The last few days have seen a profusion of invocations of the alleged policy against linking to so-called "attack sites", with a variety of targets. If this were being done by trolls trying to discredit the policy by making it look silly (as has often been alleged by its supporters when some ridiculous case or other comes up in that regard), they'd be doing a very good job in their trolling, but it seems like everybody involved in these recent cases is actually totally serious. There's no need for trolling to make the policy look silly... the supporters of the policy do a perfectly fine job of it themselves.
Recent cases:
* Anti-pedophile site Perverted Justice set up a redirect based on HTTP referrers so that anybody following links to any page in their site from Wikipedia get redirected to a criticism page that blasts Wikipedia for not cracking down on pedophile editors. This made the whole thing an "attack site" according to some who seem to think that anything that has anything critical to say about Wikipedia is an "attack" that must not be linked to. The ultimate consensus was to make references to pages in that site non-live as links as a practical means of dealing with the forced redirect, but not to suppress all reference to the site itself (which has an article on Wikipedia due to notability). Jimbo Wales even chimed in himself in the AN/I debate on this, saying "[WP:BADSITES]] is a rejected policy, as it should be. There is of course a noble concept behind it, and it is my belief that a more carefully formulated restricted version of the policy could in fact pass muster." He went on to call for being thoughtful about what one links to, and mindful of the hurt it might cause, but that we also need to be mindful of debatable criticisms of Wikipedia even if we feel them to be invalid.
* On the heels of this, with Jimbo's notes still present on AN/I, a thread opened up to discuss alleged sockpuppetry by SlimVirgin. The actual actions were fairly minor and a couple of years old, so this was perhaps "no big deal" as her supporters said... but, as with many scandals, the things that were done later to cover it up (such as oversighting many of the edits in question) were of greater concern than the original act. Anyway, since a reasonably respected admin opened the thread, it didn't get immediately suppressed as "trolling" as attempts to criticize such well-connected editors as Slim usually are; but her clique *did* invoke the anti-attack-sites policy to try to suppress a link to crucial evidence in this case, because it was in a site run by a banned attacker. The ultimate compromise was for somebody else to copy the evidence in question to another site that we *could* link to... and that site in turn included a link to the other "attack" site where it credited the source of the information, so it was just one more click away, but that seemed to placate the "no links to attack sites ever" crowd anyway.
* While this was still in full swing, the next big BADSITES flap was already under way. Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore decided he didn't like how a Wikipedia editor, who also was a notable right-wing commentator out in the "real world", was editing pages related to Moore and his films. That Wikipedian, who until recently edited under his real name and openly disclosed his occupation, affiliations, and outside publications, suddenly decided not long ago that he wanted to be retroactively anonymous, so he changed his username and insisted that all the various policies protecting editors against "outing" apply now. Moore, not being a Wikipedian, didn't feel these rules had any application to him off-wiki, so he put on the front page of his official Web site a piece mentioning the guy by name and calling attention to his Wikipedia activity. This led to frantic activity whereby some editors were insisting that michaelmoore.com is now an Attack Site and must be delinked everywhere (including on the [[Michael Moore]] article itself), and others opposing this as just plain silly. Somebody involved in the debate claimed to be friends with a producer of The Colbert Report and to have talked with them about mentioning this flap, so it just might turn up on that show (which likes to make fun of both Wikipedia and Michael Moore, so might not resist a story involving both).
* And, finally (for now), a renewed attempt is being made to get Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog, Making Light, declared to be an attack site (something that was tried, and failed the laugh test, a few months ago). This time, it's alleged that the blog published antisemitic remarks against a Wikipedia editor, though I haven't been able to find a trace of this myself when I look at it.
From all of this, it's obvious that the policy (currently embedded in
[[WP:NPA]] after the attempt at a separate BADSITES policy failed) is highly flawed, and causes much more trouble than good, and also clearly doesn't agree with consensus given that none of the above attempts actually succeeded in suppressing the information they were trying to do, and all of them met with strong opposition including from admins.
Particularly troublesome is the part of the policy that claims that the 3-revert rule doesn't apply to removing attack site links. This is a destructive invitation to edit-warring, going against the very reason 3RR was enacted in the first place: everybody who edit-wars does it because they think they're right and the other guy is wrong. In true, noncontroversial cases of gratuitous personal attacks, harrassment, outing, and the like, this special exception is unnecessary; if somebody vandalizes a user page to reveal the true name and address of that user and invite people to stalk him/her, there will undoubtably be a whole flock of editors and admins rushing to revert the vandalism, oversight the personal info, and block the user who inserted it; it's unlikely that anybody would need to revert more than 3 times in this process, and even if somebody did, it wouldn't be punished given the obviousness of the case (it's the sort of thing that goes under WP:IAR). It's only in cases where there's a real controversy over whether the policy applies to a particular case, and whether it makes any sense to invoke it, that there would be a perceived need to do multiple reverts, and those are the cases where discussion rather than edit-warring would be productive.
