Quoting Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net:
Alec Conroy wrote:
There is now an ever-growing consensus that BADSITES is rejected, and that linking to "badsites' for encyclopedic purposes is permissible in some circumstances.
Setting aside the question of the block for a moment, I'm curious about the incident that triggered the block.
If I understand rightly, [[Robert Black (professor)]] is a respected Scottish law prof who is from Lockerbie, who has taken a great interest in the Lockerbie case, and was involved in setting up the Lockerbie trials of the Libyan agents.
In response to recent activity in the case, in early July he set up a blog to discuss it. We briefly mentioned the blog and added a link to it. That link stayed in place until a few days ago, when he gave a one-sentence mention of the allegations that SV "systematically altered" the Wikipedia Lockerbie articles, mentioning what some claim is her true name. He doesn't claim that they are true, just that they are interesting.
Here's some more garbage from the page the respected professor linked to:
"The most curious reaction to the news of SlimVirgin's identity was demonstrated by the English-language media: apart from personal blogs and web forums, not a single word appeared in any of the major media! Previous scandals such the Seigenthaler case, exposing Essjay, and the WikiScanner program by Virgil Griffith, received wide coverage. But there was silence about SlimVirgin, comparable to the silence on classic themes such as UFOs and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
This year such themes have been completely ignored by major media, even when new light is shed on these twentieth-century mysteries. First the famous E. Howard Hunt, who personally participated in many covert operations during the 1950s and 1960s, admitted before he died that the assassination of President Kennedy was organized by U.S. intelligence, in conjunction with the Mafia and top administration officials, headed by Vice-President Lyndon Johnson. Several months later a notarized deathbed confession by Walter Haut was published. In 1947 he was the public relations officer at the 509th Bomb Group based in Roswell, New Mexico. First he composed a press release about the crash of a flying disc, and soon followed with a new release about a weather balloon. For the rest of his life he gave evasive explanations of what was really found, but just before he died he dared to tell the truth. In the document he left behind, Walter Haut states that he not only saw the wrecked spacecraft, but also the bodies of aliens recovered from it. They had unusually large heads, and bodies the size of a ten-year-old child. It is clear that the deathbed confessions of people who participated in these extraordinary events deserve serious attention. But the major media ignored both of them.
Moreover, the sensational confession of E. Howard Hunt did not even get any space in Wikipedia's article on the assassination of John F. Kennedy (at least it is mentioned in the article on E. Howard Hunt). The confession of Walter Haut is reflected in the article about the Roswell incident, but it lacks a direct reference to the document published on the web. Thus, the conclusion: for important Wikipedia articles, the content is gradually approaching the official information available from traditional sources. It is more or less understandable who is behind this. Everyone must decide for himself or herself whether this is acceptable."
How about them apples...? I've always wondered about that disc business.
Fred
Fred, I must be missing something. How is the fact that most of the link that Black uses is crankery at all relevant?