Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
On 26 Aug 2007 at 14:56:56 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@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.