[WikiEN-l] Another"BADSITES"controversy

[Fred Bauder]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: John Lee [mailto:johnleemk at gmail.com]
>Sent: Monday, May 28, 2007 06:21 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Another "BADSITES" controversy
>
>On 5/28/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>>
>> The latest skirmish in the never-ending civil war over linking to so-
>> called "attack sites" is the one where [[User:Will Beback]] has taken
>> onto himself to purge Wikipedia of all links to the site of notable
>> science fiction editor [[Teresa Nielsen Hayden]], even though they
>> are used as reliable sources for quite a number of diverse things,
>> because in her blog she attacked Beback (she seems to have some
>> issues with Wikipedia in general).
>>
>> This has in turn spurred a renewed edit-war over whether the anti-
>> attack-site section should even be in the WP:NPA page, and the page
>> is now under protection again as a result.
>>
>> See my essay for more on the issue:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dtobias/Why_BADSITES_is_bad_policy
>
>
>Why the hell is BADSITES being enforced so mindlessly and so religiously and
>so utterly retardedly? It's completely beyond me. Anyone with a shred of
>common sense can see that the status quo, enforced by a group of
>well-meaning zealots who I am tempted to label idiots as well (but will not,
>for the sake of civility), is not serving the encyclopaedia.
>
>Johnleemk

This sort of thing, banning links to external sites, if done at all, needs to be limited to sites that extend their activities beyond criticism of Wikipedia to actions that hurt individual Wikipedia users. The blog seems to focus on publicizing Will Beback's real name which she got from ED. She is offended at his interactions with her when she edits.

Fred