[WikiEN-l] A BADSITES RfA piling-on

[William Pietri]

Phil Sandifer wrote:
> On May 29, 2007, at 8:38 PM, Gabe Johnson wrote:
>   
>> Exactly. I have yet to see a single example of a revelation of
>> personal identity on Wikipedia Review, and I know that is certainly
>> frowned upon by the authorities there. Just cause they don't like us
>> is no reason to not be able to link to them.
>>     
>
> We, ummm, are talking about the same Wikipedia Review where people  
> conspired to call the police in my town to try to get me harassed  
> because of fictional stories I was posting to a blog, right? And the  
> one where people actively speculated about how they could get me  
> kicked out of my PhD program?
>
> I just want to make sure. I'd hate to get this magical happy site you  
> mention here confused with the one that tried to ruin my life.
>   

And here we have a fine example of the problem caused by refusing to 
link to pages on or say the name of sites where people do things we 
don't like. When I went and took a brief look at Wikipedia Review, what 
I saw was yet another internet forum, somewhat more negative in tone and 
with a higher proportion of kooks, but otherwise not very different than 
what I'd expect in the comments section of one of Nicholas Carr's 
columns about Wikipedia. Undermedicated people with an internet forum? 
Or gibbering demons with sinister plans to destroy Wikipedia? Beats me.

There's another example in Gracenotes' RFA. I saw someone concerned that 
he had posted on Wikipedia Review. And I saw another person suggesting 
we shouldn't even mention the name Wikipedia Review. Was Gracenotes' 
alleged post a reasonable attempt to reach out to and engage our 
critics, something I routinely encourage? Or was he leading a conspiracy 
to eat babies with grapefruit spoons? Did he post at there all? Who knows.

Pretty much any other time people make an accusation of nefarious 
behavior on Wikipedia, we investigate it to death, with links galore, so 
that any reasonable person can find the truth of things. We, as a 
community, are *amazing* at that. I think that commitment to 
collaborative, reasoned judgment is one of our deepest strengths, and 
one of the things that has allowed us to scale so massively.

So when eventually somebody tells me what the proposed policy is 
(despite repeated requests, nobody has yet), I still think we'll never 
come to lasting consensus on it because information needed to make good 
judgments is being actively suppressed.


William