Misplaced Pages

talk:Linking to external harassment: Difference between revisions - Misplaced Pages

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editContent deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 04:37, 1 December 2007 editWill Beback (talk | contribs)112,162 editsm →Case study: sp← Previous edit Latest revision as of 14:55, 5 June 2022 edit undoMalnadachBot (talk | contribs)11,637,095 editsm Fixed Lint errors. (Task 12)Tag: AWB 
(66 intermediate revisions by 26 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
{{shortcut|WT:LINKLOVE}} {{shortcut|WT:LINKLOVE}}
{{talkheader}}
{{archivebox|
* ]
* ]
* ]
*
}}


== Consensus version ==
]
==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. ]] ] 20:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
:Actually, it is uselessly tautological. ] (]) 22:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
::If no one defends its inclusion I'll remove it. ]] ] 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. ] (]) 17:12, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
::::Hopefully JzG's tweak addresses that one - ] (]) 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. ]] ] 21:38, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
:::::: How about this "Links meeting ] should not be removed from article space even if the links contain harassment or private information about Misplaced Pages editors." ] (]) 23:54, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
:::::::That doesn't seem right either because we often remove links that meet ], for example when there are simply too many of them. It might be better if it referred to ] which has a higher standard and covers links that serve a direct purpose for the article. links are just off site "see alsos" and of little importance. ]] ] 00:01, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
:::::::: I'm fine with removing links because we have too many links (as we frequently get at ] 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"?] (]) 00:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
:::::::::I'm not sure I agree with the intent, but that conveys the idea more clearly. ]] ] 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? ] (]) 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. ] 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. ]] ] 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. ] (]) 15:48, 23 November 2007 (UTC)


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. ] (]) 18:24, 26 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 - ] (]) 19:25, 21 November 2007 (UTC) :I like it. ] (]) 10:11, 27 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. ] (]) 20:09, 21 November 2007 (UTC) ::I still have principled objections to two points. 1) the nutshell not explicitly stating that links that serve the encyclopedia are allowed. and 2) I don't see how nowikiing some links can be consistent with NPOV. But, everyone already knew I'd say all that. :) --] (]) 10:27, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
:::I have now ] 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. ] (]) 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? ]] ] 21:41, 21 November 2007 (UTC)


::::Yes, "consensus" is an overstatement. ] (]) 01:10, 22 November 2007 (UTC) ::I think it looks good. Thanks to everyone who brought it along to this stage. ]] ] 10:44, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
::: For what it's worth, I agree that this page reflects consensus, and I support it as a guideline. --]]] 18:24, 18 May 2008 (UTC)


== My main concern ==
:::: Reverting is not a particularly helpful response; it is either {{tl|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 ]), 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. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 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? ] (]) 22:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
**{{Vandal|BenB4}}, who wrote the first draft of this proposal, was not blocked by ]. {{vandal|Miltopia}} was not blocked by JzG. {{vandal|MOASPN}} 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. ]] ] 22:36, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
***You are quite right. I apologise. It was ] 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. ] (]) 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 <u>and</u> 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. ] (]) 23:02, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
::::::::That's not helpful. ] (]) 01:10, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


Looking at this, it still seems to dance around one piece of problem behavior. It seems to me that the most straightforward case is that where the website at the other end adds something "offensive" and someone erases a general link or one to some other content on the same site as a response to the added material. I don't see this really being addressed, except by some generalities that appear to me to endorse such an erasure. Comments? ] 15:07, 30 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 - ] (]) 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). ] (]) 01:10, 22 November 2007 (UTC) * Yes, it's addressed. We assume good faith, discuss it on Talk, reach consensus, and (presumably) put it back in. This has happened less than half a dozen times in two million articles. What's disruptive is hysteria and edit warring, after all. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 16:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
::Well, haven't we already reached consensus (by rejecting BADSITES in several guises)? It seems to me that we can say, "look, we already ''have'' consensus on this; don't remove links for this reason" and skip the <s>fight</s>discussion. ] 16:55, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
::: The problem with that is that BADSITES was a statement of priniciple, whereas we are dealing with tiny numbers of highly specific instances. It's quite possible that, say, a notable individual might pursue a campaign on is blog which we consider is of no real importance biographically, and we might thus decide to link to their website but not their blog. The arbitration ruling was, IIRC, "links in articles are a matter for sound editorial judgement" - that works for me in a way that "no link may be removed, because there was no consensus in principle for removing links" does not. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 13:38, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
:Err, links should always be evaluated in their current state. So yeah, if you link to your blog all over the place, then change it's theme from how you love kittens to photoshopped images of me a la ], then yeah, I could insist the link is removed. Likewise, if the New York Times runs a story after I rob six banks in New Jersey (Dear CIA: which I'd never do), we don't start puring all out New York Times links ... Evaluate the purpose of the links, not the historic development. ]] 17:00, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
::Quite true. However in the cases of which I'm aware (I'm not counting them) the links in question were either cites or ELs to the subject's webpage or to a site mentioned in the article. I guess my discomfort arises because the phrase "value to the encyclopedia" has generally been interpreted hypothetically rather than actually, so that (for instance) the reality of numerous citations of TNH's blog was overshadowed by the hypothetical claim that blogs weren't worth linking to. It seems to me that we should bias this a bit in the direction of giving citations and references to subject websites the benefit of the doubt, since consensus has already endorsed those uses. ] 17:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
:::Wait until this is made a guideline, ''then'' if in practice your concerns become reality then we can adjust the guideline accordingly. ] 15:30, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
:::: I agree. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 18:04, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


