Suggestion and Warning: Do NOT give out your Wikipedia username here, If you are still an active user of Wikipedia, and not an administrator Options

[blissyu2]

From past experience, Wikipedia hates this forum, and will use any excuse to censor it out of Wikipedia, including banning anyone who posts here. They do not ban EVERYONE. They do not even ban everyone who posts here as a critic. However, it does greatly increase your chances of being banned if you post here using your real Wikipedia username. Since we don't want to see everyone get banned, and since we hate unfair bans, or for this forum to be the cause of some poor soul getting unfairly banned (or linked in any way to it) I think that we should recommend to people not to give your Wikipedia username. However, this is not for everyone.

If you are a banned user, and you want to protest your ban, it is a GOOD idea to say your Wikipedia username.

If you are someone who was otherwise seriously unfairly treated on Wikipedia (e.g. Nathan recently) then it is probably a half decent idea to say your Wikipedia username.

If you are someone who is here purely to destroy this forum or to bash critics, Wikipedia will probably love you, welcome you in to the cabal, give you a promotion, and so forth, if you say your Wikipedia username.

If you are a well-known critic (e.g. Matthew White, Andrew Orlowski, Daniel Brandt), then it is probably a good idea to say your real name, to identify yourself as such, but Wikipedia username probably not.

If you are an administrator, then it is probably fair enough for you to use your Wikipedia username. Thus far only one administrator has been desysopped purely for using this forum (Karmafist) and only one other had this as a part of the cause (Guanaco) - although actually he may hypothetically have been desysopped anyway. But you are generally fairly safe.

So if administrators want to come here to criticise Wikipedia, from our experience it is probably fairly safe for you to do so. For everyone else, well, its a bad idea.

Of course, its your choice whether to take this message to heed. For some, they would rather die for truth than live a lie. For people like that, hey, you may as well say who you are and go down for what you believe in.

[The Joy]

I fear the BADSITES crowd is rearing its ugly head again. Even other administrators are reluctant to mention WR on the Admin Noticeboards, I've noticed. I'm not revealing my WP name anytime soon.

[Somey]

I fear the BADSITES crowd is rearing its ugly head again. Even other administrators are reluctant to mention WR on the Admin Noticeboards, I've noticed.

I agree - and remember, BADSITES didn't have to actually become policy. They really just had to create an atmosphere of suspicion and fear, so that people wouldn't post the hated links, and they were quite successful at that - still are, of course.

In fact, it was probably more in their interests that it didn't become policy, because now, when they're accused of BADSITES-derived censorship, they can just call any references to the de facto link-redaction policy a "strawman." And of course, they'll never publicly accept or admit that our refusal to impose a non-identification policy of our own, at this point, is a direct result of their refusal to impose meaningful and effective changes to their BLP policy.

Luckily, the site doesn't seem to have suffered much from the reduction in incoming links from WP. If anything, it probably enhances our credibility...