[WikiEN-l] BADSITES ArbCom case in progress

[Ray Saintonge]

Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> On 18 Sep 2007 at 03:38:18 +0000, fredbaud at waterwiki.info wrote
>> Now, I'm not kidding...
>>
>> What are the major issues?
>>     
> Have you read the workshop and evidence pages, and their talk pages?  
> The issues have been debated heavily there.
>   
An Arbcom debate should not be there to establish or design policy.  It 
is about applying principles and policy to the particular situation of 
the disputing parties.  Using an Arbcom decision to create policy 
amounts to rule by obiter.
> The way I see it, it's a debate about the basic nature of the 
> Wikipedia community...  Are we going to be a free and open community 
> unafraid of exploring, researching, and discussing every issue 
> including criticism of ourselves, or are we going to bury our heads 
> in the sand and be afraid of our own shadows?  Are we able to take in 
> good stride the broad spectrum of opinion about Wikipedia itself as 
> well as every other subject, or are we a mind-control cult that 
> excommunicates people it doesn't like and declares them unpersons, in 
> order to kill the messenger who brings ideas distasteful to some of 
> us?  Are we a community based on consensus hashed out in free-
> spirited discussion, or a repressed and secretive group with a rigid 
> hierarchy and lots of landmines and third-rails in the form of taboo 
> topics for discussion?
>   
Well said.
> Unfortunately, your proposed findings in this case don't give me much 
> hope for an outcome that won't lead me to lose interest in 
> participating in and supporting Wikipedia.  Your "Salt the Earth" 
> remedy is utterly repugnant to the spirit of what Wikipedia aspires 
> to be.  Your idea of banning all references to "the attack site" 
> without actually saying what site you're talking about is downright 
> Kafkaesque.  And your statement that "the community may not override 
> a fundamental policy such as Wikipedia:No personal attacks" is 
> absolutely and utterly wrongheaded.  NPA is definitely *not* a 
> foundation issue; see
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Foundation_issues
>
> NPA isn't there.  NPOV is, and that's a principle that many say 
> contradicts the imposition of any absolutist link/reference bans.
>   
I have no problem with NPA being fundamental.  This debate comes down to 
how we define "personal attack."
> Saying that NPA is a "fundamental policy" is like saying that a law 
> against selling liquor on Sunday is a basic U.S. constitutional 
> principle alongside freedom of speech, and can't be modified by the 
> legislature or referendum; that's simply false.  
If we were really talking about selling liquor we would be dealing with 
the mindset that brought about the 18th amendment.
> NPA is a policy 
> adopted by consensus; it can be modified, reinterpreted, tweaked, 
> altered, limited, expanded, or even abolished by consensus, so long 
> as the actual foundation issues aren't impacted.
>   
I agree with Marc that NPA is more a principle than a policy.  When you 
try to turn principles into policy it becomes one giant game of 
whack-a-mole.

Ec