Let's not jump to conclusions here.
User:DennyColt may have been a sockpuppet of a more established WP'er, but not necessarily. Remember that it was yours truly, i.e., me, who
originally brought him to the world's attention when he made the supremely obnoxious move of listing a bunch of web-based news articles mentioning Daniel (almost all in passing, and mostly in relation to Daniel's efforts to get himself off of WP) during one of the AfD attempts - #11, I vaguely recall. They all sort of run together...
The idea that DennyColt was one of "us" - i.e., a plant, or some sort of "agent provocateur," is
totally absurd. Nobody in a trusted position here would ever have put such effort into keeping the Brandt article on WP, so Jayjg's only hope of convincing people of that preposterous yarn is to keep repeating it until they just stop trying to argue with him, hope that attrition eventually gets rid of the people who remember what really happened, and further hope that the people who replace them are even more gullible than the people running the place now.
I believed then, as I do now, that DennyColt simply got really, really pissed off that we made an issue of what he was doing during that one Brandt AfD. Maybe that was my bad for being the one to point him out, but I'd probably do it again in a heartbeat. Anyway, he didn't want the attention, and WP:BADSITES was his way of getting revenge against WR for criticizing his actions -
simple as that. And revenge, of course, is
what WP is all about, isn't it?
I'm surprised they don't just call it "Revengeopedia."
Slimmy and Jayjg didn't so much "fall for it" so much as they jumped in headfirst, bashed the hell out of anyone who disagreed with them, and led the charge to make it policy.
Anyway, "WP:LINKLOVE" is just a shortcut to
Wikipedia:Linking_to_external_harassment, also known as "BADSITES with implied, rather than explicit, enforcement by banning." And does anyone really think that once their foot is in the door with link redaction, they'll stop there? After that it's mention-redaction, then allusion-redaction, and finally user-redaction. Guaranteed!