On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 18:34:14 -0500, "Daniel R. Tobias" dan@tobias.name wrote:

Well, you and the whole BADSITES crowd have seemed to be determined to make sure that people *don't* look at it and get a chance to make up their own mind about its nature, rather than be spoon-fed your vilification of it. What other reason was there for insisting that all links to it be banned?

What other reason? Apart from baseless and vile attacks on Wikipedia editors, grandstanding by banned users, attempts to undermine Wikipedia's neutrality and harassment of some users, you mean? Apart from those, and the fact that the biggest names on WR are more about looking for evidence to support their pre-existing conclusion that the admins who banned them than about informed critique I have nothing against them.

If you look at the essay I wrote and linked on my talk page, you will see that the circumstances where I think links should be removed are:

* Links to advocacy by banned or blocked users, in content debates. This is completely consistent with existing policy for handling banned users: banned is banned, we ban people because they can't contribute neutrally, taking it offsite does not fix that problem.

* Links to harassment and attacks. If people think a WR accusation has any merit then they can either present the same evidence themselves, from reliable sources, or they can sent it to ArbCom. We need to create an environment where it is safe for people to work on contentious subjects, and that means a zero-tolerance policy for harassment.

I've yet to see anything from WR that does not fall into one of these two categories, but I don't discount the possibility that it could happen. What is not especially productive is the idea that any removal of any link is motivated by a desire to "censor" all links to WR. Where's the assumption of good faith in that? I've been denounced for "censorship" for removing a post of a WR thread written by a banned user, which post was made by a sockpuppet of another banned user. And that was the stated reason for removal. Knee-jerk reversion of removal of links is actually the root cause of most of the link drama recently.

Additionally we do have the problem that WR makes extensive use of logs and other data to track who is going there, and discusses it openly, speculating on who the visitors are, so there is a serious privacy concern for Wikipedians who click on links in debates.

Lastly there is the pervasive influence of banned users with sweetness and light self-excuses, obscuring the fact that their bans have solid consensus. Anyone here think we should allow WordBomb back? JB196? No? If people want to challenge a ban they can do so simply by emailing the arbitrators. Any credible evidence of genuine commitment to follow consensus will likely be enough. Or they can do what JB196 does, which is to use sockpuppets, meatpuppets, and subtle manipulation of our editors, to pursue his vainglorious goal. I have seen what JB196/Looch considers "legitimate critique" and was unable to tell the difference between that and ignorant grudge-bearing. I have seen what JB196 did to Alkivar, someone I like.

All this is somewhat tangential to your point, though, which is to assume that this is still about BADSITES. It's not. It's about harassment, attacks, "outing", banned editors attempting to influence content despite their bans. Some of us have moved on to a more nuanced position, in other words. Feel like joining us?

Guy (JzG)