[WikiEN-l] Featured editors?

[joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu]

Quoting "Daniel R. Tobias" <dan at tobias.name>:

> On 12 Nov 2007 at 12:01:35 +0000, Guy Chapman aka JzG
> <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>> * Links to advocacy by banned or blocked users, in content debates.
>> This is completely consistent with existing policy for handling
>> banned users: banned is banned, we ban people because they can't
>> contribute neutrally, taking it offsite does not fix that problem.
>
> I have a fundamental philosophical problem with extending the "banned
> is banned" concept to the extent that anything originating with a
> banned user must be suppressed from being linked, quoted, or
> mentioned anywhere, even by an editor in good standing.  Are we
> really like the party of Orwell's 1984 that made disfavored people
> into "Unpersons", or like the Church of Scientology which has the
> concept of "Suppressive Persons"?  Such concepts fit better with
> authoritarian regimes and mind-control cults than with communities
> devoted to gathering and sharing information.

Links that serve actually useful purposes should be kept. There's no reason
however that we should just have links whose sole purpose is to harass or
malign. They don't serve any purpose. I disagree somewhat with Guy on whether
we should actively remove such links, since in most cases I think the drama
created from such removal gives the sites more attention than they would get
otherwise and can in many cases take up more time and effort than leaving them
in place would, but the basic idea is sound. People forget that when we say
that Wikipedia is not censored we are talking about articles. There's nothing
wrong with banning links or other matters in other space if it will 
benefit the
encyclopedia.