Anyway, the policy is clearly not factually accurate, given that somebody *did* get blocked for 3RR over removing one of the links mentioned above.
If the policy is not to have a stake driven through its heart (my preference), it at least needs a massive rewrite in accordance with Jimbo's stated principles, so it calls for a thoughtful, reasoned approach to potentially harmful links rather than an absolutist black- and-white "we're good, those sites are evil" zero-tolerance rule.
On 26/08/07, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
- And, finally (for now), a renewed attempt is being made to get
Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog, Making Light, declared to be an attack site (something that was tried, and failed the laugh test, a few months ago). This time, it's alleged that the blog published antisemitic remarks against a Wikipedia editor, though I haven't been able to find a trace of this myself when I look at it.
It must be noted that Making Light isn't helping matters itself, running an extended attack piece on SWATjester after he dared stop one SF writer's attempt to use Wikipedia for self-publicity. The Nielsen Haydens proceeded to encourage this. That they did so after the last BADSITES kerfuffle beggars belief ...
- d.
On 26/08/07, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
The last few days have seen a profusion of invocations of the alleged policy against linking to so-called "attack sites", with a variety of targets. If this were being done by trolls trying to discredit the policy by making it look silly (as has often been alleged by its supporters when some ridiculous case or other comes up in that regard), they'd be doing a very good job in their trolling, but it seems like everybody involved in these recent cases is actually totally serious. There's no need for trolling to make the policy look silly... the supporters of the policy do a perfectly fine job of it themselves.
It's about creating a supportive environment for contributors. Nothing silly about that.
Recent cases:
- Anti-pedophile site Perverted Justice set up a redirect based on
HTTP referrers so that anybody following links to any page in their site from Wikipedia get redirected to a criticism page that blasts Wikipedia for not cracking down on pedophile editors. This made the whole thing an "attack site" according to some who seem to think that anything that has anything critical to say about Wikipedia is an "attack" that must not be linked to. The ultimate consensus was to make references to pages in that site non-live as links as a practical means of dealing with the forced redirect, but not to suppress all reference to the site itself (which has an article on Wikipedia due to notability). Jimbo Wales even chimed in himself in the AN/I debate on this, saying "[WP:BADSITES]] is a rejected policy, as it should be. There is of course a noble concept behind it, and it is my belief that a more carefully formulated restricted version of the policy could in fact pass muster." He went on to call for being thoughtful about what one links to, and mindful of the hurt it might cause, but that we also need to be mindful of debatable criticisms of Wikipedia even if we feel them to be invalid.
Being publicly accused of being a pedophile, by name or pseudonym, could be highly damaging to one's reputation, which would be problematic if one is not indeed a pedophile.
- On the heels of this, with Jimbo's notes still present on AN/I, a
thread opened up to discuss alleged sockpuppetry by SlimVirgin. The actual actions were fairly minor and a couple of years old, so this was perhaps "no big deal" as her supporters said... but, as with many scandals, the things that were done later to cover it up (such as oversighting many of the edits in question) were of greater concern than the original act. Anyway, since a reasonably respected admin opened the thread, it didn't get immediately suppressed as "trolling" as attempts to criticize such well-connected editors as Slim usually are; but her clique *did* invoke the anti-attack-sites policy to try to suppress a link to crucial evidence in this case, because it was in a site run by a banned attacker. The ultimate compromise was for somebody else to copy the evidence in question to another site that we *could* link to... and that site in turn included a link to the other "attack" site where it credited the source of the information, so it was just one more click away, but that seemed to placate the "no links to attack sites ever" crowd anyway.
If it seems odd, that is only because personal attacks are a regular part of the dispute resolution process. Better availability and usage of private dispute resolution would help this problem. In any case, Wikipaedia's reluctance to even blank such attacks (and other offensive material that might very well have been well-intentioned) in many cases, even after dispute resolution is over, is quite reminiscent of ED.
