[WikiEN-l] AGF and NPA in the BADSITES meta-discussion

[Alec Conroy]

"Assuming Good Faith and No Personal Attacks in the BADSITES meta-discussion".

or
"Why I argue so passionately and verbosely against BADSITES and why
BADSITES is THE greatest single threat to the project"

We try to assume good faith, but that's hard to do when the editing
gets hot.  I want to convince you that the BADSITES debate is not a
debate between Good Faith editors and Bad Faith editors.  It is a
debate between NPA and NPOV,  a debate between Compassion and Liberty,
 a debate between "Not a Battleground" and "Is an Encyclopedia".
There is no bad faith side.   It is not a debate between Saints and
Sinners.  The battle is not between Arbiters and trolls.

But reading over the discussion, I realize some people genuinely don't
seem to understand why we Anti-Badsites people have such passion on
the issue.  I want to explain just why it is I fight so hard on this
issue.  My hope is that this will lead to greater understanding, more
assumptions of good faith, and less interpersonal hostility.

I'm not going to go into the details about evidences and abuses and
consensuses and the like, I'm not going to focus on what the policy
should be--  I've said enough on this issue elsewhere.   I'm just
going to try to explain why we care so much.
--
Disclaimer:   For convenience, I using the term BADSITES to the same
basic principle:

No linking to sites that harass/attack/out. Removals not subject to
3RR. Violations lead to blocks or bans.

So far, this basic idea has been incarnated in several different
places-- arbcom principles, WP:BADSITES, WP:NPA#EL.  There are subtle
distinctions between the various strains, but they're all the same
basic species.
--

The Scourge of Personal Attacks against those who are Anti-BADSITES

I think there's a wide understanding that the pro-BADSITES people are
motivated by compassion.  They see their fellow editors being hurt,
and it makes them mad.  They just want to protect their friends and
their fellow editors.  They see the people who have engaged in
harassment as fundamentally bad people who are getting away with doing
bad things,  they long for justice, and they want to use their power
to help provide justice.  I feel like there's a widespread perception
that the pro-BADSITES editors are basically acting in good faith--
perhaps it's because some of their members are pillars of the
community, perhaps they've done a better job articulating their
motivations, or perhaps their case is just easier to understand.

Regrettably, I feel like there's been widespread allegations that the
anti-BADSITES people are acting in bad faith.  I know personal attacks
and alleging bad faith are found in almost any heated debate, but in
this debate, they have become so numerous, it's almost hard to
remember that there was ever a taboo against them.  Impugning the
character of the people who oppose BADSITES has become practically
automatic, and such attacks are being slung by some of the most highly
respected individuals on the project.

For a concrete example, we need look no further than the recent thread
about Slate.  John Lee noticed that Slate had linked to Wikipedia
Review.  Since we ourselves our debating whether or not a responsible
organization can link to WR, he thought it would be useful to point
out that Slate (a responsible news organization) has done so.  He took
the time out of his day to bring it to our attention, and his
observation has been useful in fostering discussion.

He should have been thanked for his input, which was clearly germane
to the discussions at hand.  Instead, he was immediately attacked for
even raising the point.  He's accused of being mischeivious,  a
"politcal agitator", for writing his post.  This, sadly, has become
par for the course.

Whenever someone disagrees with BADSITES, almost immediately they are
examined under a microscope for any character flaws that can be found.
 For me, someone dug through my history and accused me of once
"badgering" a victim of harassment over year ago merely, because in
2006 I asked a few too many questions about the wisdom and
implementation of the ED purge.   For other editors, their even having
edited ED is their character flaw, and this used to attack them at
every turn, even if they never once used their  ED account for the
purpose of harassment.  For some, merely seeking to avoid Ad Hominem
attacks is their flaw, as was shown when PrivateMusing, fearing a
backlask for publicly questioning BADSITES, created a sockpuppet
account to engage in the discussion.  That was his character flaw, and
he was attacked for not discussing under his main account.

And when no clear character flaw presents itself, the mere
disagreement with BADSITES is used to impugn a person's character.
Reputable editors with long edit histories are suddenly labeled
trolls.  Disagreement with BADSITES is immediate equated with
supporting harassment.   Rhetorical questions are posed that are
premised on the claim that any disagreement with BADSITES comes from a
deep character flaw.  We are asked such questions as:
* Why don't you care about protecting our editors?
* Why are you with the trolls?
* Why do you support harassment?
* There was once a case where a person received a death threat against
their children.  How can you possibly find that FUNNY?
* Why do you hate Wikipedia?

This behavior is unacceptable.  I won't compound the problem by naming
names, by citing specific examples, or presenting detailed evidence of
this behavior.  But everyone who has engaged in these kind of tactics
has been around long enough to know better, and they should be ashamed
of themselves for having sunk so low.  But guilt and blame are not the
point-- the point is to stop it in the future.

