[WikiEN-l] When Websites Attack

[Todd Allen]

Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> On 26 Aug 2007 at 14:56:56 +0100, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com> 
> wrote:
>
>   
>> 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 ...
>>     
>
> Other sites shouldn't be allowed to criticize Wikipedia or 
> Wikipedians?  They should be expected to do everything by Wikipedia's 
> rules and standards and not their own?
>
>
>   
They're absolutely allowed to do things by their own standards (at
least, provided that their behavior doesn't so far cross the line it
becomes illegal), but we're free to set our own standards too.
Personally, I think BADSITES is a potentially reasonable idea that's
been taken way, way too far. I've even seen it used to quash links to
sites that offer only general (if biting) criticism of Wikipedia, rather
than anything on any specific editor.

We're big, and we're a new concept. People are going to criticize us,
that just comes with that territory. Some of them are going to be
professional about it, and may even turn out to offer highly
constructive criticism that we should carefully consider. Some of them
are going to be impolite about it, but still might every so often be
right. And some are going to be just plain vicious.

I don't have any problem saying we shouldn't -gratuitously- link to
material which is disparaging of a specific editor, we don't need random
links to some blog that says "Editor X eats babies! Oh and here's his
phone number and home address!" on the userpage of Editor Y, who
strongly dislikes Editor X. At the same time, I don't see any reason to
suppress links to criticism which is on-topic for a genuine, good-faith
discussion, and I don't believe links to general criticism of Wikipedia,
without mentioning or outing specific editors (or only speaking about
specific editors' on-wiki activities without attempts to out), should be
subject to suppression.

Like most things, neither extreme is workable. We certainly cannot
tolerate those who wish to link to attack and outing sites in the
interest of trolling and harassment. We also should not ignore on-topic
and potentially helpful criticism, even if it comes from someone we may
not like much. (Ad hominem may be a common fallacy, but it is still a
fallacy, even assholes may be right sometimes!) The answer is somewhere
in the middle.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20070826/f4c2aba1/attachment.pgp