- While this was still in full swing, the next big BADSITES flap was
already under way. Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore decided he didn't like how a Wikipedia editor, who also was a notable right-wing commentator out in the "real world", was editing pages related to Moore and his films. That Wikipedian, who until recently edited under his real name and openly disclosed his occupation, affiliations, and outside publications, suddenly decided not long ago that he wanted to be retroactively anonymous, so he changed his username and insisted that all the various policies protecting editors against "outing" apply now. Moore, not being a Wikipedian, didn't feel these rules had any application to him off-wiki, so he put on the front page of his official Web site a piece mentioning the guy by name and calling attention to his Wikipedia activity. This led to frantic activity whereby some editors were insisting that michaelmoore.com is now an Attack Site and must be delinked everywhere (including on the [[Michael Moore]] article itself), and others opposing this as just plain silly. Somebody involved in the debate claimed to be friends with a producer of The Colbert Report and to have talked with them about mentioning this flap, so it just might turn up on that show (which likes to make fun of both Wikipedia and Michael Moore, so might not resist a story involving both).
Bad things can happen to you off-internet when you reveal your off-internet contact info online, causing some people to regret not being pseudonymous. If they want to change, why not help them? The question you should be asking is how can you better help them so a retro-active change actually works.
- And, finally (for now), a renewed attempt is being made to get
Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog, Making Light, declared to be an attack site (something that was tried, and failed the laugh test, a few months ago). This time, it's alleged that the blog published antisemitic remarks against a Wikipedia editor, though I haven't been able to find a trace of this myself when I look at it.
Which doesn't mean said remarks aren't there.
From all of this, it's obvious that the policy (currently embedded in [[WP:NPA]] after the attempt at a separate BADSITES policy failed) is highly flawed, and causes much more trouble than good, and also clearly doesn't agree with consensus given that none of the above attempts actually succeeded in suppressing the information they were trying to do, and all of them met with strong opposition including from admins.
Wikipaedia doesn't suppress enough. Wikipaedia has high Google rankings, no need to screw over people lives by being a tabloid on private individuals.
Particularly troublesome is the part of the policy that claims that the 3-revert rule doesn't apply to removing attack site links. This is a destructive invitation to edit-warring, going against the very reason 3RR was enacted in the first place: everybody who edit-wars does it because they think they're right and the other guy is wrong. In true, noncontroversial cases of gratuitous personal attacks, harrassment, outing, and the like, this special exception is unnecessary; if somebody vandalizes a user page to reveal the true name and address of that user and invite people to stalk him/her, there will undoubtably be a whole flock of editors and admins rushing to revert the vandalism, oversight the personal info, and block the user who inserted it; it's unlikely that anybody would need to revert more than 3 times in this process, and even if somebody did, it wouldn't be punished given the obviousness of the case (it's the sort of thing that goes under WP:IAR). It's only in cases where there's a real controversy over whether the policy applies to a particular case, and whether it makes any sense to invoke it, that there would be a perceived need to do multiple reverts, and those are the cases where discussion rather than edit-warring would be productive.
Heh. A blanking is not a sanction. Blocking someone for adding a link would be problematic, since they might very well not understand it is harmful. But blanking and deletion? No need to get upset, and so much to gain.
Anyway, the policy is clearly not factually accurate, given that somebody *did* get blocked for 3RR over removing one of the links mentioned above.
The person should be applauded.
If the policy is not to have a stake driven through its heart (my preference), it at least needs a massive rewrite in accordance with Jimbo's stated principles, so it calls for a thoughtful, reasoned approach to potentially harmful links rather than an absolutist black- and-white "we're good, those sites are evil" zero-tolerance rule.
Well, Wikipaedia might be an attack site too, but not removing links to attacks on other websites will only make it more of one.
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I have no trouble at all with the concept of removing links being used specifically for the purpose of making a personal attack against a wikipedian. What I do have problems with is removing ALL links to a site, regardless of the reason for the link's presence. Particularly when those links are used as references or are part of a relevant encyclopedia article, deleting these links actually increases the drama and spreads the hypothetical attack against the editor, because other editors will question the reason for removal.
The section on external links currently embedded in NPA is inappropriate, as most of these links are NOT personal attacks. It should be replaced with a prohibition on using any links for the purpose of making a personal attack. The discussion of removing ALL or MOST external links to sites that may harbour a personal attack against an individual Wikipedian is more correctly done at WP:EL.
Risker
On 8/26/07, Daniel R. Tobias dan@tobias.name wrote:
The last few days have seen a profusion of invocations of the alleged policy against linking to so-called "attack sites", with a variety of targets. If this were being done by trolls trying to discredit the policy by making it look silly (as has often been alleged by its supporters when some ridiculous case or other comes up in that regard), they'd be doing a very good job in their trolling, but it seems like everybody involved in these recent cases is actually totally serious. There's no need for trolling to make the policy look silly... the supporters of the policy do a perfectly fine job of it themselves.
