[WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

[William Pietri]

Durova wrote:
>> We do it for shock sites, and antisocialmedia.net is odious enough to
>> deserve not being linked.
>
> The purpose is that it reduces incoming traffic from one of the most
> powerful sources of link traffic on the Internet.  If that discourages
> people from using their sites to intimidate particular editors, then so much
> the better.  NPOV *is* harmed when good editors decide "this isn't worth it"
> and leave the project. 

The reason we don't link shock sites is not because *we* find them 
offensive. It's because we believe the vast majority of our readers 
would find them so immediately and pungently offensive that we want them 
to be sure they don't accidentally get an eyeful. I don't see 
antisocialmedia.net in the same category: we personally may find parts 
of it odious, but it will not cause most readers mental scarring. [1]

The question I keep asking myself about these proposals is: Who does it 
serve? Delinking shock sites serves our readers. Delinking sites that we 
don't like because of how they treat us most obviously serves ourselves 
at the expense of our readers. Your argument that it also has a subtle, 
long-term effect on our ability to serve readers is interesting, but 
unproven, and could just as well have the opposite effect.


William


[1] For those wondering about the effects without wanting to experience 
them, see the Flickr set "firstgoatse". It contains no shock images; 
it's just pictures of people reacting to seeing the most famous internet 
shock site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/firstgoatse/interesting/

-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri