Wikipedia talk:Linking to external harassment

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Links that improve the encyclopedia must not be removed.

My principal objection is to the sentence in the nutshell: " Links that improve the encyclopedia must not be removed." That sentence is vague and strict at the same time. It does not refelct current practice, as we remove forums, blogs, and commercial links that users could argue improve the encyclopedia. There's no definition, here or elsewhere, of what is meant by "improve". I think it should either be omitted from the proposal or defined. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it is uselessly tautological. WAS 4.250 (talk) 22:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

If no one defends its inclusion I'll remove it. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 23:09, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I object. The wording could probably be improved. However the phrasing could use work. I believe the idea is that links that would be valid links in mainspace but for the issue of possible harassment should not be removed. I'm not sure of a good phrasing of that. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:12, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Hopefully JzG's tweak addresses that one - David Gerard (talk) 19:25, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

If there's no good phasing then it should be removed. The text in question is too vague, in that it doesn't define "improve the encyclopedia", and too strict, in that is says they "must not be removed". If the intent is to say that value to the encyclopedia should be weighed more than harm to individuals then that's what we should say. It may be best to leave this issue out of hte nutshell. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:38, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

How about this "Links meeting WP:WEL should not be removed from article space even if the links contain harassment or private information about Wikipedia editors." JoshuaZ (talk) 23:54, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

That doesn't seem right either because we often remove links that meet WP:EL, for example when there are simply too many of them. It might be better if it referred to WP:RS which has a higher standard and covers links that serve a direct purpose for the article. [[WP:EL] links are just off site "see alsos" and of little importance. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 00:01, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm fine with removing links because we have too many links (as we frequently get at Evolution for example) but we need to make clear that harassment and such is not a reason to remove a link in article space. How about "Harassment is not by itself sufficient reason to remove a link from article space that would be there otherwise"?JoshuaZ (talk) 00:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with the intent, but that conveys the idea more clearly. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 03:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Two questions, first: could you clarify the objection to the intent? Second, would you mind terribly if this non-ideal language were inserted? JoshuaZ (talk) 00:08, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that we should categorically exclude harassment as a cause for removing links, as I think everyone agrees there are some types or degrees of harassment which is so severe that all efforts should be taken to minimize the effect. OTOH, it's likely that those cases are so few that they can be handled as exceptions that don't need to be specifically mentioned in the guideline. However I think the text in the proposal now (Links in articles are a matter for "sound editorial judgement".) is as good or better. WP:EL already says that all links are up for discussion, and that phrasing may do a better job of expressing the idea that it is up to WP editors to decide which links to include or exclude. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 08:28, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with your claim that "everyone agrees". In particular, I'm not sure I agree. If a link belongs in article space but for it being harassing then we shouldn't take it out. Furthermore, if we do allow some such links to be removed (which IMO, we shouldn't) there's no clear line; it just asks for more drama. JoshuaZ (talk) 15:48, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Hack for practical application value

JzG had a hack at this and I've had one too. How is it so far? I've focused on what's historically flown with the community in solving the problems - David Gerard (talk) 19:25, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not sure I'm too happy with nowikifying links. That makes a fair bit of sense outside article space (and made especial sense outside article space before we had nofollow tags) but I don't see what having the links as nowikied accomplishes in article space. People can still see the links, so it just emphasizes that we don't like it. It just seems to add inconvenience for our readers. The rest I'm more or less ok with. JoshuaZ (talk) 20:09, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

I have now reverted to the last consensus edit which was in place since 8 November. I feel that the language and emphasis has been changed sufficiently to require consensus for such amendments. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:12, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

It is an overstatement to say that there was a consensus for the November 8 version. Since it appeared this proposal was dead or irrelevant some folks just lost interest. Do you have any specific comments on Gerard's draft? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:41, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, "consensus" is an overstatement. WAS 4.250 (talk) 01:10, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Reverting is not a particularly helpful response; it is either {{rejected}} (as the work of a sockpuppet and a sockpuppet of a banned user, plus quite sneakily written to support a certain position while seeming not to), or we take it and work on it to make it better. The edits David and I made reflect current practice for egregious privacy violations (see Judd Bagley), and generally aim to be a guide for the bewildered rather than a crutch for wikilawyers or a stick with which to beat people. I think you'll find that David was anything but a supporter of blanket removal of links, especially from mainspace. Guy (Help!) 21:47, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

• Ah yes, the Sockpuppet card - and who blocked accounts for abuse of alternate accounts (now at ArbCom)? Why, that would be Guy! What was the abuse? Disruptive editing! What disruptive editing? Creating "heat" rather than "light" on policy pages. What policy pages? hmmmm.... (I notice that some previous discussion has now been archived - and a name of a now indisposed editor along with it.) Now, what were you saying about disruption? LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
  • BenB4 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who wrote the first draft of this proposal, was not blocked by user:JzG. Miltopia (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was not blocked by JzG. MOASPN (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) wasn't blocked by JzG either. This proposal has been shaped substantially by users who were already banned or who were banned shortly after participating. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:36, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
    • You are quite right. I apologise. It was User:David Gerard who indef blocked Privatemusings, which was then resolved and lifted only to be indef blocked again and is now at ArbCom. It is sometimes difficult to keep up with which anti-BADSITES proponents accounts from that ArbCom case have been blocked. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:48, 21 November 2007 (UTC) (edit) Oh, wait! Privatemusings was indef blocked by David Gerard on 16 November, following a previous indef block by Guy on 31 October - so my comment now stands as; much of the 8 Nov edit of the mainpage was produced with the assistence and contributions of an editor who has been twice indef blocked as a violator of WP:SOCK by both Guy and David Gerard, block reverted both times, and is now at ArbCom in regard to a third indef block for the same supposed violation. Both those editors who previously indef blocked Privatemusings today happened to agree to reword the mainpage in a manner they felt more in keeping with their understanding of practice, although it changed the spirit and added language not in previous editions. You will forgive me my lapses of recall, I am not thinking as clearly as I might. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:02, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

That's not helpful. WAS 4.250 (talk) 01:10, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

In fact, I've been consistently dead set against it. If JzG and I can halfway agree on something on the topic as being practical and useful, I submit it has at least a marginal passing chance of working in practice - David Gerard (talk) 21:58, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, David has consistently opposed BADSITE and is a strong supporter of free speech (and while wikipedia is not a free speech zone, free speech is an important tool to create and goal of a free unbiased encyclopedia). WAS 4.250 (talk) 01:10, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I avoided saying this for fear of putting words in your mouth. I think we're both agreed: it's about making a workable guideline which describes current consensus and practice. "Practical application value" is exactly it. Guy (Help!) 22:02, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

A lot of the problem of the previous version was that this can only work as a guideline for clueful editors of good will - clueless ones won't get the point and ones of bad will won't care. See WP:PRO. Hence the necessity of rewriting as a practical guideline. The previous version IMO stuck around so long because people had abandoned it as useless in a practical sense - David Gerard (talk) 22:05, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

It's not the end of the world, but the new version doesn't keep the spirit of the old one as much. The nutshell text, explicitly allowing encyclopedic content, was a very important for balance example. If there's consensus this is better, that's fine-- but there it should be discussed, not edit-warred-in. --22:14, 21 November 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alecmconroy (talk • contribs)

Looking at the history, and the fact that about half the edits seem to have been made by sockpuppets of banned users, that's perhaps no bad thing. What it does do is to reflect sanity. As David says, if he and I can agree on it, then progress is clearly being made. Guy (Help!) 23:00, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Certain encyclopedia dramatica articles

Certain encyclopedia dramatica articles relating to wikipedia admins will never need to be linked to legitimatly. These should definitly be included--Phoenix-wiki ^{(talk · contribs)} 23:00, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

• Saying that explicitly will just give them a few orders of magnitude more traffic. Nobody disputes this point, and if this page (and NPA for that matter) don't make the point without an explicit reference they need a rewrite. WilyD 23:04, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I can't imagine anybody even suggesting it, it is so self-evidently wrong. Plus it's blacklisted anyway, or was last time I looked. Guy (Help!) 23:33, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, if for example the New York Times did a front page article on ED and the article contained extensive discussion about certain ED articles on Wikipedians then we might. I don't consider that to be a likely scenario. In any event WP:BEANS says not to make this sort of thing explicit and Wily is right that mentioning them will simply give them more traffic. JoshuaZ (talk) 23:59, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

If we specifically ban certain ED articles, then we've just awarded them the Gold Medal of Trolling. They will have won at that point. All they want is to get a reaction, and that would be giving them the ultimate reaction. -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:03, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

See Steve Summit's point 3 below: such off-site rubbish should be ignored real hard. I think we can describe it in general terms (as he does) without feeding the trolls of ED - David Gerard (talk) 01:36, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I hope this policy won't include or refer to any lists of "permabanned" sites. We shouldn't do blacklisting; it smacks too much of prior restraint. —Steve Summit (talk) 19:19, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you

I would like to thank recent contributors to this discussion for getting involved. We finally have the right mix of people to forge a truly useful and stable consensus guideline on linking to external harassment. WAS 4.250 (talk) 01:17, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Excellent summary by Steve Summit on wikien-l

He just added the following:

Having followed some (but by no means all) of the interminable debate, it seems to me it all boils down to three things:

1. If a link in article space is allegedly non-encyclopedic, it needs to be assessed according to WP:V or WP:RS or whatever the sourcing guideline du jour is.

2. If a link in non-article space serves to harass a Wikipedia editor, it needs to be dealt with in accordance with WP:NPA, which at times has (and IMO certainly should) treat such links just as seriously as on-wiki harassment.

3. If an off-wiki page, not linked to from article space or from non-article space, harasses a Wikipedia editor, it should either be ignored, or dealt with off-wiki. Nothing we do on-wiki can punish an off-wiki harasser, or force the off-wiki harasser to remove their harassing words from the net.

3. is IMO excellent. It means "ignore this crap." But does it blend will it stand? - David Gerard (talk) 01:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Bravo. Thank you, David, for cross-posting that here. I can't keep up with the mailing list.

As far as point number 2 goes, I'm wondering this... If there is a significant faction of people who think that the policy needs to be "strengthened", or more thoroughly specified, in order to protect Wikipedians from harassment, then does that mean that we've somehow failed to demonstrate that a simple policy, together with effective enforcement, is all we need to beat harassment? -GTBacchus^(talk) 05:32, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

We have, without doubt, resoundingly and spectacularly failed to demonstrate that. Whether the proposed changes will make things better or worse is very much an open question. Raymond Arritt (talk) 05:47, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

If our problem is inability to enforce a clear policy, then why will writing more words on it make any difference? If that's our problem, how do we address it? -GTBacchus^(talk) 06:20, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

This will likely end up a guideline that suppliments WP:NPA, just for those who need a lot of words. WilyD 14:46, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's inability to enforce a clear policy, it's the absence of a clear policy to enforce. Or rather, the fact that every time what seems clear is enforced, we have a shitstorm. So: the purpose is to decide, in detail, what the Wikipedia community actually thinks on this matter (which is, to be honest, not that hard to discern, since everyone seems to agree that linking harassment is Just Plain Wrong), and to codify things for the guidance of the well-intentioned but inexperienced. In other words, to avoid repeating past mistakes. If we get this right it will be a consensus version of the history of the Great Attack Link Wars of 2006 and 2007. Who was it said that he who will not learn from history is doomed to repeat it? Something like that anyway. Guy (Help!) 14:51, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

There's a clear consensus against linking for the purpose of harassment, or committing harassment by the means of linking; there's much less of a sense that there's a consensus against linking to harassment, which differs from harassment itself like a map differs from the country it maps. Discussion of things in a free-ranging spirit of inquiry can include talking about, and linking to, things that constitute harassment as long as such things exist in the real world. That's a whole different thing from actually harassing somebody (with or without the use of links). The failure to distinguish the two is a philosophical divide that will forever frustrate attempts to get a complete consensus. *Dan T.* (talk) 15:04, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I quote form the current wording: Linking to external harassment, attacks, or to sites which routinely engage in such attacks, is usually considered inappropriate, and should be done only after careful thought has been given to the likely effect on the victim. That seems to reflect a consensus position. It does not absolutely forbid such a link, but it urges serious thought before doing so, which is as it should be. What is wrong with that wording, exactly? Please be specific. Guy (Help!) 15:18, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I think there is a consensus against frivolously linking to things we find unpleasant, which is what that seems to be getting at. WilyD 15:46, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I have no objection, per se, to an urging to give "careful thought" about what you link to. You should give careful thought to everything you say and do. I think lots of things, especially when I'm angry, that I'm very glad I had the sense not to actually say or act on. My concerns are not really with that wording itself but with some of the attitudes displayed by people espousing it and similar things, where I'm not convinced they don't have an agenda to let it continue to evolve and mutate into something more forbidding and less thoughtful. Am I just assuming bad faith? *Dan T.* (talk) 16:12, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

It's an inherent danger in any mutable policy that it could change into something undesirable. Just write the right policy (or in this case, I'd guess guideline) and worry about the future when it happens. WilyD 16:19, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

"...[E]veryone seems to agree that linking harassment is Just Plain Wrong". This highlights the whole, tormented issue in a nutshell, I think.

