[WikiEN-l] Another "BADSITES" controversy

[David Gerard]

On 31/05/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:

> No, I'm just rejecting all attempts to frame this as something it
> isn't. It's been a veritable straw man army today, but I will not let
> even one pass. The second someone even starts to question what
> possible benefits accrue to Wikipedia from WR links, the BADSITES
> boogeyman is trotted out to scare everyone into quiet submission, as
> it was intended. A lot of mileage has been gotten from that straw man.
> Oh, and don't bother with the "but that's just a recent convenient
> argument" ploy either. Been there, done that, and I have the e-mails.


No, that's precisely backwards of how the thread went.

On Gracenotes' RFA, Slim raised "attack sites", Gracenotes responded
concerning "BADSITES" and that he wouldn't favour a policy of mindless
removal of links to any site, Slim said she would oppose based on
that, suddenly it was the issue of the RFA.

Will Beback blindly reverted encyclopedic links, claiming they were to
an "attack site." This was entirely spurious, but closely matches the
behaviour demanded by BADSITES: remove all links to an attack *site*.

Since the behaviour demanded was identical to the "strawman" BADSITES
policy, and Will's behaviour was identical to the "strawman" BADSITES
policy, I am going *so far* as to call this thing that looks, walks
and quacks like BADSITES ... BADSITES.

Clear enough?


- d.