[WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

[John Lee]

On 10/17/07, fredbaud at waterwiki.info <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Lee [mailto:johnleemk at gmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 01:17 AM
> To: 'English Wikipedia'
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Harassment sites
>
> On 10/17/07, Will Beback <will.beback.1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Moore is notable as a filmmaker. He is not notable as a blogger. His
> > blog is not encyclopedic. We are only providing a link as a convenience,
> > and a very minor convenience because it it the first link that comes up
> > on Google. So we are saving our readers about .5 seconds out of their
> > lives. We aren't preserving NPOV, we aren't taking a stand against
> > censorship, we're merely saving some readers a tiny bit of time. I don't
> > begrudge anyone even half a second. But if the tradeoff we're looking at
> > is linking to harassment of Wikipedia editors versus the slightest
> > inconvenience (hopefully temporary) of our readers, then I don't think
> > we should have a question. For completenes inthe article we can say the
> > guy has a blog (who doesn't), but unless the blog is notable I don't see
> > the overriding need to promote "convenience" above "no personal
> attacks".
>
>
> It's an official website, not merely a blog. And even then, I'm pretty
> sure
> we frequently link to the official blogs of prominent people. The question
> is, why are we making an exception for Michael Moore? Is it motivated
> because of some editorial reason (i.e. including the link reduces the
> usefulness and value of the article), or because we're Wikipedia and we
> don't like how Moore treated one of our editors? If the latter, it's a
> pretty clearcut NPOV violation.
>
> Johnleemk
> _______________________________________________
>
> That's the real dilemma. We don't much like that editor ourselves and we
> do like Michael Moore, enough of us anyway to over-ride our policy regarding
> harassment of users. Neutral point of view has nothing to do with it. NPOV
> has to do with the content of the article, not a link to a site which was
> harassing a Wikipedia user by inviting vandalism of his talk page.
>
> Take a real good look at this:
>
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/Arbcom.jpg
>
> Is Michael Moore so wonderful, that such behavior is excusable? What harm
> is done by removing the link to his website for so long as that is its
> content?


I don't know who that editor is, and I don't care much for Moore either. The
fact that the content of our articles differs based on whether the subject
has harassed one of our editors in the past, however, clearly indicates that
we are not keeping in line with, at a bare minimum, the spirit of neutral
point of view.

You are arguing external links do not constitute content. But they do. An
article would not be considered comprehensive if it did not have a link to
the subject's official website(s) - I defy anyone to try to get such an
article past FA/GA. (I'd rant about the ridiculous nature of GA standards,
and its deviation from its original purpose, but that's for another time.)

If you want to argue that external links are not content, I suggest you try
to effect that policy change first. You're putting the cart before the horse
at the moment.

Johnleemk