Dan's already said this, but in my words: everyone agrees that linking to harass is Just Plain Wrong. Me, otherwise, I have absolutely no problem with linking to harassment (if, obviously, there's some other decent reason to do so other than to harass). The wording "linking harassment" is beautifully ambiguous, and could be argued for..., well, for as long as we've been arguing abut this.

The people who want to go beyond "don't link to harass", who want to say something more like "don't link to harassment", are trying to accomplish one (or more) of three things, I think:

G1. Suppress the harassment: Each fewer link to it that there is makes it that much harder to find.

G2. Protect the harassed: Each time an injured editor sees a link to (or mention of) their tormentors, they are reminded of their pain.

G3. Punish the harassers: They're evil, nasty people; they don't deserve incoming links from a quality site like Wikipedia.

Now, all three of these are quite arguably noble goals. But some of us are arguing (rather passionately, it seems) that we do not want to pursue any of them in this way. It's not that we condone the harassers, it's not that we don't have the utmost sympathy for the harassees and wish to support them in every way we can, but we feel that those three goals (a) don't really help much and (b) sponsor way too much collateral damage.

The other thing that goes on (though I'm not sure this is the policy to discuss it under) is that when someone wants to remove a link they find objectionable, they may try to accomplish it under the rubric of some other policy, such as WP:RS. If a link under discussion fails RS, that's fine. But we've seen people try to twist and misinterpret RS in order to delete some particular link, when it's pretty clear that their real motivation is to accomplish one of the above three goals. That's a problem -- especially if those three goals don't have consensus (which, I argue, they do not). —Steve Summit (talk) 17:56, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

← OK, so there are several threads in there. Let me ask first up: what text do you think should change in this guideline as currently written; from what and to what? Second, you raise the prospect of collateral damage. We've had something under ten articles that have been temporarily disrupted by edit warring; a strong presumption in favour of discussion should avert the edit warring, and sanity should result in the correct outcome for the articles themselves. Does that not sufficiently limit the potential for collateral damage, or is there some other form of damage you think is likely? I don't think we can ever fix a problem of people trying to remove links they don't like by cycling through policies until they find one that looks good, any more than we can prevent that exact same problem with any other kind of content, but again I would think that a strong presumption in favour of discussion - and of respecting the results of that discussion, I guess - should fix that. Yes? Guy (Help!) 19:19, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

What text do I think should change? Good question. My own, personal, selfish answer is that I don't much care: there are probably some words in there that aren't quite right, but I'm not super-motivated to find and fix them, because I don't have a clear understanding of what this proto-policy is for, or why it's necessary in the first place.

The primary reason, I know, is that Arbcom asked the community to draft a policy on links to external harassment. And I understand that this is a complicated, sticky, emotional issue, but I keep coming back to the three points of mine which David pasted into this thread. I think links in article space ought to be governed by WP:RS. I think links in non-article space, if they're perceived as harassing, ought to be governed by WP:NPA. So, ideally, there's nothing left for this policy to talk about. (Perhaps it is, as WilyD suggested above, just a bunch of extra guideline text to go along with NPA.)

I will take a stab at the words in the guideline. But I would ask anyone else: Do you agree with points 1, 2, and 3 at the start of this section? If you do, I think the conclusion is inescapable that there's nothing left for a "Linking to external harassment" policy to talk about. Am I wrong? Or if you don't agree with all three points, which one(s) do you disagree with? Why? Is it because you're in favor of G1, G2, and/or G3 above, or for some other reason? —Steve Summit (talk) 18:12, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Putting the link in plaintext

It's been proposed:

"Where an especially problematic link is encyclopedic content (e.g. in an article on someone whose notability includes harassing others), putting the link in plain text, e.g. <nowiki>http://www.unpleasant.example.com/</nowiki> (rather than as a live link), or even just the domain name, e.g. unpleasant.example.com, has been considered a workable solution in the past."

This is not consistent with my conception of NPOV. "Handicapping", "bowdlerizing" or otherwise "redacting" such links serves as a strong flag that our articles considers some sites "Good Sites" and some sites "Evil Sites". A decision about whether to link during a mention should be made for encyclopedic reasons, based on RS, EL, and MOS-- never for moral, judgmental, or emotional reasons. --[[User:Alecmconroy|Alecmc (talk) 01:45, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

This was mentioned above and quickly went to a different place. My concern with the nowiki suggestion consists of two parts. 1. Having a unlinked url on our site invites people to fix it. 2. Having out in the open invites vandals to war over it. In regard to #1, a newcomer to WP would see "Why is this not linked?" and fix it possibly opening the door to biting and possible further sanctions depending on the heat or light generated by said link (we have banned new users based on patterns of acting like vandals/socks. A truly innocent new user could be caught in this as fixing links is a relatively easy task and has a low learning curve). In regard to #2, having an unwikied link in an article (especially one known to cause issues) is like having a large steak in the middle of a pack of wild dogs. I would rather comment it out so it is not visible at the very least, in the middle put a detailed html comment in its place with a link to the discussion on why it was removed and the very most remove it completely. The last paragraph of "In articles" covers the second to worse case scenario (with the worst being permanent removal).

As a FYI, I am really trying not going to get involved in this as much as NPA. I would rather get back to editing the encyclopedia. I am merely going to be here to play devils advocate/third opinion of things I have not seen brought up. Don't shoot the messenger as I am trying to point out flaws with what could happen with wording. spryde | talk 01:50, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I think it makes a lot of sense to either not talk about a link, or else provide it as a live link. Places in-between those two seem, as you suggest, to invite fixing the link, either by making it live, or by removing mention of it. -GTBacchus^(talk) 05:50, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

The site in question was antisocialmedia and the article was Judd Bagley and the person who added the text was David Gerard, who absolutely is not as proponent of removing links. Guy (Help!) 07:27, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

It is a fact that this has been used as an actual (not theoretical) method of resolving an issue between two sides. Apparently, it works because one side thinks removing the link altogether is unencyclopedic, the other side feels their emotions have been honored, and the page is carefully watched by both sides so third parties are not an issue. WAS 4.250 (talk) 07:45, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

While it is true that " A decision about whether to link during a mention should be made for encyclopedic reasons, based on RS, EL, and MOS-- never for moral, judgmental, or emotional reasons." it is also true that time spent arguing over "live or not live" is time not spent doing something else, and I for one do not consider the difference enough to waste time over, while the emotionally distraught often will. Life is about choices. Let's not recommend that people insist on drama when this simple measure is workable, even if not optimum. WAS 4.250 (talk) 07:51, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I do see Alec's point. I mention it as an example of how these things have actually been dealt with. Examples include the naming of antisocialmedia.net on Judd Bagley - the site is entirely detailed and odious personal attacks on Bagley's perceived enemies (who happen to include several Wikipedians) but also happens to have been named in the New York Times, is something he's notable for and is something no article on him could reasonably leave out. Though there were those who wanted the name removed entirely from the article as a violation of No Personal Attacks (this issue eventually went to arbitration), even those thinking it needed to be named in the article were happy just to have it in text form. (It's now present as a link in Overstock.com.) Less pointed examples include shock sites (the present page looks to have been edited with an axe, but past versions favoured text links) and the photograph on autofellatio (which used to be linked rather than inline - note, it's now present). It's imperfect but at least gets the information out there. Hence my reference to this having historically led to a compromise that stops everyone wasting megabytes arguing - David Gerard (talk) 08:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I said it wouldn't work, but practice trumps theory. I guess that's a viable alternative. -GTBacchus^(talk) 08:45, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Putting links in plaintext is just puerile. It may soothe some ruffled feathers, but it makes every uninvolved reader wonder (a) if we don't understand HTML, or (b) why we're making them jump through pointless cut'n'paste hoops. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:37, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

• The idea here is to document what happens in practice. If you think what happens in practice is wrong, please feel free to go to the talk page of the article in question and propose a change. I don't think that debate belongs here. Guy (Help!) 19:08, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

  Yeah, the plaintext option sounds absurd to me, too, but if it works, then it works. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:29, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

  "Ditto" - plaintext seems kind of childish but if it's been made a workable solution in one case, whatever. The information is still there uncensored. WilyD 19:35, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

• It seems silly to me, like trying to be half pregnant. *Dan T.* (talk) 14:14, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

• It seems silly because it is silly, but if we can solve the GD MF BADSITES problem by letting people be a little silly, I'll suggest the wisest course of action is just to let them. WilyD 14:55, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
• I guess it's also like writing "f*ck", which I've also never really understood, because everybody knows what you mean, so how is "f*ck" any less offensive than "fuck"? But of course, that circumlocution gets used all the time, whether or not I personally think it makes sense. Okay, in the spirit of compromise, point conceded. —Steve Summit (talk) 16:31, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

• You got a point there :-) Guy (Help!) 16:36, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm concerned that putting links in plaintext will actually draw attention to links (and in any event the BITING issue if a newbie comes along to try to fix it is a serious problem). I'm seriously considering in the actually Bagely case of proposing that we do an actual link but I think that that may just create more drama at this point in time. I frankly don't see what we gain by nowikying. In those cases we simply are slightly screwing our readers and have no advantage (not to mention that it makes it even more blatant to readers that we're letting our personal issues alter the project which will do wonders for our reputation). JoshuaZ (talk) 17:04, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm concerned about the BITING issue you mention, too, but I think it's manageable. Any time there's a link that's plaintext for a reason, we can put an <!-- HTML comment --> next to it explaining so and directing would-be hotlinkers to go to the talk page for discussion first. We can also resolve not to punish first-time hotlinkers, and to defend any first-time hotlinkers who are too-zealously blocked before the saner heads have had their say. The defense is simple: "You're right, that link should be hot like all the rest, there's no good reason for it to be plaintext, but here's the very good non-good reason why it's not." (If the would-be hotlinker ignores the warning and gets into an edit war over it, they may deserve blocking for that.)

What do we gain by nowikying? Yes, we slightly screw our readers. No, we don't improve the article in any way. What we gain is simply that the editors of ours who didn't want the link there are mollified. If we can't convince them that they're wrong for not wanting the link there, if we can't make them go away, and if we're insistent on retaining some form of the link, the non-hot link is, precisely, a compromise. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:23, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Meh, I guess if this is going to be necessary to get this agreed to I'll support it. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:08, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I've put a note in the text flagging the NPOV issue. Wording tweaks welcomed - David Gerard (talk) 15:56, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Adding and removing

At the risk of turning up the temperature here, which is not my intention, there have been a couple of edits that have changed "removing" to "adding or removing" in the sentence If a link is removed in good faith, the first step should be a calm and reasoned discussion on the relevant discussion page. Bear with me here, please, I want to develop my argument in full.

I think this is an important point on which to gain agreement. There are some fundamentals to state first:

• We are talking here about a very small number of cases (fewer than ten articles, as far as I can make out). A pragmatic approach is clearly indicated, since there are few if any general rules that can be drawn from such a very small sample.
• There are, broadly, two classes of site: one, exemplified by antisocialmedia, is primarily dedicated to harassment, the other, exemplified by michaelmoore.com, is not.
• In these latter cases, Moore, Murphy and Neilsen-Hayden being the ones I recall, the content of the site changed at some point. This breaks the normal Wikipedia model of bold, revert, discuss (BRD).
• BRD defaults to a position where disputed content is removed until consensus is achieved for its inclusion. This is as it should be, otherwise we'd have a Wikilawyers' charter and policies such as WP:NPOV and WP:BLP would become virtually unenforceable.
• So, while the onus is on the editor seeking to include content to justify its inclusion, links break the normal process because the content of the site linked may be entirely different from the content at the time when said consensus was achieved. Hence the problem.

Now the bits which I think are likely to be contentious:

• Wikipedia is not evil. (OK, not that contentious).
• External links are not immediately critical to the content. Important, perhaps, and a useful service to our readers, but what really matters is the text of the article. Absence of a link may be puzzling to some, but probably no more than that.

We are balancing two competing imperatives: on the one hand, the need to be respectful to living individuals, and on the other, the need to be a neutral encyclopaedia. But there's the crucial difference in how we weight the two: a link to harassment causes pain to a real person right now, whereas the encyclopaedia is an abstract concept, a work in progress with no deadline to meet. There is harassment out there, and we can't fix that, but Wikipedia should be seen to do the right thing by not aggressively insisting on linking to it while we examine our collective navels.

