[WikiEN-l] Meet the Metz

[joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu]

Quoting "Daniel R. Tobias" <dan at tobias.name>:

> On Fri, 7 Dec 2007 11:18:42 -0800, "George Herbert"
> <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Cade is clearly looking for and finding controversy.  The Register thrives
>> on that.  The reality is rather different.  Rendering aid and comfort to
>> people who behave sociopathically online is not in the best interests of the
>> project.
>
> However, it's a logical fallacy to go from there to where several
> admins seem to be on various related articles lately (e.g., [[Gary
> Weiss]]), where they're dismissing all concerns that are in any way
> related to those mentioned in that article, even when brought up by
> perfectly rational, non-sociopathic, non-banned editors.
>
> If mapped out in outline, the line of argument seems to go:
>
> 1) Bagley claims that [list various claims of his, such as that the
> Weiss article is non-NPOV]
> 2) Bagley is a sociopathic, evil harasser.
> 3) Therefore, the claims in (1) are all false.
> 4) Thus, anybody who repeats the claims should be dismissed out of
> hand.
>
> This does not follow logically.

No it doesn't. But the conclusion of 3 happens to be true. The main 
issue seems
to be whether a mention of Bagley's criticism of Weiss is warranted in [[Gary
Weiss]]. Now, I can see the argument for doing so, especially since the matter
has been noted in some secondary sources, but there's also a good 
argument that
minor coverage of Bagley's flailing isn't that relevant enough on an article
about Weiss who is much more notable. The consensus currently is not to 
mention
Bagley on that page. I'm not sure I agree with that(I think I do but I'm not
sure) but it is a reasonable consensus that hardly constitutes a serious NPOV
problem.

Bagley had other claims he wanted in the Weiss article but if I recall, they
amounted to not much more than Bagley and Overstock's smears of Weiss that
aren't worth repeating here (and indeed have not generally been repeated
elsewhere aside from a few places noting how completely wacko Overstock's
behavior has been). (Disclaimer: I haven't looked at the details of his claims
in a while so this is from my memory of my earlier impression back when 
I payed
attention to the matter).