== Case study ==
::::::: 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. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 22:02, 21 November 2007 (UTC)


An editor recently posted on his user page a link to an external page solely concerned with hosting disparaging material on a person who is a WP editor. It is not used as a source for anything, and it appears that the editor who added it is aware that it would be perceived as problematic and is doing so to irritate the other editor. How should we proceed in this matter? The proposal calls for posting a notice on ANI, presumably to get a consensus to remove the link. ]] ] 04:34, 1 December 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 ]. 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 - ] (]) 22:05, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
* It looks to me like a clear case of ] and ]. There is no credible reason for linking that site ''other'' than to do the thing that Sfacets claims he is not doing, which is to harass or intimidate. I have left a note for the editor. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 13:35, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


::I'm a firm believer in creatively finding middle ground. In this case I would recommend that the user create a subpage of links, add whatever he wants, then ''blank'' the page so the links are available in history but not indexed or easily stumbled across. That way he has whatever he feels he needs at hand, but no one is left with a reasonable reason to feel harassed. ] 15:23, 1 December 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) <small>—Preceding ] comment added by ] (] • ]) {{{2|}}}</small><!-- Template:Unsigned --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->


:: 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. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 23:00, 21 November 2007 (UTC) ::: That would work. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 18:03, 1 December 2007 (UTC)


::::That's a departure from the remedies recommended in this guideline. I'm not sure how it's substantially different from just deleting the link from his page. Since it'd still be in the page history it'd be just as available as in a blanked sub page. I see JzG has discussed this with the user and has deleted the link from the user's page. ]] ] 21:18, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
:::::Guidelines are ''only'' guidelines. They are not meant to preclude more clueful behaviors. It differs from just deleting the link on his page because the ability to find that revision on a subpage where it will always be the last revision differs from the ability to find that revision on a page where the revision is continually receding into the past. ] 14:37, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


::: I also believe in finding middle ground, but if somebody wants a page of links, I recommend they try ] or something similar. ], etc. ] 23:37, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
== Certain encyclopedia dramatica articles ==
::::I presume he find the link useful in helping him improve the encyclopedia. Maybe reading it on occasion helps him in dealing with another editor. It is wrong to demand others to explain activity that can can be explained by having good faith. Privacy matters. AGF matters. Avoiding unneeded drama matters. Avoiding turning Misplaced Pages into a constant inquisition matters. This is a tiny thing. Find something that works and move on. ] 14:45, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


::::This is being discussed on the user's talk page without success and so I've started a thread on it at ]. ]] ] 12:44, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Certain encyclopedia dramatica articles relating to wikipedia admins will never need to be linked to legitimatly. These should definitly be included--]&nbsp;<sup>(]&nbsp;'''·''' ])</sup> 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. ]<font color="FF8800">]</font> 23:04, 21 November 2007 (UTC) :::::Honestly, if the user truly needs to remember the link, I think it would be better to just bookmark it in his browser rather than maintain the link on his page. --]] 15:10, 2 December 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. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 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 ] says not to make this sort of thing explicit and Wily is right that mentioning them will simply give them more traffic. ] (]) 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. -]<sup>(])</sup> 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 - ] (]) 01:36, 22 November 2007 (UTC) ::::::It's worth noting that he not only links to the ugly attacks on me (and others) by his co-religionists, but he adds links to words from the attack and adds a link to my place of work.--] 18:49, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


== Tagged as rejected ==
:: 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 ]. —] (]) 19:19, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


Tihs was tagged as rejected, but I removed the tag. It is clear that there is a need for a policy, per multiple ArbCom findings, and we should not allow the refusal of a few to countenance the removal of any attack to derail that process. This needs fixing, not sweeping under the carpet. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 19:42, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
== Thank you ==
:: No problem, just doing some routine cleanup of old proposals. I'll put the proposal tag back. We should probably advertise. --] (]) 19:44, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
:I agree that the "rejected" tag was unnecessary - what's with the mania for tagging every page? It's not as if it ''has'' to be a "proposal" or a "guideline" or an "essay" or else "rejected". It can just exist. <p> What's not clear to me (replying to Guy) is whether we need a new policy, in order to refuse to allow people to derail the maintenance of the encyclopedia. We've always had the power to do that. It's just that we need to start enforcing the policies we've always had. I would note that our enforcement so far has been somewhat inconsistent, and tainted with the appearance that we've based some of our actions on personal offense, and not on sound editorial judgment. If we can get our culture to the point where we know not to bring up personal reasons, then pages such as this one will become unnecessary, and we'll be able to not care what kind of tag it's got on it. -]<sup>(])</sup> 19:50, 16 December 2007 (UTC)


:I don't see the need for a policy of this sort at this time; recent scandals and the press coverage related to them shows that it's a bad idea to show any appearance of cliquishness, wagon-circling, trying to suppress critics, or sticking your fingers in your ear and yelling "La La La I Can't Hear You" in response to criticism. One positive effect of the scandals is that people are more willing than they've been in a while to stand up to the bullying of the formerly-dominant clique of insiders; it is unlikely that any link-suppression policy will ever get consensus now. ] (]) 01:54, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
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. ] (]) 01:17, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
::] covers this adequately. This proposed policy has been rejected by the community and never will be accepted because we know that we don't need redundant policies. We don't censor links because we don't like them. We censor links that clearly vioate NPA or another policy already in existence. ] (]) 02:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
:: Dan, you never did see the need to address harassment, but that doesn't mean there ''is'' no need. We ''do'' "censor" harassment, and so we should. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 11:32, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


:::When was this proposal rejected by the community? Did we have a strawpoll? ]] ] 22:39, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
== Excellent summary by ] on wikien-l ==
::::So far as I can see, this is reasonable for a guideline. "Rejected" is not the case so far as I can see. ]] 23:59, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
::::: Read the discussion above folks. It was rejected as being inactive (de facto rejection of inactive proposals). It has been reinstated and nobody is fussing with your project. Good luck, it looks like a good project. --] (]) 00:43, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
::::::The last discussion, at the end of November, was that everyone agreed to the proposal. ]. Unless there's opposition I think it can be regarded as approved. ]] ] 01:51, 19 December 2007 (UTC)


==What is different from what we do this week from what is in this proposal?==
He just added the following:
What is different from what we do this week from what is in this proposal? How is this proposal not what we are already doing ''right now''? I would like those who do not support this proposal to identify the exact language (and diffs of recent editing if you have them) that they feel deviates from existing practice. Let's fix it if it isn't an accurate statement of existing practice. Whether to make that existing practice an official guideline can be decided later. ] (]) 16:47, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


:The section above, ], followed this guideline and had an expected result, indicating that this proposal is consistent with community opinion. ]] ] 19:28, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
:Having followed some (but by no means all) of the interminable debate, it seems to me it all boils down to three things:


::As near as I can tell, people are objecting to ideas that are not included in this proposal or are claiming that something that has divided the community for months does not need to be clarified with this proposal. BADSITES is dead. This is not BADSITES. BADSITES = "mindless immediate and repeated deletion of certain links regardless of any other consideration". ] (]) 19:50, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
:1. If a link in article space is allegedly non-encyclopedic, it needs to be assessed according to ] or ] or whatever the sourcing guideline ''du jour'' is.
:2. If a link in non-article space serves to harass a Misplaced Pages editor, it needs to be dealt with in accordance with ], 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 Misplaced Pages 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.


==Terminology==
3. is IMO excellent. It means "ignore this crap." But <s>does it blend</s> will it stand? - ] (]) 01:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
I repointed the shortcut, because it is indeed dead and people citing it should go here instead. ] (]) 05:33, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


:For people to communicate effectively it is important that terms have meanings. BADSITES and BAD* mean the proposal that was rejected. LINKLOVE refers to a ''different'' proposal that was accepted. They are different. Not the same. Don't create drama by confusing things. ] (]) 08:53, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
:Bravo. Thank you, David, for cross-posting that here. I can't keep up with the mailing list. <p> 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? -]<sup>(])</sup> 05:32, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
:: Just curious, what was the reasoning for the LINKLOVE shortcut? I'm not understanding the connection. --]]] 18:28, 18 May 2008 (UTC)


== Encyclopedic value ==
::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. ] (]) 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''? -]<sup>(])</sup> 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. ]<font color="FF8800">]</font> 14:46, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


I have a hard time seeing why the list of guideline points doesn't end with "No encyclopedic value". In my opinion, if a link has encyclopedic value, it should be in the encyclopedia. This holds true even if the link (or associated site) happens to criticize/harrass/attack Wikipedians. ] - ] 03:33, 23 February 2008 (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 Misplaced Pages 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. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 14:51, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
* Sure, and I am absolutely certain that every member of StormFront is completely convinced that their links are of encyclopaedic value and should be linked. But the judgement is necessarily subjective. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 14:16, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
::And Stormfront's site ''is'' linked to, on ]. So your point is...? ] (]) 14:50, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
::: I personally removed around a hundred links where it was used - supposedly as a source in most cases - in other articles. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 15:05, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
::::It's a matter of editorial judgment in each case, which isn't helped by getting into a state of hysteria about the supreme evilness of any particular site. ] (]) 16:31, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
::::: Or by going into extreme free speech hysteria about "suppressing", "censoring" or anything else. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 18:20, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
: We've been over this before, while I agree more or less with Super this was the compromise that was reached earlier. The amount of effort spent getting here was massive. Please let's not revisit this now. ] (]) 22:18, 23 February 2008 (UTC)


== Articles ==
:::::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. ] (]) 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. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 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. ]<font color="FF8800">]</font> 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 ]? ] (]) 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. ]<font color="FF8800">]</font> 16:19, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


Sure, linking to harrasment of wikipedia editors in discussions is the height of incivility, but do we really need to mention articles? I mean, links are covered elsewhere, so if the link truly is of value then why not just link to it? This page says we can anyway, in all honesty this page is completely redundant.--]] 16:29, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
::::: "...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 Misplaced Pages.
::::: 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 ]. 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). —] (]) 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? <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 19:19, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


== Guideline status ==
: 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.


I've looked through the archives of this talk page, and I can't find an RfC to promote it to guideline status. I don't know if the process was different in 2007, but I'm reverting this to a ''proposed'' guideline, as it never seems to have gone through the ] procedure. Trout me if I've missed something, but this is a controversial topic, so unilaterally labeling it a guideline goes far beyond ]. --] (]) 17:58, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
: 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 ]. I think links in non-article space, if they're perceived as harassing, ought to be governed by ]. 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.)
:It's been a guideline for the last 4 years without comment. It appears also that most of the discussion occurred at WP:NPA: ], and archive 9 etc. ] (]) 15:49, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
::That sets a dangerous precedent, don't you think? That someone can just tag an essay as a policy or guideline and it becomes one if no one notices for a while? Perhaps I'm a bit bitter—I followed all the proper procedures in nominating a great essay for promotion just to see a bunch of people oppose it essentially because they don't want any more guidelines, not because of its content, and here someone just tagged this one and it's so. At the link you gave me, I see people talking about this page becoming policy, but I don't see a specific discussion in those archives. --] (]) 16:05, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
:::If you look through the archives for "Linking to external" you will see numerous discussions about it where they are heading towards consensus, If you go to the ] it appears to reach consensus for being included in NPA (no external links to harassment that is), the guideline is a linked to from ] as the associated guideline for it. ] (]) 16:10, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
::::Very well. Perhaps the process was less defined back then. --] (]) 16:18, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
:::::Consensus can emerge in many different ways. There's no need for an RFC. That's just a tool used sometimes to help generate consensus. ] <sup>]</sup> 10:43, 19 July 2013 (UTC)


== Linklove versus the spam blacklist ==
: 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? —] (]) 18:12, 23 November 2007 (UTC)


I'm going back and forth with a couple of other editors that a link to the current home of the website ] can't appear on the article's sidebar, or, I suppose, anywhere within the article, because it happens to be on the ]. I feel the spirit of this policy should allow a redirect since the purpose of linking to a site that is the subject of an article serves an encyclopedic purpose, regardless of the rather ] matter of its existence on the blacklist (the article has survived 24 ]s). Is this something we should explain more explicitly in this policy, or is it already covered in ] as the link obviously isn't being used for the purposes of spam? -- ]<sup>]</sup> 02:45, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
==Putting the link in plaintext==
:I don't know where this is coming from, but we have the main page of encyclopediadramatica whitelisted for a long, long time (and so have many other wikis). You can simply link to http://encyclopediadramatica.se/Encyclopedia_Dramatica:About, while the rest is blacklisted. --] <sup>] ]</sup> 14:20, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
It's been proposed:
::That is what I tried to do in the first place before ending up in the weeds. Works for me. -- ]<sup>]</sup> 05:32, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
:"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. <tt><nowiki><nowiki>http://www.unpleasant.example.com/&lt;/nowiki&gt;</nowiki></tt> (rather than as a live link), or even just the domain name, e.g. <tt>unpleasant.example.com</tt>, has been considered a workable solution in the past."
:::'what I tried to do in the first place'?? Can you show me what you tried .. ?? --] <sup>] ]</sup> 05:59, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
:::: is the edit in question, and there are multiple problems with it. First of all, http://encyclopediadramatica.se/Encyclopedia_Dramatica:About is not the link to the main page. Second, the edit removes important information (the original URL, the fact the the new site started as a mirror), third, the URL breaks the infobox by making it way too wide. I have explained all that on the article's talk page already, and so far my arguments have been ignored. Kendrick7, if you want a link to ED's homepage to be whitelisted, get it whitelisted. Then you can use that link for the infobox. --]|] 11:47, 2 July 2013 (UTC)


== Expand ==
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. --]) 01:45, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


I believe this guideline should be expanded to state that there are consequences for engaging in external harassment. Not only is linking to external harassment bad, engaging in external harassment in the first place is wrong. Any editor who does that could be sanctioned here, much the same way a company could sanction any employee who harassed a co-worker off the premises. ] <sup>]</sup> 10:42, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

