[WikiEN-l] JzG's banning Private Musings regarding BADSITES debate

[William Pietri]

Fred Bauder wrote:
>> Prof. Black is an intentionally public figure talking about a topic on
>> which he is a credentialed expert. He starts an official blog, which
>> seems relevant, so we mention it. We include a link, both because
>> statements in articles should be verifiable, and because if somebody is
>> interested enough to read about Robert Black, they could well be
>> interested in reading his blog.
>>
>> However, once Black mentions something we personally don't like, we
>> remove the link. He's not attacking anybody, the mention is clearly
>> pertinent to his field of interest, and the link on Wikipedia couldn't
>> possibly have been included as part of an attack. But still, putting the
>> link back is considered a serious enough offense that the account
>> involved is blocked, and there seems to be a fair bit of support for the
>> blocking.
>>
>>
>> If we can have this much drama, it sounds like we don't have enough
>> consensus yet. What can we do to create more?
>
> He has published defamatory information when he admits he's not sure it is
> valid. Why would we link to defamatory information?
>   

I thought I explained pretty well why we should link to his site. Let me 
try again.

He's writing about his area of expertise, and that's clearly pertinent 
to his biography, in the same way his writing a book or an article would 
be. Failure to link to his blog when we mention that it exists violates 
WP:V. Removing all mention of the blog would be a failure to mention a 
relevant fact in an article because we don't like what the article 
subject says; that violates WP:NPOV.

Either one goes against the animating spirit of the project:

    Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given
    free access to the sum of all human knowledge.

That's not "all human knowledge we like" or "all human knowledge we 
think you're ready to handle". Wikipedia should not be in the business 
of making moral judgments about the topics we cover: that's the reader's 
job.


If you would like to propose a policy where we do not link to any source 
that contains discussion of things that might be defamatory, by all 
means propose it. But I strongly believe it does not flow from the core 
policies or our shared principles, so I think it will have to be a new 
policy.


William

-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri