-----Original Message----- From: William Pietri [mailto:william@scissor.com] Sent: Friday, July 6, 2007 12:53 PM To: 'English Wikipedia' Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] FredBauder"clarifies"onattackkkkkkkkkkk site link policy
Fred Bauder wrote:
I'll never accept linking to personal attacks on Wikipedians. I don't care how futile it is considered to be or how bad such "censorship" is. And it a site makes a regular business of attacking Wikipedians, not criticizing, but attacking, I will oppose linking to the site at all. I can see only good coming out of supporting other editors and only harm coming out of tolerating their humiliation.
I agree with the principle -- we should treasure and support our editors -- but I don't think the rest follows in all cases.
For example, I once linked to what could easily be read as an off-wiki personal attack on me. That was very helpful, as it made the situation clearer to fellow editors, and resulted in me getting the assistance I needed. A blanket ban would have made my life as an editor worse, not better.
Rather than making the judgment based on the thing linked to, I think our judgment should be based on the way we are linking. Linking to a personal attack can be done as a personal attack, of course, and that should be treated like any other personal attack. But it also can be a way to defang the personal attack. It can be a way to show what kooks the attackers are. It can shine a light on things that fester in the dark.
Stepping back, links to contentious material can certainly be helpful in discussing and building consensus around whatever the new do-not-link policy ends up as. After some random clicking around on the sites whose names should not be spoken, I still haven't seen anything particularly horrific. I'm not saying it isn't there, of course. I'm just saying that if some people can see a problem and others can't, they are unlikely to ever come to consensus on the severity of the problem, let alone the solution.
William
The remedy was applied after a personal attack on MONGO was featured on the Main Page.
Fred