[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: Steve Summit [mailto:scs at eskimo.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, July 4, 2007 06:54 PM
>To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] FredBauder"clarifies"onattackkkkk site link policy
>
>jayjg wrote:
>> On 7/3/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>>> 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.
>>
>> It's only useful to link to sites that have useful content. Wikipedia
>> has all sorts of rules about not linking to useless sites.
>
>Wikipedia has rules about the insertion of useless *links*.
>And even if every link to a site is useless, we don't need
>an additional rule saying, never link to this site. The
>no-useless-links rule is both necessary and sufficient.
>
>>> 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.
>
>(But this is still no explanation:)
>
>> 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.
>
>(I should really decline to take another turn on this
>merry-go-round, but:) Links to the vicious harassment, for
>the purpose of additional harassment, are vile and should be
>prohibited. But you still haven't shown why other kinds of links
>must be prohibited. You still haven't shown why a blanket ban is
>necessary.
>
>The argument in favor of a blanket ban seems to rest on one or
>two assumptions:
>
> 1. that a link to site X is an "endorsement" of site X, and/or
> 2. that a viciously harassed volunteer Wikipedia editor,
> once harassed, is further wounded by every mention of
> the harasser, in any context.
>
>>>> What cost? I've seen none so far.
>>>
>>> An illogical, censorious policy exacts a significant (albeit
>>> intangible) cost in that observers are left with the impression
>>> that our policies are driven by emotion, not logic. One begins
>>> to trust and respect our policymaking process less.
>>
>> I'm talking about real costs, not radical philosophy.
>
>You'll have to define "real cost", then. The cost in terms of
>rational people throwing up their hands and walking away from a
>madhouse is at least as great as the cost in terms of thin-skinned
>victims wailing that the bully's name got mentioned again. It's
>not "radical philosophy" to point out that irrational, emotion-laden
>policies weaken a project that's supposed to welcome rational,
>mature contributors.
>
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