Jimmy Wales wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 24/12/2007, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Bottom line is wikipedia isn't a free speech zone. It is a project to write an encyclopedia.
Amen.
Free speech and writing an encyclopedia are not mutually exclusive.
But they really are, if we understand what is meant in this context by "a free speech zone".
The question here is "time, place, and manner" restrictions. If you want to advocate for racism (for example), you are certainly welcome to do so: just not here, not at Wikipedia.
The question is really what we intend when we use the term "Wikipedia" in this kind of thread. If you use the term in its narrowest sense as what the passive information-seeking public sees you are closer to being right. For most people who have been active contributors it is much more than that. For them "Wikipedia" includes all the various namespaces where difficult problems are hammered out. Some might even see the mailing lists and IRC as a part of the greater Wikipedia. Free speech is essential to hammering out the problems, and it follows from this that without free speech NPOV is unattainable.
Maybe this is what you mean by "time, place and manner", but that's not what's coming across. What's being communicated is a highly restrictive environment where there is no place provided in which to express a different opinion, or at least not one that is contrary to received wisdom. Advocacy, like advertising goes beyond free speech We have a history of dislike for advertising even for the most benign of products. Repeated claims on behalf of these products by the same person will stand him in no better stead than if he was promoting racism.
Remember too that most of us who take a more liberal view on dealing with these explosively controversial subject would still not dream of doing so in an article. Sometimes it pays to give people credit for a little more sophistication than a simplistic black-and-white duality between Wikipedia and free speech.
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