[WikiEN-l] BADSITES ArbCom case about to close

[joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu]

Quoting John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com>:

> On 10/17/07, joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu <joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> > <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > 15.1) Wikipedia should not link to websites set up for the purpose of or
>> > substantially devoted to harassing its volunteers. Harassment in this
>> context
>> > refers to cyber-stalking, offline stalking, outing people without their
>> > consent, humiliating them sexually, or threatening them with physical
>> > violence.
>>
>>
>> I'm very worried that this proposal doesn't make any distinction
>> between article
>> space and non-article space.
>
>
> I'm very worried that this means I can't link to an attack site to make fun
> of it, as I did with Brandft's hive mind. (I was listed on it, so I thought
> it'd make a good userbox joke - gosh, I feel so old.) This makes no
> distinction between intent and actual action - [[mens rea]] for the legal
> nerds out there. In real life, the law sometimes cannot draw a good
> distinction between intent and the act itself, but in Wikipedia, we usually
> can. We should be banning the usage of links for the express purpose of
> harassing or outing editors; not banning links which *might* conceivably be
> used in a context to harass editors simply because of their content.

I'm inclined to agree. I forgot also that we had fun little threads 
occasionally
when people got stuck on Hivemind. JzG announced his placement on Hivemind.
However, an occasional humorous thread being curtailed seems like a 
minor price
to pay.