On 20 Apr 2007 at 20:42:24 -0600, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Would blocking Google and the other major search engines from spidering Wikipedia satisfy you? I'd rather see that tried before implementing some sort of blanket ban on biographical articles.
That seems like a version of the infamous Brandtian argument that free speech should only be permitted if not *too* many people actually get to hear you; it's OK to be free in what you put in a website, but you'd better not let the search engines index it too well so that you get a big audience for what you say.
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
On 20 Apr 2007 at 20:42:24 -0600, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Would blocking Google and the other major search engines from spidering Wikipedia satisfy you? I'd rather see that tried before implementing some sort of blanket ban on biographical articles.
That seems like a version of the infamous Brandtian argument that free speech should only be permitted if not *too* many people actually get to hear you; it's OK to be free in what you put in a website, but you'd better not let the search engines index it too well so that you get a big audience for what you say.
Mind you, I'm not actually saying I like the idea myself; IMO it's the slightly less worse of two bad ideas. I think Wikipedia is doing just fine in the libel department as it is, and will probably be doing even better once version flagging is in. I was mainly just trying to determine the basis of doc wikipedia's specific objection.