On 5/31/07, Sheldon Rampton <sheldon(a)prwatch.org> wrote:
Jayjg wrote:
Somebody asserted that it could be beneficial to
Wikipedia to link to
sites like WR. I challenged that person to provide concrete examples
of how. Soon afterwards hysterical rhetoric ensued, policies and
insults flying left and right, impassioned cries of "censorship",
babies being murdered, death stars being blown up, heat death of the
universe, etc. The usual.
This description is mostly mischaracterization of the discussion. The
part about "babies being murdered," for example, is based on a
complete misreading. Someone who supports the BADSITES policy argued
awhile back that use of BADSITES as a pretext for systematically
removing links to the "Making LIght" website was merely a case of
someone misinterpreting the policy and didn't reflect badly on the
policy itself. The argument was that the policy shouldn't be rejected
simply on the basis of an instance of it being misused. The specific
phrase used was "don't throw out the baby with the bathwater," where
the "baby" meant the BADSITES policy. This in turn led to several
subsequent postings that mentioned babies and bathwater, including
one posting by an opponent of the BADSITES policy who said something
about not murdering the baby. It was a bit of playful wordplay, not
the sort of hysterical rhetoric you're making it out to be. Maybe you
hadn't followed the whole thread and just didn't get the reference.
The same post that contained the "playful wordplay" about murdering
babies also accused other posters of "damaging... articles and
Wikipedia","breaking RFAs", "dropping poison pills",
"disrupting
Wikipedia for political gain" and other unsavory accusations. That's
hardly "a bit of playful wordplay".
But since Jayjg says he doesn't support a policy
of censorship,
Please review [[begging the question]]. The only possible response to
a question predicated on that opening line is mu.