[WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

[fredbaud at waterwiki.info]

-----Original Message-----
From: George Herbert [mailto:george.herbert at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2007 04:44 PM
To: 'English Wikipedia'
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

On 10/19/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
> > Jimmy Wales schreef:
> >> The only real question is where and how to draw the line, but we are
> >> actually fortunate in this regard: there are virtually no borderline
> >> cases as an empirical matter.
> >
> > They may be a minority, but most of the recent discussion was about
> > borderline cases. The Nielsen Hayden blog, the WikipediaReview Signpost
> > article, the Michael Moore site.
> >
> > Perhaps you don't hink these are borderline, but in each of these cases
> > I've seen people arguing on both sides.
>
> Fair enough, the middle does need to be clarified. And maybe the
> conversation can proceed in a calm way if we remember that we do have a
> pretty easy consensus on the extremes and are quibbling thoughtfully
> over some middle points.
>
> I still think it is not that hard, but I suppose I might be coming at
> this from my own perspective (that it is overboard to hastily remove
> links to a legitimate blog or to Michael Moore's site which is doing
> something irritating at the moment).

I agree with your position that these actions were overboard; the
problem is, they were both done, they were both actively supported by
a noticable fraction of active admins/senior editors at the time they
were removed, and it was not clear to anyone (objecting to the
removals or neutral) what policy actually had to say about it.

During the runup and early bits of the Moore removal, I objected to
removing the links, but I couldn't tell if restoring them and warning
the removers was the right thing to do, or a blockable offense I'd be
committing. So I made some ANI comments and sat on my hands.

-george william herbert

_______________________________________________

You didn't edit war or wheel war. That is righteous. You discussed the matter on an appropriate forum.

Fred