:I believe that the old arbcom cases may be ambiguous as far as what the penalties are for linking to harassment '''now'''. It once was lax until the Rfar/MONGO case when it was made very strict, then reduced after BADSITES failed but was still more strict than it originally was. Perhaps a update is needed.--] 03:42, 20 July 2013 (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 ] 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 ]. 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. <small style="background:#ccc;border:#000 1px solid;padding:0 3px 1px 4px;white-space:nowrap;">] | ]</small> 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. -]<sup>(])</sup> 05:50, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

:The site in question was antisocialmedia and the article was ] and the person who added the text was David Gerard, who absolutely is not as proponent of removing links. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 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. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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 <tt>antisocialmedia.net</tt> on ] - 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 ].) Less pointed examples include ]s (the present page looks to have been edited with an axe, but past versions favoured text links) and the photograph on ] (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 - ] (]) 08:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
::Well, I said it wouldn't work, but practice trumps theory. I guess that's a viable alternative. -]<sup>(])</sup> 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. —] (]) 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. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 19:08, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
*:Yeah, the plaintext option sounds absurd to me, too, but if it works, then it works. -]<sup>(])</sup> 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. ]<font color="FF8800">]</font> 19:35, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
*It seems silly to me, like trying to be half pregnant. ] (]) 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. ]<font color="FF8800">]</font> 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. —] (]) 16:31, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
::* You got a point there :-) <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 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). ] (]) 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 <code>&lt;!-- HTML comment --></code> 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. —] (]) 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. ] (]) 03:08, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

I've put a note in the text flagging the NPOV issue. Wording tweaks welcomed - ] (]) 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 Misplaced Pages model of ] (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 ] and ] 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:

* Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 ] 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 ] 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. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 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 ].
:* 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. --] (]) 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 ]) and great swathes of Misplaced Pages 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 ]; 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? <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 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. —] (]) 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. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 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. —] (]) 20:30, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
:::::::: Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages-like project which only used deadtree sources, but it couldn't hold a candle compared to Misplaced Pages, and it'd be full of errors caused by editors not all having access to the sources. --] (]) 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. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 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. ] (]) 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 ]. The fact that Stormfront is a bunch of neo-nazis should not be relevant. ] (]) 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. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 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. ] (]) 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. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 20:29, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

::::::: At the risk of invoking ], if Adolf Hitler were alive today and had a webpage, would we link to it from ]? Note that we ''do'' link to the KKK's website from ].
::::::: 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. —] (]) 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 ]. 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. 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. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 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 ], ], and, in some parallel universe, ]), 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? —] (]) 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. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 22:54, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

== This is progress ==

I guess Misplaced Pages is growing up after all. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 18:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

:I like it. ] (]) 10:11, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

::I still have principled objections to two points. 1) the nutshell not explicitly stating that links that serve the encyclopedia are allowed. and 2) I don't see how nowikiing some links can be consistent with NPOV. But, everyone already knew I'd say all that. :) --] (]) 10:27, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

::I think it looks good. Thanks to everyone who brought it along to this stage. ]] ] 10:44, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

== My main concern ==

Looking at this, it still seems to dance around one piece of problem behavior. It seems to me that the most straightforward case is that where the website at the other end adds something "offensive" and someone erases a general link or one to some other content on the same site as a response to the added material. I don't see this really being addressed, except by some generalities that appear to me to endorse such an erasure. Comments? ] 15:07, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
* Yes, it's addressed. We assume good faith, discuss it on Talk, reach consensus, and (presumably) put it back in. This has happened less than half a dozen times in two million articles. What's disruptive is hysteria and edit warring, after all. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 16:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
::Well, haven't we already reached consensus (by rejecting BADSITES in several guises)? It seems to me that we can say, "look, we already ''have'' consensus on this; don't remove links for this reason" and skip the <s>fight</s>discussion. ] 16:55, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
:Err, links should always be evaluated in their current state. So yeah, if you link to your blog all over the place, then change it's theme from how you love kittens to photoshopped images of me a la ], then yeah, I could insist the link is removed. Likewise, if the New York Times runs a story after I rob six banks in New Jersey (Dear CIA: which I'd never do), we don't start puring all out New York Times links ... Evaluate the purpose of the links, not the historic development. ]<font color="FF8800">]</font> 17:00, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
::Quite true. However in the cases of which I'm aware (I'm not counting them) the links in question were either cites or ELs to the subject's webpage or to a site mentioned in the article. I guess my discomfort arises because the phrase "value to the encyclopedia" has generally been interpreted hypothetically rather than actually, so that (for instance) the reality of numerous citations of TNH's blog was overshadowed by the hypothetical claim that blogs weren't worth linking to. It seems to me that we should bias this a bit in the direction of giving citations and references to subject websites the benefit of the doubt, since consensus has already endorsed those uses. ] 17:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

== Case study ==

An editor recently posted on his user page a link to an external page solely concerned with hosting disparaging material on a person who is a WP editor. It is not used as a source for anything, and it appears that the editor who added it is aware that it would be perceived as problematic and is doing so to irritate the other editor. How should we proceed in this matter? The proposal calls for posting a notice on ANI, presumably to get a consensus to remove the link. ]] ] 04:34, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Latest revision as of 14:55, 5 June 2022

