[WikiEN-l] A BADSITES RfA piling-on

[Andrew Gray]

On 28/05/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> There are some sites where practically every link will quickly lead to
> a serious personal attack. The idea is not to increase the readership
> of the site. And no one has given a single example of where one of
> these dedicated attack sites would ever *need* to be linked to, rather
> than the contents described, or the link e-mailed to someone.

The problem with the proposal is that it does not confine itself to
"dedicated attack sites" Hivemind, etc; that would be sensible and
defensible, and most of those who disagree on grounds of principle
could support it on grounds of pragmatism.

It just says, well, no links to "attack sites". And so we get crazy
things like systematically purging the links to Making Light, one
editor having decreed it an "attack site"...

The current wording is interesting. We start by saying to remove
"Links or references to off-site personal *attacks*", and then move
straight into "no attack sites", implying that any site hosting the
former is thereby the latter. That sort of ambiguity leads to a
multitude of sins.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk