On 6/26/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan(a)tobias.name> wrote:
The wikidrama continued in the [[Essjay controversy]] article over
the last 24 hours. First, various people edit-warred over the
insertion of the relevant link to a site that some regard as a so-
called "attack site", which also happened to be where important
activity in the history of the Essjay affair first came to light. The
anti-linking side threatened to block people for adding the nefarious
link, and actually blocked at least one ([[User:KamrynMatika]],
blocked by admin [[User:ElinorD]], about whom I must apologize
profusely to the Wikipedia community for playing any role in making
her an admin; I voted to support her RfA, despite knowing of her anti-
attack-site stance, out of a desire not to impose political litmus
tests like the other side did). This puts the lie to any assertion
that the link ban is "no big deal" because it won't be used to block
any linking that helps the encyclopedia... any such applications
(like attempts to suppress links to [[Teresa Nielsen Hayden]]'s blog)
were clearly misguided and can be reversed by using common sense and
[[Wikipedia:Ignore All Rules]]... well, except for now, I guess.
Then, [[User:MichaelLinnear]] came up with a seemingly good solution
to the mess; he found a respectable news outlet that was a reference
for the same fact. Problem solved... no "attack" links needed, huh?
Still, [[User:MONGO]] immediately and mistakenly reverted that
addition... well, anybody who's ever in the past inserted a so-called
attack link for any reason is clearly a Troll and an Attack Site
Partisan, so "Assume Bad Faith" is the applicable principle for
dealing with *their* kind... any link they ever insert must be
another evil attack site, given that their sinister agenda is to
promote those sites any way they can. Keep the revert trigger finger
ready, and the safety off! Still, he realized his error quickly and
reverted himself a minute later.
So, problem solved, huh? Not so fast... while all of this insertion,
reversion, and re-reversion was taking place, it appears that nobody
involved actually tried to *go* to that new respectable news link.
Turns out that it's "404 Not Found"... you get only an error page.
Well, I guess that's a great thing... no possibility of winding up on
evil attack-site content that way. The fact that there's no useful
information there either is only a minor quibble.
As of now, the nonexistent link is still there at Footnote 1... I
guess it will stay until somebody either finds another "respectable"
source, or else dares to face off against the Clique by putting the
relevant "attack" link back.
(firstpost)
i suspect that your continued rantings and overuse of sarcasm & targetting
of various editors is going to do more to harm your cause than help it.
you would be much better off spending your time making reasonable,
rational
arguments presented in a calm, non-accusatory manner and attempting to
engage the editors you disagree with in proper discussion as opposed to
bitching about them on the mailing list
1. The sarcasm aside, how is what Dan saying irrational?
2. He is trying to engage them, considering many of them read and write to
the mailing list.
3. The exasperation is understandable considering that the proponents of
this idea that we can never link to a *site* which contains attack pages
have not thought it through and continually push it without care for the
consequences, even when their actions directly and negatively impact the
encyclopaedia.
Johnleemk