[WikiEN-l] FredBauder"clarifies"onattackkk site link policy

[Fred Bauder]

You may appeal the case if you wish, although I would not guarantee we would accept the appeal. The decision is binding with respect to links to the drama site. The principles which form the basis for the case also remain, solidarity with other users and reasonable efforts to protect our users from harassment.

Fred

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Daniel R. Tobias [mailto:dan at tobias.name]
>Sent: Sunday, July 1, 2007 01:12 PM
>To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] FredBauder"clarifies"onattack site link policy
>
>On 1 Jul 2007 at 16:32:39 +0000, wikien-l-request at lists.wikime wrote:
>
>> See
>> 
>> Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/MONGO/Workshop
>> 
>> and the other pages associated with that arbitration.
>
>...which actually impose a ban on linking to Encyclopedia Dramatica, 
>not Wikipedia Review, which is the site in question in the latest 
>incident.
>
>But referring to that arbitration workshop page just underscores the 
>idea that it's bad for ArbCom to be making policy, which is exactly 
>what it's doing when it does things like imposing sweeping bans on 
>linking to sites, regardless of the word-lawyering you may be doing 
>to claim that it isn't making policy. The arbitration workshop page 
>was frequented by a fairly small group of people -- the combatants in 
>the current case (some ED partisans vs. some editors/admins that had 
>been targeted for attack on that site) along with the handful of 
>policy wonks who pay close attention to all ArbCom cases and other 
>such administrivia. It can hardly be considered to be representative 
>of the Wikipedia community as a whole, of which one is supposed to 
>have a consensus when setting policy. I see that the part on not 
>linking to "attack sites" got hardly any discussion or debate on that 
>page, with just a handful of comments including your own curt "Game 
>Over" against somebody wanting less absolutism. Some other things on 
>the page got a greater deal of debate (the "solidarity" part, where 
>admins were expected to close ranks in an us-vs-them manner against 
>anybody deemed to be "attacking" one of "us", got some expressions of 
>concern for over-broadness and slippery-slope dangerousness, but 
>these were dismissed with "if you're not with us, you're with the 
>terrorists" rhetoric).
>
>To treat anything emerging from this as binding policy enforceable 
>against anybody other than the direct parties to the particular case 
>is letting a small handful of people impose policy on a greater 
>community unaware that this is even happening until it's too late, 
>after which everybody gets told to "shut up and follow the binding 
>decision".
>
>I know that I was unaware of what was going on in that ArbCom 
>decision at the time it was being made; like the vast majority of 
>editors, I was busy improving the encyclopedia, not concerning myself 
>with silly flame-wars between people on an external site I was not 
>interested in and editors on Wikipedia I was not dealing directly 
>with at the time. If I'd known that it was being used as an entering 
>wedge to impose sweeping rules on all of us, I'd certainly have 
>raised objections at the time.
>
>-- 
>== Dan ==
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>
>
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