Robert wrote:
There is no God-given right to use a Wiki or work on an encyclopedia. We have a rather open-minded editorial policy, and it does not constitute censorship. Thus, we should not allow "contributors" whose admitted endgoal is to intimidate, or to incite violence. If we scare away the blacks, the Jews, the gays and the Catholics by opening up this encyclopedia to violent hate groups, then what are we left with? We will end up limiting the free speech of the many other people who will certainly be driven away, and we will be damaging our own reputation for no good reason.
But we're going to scare off people no matter what we do. *Not* banning openly gay activists scares off already a large portion of the earth's population, namely conservative Christians and Muslims. Obviously that isn't a good enough argument for banning gay activists from the encyclopedia. There's a whole list of mutually antagonistic groups, differing mostly in degree of antagonism.
Which of these groups would qualify? -- Supporters of segregation. E.g. black separatists; white separatists; supporters of "population transfer" of Palestinians out of Israel; etc. -- Supporters of theocracy. E.g. supporters of the Iranian government; the Taliban; and other such groups. -- Supporters of Sharia law. -- Supporters of terrorism as a legitimate military/political tool, at least in some cases. (Note that Noam Chomsky and like-minded people would fall under here.) -- People who argue that homosexuality is immoral and unnatural. -- People who argue things that are considered "blasphemous" by many religions.
The list could go on, but with just this list here, we've already cut out a very large percentage of the earth's population. And one could easily make the argument that e.g. supporting Sharia law is directly threatening women and non-Muslims in the same way black and white nationalists threaten non-blacks and non-whites.
-Mark