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.