From: wikien-l-bounces(a)Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Matt Brown
On 2/8/06, Jay Converse <supermo0(a)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. After all we are a community, and sometimes small individual
freedoms get sacrificed for the common good. This is going to apply to any
community above a certain size, and I would find it hard to imagine any
community similar to this one where putting an "I am a paedophile" poster up
on your front door is not going to provoke righteous outrage from a fairly
large proportion of the community.
If the community, through the ArbCom, decides that a line has to be drawn,
then we should accept it. We can discuss the precise location of the line,
but I still think it needs to be drawn.
Pete, walking a fine line