[WikiEN-l] When Websites Attack

[crock spot]

I have a few thoughts to express on this issue:

BADSITES is not a policy, but NPA is a core policy. The external links
section of NPA deals directly with this issue.

However, Wikipedia is not a person. So any "attack" on Wikipedia that does
not single out individual volunteer contributors would, in my opinion, not
be covered at all by NPA. Attacks on Wikipedia that promote disruption must
surely be covered by another policy, but it would not be NPA. Legitimate
criticism of the project itself is not something I would consider
necessarily an attack, or a promotion of disruption.

I also draw a distinction between a website that might have a personal
attack against a contributor embedded in a sub page, and one that has the
attack on their main index page. In the former case, if one is linked to a
completely different sub page, one would have to really go looking for that
attack. In the latter case, all one has to do is click "home" to find it.

I don't claim to have the solution to this problem, but these aspects should
be considered.

Crockspot

On 8/26/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>
> On 26 Aug 2007 at 17:00:07 +0100, <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
> wrote:
> [long line rewrapped in accordance with RFC 2822]
> > "Daniel R. Tobias" wrote
> >
> > > * Anti-pedophile site Perverted Justice set up a redirect based on
> > > HTTP referrers so that anybody following links to any page in their
> > > site from Wikipedia get redirected to a criticism page that blasts
> > > Wikipedia for not cracking down on pedophile editors.  This made the
> > > whole thing an "attack site" according to some who seem to think that
> > > anything that has anything critical to say about Wikipedia is an
> > > "attack" that must not be linked to.
> >
> > Question: What connection would there be between compiling an
> > encyclopedia, and linking to any site which took the step of
> > redirecting incoming links to somewhere not intended?
>
> I mentioned what was ultimately done in response to the redirection,
> the changing of links to unlinked URLs in places where they're needed
> as references.  Such a forced redirection should be treated like any
> other case where a link is made less usable, like a "404 Not Found"
> dead link, a page retreating behind a registration-required login
> wall, a site redesign leading to it being inaccessible in some
> browser versions or full of annoying, intrusive ads... in all of
> these cases, the use of the link needs to be reconsidered, possibly
> changed to a "nowiki" URL or to an archived copy somewhere else or to
> an alternate site with similar content, and possibly the site owner
> should be informed of the unusability of their link in an
> encyclopedia and encouraged to fix it.  But in none of these cases is
> there the "moral panic" of saying "They're an eeeeeeeeeeeevil Attack
> Site and all references to it need to be DESTROYED!!!!!!!"
>
> --
> == Dan ==
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>
>
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