On 7/3/07, The Mangoe the.mangoe@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/2/07, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
Regardless of whether WR is covered by the MONGO ruling (it's not explicitly named, and we've sort of waffled back and forth on the issue for some time now): why exactly do we need to link to it? For our purposes, it's not a reliable source; we don't add links to random websites -- even *interesting* random websites -- in the same way we don't add links to tabloids. If we just enforce the existing policy on external links, the problem essentially goes away.
WR is a reliable source, and is used as such. That sounds preposterous? Then go see how many links there are to it: 193 as I write this. A substantial fraction, maybe half, are citations as evidence in a bunch of RfC/ArbCom cases.
Erm, no. It may be accurate to say that it's occasionally mis-used by people who for some bizarre reason think it might be a reliable source; but on the scale of actual reliability for the purposes of an encyclopedia article, an anonymous online forum -- largely populated by people with an obvious axe to grind, to boot -- is one step above graffiti on a bathroom wall. Its only potential use would be for coverage of WR itself, which we don't actually have any of at the moment, making that point rather moot.
(The occasional convenience of having such links in dispute resolution proceedings are one of the reasons I argued against the total ban proposed by BADSITES, incidentally; but such proceedings aren't covered by sourcing policy in any case.)
Kirill