From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of The Cunctator
On 2/8/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Matt Brown
On 2/8/06, Jay Converse supermo0@gmail.com wrote:
This is what I'm worried about, and the precedent I was
mentioning.
All of a sudden, userpages now need to be politically
correct, or you
risk a block. That is, if this precedent does get set.
You don't have a userpage in order to exercise any
"right" to free
speech, but because it helps the project; it aids
communication and
makes people happy. You never did have the right to say anything you pleased there; disruptiveness has always been unacceptable.
There's nothing particularly new about that proposed finding.
A common example is that while you have a right to freedom
of speech,
you don't have the right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded cinema.
If something on a userpage cause disruption and offence, then it should be removed.
The reason you can't shout "Fire!" in a crowded cinema is not because it causes disruption and offense, but because it could cause a panicked stampede, leading to real physical harm.
IOW, disruption and offence.
Which doesn't apply to Wikipedia.
We should browbeat and harass people rather than physically smack them over the head?
People are entirely too touchy here.
After all we are a community, and sometimes small
individual freedoms
get sacrificed for the common good.
Which, history tells us, is rarely for the common good in the long run.
If we let the community decide what is best for it, so long as the ultimate goal of writing an encyclopaedia remains foremost, then surely we will find the common good?
Wikipedia is not an iron-fisted dictatorship under the heavy hand of Jimbo, nor is it a theocracy under the all-seeing gaze of the ArbCom. Usually the community sorts things out at street corner level and it is only the problem cases that come to the attention of admins, the ArbCom and as a last resort, Jimbo.
Personally, I'd prefer to see a lot more common sense and a lot fewer rules, but I suspect that common sense doesn't scale, judging by the way things are going here.
Pete, commoner