G'day Todd,
There's a -tremendous- difference between
tolerating spam and leaving
it in an article where it's appropriate. I'm 100% for stopping any
spamming campaign. But if someone were spamming a link to the NYT with
"SUBSCRIBE TO THE NYT TODAY!", we wouldn't spam-blacklist it, because
there are legitimate uses. In this case, there's a legitimate use. And
No, we wouldn't spam-blacklist it because there are better alternatives
available to us --- like blocking the spammer (singular). If a mass
effort occurred, I'm sure the /New York Times/ website *would* be added
to the blacklist. This would mean that the /New York Times/ could not
be referred to in the future, and we could not make changes to existing
articles containing links to the website unless we removed the link as
part of our edit.
That would be a Bad Thing, but bearable for a brief period. We have the
capacity, and I think the will, to do it, if spammers became enough of a
nuisance to make it necessary (not that I want to encourage you to stuff
beans up your nose). By comparison, we could go a week or month without
publishing the HD-DVD key, while standing on our collective heads.
the last I checked, child porn wasn't being
printed in everything from
Wired to the New York Times.
You seem to be saying that it would be okay to print child porn if the
/New York Times/ included a sample in a series on the topic.
And yes, we -can- cover the topic without using the
number, in the
same way we -could- cover the speed of light without putting what it
is. But either one would be incomplete. Only one, however, involves
caving to bullies.
Fuck "caving to the bullies". That is not, and should not be, a factor
in our editorial process: "Let's see, can we stick it to The Man by
doing this? Cool, discussion over, we'll do it."
I've seen that too often on Wikipedia. If we include the string it must
be *only* because it improves the article to have it there --- as David
has argued --- and not because The Man wants us to remove it --- as you
have argued. I should have thought this obvious to anyone interested in
seeing this encyclopaedia flourish.
--
Mark Gallagher
"'Yes, sir,' said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten
in the leg by a personal friend."
- P G Wodehouse, /Carry On, Jeeves/