[WikiEN-l] BADSITES ArbCom case about to close

[Daniel R. Tobias]

On 17 Oct 2007 at 10:26:47 -0400, joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu wrote:

> Quoting John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com>:
> 
> > 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.

That, in fact, is how I got dragged into the whole BADSITES issue in 
the first place, since I was one of those who liked to make fun of 
the silly stuff that got said in those sites, with links, and I also 
at one point was featured in both Brandt's Hivemind and Merkey's 
MerkeyLaw, and proudly linked to them on my user page for it.  I 
resented a policy that told me I couldn't do what I regarded as 
harmless diversion.

In the greater scheme of things, this is probably a "minor price to 
pay" as noted above, but in terms of the harm done to the general 
culture of Wikipedia (by not only BADSITES itself, but by the entire 
mindset behind it and all its other manifestations), where the entire 
field of discussion gets riddled with landmines, tripwires, and 
political third rails that one must avoid, the harm is more than 
minor in my opinion.  It's similar to the pernicious harm to academia 
caused by the Political Correctness movement, where students and 
faculty are afraid to speak freely for fear of offending some 
minority group.


-- 
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/