The comical irony, of course, is that these attacks have occurred in
the context of discussions about how to STOP attacks on Wikipedians
and how to promote greater harmony within the community.   I posit
that these sorts of attacks have done far more to hurt our community
than bad-faith harassment ever has.  When some troll makes some
outrageous claim, we naturally rally around our attacked editors.
When some lunatic practically accused SV of personally masterminding
the 9/11 attacks, faking the moon landings, and being the second
gunman on the grassy knoll, that didn't make our community distrust
SV, it made us rally around her.   In contrast, when we lash out at
anyone even discussing the subject (much less linking to it), we
create a huge and hateful rift in our community.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. It is essential that
good-faith users to discuss absolutely anything they think is relevant
to the project, without their comments being deleted or their
character being impugned.  When the ability to have such discussions
dies, I think the soul of Wikipedia dies with it.  Those of us who
oppose BADSITES have a different opinion than those who support it.
But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We
all have compassion for those who feel harassed, we all want to create
the best encyclopedia possible.  We have called by different names
editors of the same principle. We are all pro-BADSITES, we are all
anti-BADSITES.  And If there be talk posts that accuse us of conflict
of interests or of being MI-5 secret agents, let those stand
undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may
be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.  The real trolls
cannot destroy unless we are willing to dismantle the encyclopedia to
get back at them. No trolls can destroy Wikipedia, unless we are all
their accomplices.

---

Why We Fight [Against Badsites]

Wikipedia is heading towards being THE most important content site on
the entire Internet. And the thing that makes the Internet (and
Wikipedia) so magical is that it's the first communications medium in
human history that is truly completely uncensored. The internet has
every point of view imaginable, and Wikipedia discusses every notable
subject imaginable.

This kind of communication really is changing the world. A year or two
ago, I was playing Warcraft and got to know talking with one of the
people I was playing with. She was a Jewish teenager, living in
Israel. She has a boyfriend, she told me, someone she met online, but
she had never met him. "Did you two live too far away from each other
to be able meet?", I asked.

"No," she replied. The boyfriend lived within 50 miles of her. But you
see, he was Palestinian. She was Israeli. Even though they were close
together geographically, their families would never have allowed them
to date, or even to meet. But they secretly were very very close,
using the internet, the uncensored medium.

The internet is going to change the world. Wars are going to become
infinitely harder to fight. Historically, it was conceivable for
Americans to bomb Russians-- who did we known in Russia? Thanks to the
Internet, all peoples are going to start to come together more and
more. You don't want to bomb a country when you're scared you're
friend there might die. You don't want to declare war on a country if
it means half your Quake Clan might be killed.

In Myanmar, where there's a massive human rights crisis, the first
thing the government did was shut off the internet, because they knew
it would bring world attention to the people of Myanmar, and tend to
make the rest of the world reach out and want to help. Whereas,
without TV or internet or phone service-- Myanmar is just a place on a
map-- not faces of people we want to help.

In all this, I've spoken in terms of the Internet, but I could just as
easily talk about Wikipedia, since we're on the cutting edge of the
internet. It's a wonderful beautiful thing. An encyclopedia that
covers _Everything_, that's free to anyone who we can possibly get it
to. Christian children can learn about the Islamic view of Jesus and
Muslim children can learn about the Christian view of Muhammad.
Creationists can learn about Evolution even if their communities don't
want them to, and Evolutionists can learn about Creationism even if
their communities don't want them to.

But we have to resist the temptation to start censoring. It has to be
the encyclopedia of EVERYTHING notable-- not just an encyclopedia of
the popular or the approved. And censoring always starts so small--
surely THIS speaker is sufficiently evil that we can censor discussion
of THAT person/group. No one would ever defend this person/group--
they're without redeeming value. We can get rid of them. Oh, and what
about this one too? And what about this one? And soon-- amazingly
soon-- we're not censoring coverage of ED trolls anymore, we're
censoring coverage of Michael Moore.

So, that's my story. Wikipedia is a powerful force, and it's tempting
to use that power to try to stop specific cases of harassment. But not
only is such power easily misused, ultimately, the value of having a
totally uncensored encyclopedia of every notable subject is so great
that it far outweighs whatever small help censoring the encyclopedia
would. Not linking to harassment will not cause that harassment to no
longer exist. The simple fact is-- if someone is harassing you,
stalking you, or threatening you-- you have to take it to the real
courts, not to Wikipedia. We don't have the power to do anything about
it.

And censoring those accused of harassment from our encyclopedia (if
they are notable to merit mention) will sell out our reputation. We
don't HAVE to be the uncensored encyclopedia of everything, after all.
We could be the encyclopedia of only "acceptable" point of view,
rather than NPOV, and if we're not careful, that's where we might wind
up.  Already, at least one arbiter has comment that NPOV may simply
not be a realistic goal when it comes to covering our critics.

BADSITES isn't about ED or ASM or even Michael Moore. It's about
Wikipedia. No one here has the ability to delete Michael Moore's
speech. The BADSITES proponent aren't trying to delete things from
Michael Moore's site-- they're trying to delete things from Wikipedia.