[WikiEN-l] Time to reboot wikien-l

[jayjg]

On Nov 21, 2007 1:02 PM,  <joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu> wrote:
> Quoting jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com>:
>
> > On Nov 21, 2007 11:52 AM,  <joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >> Quoting jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com>:
> >>
> >> > On Nov 15, 2007 9:43 PM, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> >> >> William Pietri wrote:
> >> >> >Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> >> >> >> [...]As long as this silly idea refuses to die, neither can my fervent
> >> >> >> opposition to it.
> >> >> >>
> >> >> > I regret that I feel the same way.
> >> >>
> >> >> And I share Dan's and William's chagrin.
> >> >>
> >> >> Something I've been struck by: we need to learn or re-learn,
> >> >> for today's Wikipedia, how to form consensus.  Back in the day
> >> >> I think we knew how to, but either we've forgotten, or the game
> >> >> has changed.
> >> >>
> >> >> A tiny minority of influential people on one side of a
> >> >> contentious issue can apparently keep it alive *forever*.
> >> >> We have to figure out how to settle these issues, and move on.
> >> >>
> >> >> I'm not a big player in any of these debates, but by way of
> >> >> example, I managed to do this in the case of spoiler warnings.
> >> >> I care almost as much about the spoiler warnings issue as the
> >> >> BADSITES issue.  I could easily be one of the tedious cranks
> >> >> that Snowspinner was just complaining about.  That spoiler
> >> >> warnings have been summarily eradicated is deeply wrong.
> >> >> But with apologies to Ken Arromdee, who I would have like to
> >> >> have supported in that fight, I decided I didn't care enough
> >> >> about the issue to keep arguing against the juggernaut that had
> >> >> somehow formed against it, so I turned my back and walked away.
> >> >>
> >> >> I'm not saying the solution is to walk away from things you care
> >> >> about.  But the BADSITES issue clearly will not die; we've got
> >> >> people on both sides who haven't budged an inch in their positions
> >> >> (myself included) and who are apparently willing to trot out the
> >> >> same arguments in endless repetetition until the cows come home.
> >> >> We've all got to get off that treadmill somehow.
> >> >
> >> > I don't think that's accurate. It is only people who are against
> >> > BADSITES who continually trot it out so they can flail against it; it
> >> > is the convenient strawman it always was, since it was first created
> >> > as a strawman.The history of the proposed "alternative" to BADSITES,
> >> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Linking_to_external_harassment
> >> > , is also fascinating. It turns out that the two main authors
> >> > of the policy, BenB4 and Privatemusings, are banned sockpuppets. In
> >> > fact, 58% of the edits to the page are by banned editors, mostly
> >> > sockpuppets, another 18% are by an ip editor, and another 4% by the
> >> > people who most often bring up the BADSITES strawman, Alecmconroy and
> >> > Dtobias, for a total of 80%. Though the latter two didn't contribute
> >> > much to the actual writing, they certainly dominated the Talk: page -
> >> > Alec made 24 edits to the Talk: page and Dan made 162. So we have now
> >> > reached the point where policies are essentially being written by
> >> > banned editors, sockpuppets, IP editors, and people who oppose the
> >> > policy they are writing. And even that "alternative" has apparently
> >> > today been unilaterally rejected by a new IP editor:
> >> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/86.148.219.194
> >> >
> >> > BADSITES has proven to be an extremely convenient way of distracting
> >> > attention from the real issues regarding offsite harassment and
> >> > non-encyclopedic links; I suspect it has worked even better than its
> >> > author ever dreamed it would.
> >>
> >> Jayjg this would be a nice story except for a few problems: 1) A number of
> >> editors favored BADSITES
> >
> > Really? Which ones?
>
> Tony Sidaway supported it strongly. See
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAttack_sites&diff=125835497&oldid=125826215
>
> Well, Mongo appeared to support it. (See his comments on the talk page as well
> as
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Attack_sites&diff=prev&oldid=125089297
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAttack_sites&diff=125729862&oldid=125720565
> ). Mongo then went to [[WP:NPA]] and attempted to get nearly identical
> language
> in there where he was supported by Thuranx.

So Tony supported it, and Mongo insisted it was an essay or proposed
policy. And?

>
> >
> >> 2) The removal of many of the problematic links we've
> >> seen in the last few months (such as Making Lights and Robert Black's blog)
> >> we're precisely what BADSITES was calling for.
> >
> > Just because the outcome is the same doesn't mean the reasoning for
> > doing so was the same. Crappy links are deleted for all sorts of
> > reasons, mostly because they're crappy, even if they would also have
> > been deleted under that strawman BADSITES policy.
>
> Except none of these were crappy links.

They looked like crappy links to me, but I could be wrong. Any specifics?

> These were links that would have been
> included in article space but for the fact that they contained material we
> didn't like.

Err, "containing material we don't like" pretty much covers every link
ever deleted from Wikipedia.