On 7/30/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/29/07, Steve Summit scs@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