Shortcut
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Linking to external harassment page.
Archives: 1, 2, 3

Archives

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)

I like it. WAS 4.250 (talk) 10:11, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I still have principled objections to two points. 1) the nutshell not explicitly stating that links that serve the encyclopedia are allowed. and 2) I don't see how nowikiing some links can be consistent with NPOV. But, everyone already knew I'd say all that. :) --Alecmconroy (talk) 10:27, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I think it looks good. Thanks to everyone who brought it along to this stage. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 10:44, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I agree that this page reflects consensus, and I support it as a guideline. --Elonka 18:24, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

My main concern

Looking at this, it still seems to dance around one piece of problem behavior. It seems to me that the most straightforward case is that where the website at the other end adds something "offensive" and someone erases a general link or one to some other content on the same site as a response to the added material. I don't see this really being addressed, except by some generalities that appear to me to endorse such an erasure. Comments? Mangoe 15:07, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Yes, it's addressed. We assume good faith, discuss it on Talk, reach consensus, and (presumably) put it back in. This has happened less than half a dozen times in two million articles. What's disruptive is hysteria and edit warring, after all. Guy (Help!) 16:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, haven't we already reached consensus (by rejecting BADSITES in several guises)? It seems to me that we can say, "look, we already have consensus on this; don't remove links for this reason" and skip the fightdiscussion. Mangoe 16:55, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
The problem with that is that BADSITES was a statement of priniciple, whereas we are dealing with tiny numbers of highly specific instances. It's quite possible that, say, a notable individual might pursue a campaign on is blog which we consider is of no real importance biographically, and we might thus decide to link to their website but not their blog. The arbitration ruling was, IIRC, "links in articles are a matter for sound editorial judgement" - that works for me in a way that "no link may be removed, because there was no consensus in principle for removing links" does not. Guy (Help!) 13:38, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Err, links should always be evaluated in their current state. So yeah, if you link to your blog all over the place, then change it's theme from how you love kittens to photoshopped images of me a la Bert is evil, then yeah, I could insist the link is removed. Likewise, if the New York Times runs a story after I rob six banks in New Jersey (Dear CIA: which I'd never do), we don't start puring all out New York Times links ... Evaluate the purpose of the links, not the historic development. WilyD 17:00, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Quite true. However in the cases of which I'm aware (I'm not counting them) the links in question were either cites or ELs to the subject's webpage or to a site mentioned in the article. I guess my discomfort arises because the phrase "value to the encyclopedia" has generally been interpreted hypothetically rather than actually, so that (for instance) the reality of numerous citations of TNH's blog was overshadowed by the hypothetical claim that blogs weren't worth linking to. It seems to me that we should bias this a bit in the direction of giving citations and references to subject websites the benefit of the doubt, since consensus has already endorsed those uses. Mangoe 17:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Wait until this is made a guideline, then if in practice your concerns become reality then we can adjust the guideline accordingly. WAS 4.250 15:30, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree. Guy (Help!) 18:04, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Case study

An editor recently posted on his user page a link to an external page solely concerned with hosting disparaging material on a person who is a WP editor. It is not used as a source for anything, and it appears that the editor who added it is aware that it would be perceived as problematic and is doing so to irritate the other editor. How should we proceed in this matter? The proposal calls for posting a notice on ANI, presumably to get a consensus to remove the link. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 04:34, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

  • It looks to me like a clear case of WP:HARASS and WP:NPA. There is no credible reason for linking that site other than to do the thing that Sfacets claims he is not doing, which is to harass or intimidate. I have left a note for the editor. Guy (Help!) 13:35, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm a firm believer in creatively finding middle ground. In this case I would recommend that the user create a subpage of links, add whatever he wants, then blank the page so the links are available in history but not indexed or easily stumbled across. That way he has whatever he feels he needs at hand, but no one is left with a reasonable reason to feel harassed. WAS 4.250 15:23, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
That would work. Guy (Help!) 18:03, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
That's a departure from the remedies recommended in this guideline. I'm not sure how it's substantially different from just deleting the link from his page. Since it'd still be in the page history it'd be just as available as in a blanked sub page. I see JzG has discussed this with the user and has deleted the link from the user's page. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:18, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Guidelines are only guidelines. They are not meant to preclude more clueful behaviors. It differs from just deleting the link on his page because the ability to find that revision on a subpage where it will always be the last revision differs from the ability to find that revision on a page where the revision is continually receding into the past. WAS 4.250 14:37, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
I also believe in finding middle ground, but if somebody wants a page of links, I recommend they try del.icio.us or something similar. WP:NOT#LINK, etc. JavaTenor 23:37, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I presume he find the link useful in helping him improve the encyclopedia. Maybe reading it on occasion helps him in dealing with another editor. It is wrong to demand others to explain activity that can can be explained by having good faith. Privacy matters. AGF matters. Avoiding unneeded drama matters. Avoiding turning Misplaced Pages into a constant inquisition matters. This is a tiny thing. Find something that works and move on. WAS 4.250 14:45, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
This is being discussed on the user's talk page without success and so I've started a thread on it at WP:ANI#Linking to external harassment. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 12:44, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Honestly, if the user truly needs to remember the link, I think it would be better to just bookmark it in his browser rather than maintain the link on his page. --Kyoko 15:10, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
It's worth noting that he not only links to the ugly attacks on me (and others) by his co-religionists, but he adds links to words from the attack and adds a link to my place of work.--Simon D M 18:49, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Tagged as rejected

