[WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

Fri May 6 17:14:04 UTC 2005

I don't think it's us who the bullies are here. The alleged kook has been 
bullying people on usenet for many years; his legal threats are an example 
of that. If we had an article [[Abusive usenet contributors]], he'd be 
pretty close to the top of the list. 

All we're reporting is that a usenet group known for naming people as kooks 
thinks he's one of the top ones. Readers can be trusted to do further 
research, if necessary, to make their own decisions regarding the judgement 
of that newsgroup, and of the kookiness or lack thereof of anyone mentioned. 
There's plenty of original source material to mine.

jpgordon

On 5/6/05, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 5/6/05, Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > WE are not reporting that he is Kook of the Millenium.
> > We are reporting that the Usenet group so labeled
> > him. This reporting is accurate and factual, and we
> > shouldn't be removing the information.
> >
> All I'm arguing here is that we shouldn't try to exercise publishing
> power without responsibility; in other words, we shouldn't be bullies.
> If this were some newsworthy public figure trying to delete accurate,
> relevant, well-referenced, notable material about himself and
> threatening us with legal action, I might agree that we should revert
> him, argue with him, and ignore the threats. But this person we're
> ganging up on here is a non-notable, private individual who has done
> no harm other than to make a fool and a nuisance of himself on Usenet.
> Weve inserted his real name into an article; we've attached it to a
> slur; we've reverted him trying to delete it; we've protected the page
> so he can't delete it; we've ridiculed him when he contacted this
> mailing list for help; we've reverted the deletion that an admin tried
> to make; and now we're going to ban him for making legal threats.
> Which part of this exactly isn't bullying?
> 
> To make matters worse, the only reason you don't take his legal
> threats seriously is that he's made them before and nothing came of
> them. In other words, you're not taking him seriously because he's
> ineffectual and powerless. That's exactly when we should back off, not
> put the boot in further.
> 
> There's nothing worse than a powerful journalist who uses his or her
> position in the manner described above, and we've all become people
> who have, in many ways, just as much power (but without any of the
> infrastructural restraints journalists have), which means we have to
> exercise self-restraint and be decent. What's wrong with being decent
> all of a sudden?
> 
> Sarah
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