On 0, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net scribbled:
On Mon, 2 Jul 2007 13:52:19 +0100, "Tony Sidaway" tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
Given that the pro-link-ban side has been known to use their cliquish power to torpedo people's election (in RfAs) using political litmus tests, why is it so absurd to do the same on the other side?
Well it makes *you* look as petty and nasty as the other side (if that's what they're doing).
Tony, surely you must know: /we/ are consensus, /you/ are a clique, /they/ are a cabal.
Fact is, WR was never a reliable source. Just look at the ravings of Jonathan Barber (JB196, editing WR as Looch) and you'll see that in an instant. The reason we should not link to it is not the attacks or the outing, it's because no collection of banned trolls and frustrated vanity spammers will ever have anything like a neutral commentary on anything, and also because it's a forum not a wiki, so crap either stays or is deleted, it's not subject to any process of editing or refinement. It simply fails any rational sourcing guideline.
That is precisely the issue with [[Essjay controversy]]: WR may not be a RS about anything else in the world - but is it a reliable source about what happens on WR? More generally, is any site with user-generated content a RS about what happens on that selfsame site? Obviously some people don't think the answer is yes.
Guy (JzG)
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