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

[joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu]

Quoting Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net>:

>> Alec Conroy wrote:
>>> There is now an ever-growing consensus that BADSITES is rejected, and
>>> that linking  to "badsites' for encyclopedic purposes is permissible
>>> in some circumstances.
>>
>> Setting aside the question of the block for a moment, I'm curious about
>> the incident that triggered the block.
>>
>> If I understand rightly, [[Robert Black (professor)]] is a respected
>> Scottish law prof who is from Lockerbie, who has taken a great interest
>> in the Lockerbie case, and was involved in setting up the Lockerbie
>> trials of the Libyan agents.
>>
>> In response to recent activity in the case, in early July he set up a
>> blog to discuss it. We briefly mentioned the blog and added a link to
>> it. That link stayed in place until a few days ago, when he gave a
>> one-sentence mention of the allegations that SV "systematically altered"
>>  the Wikipedia Lockerbie articles, mentioning what some claim is her
>> true  name. He doesn't claim that they are true, just that they are
>> interesting.
>>
>> The link was removed within 24 hours by a newly created account called
>> "Privacyisall", which has only edited around this, and shows enough
>> instant facility with Wikipedia that the account could well be a sock.
>> The edit summary: "Remove blog which outs and attacks our editors as per
>>  Arbcom ruling."
>>
>>
>> So if I got that right, it seems to me that here we have another case
>> along the lines of Micheal Moore.
>>
>> 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?
>>
>> William
>>
>
> He has published defamatory information when he admits he's not sure it is
> valid. Why would we link to defamatory information?

Huh? Do you mean Black has done so? Saying "X claims that Y" is now 
"defamatory
information" that we can't link to even if it is a link we'd otherwise have in
article space? What if it weren't Black but the New York Times? Or what if it
were Black but the information was about an editor of say the German Wikipedia
or a non-Wikimedia project?

Finally, I do hope you realize what this would look like to the general 
public;
Wikipedia will censor any links that even mention the possibility that another
site outed a Wikipedian. Are we trying to look like something out of Catch-22?