[WikiEN-l] BADSITES redux

[Steve Summit]

jayjg wrote:
> On Nov 21, 2007 8:02 PM, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>> What we truly do not need... is the notion that off-wiki harassment
>> of a Wikipedia editor is such an uber-mortal sin that we should
>> summarily ban all links to the harassing page and/or the harassing
>> site and/or sites that link to the harassing page or the harassing
>> site.  These extreme sanctions, which involve trampling on various
>> other cherished Wikipedia policies and ideals, are what people were
>> so upset about with BADSITES.  But the fact that people keep talking
>> about (and exercising) similarly extreme sanctions is why BADSITES,
>> despite protestations to the contrary, is still alive, whether under
>> that name or some other.
>>
>> The defenders of the policies-they-don't-want-called-BADSITES
>> keep claiming that their policies are not BADSITES, and that
>> BADSITES is dead...
>
> Who on earth are you talking about here? I hope not me...

What on earth are you being so defensive about?

> Is there someone in particular you are referring to?

No one person, no.

I was talking about anyone who advocates things like blanket
bans of links to "attack sites".  Who advocates removal of
otherwise-useful links because the linked-to page (or site)
happens to contain something which is construed as being
harassing of Wikipedians.  Who holds that "supporting our editors
and protecting them from harm" requires sanitizing the website so
that nothing can be seen which could upset an aggrieved editor,
or cause anyone else to ask an aggrieved editor an uncomfortable
question.  I was talking about the notion that "off-wiki
harassment of a Wikipedia editor is such an uber-mortal sin"
that we must necessarily adopt "extreme sanctions which involve
trampling on various other cherished Wikipedia policies and
ideals".  I was talking about anyone who doth protest too much. :-)

In short, I was talking about anyone who advocates removing links
not because they attack a Wikipedia editor, but because they
secondarily or tertiarily or hypothetically attack a Wikipedia
editor.  Those are the aspects that I didn't like about that old,
dead, proposed policy, but which when I see advocated anew make
me wonder whether the old policy perhaps isn't all dead, after all.

Several people (perhaps you're one of them; I don't try to
keep track) seem to have a hard time with abstract arguments.
They insist on names and diffs, and if the names and diffs are
not provided, they suggest that the abstractly-described problem
might not exist.  But if the names and diffs *are* provided,
either the namer is accused of having attacked the named, or else
the discussion gets completely sidetracked onto the specifics of
the named incident, resulting in a conclusion either that the
named person didn't do anything wrong, or did something excusably
wrong, or did something wrong but for an unrelated reason, or
did something wrong which they've apologized for and which won't
happen again.  In any case, the abstract argument (but the one
which would have mattered going forward) is forgotten.

But if you insist, I was thinking of people like the ones who
defended the recent removal of links to Michael Moore's home
page, or the recent removal of links to what's-his-name's blog
(the one that linked to something about a conspiracy involving
a Wikipedia editor and MI5).

And if you really insist, I was thinking specifically of Fred
Bauder and either you or JzG.  But I've only recently discovered
that I had you and JzG completely conflated in my head, so I
can't be sure which it was.