goers all try to reach the fire exists. In the rush some might be injured or even die due to suffocation or being trampled to death. Peoples valuables might be looted and for sure, they will all have their movie experience destroyed.
You may prefer this analogy: You have the right to say "I am a fish". You don't have the right to publish "I am a fish" on the front page of your national newspaper. Why? It's not your newspaper. Wikipedia is not yours either.
If Wikipedia isn't mine, then who owns it? Who gets to decide whether publishing "I am a fish" on your user page is allowed or not? Why doesn't my opinion carry as much weight as the next one? AFAIK there is no Wikipedia-rule against writing pedophile on your user page. I thought that was the whole reason for this email thread.
pedophile. I'd say that words by themselves neither cause disruption nor offence. It is people that willfully participates in the act of
Words carry information. That information can be disruptive and offensive. Let's not get too technical.
Information has no moral value, it is neutral. It is the consumer of the information that may *choose* to being disrupted or offended. Each and everyone is responsible for how he or she interprets the information and what "mood" that puts him or her in. Within reasonable limits of course - false information, hatespeech and goatse is not good and is not allowed on Wikipedia.
being offended or disrupted. You can't remove your responsibility for your own thoughts and place it on some word.
I think using inflammatory language on a user page and claiming that it's not offensive is a better example of "removing responsibility for your own thoughts".
No it isn't. Every Wikipedian is responsible for what he or she writes on his or her user page. He or she is not responsible for how offended readers of his or her user page *choose* to become.
Where I live, any of the following posters would "provoke righteous outrage from a fairly large proportion of the community: "I'm a pedophile", "I'm a Nazi", "I'm a socialist", "I'm a racist", "I'm a communist", "I'm a Jew", "I'm a Muslim", "I'm a American", "I'm a
"I'm a Muslim" is offensive? Eep.
I did not write that. I wrote that such a poster would "provoke righteous outrage from a fairly large proportion of the community." Muslim, just like all the other epithets I listed, is information and carries no moral value.
put them there. The law protects my right to put almost any poster I want on my front door. Wikipedia works like that too. You might say that the right to call yourself whatever you want is not necessary for
That's where you're dead wrong. There is no implied or explicit right to free speech. Quite the opposite - many policies limiting exactly what you can and can't say.
Most constitutions (the one in the US for example) explicitly guarantees every citizens right to free speech. Most countries also have laws that makes saying and publishing certain things illegal. In most countries with "free speech," you are allowed to put "almost any poster you want on your front door." Similarly, Wikipedia allows you to put almost any description of yourself you want on your user page.
Quite the contrary, it is important to emphasize that there is no protection for offensiveness for anyone.
-- mvh Björn