I wrote:
Fred Bauder wrote:
Your essay presumes that a parasitic site feeding off us does not suffer lack of oxygen if we don't link to them.
The only way to cut off the oxygen supply of a site like that would be to somehow prevent it (i.e. all the people editing it) from *reading* Wikipedia.
Actually, I take that back. The way to cut off the air supply of trolls (which is a more relevant parasite to be making metaphors about) is to stop talking about them or acknowledging their existence in any way. Now, I take your point, linking to them is a certain acknowledgement of their existence that they might get a cheap little thrill out of and that we therefore ought to avoid doing. But seeing us wasting all this good time arguing about policy instead of working on the encyclopedia thing -- they really love that. And seeing their name in lights (if only implicitly) in a policy which seeks to shun and ban them, but which then generates even more heat as people get unjustly blocked by inadvertently violating the ban: nothing acknowledges and validates their existence more than such a ban; it's like funnelating keg-sized shots of pure LOX.