[WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

[Delirium]

Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 16/10/2007, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   
>>> The way I see it, there has been vastly more disruption to Wikipedia
>>> coming from attempts to suppress links to sites than has ever
>>> occurred by the presence of such links.
>>>       
>> In the case of WR, I think that there's a case to be made.
>>     
>
> "If you want to take Vienna, take Vienna". If you want to block
> linking to Wikipedia Review, then block linking *to Wikipedia Review*.
>
> There are many people violently against the "attack sites removal"
> concept who would tolerate "site A and B are irredeemably and
> inherently useless for reasons X Y and Z, don't link there". I still
> haven't seen a good reason we can't have an (Arbcom-named?) blacklist,
> kept as small and undisputable as possible...
>   

That seems reasonable to me, and as an added bonus it could be done in a 
manner that doesn't special-case Wikipedians. The general category of 
non-notable attack websites/blogs is rarely worth linking to, and since 
their proponents often spend a lot of effort trying to link them and 
they can have negative effects (moreso than most spam), it might be 
worth some special effort to keep them out.

I think this is actually more common with non-Wikipedia-related attack 
blogs than with Wikipedia-related ones, but those don't get as much 
attention unless someone complains to OTRS. (See the history of [[Erwin 
Raphael McManus]] for one particular instance of persistent attempts to 
link an attack blog.) But of course it would apply to those who attack 
Wikipedians as well.

In either case that approach wouldn't justify removing information about 
*notable* attack sites (or attack books, or attack newspapers, or 
whatever), which is really what the problem with 'badsites' and similar 
proposals is.

-Mark