[WikiEN-l] Harassment sites

[Jimmy Wales]

(I have this funny feeling, after writing this email, that it is the 
sort of email likely to be misused in some fashion as a WP:JIMBOSAYS 
fallacy.  This note at the top serves as notice that anyone citing this 
email as setting down policy on Wikipedia is being a goof.  I am just 
discussing and thinking here and trying to be helpful.)

Will Beback wrote:
> I believe that when an editor on Wikipedia gets into a dispute and uses 
> their blog as a weapon in that dispute, then that the blog is no longer 
> a suitable source for Wikipedia.

While I could perhaps agree with something in this general area, I think 
this statement overreaches significantly.

First, blogs-as-sources is already a tricky topic, but there are of 
course cases where a blog is a legitimate source.  For example, if a 
well known person blogs in response to a media controversy, that 
particular blog post can be quite valid as a source for a sentence 
saying "In a post to his personal blog, John Doe vigorously disputed the 
allegations put forward by the New York Times."

Now suppose that same well-known person, in a completely different 
matter, gets into some kind of squabble with a Wikipedian and uses their 
blog as a weapon in that dispute.  In some extreme cases (death threats? 
libel? we could discuss...), there could be a reason to delink the blog 
everywhere.  Or, in case of a redirect to an attack page, there is 
absolutely a reason to delink the blog (because the link is no longer 
valid).

But in general, it seems to me that a non-libelous perfectly legal rant 
against a Wikipedia editor would not justify removing an unrelated 
article space link which would be valid otherwise.

--Jimbo