QUOTE(ColScott @ Sun 23rd March 2008, 1:18pm)
Yes including here.
I thought about posting something non-idiotic once, but I chickened out at the last minute. The world just wasn't ready, I realized...
There are two important points here, of course. The first is that Wikipedia is different from other websites in terms of the effect it has on its subjects and their supporters. Wikipedia
users don't understand this effect, and probably never will, evidently. The reason for the effect is complex, and I'll probably devote at least three book chapters to it one day, but the short version is that it's a combination of arrogance, anonymity, search-engine ubiquity, editors taking themselves too seriously, revenge, and the fear of revenge. All these factors work together to make people react differently, and much more intensely, to attacks made against them via Wikipedia (which can include the mere existence of an article), vs. attacks made on them almost anywhere else on the internet.
Frankly, attempts to equate Wikipiedia with sites that haven't achieved that combination of factors are simply a form of diversionary strawman argument.
The second point to bear in mind is that eventually, someone will be the subject of a Wikipedia article who will make Daniel Brandt and Don Murphy look like Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore. It's unfortunate, but the truth is that we live in a society in which a person's kneecaps can be broken for about 5 percent of the cost of suing that same person, and with a far greater degree of impunity. You can hire and maintain a small army of mercenaries for the same amount required to successfully sue a private foundation that (currently) has legal precedent working in its favor. As a result, Wikipedia editors have every reason to fear being identified, but the Wikimedia Foundation - by not indemnifying them in any way whatsoever - effectively
encourages angry biography subjects to do exactly that.
And just because in any given case the Foundation will probably cave at the first sign of a credible legal threat, there are plenty of really scary people out there who won't even bother making a "legal threat" in the first place. Why give fair warning when Wikipedia doesn't give fair warning? As Wikipedia's intransigence, arrogance and complete disdain for social ethics becomes more widely known throughout the English-speaking world, the likelihood will only increase that someone will come along and simply forego the hassle of trying to argue with WP editors, in favor of attacking them directly.
No doubt someone from WP will read this and interpret it as "OMG WR condones physical attacks," but this is something most of us (including myself) are trying to
prevent, not encourage, by supporting an opt-out policy.