By and large, it seems like the BADSITES-equivalent proposals are "mostly dead"-- I think everyone recognizes that "Never link to any 'site that is sufficently bad', deletion exempt from 3RR" has been rejected by the community. (Rejected in the formal sense-- it's hotly disputed, doesn't have consensus, and that isn't likely to change anytime soon). Such proposals may be mostly dead, but of course: "MOSTLY dead" isn't "all dead". I see there's at least one BADSITES-equivalent proposal still floating around here on the list, namely the proposal that says "Any site that is sufficiently bad shall be declared unreliable, and may not be linked to". And, like any perinneal debate, I'm sure there will be more such proposals for the foreseeable future. Therefore, I'd propose the following question to anyone proposing new policies on this subject: How would your policy prevent incidents like MakingLights and the MichaelMoore from happening again in the future? ---------------- DISCLAIMER: Just to remind us all, I'll recap the Making Lights saga, but I won't name the person who was involved, and I sincerely would ask everyone else not to criticize someone today for something they did months ago. Seriously. We've all made mistakes, they're over and done with, and I _sincerely_ am not trying to relive this past saga-- I just don't want to relive it in the future either. Ordinarily, I'd use a hypothetical example here, but I've found that in this debate, hypothetical examples are invariably dismissed when someone says "Oh, that could never really happen". So I actually do have to use a real-world example if we're going to talk about this. ---- The Making Light Story MakingLights is a famous blog, run by a famous person. People on that site's forum got into a flamewar of some sort with somebody. Some very-not-nice things were said, and apparently some personal information was posted. (Ostensibly the person's real name could be found just by typing his username into google, but I haven't confirmed that). Unfortunately for MakingLights, the person who was flamed turned out to be a Wikipedia administrator. He came to Wikipedia, declared Making Lights an "attack site", and in less than two hours, he went to 23 different pages and deleted all the links to Making Lights and its affiliated sites. When members of the community objected to the deletions and restored the links, the same admin performed 22 seperate reverts in under two hours. When questioned, the admin justified his actions by arguing, in part, that the site's alleged harassment of him "calls the website's neutrality into question. If the editor [of Making Lights] is engaged in ongoing disputes with Wikipedia and its editors, can it still be viewed as a reliable source?" The admin also offered a quid pro quo, whereby if the objectionable content was removed from Making Lights, the Wikipedia links to ML would be restored, but if the content remained on Making Lights, he promised to continue to remove the links to ML indefinitely. The whole experience was extremely upsetting for all involved, and if you look around on Sci-Fi community blogs, you can see that Wikipedia lost a lot of respect in that incident. Many in that sci-fi-blogger subculture seem to have some harsh words for Wikipedia as a result of the experience, and I'm sure we alienated a lot of people who could have been valuable contributors. The people who edit and read Making Lights felt bullied, abused, and harassed. Speaking as a reader/editors of Making Light, Sci Fi megagenius Cory Doctorow summarized the experience thusly: "This is unseemly. You appear to be attempting to punish someone who dislikes you by removing references to her site. This seems like retaliation, not an effort to improve Wikipedia. What's more, the repeated demand to change something posted to her site seems like extortion, not an attempt to improve Wikipedia. TNH claims that Wikipedians pursue petty vendettas at the expense of quality. Please conduct yourself in a way that does not lend itself to this interpretation of the project." Ultimatlely, that particular incident came to an end when the disputed material was deleted from ML, at least temporarily, and the links to ML were restored. ------------------------------ Now, let's not obsess over WHO did this. I swear, I'm not bring this up to get in a dig at anyone. The admin in question admits at least having "overreacted", and as long as the behavior has stopped, it doesn't matter WHO did this-- so by bringing this up, I'm sincerely, sincerely not trying to pick on anyone. We've all done things in the past, on wikipedia or elsewhere, that we shouldn't be throwing stones over this past thing right now. ---- But that said, I can't help but notice that this sort of abuse seems inherent to any BADSITESesque polices of the form "no linking to sites that are sufficiently bad". My questions for Will Beback, or anyone else in the future who proposes a new policy that forbids all links to "sites that contain attacks" are this: #1. Do you agree that the Making Light case was an abuse of power (or at least, incorrect. .-- i.e. Do you agree Making lights should NOT have been purged)? #2. And if so, how will your new proposed policy prevent this sort of abuse when the old policy was unable to. That is-- if we all magically decided to enact your policy today, what's to stop you (or me, or anyone) from turning around tomorrow and having a complete repeat of this whole fiasco tomorrow. --- I believe any future policy, in order to be successful, must recognize the past abuses of BADSITES, and must include reasonsable assurances that the proposed policy won't lead to the same kind of abuses in the future. If an anthropomophic proposal's answer is "MakingLights and MichaelMoore should have been deleted, and if I get enacted, I will make sure they get deleted again if a similar situation arises", then I personally think such a proposal is unlikely to ever achieve consensus. --- Alec

By and large, it seems like the BADSITES-equivalent proposals are "mostly dead"-- I think everyone recognizes that "Never link to any 'site that is sufficently bad', deletion exempt from 3RR" has been rejected by the community. (Rejected in the formal sense-- it's hotly disputed, doesn't have consensus, and that isn't likely to change anytime soon). Such proposals may be mostly dead, but of course: "MOSTLY dead" isn't "all dead". I see there's at least one BADSITES-equivalent proposal still floating around here on the list, namely the proposal that says "Any site that is sufficiently bad shall be declared unreliable, and may not be linked to". And, like any perinneal debate, I'm sure there will be more such proposals for the foreseeable future.

Ordinarily, I'd use a hypothetical example here, but I've found that in this debate, hypothetical examples are invariably dismissed when someone says "Oh, that could never really happen". So I actually do have to use a real-world example if we're going to talk about this.

The whole experience was extremely upsetting for all involved, and if you look around on Sci-Fi community blogs, you can see that Wikipedia lost a lot of respect in that incident. Many in that sci-fi-blogger subculture seem to have some harsh words for Wikipedia as a result of the experience, and I'm sure we alienated a lot of people who could have been valuable contributors. The people who edit and read Making Lights felt bullied, abused, and harassed.

Speaking as a reader/editors of Making Light, Sci Fi megagenius Cory Doctorow summarized the experience thusly: "This is unseemly. You appear to be attempting to punish someone who dislikes you by removing references to her site. This seems like retaliation, not an effort to improve Wikipedia. What's more, the repeated demand to change something posted to her site seems like extortion, not an attempt to improve Wikipedia. TNH claims that Wikipedians pursue petty vendettas at the expense of quality. Please conduct yourself in a way that does not lend itself to this interpretation of the project."

Ultimatlely, that particular incident came to an end when the disputed material was deleted from ML, at least temporarily, and the links to ML were restored.

Now, let's not obsess over WHO did this. I swear, I'm not bring this up to get in a dig at anyone. The admin in question admits at least having "overreacted", and as long as the behavior has stopped, it doesn't matter WHO did this-- so by bringing this up, I'm sincerely, sincerely not trying to pick on anyone. We've all done things in the past, on wikipedia or elsewhere, that we shouldn't be throwing stones over this past thing right now.

But that said, I can't help but notice that this sort of abuse seems inherent to any BADSITESesque polices of the form "no linking to sites that are sufficiently bad".

I believe any future policy, in order to be successful, must recognize the past abuses of BADSITES, and must include reasonsable assurances that the proposed policy won't lead to the same kind of abuses in the future.