[WikiEN-l] The terrorists have won

[Nathan]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 7 Jul 2009, Ian Woollard wrote:
> > > But if they do make demands about silence, it is our ethical duty
> > > to... censor ourselves?
> > Yeah, why not? Just because your enemy want something to happen,
> > doesn't mean you don't want it as well.
>
> But it has some negative effects that they don't care about and we do.
>
> For instance, modifying our articles when a hostage is threatened
> encourages
> other terrorists to take hostages.  How long until some terrorist demands
> that
> we alter our Jenin article to say that Israel committed a massacre, or else
> they start executing hostages, now that we've demonstrated that we can be
> coerced in that way?
>

I have a hard time believing you honestly see that as even a remote
possibility. In the extraordinarily unlikely case that a psychotic terrorist
takes someone hostage to effect a short term change in a *Wikipedia
article*, I doubt our prior response to such pressure will figure
significantly in his/her decision process.