[WikiEN-l] Inside Higher Ed: Does Wikipedia Suck?

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:24 PM 3/28/2010, Fred Bauder wrote:

>That is why I despise the war on external links and further reading some
>editors seem to think is appropriate.

I don't think that some editors realize the extent to which the 
blacklist, originally intended to control spam, is used to control 
content. A web site that is inappropriate as a reference can 
sometimes be the most important site for an external link. Yet if a 
lot of people have linked to that site, and especially if a handful 
of editors, interested in the topic -- or even they are COI -- have 
added a lot of links, the site is nominated for blacklisting. In the 
nomination and in decisions to blacklist by administrators, a 
supporting reason, besides reports on numbers of links existing, is 
often "Site is not RS." Sometimes, even, this is a controversial 
statement, but if it's not clearly RS, the argument can prevail.

The specific appropriateness of the links in the articles where 
placed *is not considered*, and, indeed, that consideration would be 
impractical.

Sometimes sites are blacklisted without massive spam, but only a 
little, and I have found, on occasion, that all the links that 
resulted in blacklisting were actually legitimate, and that was 
sustained by later stable replacement. Editors who were adding links 
in good faith, links that were actual improvements, have been blocked 
and banned for "spamming." Even when they stopped when warned.

I appreciate the need for spam control, but it can go too far. 
ArbComm decided that content control ("not RS") was not a legitimate 
reason for blacklisting, but it's complicated by the need to balance 
true spam control with damage to editorial freedom, so we can't say 
that content arguments are utterly irrelevant, either. If there is 
gross spamming, but a site is RS, we would properly be more reluctant 
to blacklist. If a site is utterly and unremediably usable, it might 
be blacklisted easily if there is spamming. Most blacklistings do 
fall into this category.

What I've seen, though, in raising the argument that a site would 
make a good external link, is the "Wikipedia is not a repository of 
links" argument, which is making a decision, like the not-RS 
argument, in the wrong place, blacklist administrators should have no 
special authority, as admins, over article content. It should be 
realized that this is truly a small number of admins, as little as 
two or three, that regularly make decisions, and, as is typical, they 
are overworked.

But, then, there is still the possibility of whitelisting individual 
links. I had thought that I'd come to some agreement with Beetstra 
over this, and I started to try to assist by reviewing whitelisting 
requests. These had been sitting for, some of them, for over two 
months without response. Whitelisting is only a practical alternative 
if it is quick, in general, and there is no anti-spam reason to deny 
a reasonable whitelisting request, it would be impossible to spam 
through whitelist requests if support is routinely required from at 
least one registered editor, not associated with the site or an SPA 
around the issue, looks at it and decides it's a reasonable request. 
That still does not make the decision at the article for actual use. 
But this is one of the charges made against me in the lastest 
Arbitration Enforcement action, that I somehow was violating my ban 
by reviewing unanswered whitelist requests and giving an opinion, an 
opinion that really shouldn't have been contentious, and there was no 
dispute on that page.

I also commented on one request on the blacklist page, where a 
request for blacklist had been made, there was a neutral comment from 
Beetstra, and I then contradicted information in the blacklist 
request, because I concluded that the site was, in fact, RS. Just my 
opinion! But evidenced. So, as far as dispute on that page was 
concerned, I was originating the dispute, which was supposedly 
allowed. It did not spin out and become a massive discussion, I was 
careful to be brief. I wasn't intervening in a dispute between 
editors. It could be said that there was a dispute between an IP 
editor and an anti-spam volunteer who had warned him or her, on the 
IP talk page, but I did not intervene in that. I was commenting on 
the blacklisting proposal, not on the possible editorial dispute 
(which apparently didn't continue, but I don't know. To my knowledge, 
the IP was not blocked, which would certainly have occurred if 
"spamming" had continued.)

Based on Beetstra's later comments, I sadly concluded that help with 
whitelisting was seen as an outside interference, it was not welcome, 
even when done carefully in such a way as to thoroughly respect the 
legitimate needs of blacklisting. So the ArbComm decision on the 
blacklist is basically a dead letter, for lack of anyone 
knowledgeable to make it happen.

Links will be provided on request. This is not an attempt to canvass 
support for some position on any web site.