On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 12:39:40PM +0000, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 23:53:08 +0530, "Relata Refero" refero.relata@gmail.com wrote:
"Even if admins were blocking a specific POV- so what?" Well, here's why that thinking might be dangerous: most banned editors are banned for disruptively arguing their POV, nor their POV. If we ban accounts on the basis of POVs like already banned editors, that would be a severe error, and compromise our neutrality, our effectiveness, and our ability to criticize ourselves.
There's some truth in this, but I don't see much evidence that people are being actively banned just for holding a POV, only for disruptively asserting it. I guess our tolerance for pedophilia activism and holocaust denial is pretty low, but the average holocaust denier engages in unambiguously banworthy editing (they are usually not too subtle in their biases).
Apart from invoking Godwin's law, I don't think your Reductio ad Nazium argument helps the discussion. No matter how outrageous the POV is, nobody should be banned for merely holding it.
We could all do with a bit more AGF here. Some people give a very good impression of assuming that any removal of any link is motivated by a desire to censor legitimate criticism. Some admins think that this makes the people who stir up such drama *evil*. I don't think either of these views is productive. But neither do I think we should tolerate arguments based on points of non-existent principle (e.g. free speech) when an explanation has been made in pragmatic and specific terms (e.g. offsite harassment, banned users advocating content changes in offsite forums). Wikipedia is not a free speech zone and not anarchy either.
I remember an issue, where the main argument, which was solely based on this non-existent principle (free speech), trumped all explanations, which had been made in pragmatic and specific terms (e.g. onsite bigotry, vote stacking in offsite forums).
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