[WikiEN-l] Fred Bauder"clarifies"on attack site link policy

[Fred Bauder]

Wikipedia is goingto be a safe and pleasant place for people to work. We will respect ourusers and do what we can to protect them from harassment.

Fred

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rich Holton [mailto:richholton at gmail.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, July 4, 2007 06:40 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] FredBauder"clarifies"onattackkkkk site link policy
>
>jayjg wrote:
>> On 7/3/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>>> jayjg wrote:
>>>> On 7/2/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>>>>> jayjg wrote:
>>>>>> and no-one is going to insist on a banning if there is some incredibly
>>>>>> important reason why one must be linked to under some bizarre and
>>>>>> unforeseen turn of events.
>>>>> But those turns of events are not, in fact, so bizarre or unforeseen.
>>>> Yeah, they pretty much are. Rare events, and generally involving
>>>> wiki-drama, not actually building an encyclopedia.
>>> I'm not talking about wiki-drama, I'm talking about hypertext.
>>> Wikipedia is a website. Websites link to each other. It turns
>>> out it's an incredibly powerful and useful concept. If whenever
>>> we're talking about something said on site X -- whether this is
>>> in an RFC or Arbitration case, or a topicality debate in project
>>> space, or wherever -- and if site X happens to be on a secret
>>> list of Sites One Must Not Link To, such that instead we're
>>> supposed to use circumlocutions like describing the site in
>>> words, or emailing a URL, instead of just making a hyperlink
>>> like Time Berners-Lee intended -- if we insist on going through
>>> this cutting-off-our-nose-to-spite-our-face exercise, just so we
>>> can feel good about not "endorsing" a site that has (perhaps
>>> egregiously) wronged one of our editors, that's just an
>>> incredibly frustrating and pointless waste of time.
>> 
>> It's only useful to link to sites that have useful content. Wikipedia
>> has all sorts of rules about not linking to useless sites.
>>>>> You claim that the blanket ban is acceptable because reasonable
>>>>> people can decide to make exceptions if necessary. But why go
>>>>> that route? Why not say that links -- to any site, anywhere --
>>>>> which serve as attacks, are attacks, and are banned under NPA?
>>>>> Why not let reasonable people realize that this is a sufficient
>>>>> policy, that will disallow all the troublesome links just as
>>>>> effectively as the blanket ban would? What additional protective
>>>>> power is gained by proactively applying the blanket ban?
>>>> Well, let's say one links to the front page of an attack site, which
>>>> doesn't actually contain any attacks, but just links to all sorts of
>>>> other pages that do.
>>> So what?
>>>
>>> I wish you'd answer the question. Why do we need a blanket ban?
>>> How does it prevent Personal Attacks (in ways that WP:NPA can't)?
>>> How does it help us build an encyclopedia?
>> 
>> That has been explained at length. Wikipedians volunteer their time to
>> help in this project; as a result of that volunteer work, they are
>> exposed to often vicious harassment by a small number of banned
>> editors on websites. We should not in any way bring attention to those
>> websites. It's common sense, good policy, and basic decency. Stop
>> doing it.
>
>Jay,
>
>This does not explain the need for a blanket ban. It does explain the 
>need for not linking to personal attacks, etc.
>
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