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

[The Mangoe]

On 7/2/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Look, let's start talking some sense now. ED, WR are attack sites,
> nothing more. They have no value whatsoever, and, unless under some
> extraordinarily unlikely circumstances, there's simply no reason to
> link to them. The MONGO case was clear (and correct) about this.

And I say you are wrong, and that you are lumping together a bunch of
sites whose one real commonality is that they bear ill-will towards a
variety of Wikipedians. I'm not going to defend ED and Wikitruth, but
as there is an article on the latter it is ordinarily reasonable to
link to it, and pointless not to. WR is just a forum. As far as the
"attack" nature of it is concerned, it is so not because they give
names to people (if you can find them, and I'd bet most people would
have a lot of trouble doing so) but because of their opposition to the
way Wikipedia is being run.

But even then, the problem is that you can't keep it confined to that
small set of sites, because naming names is just something that people
out there are going to do. Now, maybe some oldtimers are supposed to
know that "attack sites" really means "ED, WR, and Wikitruth" and that
other sites which name names are supposed to be left alone. It's
simply not reasonable to expect to people to know this, and therefore
the various erasure incidents are going to keep happening. So it has
turned into yet another source of vandalism that people have to patrol
for.