[WikiEN-l] A BADSITES RfA piling-on

[Daniel R. Tobias]

On 28 May 2007 at 14:05:34 +0000, "Fred Bauder" 
<fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

> Thanks for the heads-up. Bottom line, this guy doesn't get it. How
> hurtful external attacks can be to Wikipedia users. He has minimal
> commitment to taking effective action, maximum commitment to
> dissimulation. 

I'm disappointed that you've joined the enraged mob with torches 
that's abusing Gracenotes' RfA because he insists on a thoughtful, 
nuanced approach to "bad site" linking instead of war-on-drugs-style 
zero tolerance.  It's especially disappointing given that some of 
your own past writings on the topic have seemed to advocate the same 
sort of carefully considerate, non-knee-jerk approach that you're 
saying he "doesn't get it" for having himself.

But, then, I've also developed some doubts about your own judgment 
given your activity on this list last week, when you developed out of 
whole cloth an entirely bizarre interpretation of [[WP:BLP]] that 
held that this policy could be used as a Harry-Potter-esque magical 
incantation by any admin in order to take unilateral action that 
would not be permitted to be questioned, debated, reversed, or 
subjected to any sort of process or consensus save the unlikely 
possibility of a full-blown ArbCom case.  The fact that nothing in 
the actual wording of the policy itself even hinted at this 
interpretation didn't faze you one bit, though you later backed down 
after a storm of controversy here.

I guess if you're willing to hand all admins such absolute, nearly 
unreviewable power, then it would indeed follow that you then should 
insist on imposing political litmus tests on admin candidates to make 
sure that this power is only given to the ones who are politically 
correct.

-- 
== Dan ==
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