[WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

[joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu]

Quoting Will Beback <will.beback.1 at gmail.com>:

> William Pietri wrote:
>> Will Beback wrote:
>>
>>> WE can argue over how much of a positive improvement there'd
>>> be, but it's hard to argue that our articles are defaced by removing a
>>> link that isn't a source.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> It's not hard at all, Will.
>>
>> If you'd like to see how easy it is, go propose that we remove all
>> external links that aren't sources. Or even just external links to sites
>> where the subjects of articles self-publish. Or forget proposing. Just
>> go do it.
>>
>> You will find an ocean of people willing to tell you those links do
>> indeed belong in the articles.
>>
>> And once you have discovered that they are all in the encyclopedia for
>> good encyclopedic reasons, then perhaps you'll have an easier time
>> accepting that we are not willing to compromise the encyclopedia's
>> content. Especially for something where even you admit the benefit is
>> arguable, and where some of us argue that there is harm, not benefit at all.
>>
>> William
>>
> I'm not proposing removing all external links, I'm proposing removing a
> small number of links.
>
> I hope that you aren't saying that all external links provide value and
> we should never remove any external link that a well-meaning editor (or
> greedy website owner) adds. If we stopped deleting external links and
> removed the spam blacklist I predict we'd have more links than text,
> especially in some topics. We include a large variety of links because
> they provide encyclopedic value. If we determine that they don't provide
> that value then we delete them.
>
> Will
>

This is a strawman. The point is that we shouldn't be removing links from an
article unless those links are somehow damaging to the content. The 
distinction
between a random blog or a spam link to buy cars and Michael Moore's personal
website should be obvious.