[WikiEN-l] BADSITES ArbCom case in progress

[charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com]

Armed Blowfish wrote

> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > Are we here to work on the encyclopedia, or not? Very importantly, do we
> > allow naked politics on the site? By that I mean, do we stay with allowing
> > criticism of actions on the site (which has always been permitted), or would
> > it be OK to impute motives and attack those, blacken people's reputations,
> > and so on? If so, exactly what good would come of it?
> >
> > Charles
 
> Erm, the latter is already done, extensively,
> regularly and self-righteously.

That would be against policy, then. I'm against it. It sounds as if you are, too.

> Every time you call someone a troll, you
> are implying that person's intent is to
> get a negative reaction.  

On WP, calling someone a troll is way past violating WP:CIVIL.

>Clueless newbie
> edits are regularly labelled as vandalism -
> which means intentional defacement of
> Wikipaedia.  

The V-word should be used economically. I had a very interesting example, where a net nanny was producing apparent vandal edits for someone. Fortunately I didn't leap to conclusions, there.

>Enforcement of the conflict
> of interest policy almost always involves
> negative speculation on people's motives.

I have repeatedly said that COI is not a reason to abandon AGF. It really isn't. People use it instrumentally, to try to win editing arguments, but they are in the wrong there.

> And what is a sockpuppetry investigation
> but a search for hidden malice?  Any time
> anyone does anything that a significant
> number of people don't like, that person's
> motives are guessed in the worse possible
> light.

A search for abusive sockpuppetry is a search for abuse, plain and simple. I don't accept this.

> The majority of user-contributed websites
> are attack sites, since it is human nature
> to attack.  Off the top of my head, the only
> one I can think of that isn't is DeviantArt.
> Yes, people do attack other people on
> DeviantArt, but they fullfill requests from
> representatives to take things down, no
> questions asked.

I have said that "attack site" is a useless classification. It is facile and prejudges just the issues that matter in assessing critical material.

> Most places, however, will merely say no
> when you ask them to take something down
> and they don't want to.  Wikipaedia and
> Encyclopaedia Dramatica are significant
> exceptions to this - they will very often make
> things worse in response to complaints.
> What makes Wikipaedia worse than
> Encyclopaedia Dramatica is its higher
> Google rankings and self-righteous attitude
> (those people deserve to be attacked and
> suffer, for the good of the encyclopaedia!)
> Encyclopaedia Dramatica, at least, merely
> has a rather negative sense of humour.

Well, WP is better than ED on just about everything except intention to shock and persecute. Think what you're saying a moment.

Charles

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