Will Beback wrote:

fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote: I'm just making the situation clear. It turned out that the best alternative with Michael Moore was talking to him. (or with whoever was running his site). I think in all cases we need to be thoughtful about what we do, not apply some cookiecutter policy. Part of being thoughtful is gaging our own sentiment. Sometimes you just have to accept foolishness and get on with things. We are not always consistent. And for good reason.

Fred

This, and Fred's earlier spiderweb parable, bring up an important
point in Wikipedia policy making. Wikipedia policies are
inherently flexible. We don't need to craft rules that will work
100% of the time or be perfectly fair in every conceivable
situation. We can settle for writing policies and guidelines that
do more good than harm and that work without modification most of
the time. Special situations can be handled specially.

Regarding dealing with the problems that come up, good policies
help reasonable people find the best solutions. Not cookie
cutters, but roadmaps. I'd expect that a helpful policy on linking
to external harassment should include dispute resolution steps,
such as having a relatively uninvolved person contact the
harassing website. If our policy had been more helpful then
perhaps some of the dramas we've seen wouldn't have risen beyond
brief AN/I postings.

Will Beback