[WikiEN-l] Another "BADSITES" controversy

[Risker]

I think I would go with the "clueless politically" explanation - he did have
it in his mind that [[Essjay controversy]] could get promoted to Featured
Article status...

Risker


On 5/31/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/31/07, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Within a week, DennyColt disappeared, after having escalated his
> language
> > with respect to BADSITES to calling Wikipedia Review a hate site,
> becoming
> > verbally aggressive on a Request for Clarification from Arbcom, and
> being
> > named in an RfC. By that stage, a lot of people were wondering about
> him.
> > But the BADSITES proposal closely parallels earlier writings by other
> > editors, and interestingly a much-watered-down kernel of the proposal
> > in BADSITES is nearing consensus on the WP:NPA policy.
> >
> Risker, the situation was that a bunch of admins had been removing
> links to attack sites for about 18 months. Not in any kind of
> systematic way (i.e. not hunting them down so far as I know), but just
> removing them if they noticed one. That was the de facto policy.
> That's how policy develops, by admins doing things. It just wasn't
> written down anywhere.
>
> It also wasn't an organized group of admins, just self-selecting
> individuals who had different criteria. Some removed links that I
> wouldn't have removed, for example. There was no communication between
> us about it (that I know of), no planning, no intention of creating a
> written policy.
>
> Then DennyColt turned up with the proposal. It was worded a little
> hysterically, but it basically described what the de facto policy was.
> But then a bunch of people who post to these sites (WR and
> Encyclopedia Dramatica) turned up -- led by Squeakbox and Mangoe,
> judging by the top posters on talk
> http://vs.aka-online.de/cgi-bin/wppagehiststat.pl -- who didn't want
> it to be written policy, and they started kicking up a fuss.
>
> Well, at that point, you're in a quandry. You don't particularly want
> it to be written policy, because there's no need and the fuss about it
> is tiresome. But you also don't want anyone to be able to claim it was
> rejected, because then what? Would that mean links could no longer be
> removed? So for that reason people felt they had to defend it -- even
> though I don't think anyone particularly wanted it!
>
> If he was a strawman sock, he was very clever. Rigorously enforce and
> spell out a practise you want to get rid of in order to make it look
> extremist; give it a shortcut that makes sure everyone's first thought
> about it is "censorship!"; get people who don't really want it to feel
> they have to defend it just to make sure the idea of it doesn't fail
> entirely; then bugger off and leave them holding the baby. On top of
> all that, factor in the unforeseen blog situation, where the
> definition of "attack site" is extended beyond what anyone ever
> intended (and why not? we're talking BADSITES after all, not "attack
> sites"), and hey presto -- chaos, and otherwise sensible people
> falling out with each other all over the place.
>
> We'll probably never know whether he was a strawman sock or just so
> clueless politically that he ended up looking smart and Machiavellian.
>
> Sarah
>
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