On 9/20/07, charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
Fred wrote
PLEASE,
give us some guidance that can stick, if (collective you) are
going to make the policy any more specific.
I'm not sure we (the arbitrators) would agree on this point (that it was ever proper
to remove the link to
MichaelMoore.com).
And actually, we didn't necessarily agree to consider that question. Should we?
I'm not sure the ArbCom should get into policy making, even in response to polite
requests to do so. One of the clear problems of the reification (BADSITES as if there was
a well-defined thing out there, rather than just the usual Web slop of forums for people
getting things off their chests with improbable avatars) is that there is some assumption
that there _must be a policy_. There can't really be a policy about how junky really
junky junk has to be before people will be punished for linking to it. People who go
around the site linking to junk are being a nuisance anyway.
A 'policy' would, for the usual reasons, be applied by people saying the junky
junk they are linking to is not quite as junky junk as the policy specifies, and so
linking to it is somehow OK. That is not how good policy operates. Good policy has some
kernel that can generally be agreed (like 'civility helps'); and does not specify
(a list of acceptable insults along with a list of definitely unacceptable ones).
Charles
The problem is that we've entered the worst of all worlds right now -
we have evolved precedent via a couple of cases of sausage-making
unpleasantness that true attack sites shouldn't be linked, but other
stuff probably should be, but in both cases we've had edit (and to
some degree wheel) wars over whether we should or should not, and
everyone is left in the situation of knowing that people have
threatened to pull large hammers out in future situations, but not
under what exact circumstances the hammers will fall.
Ok, so a link to an attack site is making a personal attack on the
user being attacked. Is making that link in the course of discussing
an apparent violation of WP administrative policy ok (recent SV case,
though the details turned out to not be a violation, I believe)? Is a
link to
Michaelmoore.com deletable when he has an edit link to a WP
user or user talk page, but must immediately be restored if that edit
link goes away? Is restoring a link to
michaelmoore.com while there's
a possibly violating link from there to edit a user talk page
disruptive by nature and blockable or bannable?
It's really dangerous for Arbcom to wade in halfway. If you do, I
can't tell what to warn people about, revert over, or what to block
people about, where there will unambiguous agreement that I've done
the right thing.
If the fact of the matter is that the community is unsettled about
this, then Arbcom can either try to settle it, with enough specificity
that I and other generally reasonable good-intentions people don't
find ourselves scratching our heads next time going "Uh...", or make
it clear that it's unsettled other than a few corner cases, and that
AGF will still have to apply and that wheel-warring or edit-warring
will be handled normally in grey areas where it's not clear what the
right answer is (i.e., if you don't slow down and talk when an action
turns out to be controversial, you will get in trouble).
Somewhere in the middle is the worst possible case, because it's still
likely to leave reasonable admins and users unsure of what to do in an
actual case, but aware that they're going to be judged more harshly if
they make a mistake...
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com