[WikiEN-l] Peodophiles and wikipedia

[Daniel R. Tobias]

On Tue, 25 Dec 2007 11:00:37 -0500, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> 
wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > Free speech and writing an encyclopedia are not mutually exclusive.
> 
> But they really are, if we understand what is meant in this context by 
> "a free speech zone".
> 
> The question here is "time, place, and manner" restrictions.  If you 
> want to advocate for racism (for example), you are certainly welcome to 
> do so: just not here, not at Wikipedia.

Advocacy for *anything*, whether for peace and brotherhood or racism 
and pedophilia, is out of place in article space, where NPOV is 
required.  No distinction needs to be made about whether the advocacy 
is for something "good" or "bad", which avoids the inherent 
subjectivity of such distinctions.  The only place for "free speech" 
here is in the context of "WP:NOT censored", where it is considered 
improper to remove things that otherwise comply with policies simply 
because they offend somebody.

In other spaces such as talk and project space, things are rather 
more complex, as certain sorts of advocacy (for positions regarding 
how things are done within Wikipedia, not directly for positions in 
the "real world") is in-bounds and expected.  There, it's meaningful 
to support "free speech" for the various relevant positions in such 
internal debates, and to cry foul if one side or the other is 
unfairly suppressed.

User space is the trickiest of all, since some degree of real-world 
"advocacy" has sometimes been tolerated in the course of self-
description, and the limits on this are unclear and ever-changing.

-- 
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