I come to this from the perspective of an OTRS volunteer, I think some others here also do OTRS. If we get a complaint then we don't reply that if the argument settles itself in a week or so then the defamatory material will be removed, we remove it, there ad then, and initiate a discussion on the talk page. And that's a really important principle to uphold. It is vastly easier to go back to the complainant a week later and say look, I'm awfully sorry, but we read around the subject and there is no doubt that many reliable sources have indicated that this material is significant; unfortunately we have a limited ability to fix real-world problems. If this is not obvious then I probably haven't explained it right, I guess, at least it seems obvious to me.

One obvious source of problems would be if a link is removed again shortly after a debate on Talk. That's easily handled: the individual who removes the link can be pointed to the talk page, and we can all WP:AGF until it's proven otherwise.

What I'm arguing, then, is that as a principle, harassment needs fixing here-and-now while content issues can be discussed in our usual ponderous way, especially when the result is that we link to the harassment anyway - we need to be seen to be not evil. Despite the enormous number of words it took me to say that, I do think this is a pretty simple principle and one which I hope we can endorse. Thanks for hanging in there. Guy (Help!) 13:42, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Everyone knows where I stand, so I'll just go quick:

• Links _ARE_ the encyclopedia. Without links, there basically is no WP:V.
• In a content dispute, we should neither favor nor disfavor links based on our moral assessment of their content. What I see above is a proposal to bias content disputes involving things we hate so that it's harder to insert things we hate than it is to insert things we like-- regardless of the encyclopedic considerations.
• It is not consistent with NPOV to allow our emotional or moral judgments to affect the content of the articles. "Delinking" should apply to ALL links in the encyclopedia or no links in the encyclopedia. To link to some, but not others, based our own POV is not consistent with NPOV, and NPOV is non-negotiable. --Alecmconroy (talk) 16:26, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, Alec, but you are simply wrong about your first point. We reference things from all kinds of sources, many of which are not available online at all or are available only with a subscription. Most science journals do not permit public access to full text (hence FUTON bias) and great swathes of Wikipedia have no real references at all, which is not good but does not necessarily mean the articles are factually inaccurate or biased. What matters is the content and the ability to verify it from reliable sources. Nowhere in policy does it state that content must be verifiable from a link included there and then. Quite the opposite.

Your comment about not biasing based on things we hate is, in my view, an excessively simplistic and inaccurate characterisation and flatly contradicted by most of the discussion above. Actually this is about respecting living people, as with WP:BLP; about not being evil and being seen not to be evil.

David has already cited one precedent that shows that there is no tangible degradation of the project caused by not actually hotlinking something which is judged by independent sources (not just us) to be vile.

So, I'm afraid you have just reiterated an absolutist position in a debate where people are trying to come up with workable, pragmatic guidance for the confused and well-intentioned. I wonder if you wouldn't mind giving this a bit more thought? Guy (Help!) 19:06, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

He may be absolutist, but he's also right. (So I guess I'm absolutist, too.) At root, the removals we're concerned with here are based on emotion, not logic. Humans being the emotional creatures we are, compromises which respect widespread emotional leanings may occasionally be necessary, but it's not wrong to point out the illogic. —Steve Summit (talk) 16:53, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Really? I believe it is factually wrong to state that "links are the encyclopaedia". They aren't. We could write a fantastic article without a single link. It's also the case that we view links differently depending on the overall tone of the site. A harmless site which is not especially relaible but has interesting content may achieve consensus as an external link, while something like Stormfront will not. Not due to differences in reliability, but due to the fact that one is a hate site and the other is not. One might I suppose have as a point of principle that both should go, but in practice we are humans and that's how links have always been assessed. Guy (Help!) 18:41, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

"Links are the encyclopedia" is a canard. It was the rest of Joshua's argument I was agreeing with. Sheesh. —Steve Summit (talk) 20:30, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia as we know it really couldn't exist without hyperlinks. The whole project is based upon the ability of large numbers of editors to quickly and transparently look over each others' sources. Sure, you could make a Wikipedia-like project which only used deadtree sources, but it couldn't hold a candle compared to Wikipedia, and it'd be full of errors caused by editors not all having access to the sources. --Alecmconroy (talk) 16:43, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

