[WikiEN-l] Another "BADSITES" controversy

[Ken Arromdee]

On Wed, 30 May 2007, Slim Virgin wrote:
> I'm saying three things (1) there is never a good reason to link to
> one of these sites, so don't do it; (2) no matter what page you link
> to, there's likely to be a serious personal attack on it, because the
> particularly egregious sites are full of them; (3) that we shouldn't,
> as an encyclopedia, want to increase the readership of websites that
> seem devoted to encouraging stalking, harassment, "outing," and
> defamation.
> 
> All the opposing arguments I've seen so far boil down to
> wikilawyering, along the lines of "But we can't have that rule because
> one day the New York Times might publish a threat to stalk and harass
> a Wikipedian, and then we could never again use the New York Times as
> a source!!" or "But what if there's an ArbCom case about these sites,
> and what if no one could understand the evidence without seeing actual
> live links, and what if all the ArbCom members lost access to their
> e-mail accounts for the entirety of that case!!!"

If you say words like "never", you invite this so-called Wikilawyering.
Telling you that "never" really should be "rarely" isn't Wikilawyering; it's
pointing out that what you say doesn't make any sense.

Moreover, other uses have been pointed out to you, the most famous being
the Wikipedia Signpost link and the links to attack sites in the talk page
discussing the attack sites policy.  These are not hypotheticals like the New
York Times posting a threat; these have happened already!  And the "no
attack sites" crowd deleted the links blindly anyway.