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

[Fred Bauder]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rich Holton [mailto:richholton at gmail.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, July 4, 2007 09:24 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fred Bauder"clarifies"on attack site link policy
>
>jayjg wrote:
>> On 7/4/07, James Farrar <james.farrar at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 05/07/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>>>> 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.
>>> Yes, we got that the first time...
>> 
>> It bears repeating.
>> 
>
>Please do repeat it jay. I agree with the sentiment. I don't know of 
>anyone here who disagrees.
>
>Where the disagreement lies is on the steps needed to make it a safe and 
>pleasant place to work.
>
>Banning all anonymous edits may well make it a safer and more pleasant 
>place to work, but we do not take that step. No, I'm not using a 
>strawman here; I'm just demonstrating that there are a range of possible 
>actions to address the issue. Not all are good.
>
>The point under discussion is whether a blanket ban of certain sites is 
>a good step to take.

It's a drastic remedy that cause almost as much trouble as it avoids, but is still justifiable. What the ban on linking to Encyclopedia Dramatic accomplishes is to scotch ready acceptance of that type of snarky dialog on Wikipedia itself. If we accept casual links to whatever cute meme on ED that strikes someone's eye, what we are doing is saying, hey, this site is cool. A little looking around at their entries on our contributors will soon demonstrate the hurtful nature of their entries and the absence of critical content.

Part of the ban is posturing, very similar to our posturing on pedophilia. We have no way to prevent either pedophiles or drama affectionados from editing Wikipedia. All we can do is make a big noise about it. We will have snarky editors engaging in hurtful attacks on other users both on and off Wikipedia no matter what we do. So what is involved is more staking out a position than anything else.

So it is very much a matter of saying and meaning:

We will make every effort to support our contributors and to defeat attempts to harass them.

Fred