Misplaced Pages

talk:Linking to external harassment - 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.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by WilyD (talk | contribs) at 14:46, 22 November 2007 (→Excellent summary by Steve Summit on wikien-l: just a guideline, I'd guess). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 14:46, 22 November 2007 by WilyD (talk | contribs) (→Excellent summary by Steve Summit on wikien-l: just a guideline, I'd guess)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) Shortcut

/Archive

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 Misplaced Pages 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. 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)

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)
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  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 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)

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 Misplaced Pages 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 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.

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 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 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)

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. --


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 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 08:45, 22 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 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:

  • 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 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)