[WikiEN-l] Self-sensorship, how far should it go?

John Lee johnleemk at gmail.com
Sun Jul 29 17:07:09 UTC 2007


On 7/30/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/29/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> > Fred Bauder wrote:
> > > But is there anything to it? Or is it just nasty gossip?
> > > If you want to gossip, join the Navy.
> >
> > There's a fine line to be trodden here.  Certainly, we don't
> > want or need to dignify wild rumors with any attention at all.
> > But once a story "has legs" (and whether it deserves them or not),
> > too-strenuous attempts to deny it only fuel the speculations that
> > there *is* a cabal and a cover-up -- and those speculations can
> > end up driving more long-term damage than the original, spurious
> > accusation would have.
> >
> > A single, simple statement on Slim's user or talk page, saying
> > that the rumor is false, would be much better than all this
> > rampant reverting by ElinorD, Jayjg, and Crum375.  (And there may
> > have been other reverters, sorry if I left you out, but evidently
> > this issue has become so "serious" that [[User talk:SlimVirgin]]
> > has had a bunch of its history deleted.)
> >
>
> There are some questions that remain, though.  Like why would it be
> discussed on Wikipedia, along the lines of why discuss every lame hate
> site that ever put 'clopedia' after a grunt and spewed venom about
> some other race/religion or whatever on this list?
>
> In what manner and for what purpose is it being discussed on
> Wikipedia?  People's talk pages aren't their personal blogs.  And
> article talk pages are to discuss articles.  Is this news?  What
> newspapers has it been reported in?   Is it ever going to be real
> news?


Not everyone reads the mailing list/Slashdot and may want to enquire about
rumours they've heard. I would rather that they heard about these ridiculous
allegations from Wikipedians on Wikipedia, rather than on some other website
because self-righteous Wikipedians decide any mention whatsoever of the
claims is ridiculous.

Johnleemk


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