Talk:The Abusive Hosts Blocking List

Defacement

By Richard Scoville

It looks like this page was vandalized by Richard Scoville (24.174.168.196) and possibly Barbara Schwarz (152.163.100.11), to try and cover up their attacks against the AHBL. Reverted the changes. Brian 13:59, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

By Other Parties

And now it looks like it was vandalized by AHBL. (Although I don't think it was-- it was done by an anonymous IP user, not Bruns, who edits openly and thus far constructively.) I edited the article to remove the paragraph that was wrong on so many levels:

1. Characterizing a communication as "libel" is a legal determination that should not be made colloquially. I am not confident that an anonymous poster has the background to make that determination accurately, especially since anyone with that capacity could probably spell it correctly.
   
2. Scoville's current activities, particularly those not pertaining to the subject of this article, are not important anyway.
   
3. Bad grammar.
   
4. Snide comments about the costs of articles on the "Free Speech Store" website are Not Helpful even if they're accurate. One could just as easily and as snidely note the grammatical ambiguity in the AHBL name and question whether "Abusive" refers to the "Hosts" or the "Blocking List," but I don't propose putting that in the article either. NPOV at the very least precludes cheap shots.

DCB4W 23:11, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Response by AHBL to other parties defacement

Defacement is never tolerated on Wikipedia. Please if your intent is to defend us or add to the information provided regarding the Scoville case, read Wikipedia's guidelines for posting, and do so in a socially acceptable manner.
I can assure you this article was not vandalized by the AHBL, however a community editable page referring to Mr. Scoville in any manner is a prime target for "both sides", which in this case is Mr. Scoville against something that rather appears to be everyone else. The AHBL is not the only group routinely attacked by Mr. Scoville, I would therefore postulate that this was the work of some party Mr. Scoville spends his time harassing. I'll also note that two AHBL/SOSDG admins are also WP admins, and in the spirit of FOSS we tend to not bite the hand that feeds us. I hope you don't mind that I took a moment to wikify your reply so that it was more easily readable. I did not in any way change the contents.
Ooh and we were referring to the hosts being abusive, not us, unless you broke the coffee machine, in which case we do get abusive. ;) Trelane 19:20, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

As for the "grammatical ambiguity" comment, when giving examples to illustrate Things That Shouldn't be Put in the Article, one will necessarily mention a thing that shouldn't be put in the article. Considering that my entire point was to explain why I thought that the sections I deleted were beyond the pale, I am amused by the irony of the "socially acceptable manner" advice. I realize that tone doesn't always translate clearly in text, so perhaps I should have worded what I wrote a little differently. My comment about the page being "vandalized by AHBL" also was a little bit tongue-in-cheek, which is why I put in the parenthetical disclaimer to begin with--I didn't think it likely that AHBL had inserted the unencyclopedic content, but it does tend to look bad when someone slams an organization's opponent on that organization's page. I wasn't trying to be antagonistic, and I'm sorry if you took my commentary differently than I intended it. My sense of humor always has been idiosyncratic.

I rewrote a few paragraphs in the article itself because I felt that the article, as it was written, didn't easily convey what happened in the lawsuit. There was a very precise--and to a lawyer, very obvious-- reason why that lawsuit had to be dismissed, and I felt that the article would benefit from having that explained. I have no agenda beyond that. DCB4W 23:32, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I in no way interpreted your claim as a slam. In fact your point was quite clear and well made. My point is that the AHBL will not tolerate any person attempting to "defend" us by breaking Wikipedia's guidelines. I hope this clears up my/The AHBL's stance on this matter Trelane 20:10, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Page Contents

On a more general note, should there really be a subheader for this particular case when it's the only entry under the "AHBL In Court" header? DCB4W 23:41, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Notability of dismissed lawsuit

This lawsuit seems to be covered in too much detail considering that it was dismissed at its first court hearing. We don't need to go ino so much detail about the motions, attorneys, etc, let's just say they were sued but the lawsuit was dismissed. We shouldn't spend more than a few sentences on it. -Will Beback 22:23, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I was about to launch into a long discussion about why you're wrong... and then I reread it and decided you were right. I just tweaked the language a bit. DCB4W 01:27, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup

Because of abuse and trolling here, I've done some clean up a few months after the fact. I don't really feel there's any sense in a discussion reoccuring with the temperature of the previous. If you're interested in the back story it's still available in this page's history. Trelane 21:50, 2 October 2006 (UTC)