<snip> From all of this, it's obvious that the policy (currently embedded in [[WP:NPA]] after the attempt at a separate BADSITES policy failed) is highly flawed, and causes much more trouble than good, and also clearly doesn't agree with consensus given that none of the above attempts actually succeeded in suppressing the information they were trying to do, and all of them met with strong opposition including from admins.
Particularly troublesome is the part of the policy that claims that the 3-revert rule doesn't apply to removing attack site links. This is a destructive invitation to edit-warring, going against the very reason 3RR was enacted in the first place: everybody who edit-wars does it because they think they're right and the other guy is wrong. In true, noncontroversial cases of gratuitous personal attacks, harrassment, outing, and the like, this special exception is unnecessary; if somebody vandalizes a user page to reveal the true name and address of that user and invite people to stalk him/her, there will undoubtably be a whole flock of editors and admins rushing to revert the vandalism, oversight the personal info, and block the user who inserted it; it's unlikely that anybody would need to revert more than 3 times in this process, and even if somebody did, it wouldn't be punished given the obviousness of the case (it's the sort of thing that goes under WP:IAR). It's only in cases where there's a real controversy over whether the policy applies to a particular case, and whether it makes any sense to invoke it, that there would be a perceived need to do multiple reverts, and those are the cases where discussion rather than edit-warring would be productive.
Anyway, the policy is clearly not factually accurate, given that somebody *did* get blocked for 3RR over removing one of the links mentioned above.
If the policy is not to have a stake driven through its heart (my preference), it at least needs a massive rewrite in accordance with Jimbo's stated principles, so it calls for a thoughtful, reasoned approach to potentially harmful links rather than an absolutist black- and-white "we're good, those sites are evil" zero-tolerance rule.
-- == Dan == Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/ Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
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Risker wrote:
I have no trouble at all with the concept of removing links being used specifically for the purpose of making a personal attack against a wikipedian.
The inevitable difficulty with this has less to do with removing attack links, and everything to do with identifying them. The more thick-skinned among us will happily laugh off comments that others see as grossly offensive. When I make a sarcastic comment I know that I leave myself open to comparable comments from my target. If I react to someone else's unseemly innuendo I certainly don't do so with the intent that third-party supporters of either side will expand the issue into something more than it ever was or should be.
What I do have problems with is removing ALL links to a site, regardless of the reason for the link's presence. Particularly when those links are used as references or are part of a relevant encyclopedia article, deleting these links actually increases the drama and spreads the hypothetical attack against the editor, because other editors will question the reason for removal.
Exactly. These other editors seldom enter the lists as partisan to a combatant. They often do so out of respect for the view that NPOV demands recognition that both sides have a valid point to make.
The section on external links currently embedded in NPA is inappropriate, as most of these links are NOT personal attacks. It should be replaced with a prohibition on using any links for the purpose of making a personal attack.
That would be far more acceptable.
Ec
On 8/27/07, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
The section on external links currently embedded in NPA is inappropriate, as most of these links are NOT personal attacks. It should be replaced with a prohibition on using any links for the purpose of making a personal attack. The discussion of removing ALL or MOST external links to sites that may harbour a personal attack against an individual Wikipedian is more correctly done at WP:EL.
I'm going to repeat what I've said before on this matter: much of this is already covered by the blocking policy. Making personal attacks is blockable. Posting personal information is blockable. Making threats is blockable. Doing anything that puts someone else in danger is blockable.
All we need to do is make it clear that whether you do on the wiki, or somewhere else that you link to from the wiki, you get blocked for it.
Stephen Bain wrote:
On 8/27/07, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
The section on external links currently embedded in NPA is inappropriate, as most of these links are NOT personal attacks. It should be replaced with a prohibition on using any links for the purpose of making a personal attack. The discussion of removing ALL or MOST external links to sites that may harbour a personal attack against an individual Wikipedian is more correctly done at WP:EL.
I'm going to repeat what I've said before on this matter: much of this is already covered by the blocking policy. Making personal attacks is blockable. Posting personal information is blockable. Making threats is blockable. Doing anything that puts someone else in danger is blockable.
All we need to do is make it clear that whether you do on the wiki, or somewhere else that you link to from the wiki, you get blocked for it.
If someone is obviously posting a link to pull something they wouldn't be allowed to directly pull on-wiki, it should be treated just like they -did- do it on-wiki. But oftentimes these situations are a lot more nuanced then someone writing on a blog "Editor X is a moron, and here's his home address!" and then slapping links to it everywhere.
