Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
On 16 Oct 2007 at 23:55:24 -0700, Will Beback
<will.beback.1(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Moore is notable as a filmmaker. He is not
notable as a blogger. His
blog is not encyclopedic. We are only providing a link as a convenience,
and a very minor convenience because it it the first link that comes up
on Google. So we are saving our readers about .5 seconds out of their
lives. We aren't preserving NPOV, we aren't taking a stand against
censorship, we're merely saving some readers a tiny bit of time. I don't
begrudge anyone even half a second. But if the tradeoff we're looking at
is linking to harassment of Wikipedia editors versus the slightest
inconvenience (hopefully temporary) of our readers, then I don't think
we should have a question. For completenes inthe article we can say the
guy has a blog (who doesn't), but unless the blog is notable I don't see
the overriding need to promote "convenience" above "no personal
attacks".
Thus, the "tradeoff" is between a very minor convenience to people
trying to get to the link... versus a very minor interference in the
spread of harrassment that's already out there and well-indexed in
Google. So we're all getting into a big lather over something that
barely actually matters, one way or another... apparently, we're all
motivated by the principle of the thing.
I think that external links to the
subject's self-published sites don't
add anything beyond a link to the subject's self-published site, which
is usually the easiest thing to find about them. Omitting them in some
circumstances does not harm the articles greatly, and if it would have a
major impact in reducing harassment then the trade off would be
worthwhile. WE can argue over how much of a positive improvement there'd
be, but it's hard to argue that our articles are defaced by removing a
link that isn't a source.
W.