[WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

[Ray Saintonge]

George Herbert wrote:

>The problem is that those forums constitute the only mechanisms by
>which nearly all decision-making happens in Wikipedia.  You can't go
>"I'm going to go over to that room there, with these other people, and
>stop listening to the guy shouting into the megaphone".  There's only
>one "room" per topic (or, a small set, of meta-topic rooms plus the
>right one).  If someone's abusing others, their only options short of
>some form of community imposed censorship are to stop participating.
>
This is precisely the situation and lack of consensus that makes most of 
those rules meaningless.

>Every forum I have seen people try to build online, without exception,
>has failed and fallen apart if there wasn't a mechanism by which
>abusive contributors could be exiled.  There have also been a fair
>number of places where tin-pot dictators stifle discussion - there's
>no doubt that there's a continuum from undercontrol to overcontrol.
>Wikipedia is operating comfortably in the middle ground, which is in
>my experience and opinion the only place that an online community can
>survive.
>
Yes, and it's difficult to explain what happened to keep it growing long 
and strong..  NPOV was only one factor.  So too was the need to face 
certain issues of conflicr (like British vs. American English) from the 
very beginning.  Unlike the various Yugoslave wikipedias we dealt with 
the problem head on with a problem-solving attitude.

Ec