[WikiEN-l] Another "BADSITES" controversy

[William Pietri]

Slim Virgin wrote:
> What this debate boils down to is what kind of atmosphere we want on
> Wikipedia. Some people are arguing that we don't want an atmosphere of
> censorship, and that's a valid point of course. My argument is that we
> shouldn't want an atmosphere in which some people are being outed,
> attacked, ridiculed, and having their families and their friend's
> families contacted by lunatics. And when it does happen, Wikipedians
> should stick together, no matter their editing differences, and should
> make clear that it's totally unacceptable behavior.
>   

I'm with you on the atmosphere. I have been involved in on-line 
community stuff for an embarrassingly long time, and I think keeping a 
healthy, supportive, sympathetic, and welcoming culture is vital to an 
effort like Wikipedia. I'm also with you on drawing clear lines on 
what's acceptable and taking those lines very seriously.

But where I'm not yet convinced is the extent to which we can 
effectively punish off-Wikipedia activity on Wikipedia. I see the 
appeal, but to the extent that I understand what's being proposed, I am 
not yet seeing the benefits outweigh the costs.

For example, in your hypothetical case of a person maliciously posting 
links to a site with libel elsewhere on it, I'm not seeing as banning 
talk-page links to the whole site as particularly effective. Instead, 
I'd rather we got together as a community and set up a legal fund for a 
libel suit. I feel like banning links to some kook's site is just 
rewarding their desire to cause trouble, and doesn't hurt them in any 
way that matters. A well-funded lawsuit, on the other hand is plain 
scary. Speaking of which, I'm in for $500 if somebody makes your 
hypothetical case real.

> There have been a couple of comments in this thread from people who
> are coming very close to saying some people deserve to be outed and
> attacked. It's a sad day to see that from anyone posting to this list.
>   

If anybody is doing that, shame on them. I don't think anybody deserves 
that.

On the other hand, I think there's a legitimate point that could be 
mistaken for that.

As the people running one of the world's top information sources, even 
if we don't think we deserve trouble, I think we should expect it. We 
should also expect people to pry at our pseudonyms in the same way they 
pry at corporate and governmental veils of secrecy. We're important, and 
they want to know who we are and what we're up to. Luckily, much of the 
heat is focused on Jimmy Wales, and I appreciate the amount of trouble 
and abuse he takes on our behalf. But it will only get worse.

I think we should be relentless about policing abuse on Wikipedia both 
because it's right and because it will be the death of the project if we 
don't. But I don't think we can fix the rest of the Internet or the rest 
of humanity, and barring legally actionable issues, I don't think we 
should try. Their lack of psych meds is not a problem we can solve, and 
I think taking the high road will get us a lot further.

> Common sense and basic empathy need to guide us here, just as they do
> over other BLP issues. This *is* a BLP issue, unless we're assuming
> we're not really flesh and blood behind these keyboards.
>   

I regret to say that I disagree with you here except that I see 
compassion as a common motive.

William