On 9/28/07, Monahon, Peter B. <Peter.Monahon(a)uspto.gov> wrote:
" Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers." - Article 19, Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A
(III) of 10 December 1948
Wikipedia is not a government-owned institution; it is privately-owned and
thus the laws concerning private property apply. The WMF reserves the right
to reject contributions as it sees fit; the only real rights you have under
the model we operate from are the right to leave, and the right to fork.
Everything else is pretty much a privilege granted by the owners of the
servers which host Wikipedia. In short, there is no right to freedom of
speech on Wikipedia, just as there is no right for you to hold an animal
rights rally in my living room or in a shopping centre.
(was Re: The price of providing privacy and free speech)
Please take discussions of this
sort to a mailing list where it is
on-topic.
Hmm ... regarding "...discussions of this sort...", which I see as
"Wikipedia policy towards anonymous contributions and contributors" or
the use of
http://tor.eff.org/ versus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_open_proxies, do you have a
suggestion of a better place?
Personally I think we - Wikipedia - should stand up for Tor operators
who get abused. We - Wikipedia - should at least understand the
difference between our own policy against anonymous contributions or
contributors on Wikipedia (a prohibition with which I disagree), versus
totally unrelated features and benefits of Internet anonymity (though I
think these issues are totally related to Wikipedia). Just because we
may block anonymous contributions and contributors shouldn't mean we
think anonymity itself is always bad or that we are neutral to it.
Wikipedia is not a social project, not a democracy, not a soapbox, etc. We
are here to write a free encyclopaedia, nothing more and nothing less. We
should not be advocating certain social ideals; even the GFDL is only a
means to an end - that of ensuring the sum of human knowledge is available
to everyone.
Johnleemk