There is a huge logical disconnect here. Wikiepdia can exist indefinitely with no links to sites that include attacks, because the vast majority of sources do not contain attacks, and the vast majority of subjects do not attack people on their websites. The few who do, through lapse of judgement or deliberate intent, well, if they get removed we talk about it and rapidly decide to put them back in. And havingtalked about it, any edit war is forestalled, because a consensus exists and can be pointed to. Guy (Help!) 22:58, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Guy is correct in that we could in theory construct an encyclopedia without any hard-links at all. However, doing so would be a tremendous disservice to our readers. JoshuaZ (talk) 18:23, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

If people are doing that then I find that unfortunate. A link to Stormfront should be assessed based on whether or not is is compliant with WP:EL. The fact that Stormfront is a bunch of neo-nazis should not be relevant. JoshuaZ (talk) 19:13, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's particularly problematic that sites which are actively evil are less welcome than others. Guy (Help!) 19:18, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Evil is POV. I think they're evil too, that doesn't mean my POV should get in the way. There are people who think that just about any organization whether it is evil. JoshuaZ (talk) 19:46, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Not especially POV, no. I can find you a horde of reliable sources that say Stormfront is evil, and I'm pretty confident I will not be able to find any objective independent commentator who identifies it as harmless. Guy (Help!) 20:29, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, if Adolf Hitler were alive today and had a webpage, would we link to it from Adolf Hitler? Note that we do link to the KKK's website from Ku Klux Klan.

POV attitudes aside, if someone or something is evil, that shouldn't affect the way we cover them. To do otherwise is prudery, and has no place in an encyclopedia. —Steve Summit (talk) 20:30, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Of course we would, and if it was removed then there would be a rapid editorial consensus to stick it back in. The problem all along has been people acting from principle and outrage, rather than just noting that, well, that was silly, and calmly agreeing what to do about it. And we are, remember, talking about tiny numbers of articles. Stormfront is linked in Stormfront (website). But it's an inappropriate link in pretty much any other article. The few people who thought it was a great source for the fact that millions of Jews did not die in the holocaust were not the kind of people with whom you can have a rational discussion. You'll note that eve though I was the one whose home Don Murphy phoned, I was very much in favour of putting donmurphy.net back in that article. [1] is quite informative. It also shows us why we need a guideline for the guidance of the bemused :-) My main point here is that if we reinforce the presumption to discuss rather than reflexively revert, we will probably not have anythign like the same problem. Guy (Help!) 20:48, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

So somewhere -- like, in this policy itself -- we need to distinguish between external links for reference (by which I mean, the corresponding homepages linked to from Michael Moore, Ku Klux Klan, and, in some parallel universe, Adolf Hitler), versus external links used as sources in assorted other articles. Here I somehow thought we were talking about the first case, but you're talking about the second. Other readers are likely to make the same mistake I did.

I'd rather not disallow a source just because it's evil, but it will never be possible to disentangle "this is an unreliable source because it's written by a bunch of nonsensical kooks" from "this is an unreliable source because it's written by a bunch of evil, conniving (albeit articulate) bastards". So I'm not going to get too excited about that case.

I wouldn't use the words you did (I would never say it's "not particularly problematic that sites which are actively evil are less welcome than others", because I think it is problematic), but in the end I agree that the number of articles we might link from to stormfront.org, or kkk.com, or hypothetically AdolfHitler.name, is at most one apiece. But how do we articulate this distinction? Should we try to cover links "as sources" versus "for reference" separately? (This would be difficult, since "for reference" is not at all the right way to describe that case, and I'm not sure there's a good way.) Or should we just make an explicit exception that it's okay to have a link to X's home page from our article on X even if X's home page wouldn't meet RS or NPA (or anything else) anywhere else? —Steve Summit (talk) 21:21, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually the sole issue is official websites of the subjects. In other cases blatant attack sites are pretty much universally rejected as unreliable. Nor would Moore's website be a source for anything not related directly to Moore. Guy (Help!) 22:54, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

This is progress

We have come a long way from the days of trying to ban BADSITES from all MediaWiki projects anywhere. I guess Wikipedia is growing up after all. WAS 4.250 (talk) 13:53, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Consensus version

Does this current version have consensus behind it? I'm at least ok with it given David Gerard's recent edits. I don't consider it ideal, but it seems like a reasonable compromise at this point in time. JoshuaZ (talk) 18:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)