Rich Holton wrote:

Daniel R. Tobias wrote:

...

For your edification and amusement... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dtobias/Why_BADSITES_is_bad_policy

I have been wondering for quite some time why we allow links to various attack sites, so long as they don't attack Wikipedia editors. Either linking to attack sites is bad, and all should be eliminated (I don't support this), or we shouldn't make a special case of sites that attack Wikipedia editors.

Attack sites are a natural by-product of being big. Any large organization will spawn a flock of malcontents whose points of view defy all atempts at logical analysis.

As I wade through the tedious debates on this under the guise of "No Personal Attacks" I find that those who are pushing for this kind of policy are no better than the sites they seek to have suppressed. By seeking to arrogate to themselves the sole right to determine what is and is not an attack site, and by seeking to suppress any contrary opinion they do well to establish themselves in the company of a variety of governments past and pesent across the entire political spectrum that would do just that. Free speech is not instituted by defending one's own rights, but by defending the rights of others to say things that one dislikes.

I am unlikely to have need of the allegedly evil sites, save perhaps accidentally when another page from the same site deals in perfect innocence with a topic that interests me. Yet some jackbooted defenders of freedom would have the temerity to assert that because on some other page the website owners offended them all of their efforts should be under interdict.

I don't dispute the fact that there are sites out there that are hypercritical of Wikipedia. Some of them refer to Wikipedians in a manner that goes well beyond the bounds of good taste. When those sites engage in acts of questionable legality the offended individual may only have pyrrhic means at his disposal to combat the offence. What they can do is a much broader question that is beyond our scope, but punishing other Wikipedians by withholding their access to relevant links in the hope of reducing the offender's Google rating cannot be the right way to go about it.

Ec