[WikiEN-l] Another "BADSITES" controversy

[Slim Virgin]

On 5/30/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:

> As others have said, it's not as a source in an article that anybody
> has been or intends on using that site (except perhaps for a future
> article on the site itself, if it should become sufficiently notable,
> or maybe on [[Criticisms of Wikipedia]] -- the sole thing that it
> would ever be a source for would be about itself and the views
> espoused by its participants).

Dan, would you be okay with this scenario? I today create a website
that outs you, says where you live, and accuses you of being a
pedophile, with some alleged examples. I then start a discussion about
it on various project pages, and every time I mention it, I link to
it. I'm careful not to link to the actual page that gives your
details, so I'm not linking to a personal attack. I'm just linking to
the main page, and I link here and I link there, I link everywhere, in
an attempt to increase my readership.

Would you be okay with that?

Let's take it a bit further. Let's suppose I'm a reporter and I write
an article about my experiment for a reliable source, and let's also
suppose it's a very notable newspaper, but not a good one, and it lets
me name the website in the article. I don't name you, but I also don't
admit that I made up the pedophile allegation. I just present the
creation of the website as an experiment; veracity of contents to be
left to the reader.

Should someone then be able to create a Wikipedia article about my
site, and link to it in that article so that it ends up in a prominent
place in Google?

See, I'm pretty sure if that happened, you'd be howling, and rightly so.

Then try to imagine how you'd vote in an RfA for someone who called my
website a "mixed bag," and who didn't want a ban on linking to it.