On Wed, 11 Jul 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
There is no absolute ban, and the removal does not depend on anyone's imagination, it depends on the excellent principles noted in the MONGO arbitration, to wit: don't link to sites which habitually attack, harass and violate privacy.
This is obviously some strange definition of the phrase "no absolute" of which I was not previously aware.
The distinction is a subtle one, I agree. If WR had static pages with an editorial process in addition to the forum, then a debate might well be appropriate in respect of one of those pages. As presently constituted, no chance. They could change policy, change moderation policy, lock old threads and purge them of crap, produce static editorial summaries or some other thing I have not thought of and we would then be in a position to discuss the merits of individual links, but as long as it is a forum and largely dominated by grudge-bearers then no amount of debate is likely to change the outcome, and perpetuating the demand for links risks crossing the line into troll country.
If someone uses a link, your policy means that they cannot argue that the link is a valid one; all such links are banned regardless of their content.
No matter how you spin the phrase "no absolutes", saying that a link may not be inserted under any circumstances regardless of any arguments made about that specific link, is an absolute. Claiming it is not insults everyone's intelligence.