Joshua Zelinsky wrote:
...People forget that when we say that Wikipedia is not censored we are talking about articles. There's nothing wrong with banning links or other matters in other space if it will benefit the encyclopedia.
I'm not sure I can agree with that. In general, banning and censoring things is *wrong*, and saying it's okay under some circumstances as long as it "helps the project" is somewhat too Machiavellian for my taste. It's like saying that accepting advertisements to support the Wikimedia Foundation is okay if it will benefit the encyclopedia, or spamming Usenet newsgroups urging people to make donations is okay if it will benefit the encyclopedia.
As you said in the part of your message I snipped, attempting to ban or remove things from non-article space can result in large amounts of unnecessary drama, not to mention wasted time, extreme positions becoming solidified, productive editors being alienated, etc. I know I'm not alone in suspecting that the set of removals that will actually have a net benefit to the encyclopedia (and hence be acceptable under your proposition) is near zero.
Furthermore, something I'm noticing more and more lately is that an inescapable part of this sort of banning and censoring is a disquieting element of paternalism. The removals are performed by a small number of presumably-trusted senior editors, on the grounds that they know that the material being removed is "hurtful to the project". But since part of the alleged hurt is always the associated hype and drama, the removers tend to ask that the removals not be discussed either. We're supposed to trust that the person doing the removing knows what's best for the project, knows what's best for us, is better at deciding for us what we should and shouldn't discuss than we are ourselves. Obviously, the bigger and more disparate the project becomes, the harder it is to maintain that kind of trust.