[WikiEN-l] Essjay and BADSITES and dead links... oh my!

[John Lee]

On 6/26/07, Kamryn Matika <kamrynmatika at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/26/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> >
> > The wikidrama continued in the [[Essjay controversy]] article over
> > the last 24 hours.  First, various people edit-warred over the
> > insertion of the relevant link to a site that some regard as a so-
> > called "attack site", which also happened to be where important
> > activity in the history of the Essjay affair first came to light. The
> > anti-linking side threatened to block people for adding the nefarious
> > link, and actually blocked at least one ([[User:KamrynMatika]],
> > blocked by admin [[User:ElinorD]], about whom I must apologize
> > profusely to the Wikipedia community for playing any role in making
> > her an admin; I voted to support her RfA, despite knowing of her anti-
> > attack-site stance, out of a desire not to impose political litmus
> > tests like the other side did).  This puts the lie to any assertion
> > that the link ban is "no big deal" because it won't be used to block
> > any linking that helps the encyclopedia... any such applications
> > (like attempts to suppress links to [[Teresa Nielsen Hayden]]'s blog)
> > were clearly misguided and can be reversed by using common sense and
> > [[Wikipedia:Ignore All Rules]]... well, except for now, I guess.
> >
> > Then, [[User:MichaelLinnear]] came up with a seemingly good solution
> > to the mess; he found a respectable news outlet that was a reference
> > for the same fact.  Problem solved... no "attack" links needed, huh?
> > Still, [[User:MONGO]] immediately and mistakenly reverted that
> > addition... well, anybody who's ever in the past inserted a so-called
> > attack link for any reason is clearly a Troll and an Attack Site
> > Partisan, so "Assume Bad Faith" is the applicable principle for
> > dealing with *their* kind... any link they ever insert must be
> > another evil attack site, given that their sinister agenda is to
> > promote those sites any way they can. Keep the revert trigger finger
> > ready, and the safety off!  Still, he realized his error quickly and
> > reverted himself a minute later.
> >
> > So, problem solved, huh?  Not so fast... while all of this insertion,
> > reversion, and re-reversion was taking place, it appears that nobody
> > involved actually tried to *go* to that new respectable news link.
> > Turns out that it's "404 Not Found"... you get only an error page.
> > Well, I guess that's a great thing... no possibility of winding up on
> > evil attack-site content that way.  The fact that there's no useful
> > information there either is only a minor quibble.
> >
> > As of now, the nonexistent link is still there at Footnote 1... I
> > guess it will stay until somebody either finds another "respectable"
> > source, or else dares to face off against the Clique by putting the
> > relevant "attack" link back.
> (firstpost)
>
> i suspect that your continued rantings and overuse of sarcasm & targetting
> of various editors is going to do more to harm your cause than help it.
>
> you would be much better off spending your time making reasonable,
> rational
> arguments presented in a calm, non-accusatory manner and attempting to
> engage the editors you disagree with in proper discussion as opposed to
> bitching about them on the mailing list


1. The sarcasm aside, how is what Dan saying irrational?
2. He is trying to engage them, considering many of them read and write to
the mailing list.
3. The exasperation is understandable considering that the proponents of
this idea that we can never link to a *site* which contains attack pages
have not thought it through and continually push it without care for the
consequences, even when their actions directly and negatively impact the
encyclopaedia.

Johnleemk