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
[...] a notable right-wing commentator out in the "real world", was editing pages related to Moore and his films. That Wikipedian, who until recently edited under his real name and openly disclosed his occupation, affiliations, and outside publications, suddenly decided not long ago that he wanted to be retroactively anonymous, so he changed his username and insisted that all the various policies protecting editors against "outing" apply now.
And this, sadly, is the hole that will sink our acceptance of anonymity.
It has been very exciting to see all of the organizations busted recently for fiddling Wikipedia. But anybody sinister and mildly smart is going to get an account now. Our strong protection of anonymity will definitely be seen as exploitable. If we continue on our current course, someone is eventually going to get exposed for manipulating Wikipedia, and we will get tarred and feathered for actively aiding and abetting them.
For a while I've been considering proposing that all admins, or at least all new admins, have public identities. That's not because I particularly like the idea. Anonymity creates a lot of opportunity for good. But I can no longer persuade myself that one of the world's top publishers of reference information can be run by anonymous internet identities. Not because it doesn't work, but because it undermines public trust.
Essjay was a huge black eye for us, and nobody could question that he was a generally good guy who meant well. When it is discovered that some admin is actually an intentional fraud used to manipulate coverage, it will be an even bigger mess. And the way we're going, it's only a matter of time.
William
William Pietri wrote:
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
[...] a notable right-wing commentator out in the "real world", was editing pages related to Moore and his films. That Wikipedian, who until recently edited under his real name and openly disclosed his occupation, affiliations, and outside publications, suddenly decided not long ago that he wanted to be retroactively anonymous, so he changed his username and insisted that all the various policies protecting editors against "outing" apply now.
And this, sadly, is the hole that will sink our acceptance of anonymity.
It has been very exciting to see all of the organizations busted recently for fiddling Wikipedia. But anybody sinister and mildly smart is going to get an account now. Our strong protection of anonymity will definitely be seen as exploitable. If we continue on our current course, someone is eventually going to get exposed for manipulating Wikipedia, and we will get tarred and feathered for actively aiding and abetting them.
For a while I've been considering proposing that all admins, or at least all new admins, have public identities. That's not because I particularly like the idea. Anonymity creates a lot of opportunity for good. But I can no longer persuade myself that one of the world's top publishers of reference information can be run by anonymous internet identities. Not because it doesn't work, but because it undermines public trust.
Essjay was a huge black eye for us, and nobody could question that he was a generally good guy who meant well. When it is discovered that some admin is actually an intentional fraud used to manipulate coverage, it will be an even bigger mess. And the way we're going, it's only a matter of time.
William
I'd be fine with that. Then again, I'm on Hivemind already, and obviously I've never made any secret of my real name, as you'd see on this email which will go to the public mailing list.
I think there are also some potential technical solutions. For example, perhaps a list, generated automatically by the server and visible only to checkusers, of editors with the same IP address making frequent edits to the same page. To conform with the privacy policy, the actual IP address wouldn't be displayed until and unless a checkuser determines that the behavior is indeed suspicious enough to run a checkuser, just "Editors X, Y, and Z made edits to A, B, C, and D from (the same/first 3 octets the same) IP address". I think something like that would go a long way toward curbing sockpuppetry, while not being an unreasonable violation of anyone's privacy (the checkuser still has to be justified in running a checkuser to see what your IP actually -is-, and appearing on such a list would not in and of itself be sufficient grounds to run checkuser on you, but would say "Hey, these accounts might be a few we need to look at".)
As to Essjay-style situations, I don't really see any other way around it. Sure, all of us know that despite everything, Essjay was a nice guy who had no wish whatsoever to harm the project. The unfortunate part is that, despite his good intentions, he did. Despite what any of us might know, what anyone else would see is "Hey, this guy massively inflated his credentials and was in a position of authority on this site, and no one caught him." They won't understand that here, positions of authority are based on behavior and trust, not credentials. At the very least, it would have been wise for him to tell the reporter off the record "Not everything about me on my user bio is true, please refrain from using anything like that in your story."
So, there's my criticism for the day. I think, to far too large of an extent, things are trying to be done in ways that -once- worked, for a much smaller and more obscure project, but no longer work since that project doesn't exist anymore, and it's been replaced by a highly-publicized behemoth. Village council governance works great for a village where everybody knows everybody, but it ceases to when that village suddenly grows to the size of New York City. That doesn't mean everyone who loved that openness and informality will give it up easily, nor even that they should not insist that the best parts of that should not be retained, but changes do have to get made.