Tihs was tagged as rejected, but I removed the tag. It is clear that there is a need for a policy, per multiple ArbCom findings, and we should not allow the refusal of a few to countenance the removal of any attack to derail that process. This needs fixing, not sweeping under the carpet. Guy (Help!) 19:42, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

No problem, just doing some routine cleanup of old proposals. I'll put the proposal tag back. We should probably advertise. --Kevin Murray (talk) 19:44, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the "rejected" tag was unnecessary - what's with the mania for tagging every page? It's not as if it has to be a "proposal" or a "guideline" or an "essay" or else "rejected". It can just exist.

What's not clear to me (replying to Guy) is whether we need a new policy, in order to refuse to allow people to derail the maintenance of the encyclopedia. We've always had the power to do that. It's just that we need to start enforcing the policies we've always had. I would note that our enforcement so far has been somewhat inconsistent, and tainted with the appearance that we've based some of our actions on personal offense, and not on sound editorial judgment. If we can get our culture to the point where we know not to bring up personal reasons, then pages such as this one will become unnecessary, and we'll be able to not care what kind of tag it's got on it. -GTBacchus 19:50, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the need for a policy of this sort at this time; recent scandals and the press coverage related to them shows that it's a bad idea to show any appearance of cliquishness, wagon-circling, trying to suppress critics, or sticking your fingers in your ear and yelling "La La La I Can't Hear You" in response to criticism. One positive effect of the scandals is that people are more willing than they've been in a while to stand up to the bullying of the formerly-dominant clique of insiders; it is unlikely that any link-suppression policy will ever get consensus now. *Dan T.* (talk) 01:54, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
WP:NPA covers this adequately. This proposed policy has been rejected by the community and never will be accepted because we know that we don't need redundant policies. We don't censor links because we don't like them. We censor links that clearly vioate NPA or another policy already in existence. Cla68 (talk) 02:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Dan, you never did see the need to address harassment, but that doesn't mean there is no need. We do "censor" harassment, and so we should. Guy (Help!) 11:32, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
When was this proposal rejected by the community? Did we have a strawpoll? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:39, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
So far as I can see, this is reasonable for a guideline. "Rejected" is not the case so far as I can see. WilyD 23:59, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Read the discussion above folks. It was rejected as being inactive (de facto rejection of inactive proposals). It has been reinstated and nobody is fussing with your project. Good luck, it looks like a good project. --Kevin Murray (talk) 00:43, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
The last discussion, at the end of November, was that everyone agreed to the proposal. ]. Unless there's opposition I think it can be regarded as approved. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 01:51, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

What is different from what we do this week from what is in this proposal?

What is different from what we do this week from what is in this proposal? How is this proposal not what we are already doing right now? I would like those who do not support this proposal to identify the exact language (and diffs of recent editing if you have them) that they feel deviates from existing practice. Let's fix it if it isn't an accurate statement of existing practice. Whether to make that existing practice an official guideline can be decided later. WAS 4.250 (talk) 16:47, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The section above, #Case study, followed this guideline and had an expected result, indicating that this proposal is consistent with community opinion. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:28, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
As near as I can tell, people are objecting to ideas that are not included in this proposal or are claiming that something that has divided the community for months does not need to be clarified with this proposal. BADSITES is dead. This is not BADSITES. BADSITES = "mindless immediate and repeated deletion of certain links regardless of any other consideration". WAS 4.250 (talk) 19:50, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Terminology

I repointed the shortcut, because it is indeed dead and people citing it should go here instead. J T Price (talk) 05:33, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

For people to communicate effectively it is important that terms have meanings. BADSITES and BAD* mean the proposal that was rejected. LINKLOVE refers to a different proposal that was accepted. They are different. Not the same. Don't create drama by confusing things. WAS 4.250 (talk) 08:53, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Just curious, what was the reasoning for the LINKLOVE shortcut? I'm not understanding the connection. --Elonka 18:28, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Encyclopedic value

I have a hard time seeing why the list of guideline points doesn't end with "No encyclopedic value". In my opinion, if a link has encyclopedic value, it should be in the encyclopedia. This holds true even if the link (or associated site) happens to criticize/harrass/attack Wikipedians. Superm401 - Talk 03:33, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

