[WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

[Thatcher131 Wikipedia]

On 10/17/07, fredbaud at waterwiki.info <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
> 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?
>
> Fred
>

Fred, I understand the importance of not harassing our volunteer
editors, and that while one day it might be a mostly-liked public
figure and a mostly disliked editor (Michael Moore and THF), another
day it might be a mostly disliked public figure and a well-liked
editor (such as Jeff Bagely and SlimVirgin).  But I think it is
important to separate article space from other spaces.  Among other
things, we risk being manipulated--supposed Stephen Colbert decided to
play around with this concept?

But it also seems to me that there are many other alternatives and the
binary we must link/we must not link is a false dichotomy.  In the
case of Moore we could link to
http://michaelmoore.com/books-films/index.php, which advances the
purpose of the link even more than linking to the main page of his
site.  In the case of Bagley do we really want to compromise article
content by writing, "Overstock.com is linked to a supposedly
independent web site that published highly critical information about
people" without even naming the site?

The problem in the case was edit warring and other bad behavior by
editors who should have known better, and who should have found other
ways to resolve the issue; the link policy should have been secondary.