>The
litmus test is whether what they have said is not only 'offensive' but, 'grossly
offensive'. Wikipedia's internal >systems and thresholds would make no
difference to the authorities in the UK. It would be interesting to see what the
>public fall-out would be if Wikipedia decided that no action should be taken
against X whilst the UK jailed him / her.
Well, there’s this
page:
which
never became policy (probably because, it seems, people discussed it more in
light of threats of suicide rather than threats to others). But it may be time
to revisit that.
I
assume, in the hypothetical you’re talking about, the question would be whether
someone was punished in real life for threats made on-wiki that resulted in no
action from the ArbCom? Or from anyone? In the former, yes, the public fallout
would be interesting; in the latter, it would depend on whether anyone with the
power to take action knew.
I
do recall some past cases, once described on the now-deleted “List of
banned users”, where the trigger for the formal ban (as opposed to the
never-lifted indefinite block) was a user threatening violence against someone
(usually via their latest sock).
Of
course, if someone were to be incarcerated in real life as a result of
their on-wiki threats, any action after that other than blocking the account to
prevent some hacker from making use of it would really be
superfluous.