  • Sure, and I am absolutely certain that every member of StormFront is completely convinced that their links are of encyclopaedic value and should be linked. But the judgement is necessarily subjective. Guy (Help!) 14:16, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
And Stormfront's site is linked to, on Stormfront (website). So your point is...? *Dan T.* (talk) 14:50, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I personally removed around a hundred links where it was used - supposedly as a source in most cases - in other articles. Guy (Help!) 15:05, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
It's a matter of editorial judgment in each case, which isn't helped by getting into a state of hysteria about the supreme evilness of any particular site. *Dan T.* (talk) 16:31, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Or by going into extreme free speech hysteria about "suppressing", "censoring" or anything else. Guy (Help!) 18:20, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
We've been over this before, while I agree more or less with Super this was the compromise that was reached earlier. The amount of effort spent getting here was massive. Please let's not revisit this now. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:18, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Articles

Sure, linking to harrasment of wikipedia editors in discussions is the height of incivility, but do we really need to mention articles? I mean, links are covered elsewhere, so if the link truly is of value then why not just link to it? This page says we can anyway, in all honesty this page is completely redundant.--Patton123 16:29, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Guideline status

I've looked through the archives of this talk page, and I can't find an RfC to promote it to guideline status. I don't know if the process was different in 2007, but I'm reverting this to a proposed guideline, as it never seems to have gone through the WP:PROPOSAL procedure. Trout me if I've missed something, but this is a controversial topic, so unilaterally labeling it a guideline goes far beyond WP:BOLD. --BDD (talk) 17:58, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

It's been a guideline for the last 4 years without comment. It appears also that most of the discussion occurred at WP:NPA: Wikipedia_talk:No_personal_attacks/Archive_8#Linking_to_the_external_attack_sites, and archive 9 etc. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:49, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
That sets a dangerous precedent, don't you think? That someone can just tag an essay as a policy or guideline and it becomes one if no one notices for a while? Perhaps I'm a bit bitter—I followed all the proper procedures in nominating a great essay for promotion just to see a bunch of people oppose it essentially because they don't want any more guidelines, not because of its content, and here someone just tagged this one and it's so. At the link you gave me, I see people talking about this page becoming policy, but I don't see a specific discussion in those archives. --BDD (talk) 16:05, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
If you look through the archives for "Linking to external" you will see numerous discussions about it where they are heading towards consensus, If you go to the Wikipedia_talk:No_personal_attacks/Archive_9 it appears to reach consensus for being included in NPA (no external links to harassment that is), the guideline is a linked to from Misplaced Pages:NPA#External links as the associated guideline for it. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:10, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
Very well. Perhaps the process was less defined back then. --BDD (talk) 16:18, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
Consensus can emerge in many different ways. There's no need for an RFC. That's just a tool used sometimes to help generate consensus. Jehochman 10:43, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Linklove versus the spam blacklist

I'm going back and forth with a couple of other editors that a link to the current home of the website Encyclopedia Dramatica can't appear on the article's sidebar, or, I suppose, anywhere within the article, because it happens to be on the spam blacklist. I feel the spirit of this policy should allow a redirect since the purpose of linking to a site that is the subject of an article serves an encyclopedic purpose, regardless of the rather WP:BURO matter of its existence on the blacklist (the article has survived 24 WP:AFDs). Is this something we should explain more explicitly in this policy, or is it already covered in WP:SPAM as the link obviously isn't being used for the purposes of spam? -- Kendrick7 02:45, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I don't know where this is coming from, but we have the main page of encyclopediadramatica whitelisted for a long, long time (and so have many other wikis). You can simply link to http://encyclopediadramatica.se/Encyclopedia_Dramatica:About, while the rest is blacklisted. --Dirk Beetstra 14:20, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
That is what I tried to do in the first place before ending up in the weeds. Works for me. -- Kendrick7 05:32, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
'what I tried to do in the first place'?? Can you show me what you tried .. ?? --Dirk Beetstra 05:59, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
This is the edit in question, and there are multiple problems with it. First of all, http://encyclopediadramatica.se/Encyclopedia_Dramatica:About is not the link to the main page. Second, the edit removes important information (the original URL, the fact the the new site started as a mirror), third, the URL breaks the infobox by making it way too wide. I have explained all that on the article's talk page already, and so far my arguments have been ignored. Kendrick7, if you want a link to ED's homepage to be whitelisted, get it whitelisted. Then you can use that link for the infobox. --Conti|✉ 11:47, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Expand

I believe this guideline should be expanded to state that there are consequences for engaging in external harassment. Not only is linking to external harassment bad, engaging in external harassment in the first place is wrong. Any editor who does that could be sanctioned here, much the same way a company could sanction any employee who harassed a co-worker off the premises. Jehochman 10:42, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I believe that the old arbcom cases may be ambiguous as far as what the penalties are for linking to harassment now. It once was lax until the Rfar/MONGO case when it was made very strict, then reduced after BADSITES failed but was still more strict than it originally was. Perhaps a update is needed.--MONGO 03:42, 20 July 2013 (UTC)