Daniel R. Tobias wrote: Or even, for that matter, to discuss, or advocate, adults having sex with children who are below the age of consent. After all, NAMBLA is headquartered in the United States... -Mark

Sam Korn wrote: Why should drawing a line be so important? Giving users the maximum flexibility to express who they are is good for everybody, because the whole world then has a transparent view of where that individual is coming from. Nobody is even promoting that people should proclaim that they are breaking the law. It's a big leap from someone saying that he smokes weed to his proclaiing that he is breaking the law. If what people say is tantamount to admitting to breaking the law we can offer them no protection against self-incrimination. There's something sad about a situation where PR becomes the driving force behind what we do. It's equally disturbing when a bunch of hypocrites loudly shout "IANAL", and then proceed in an attempt to enforce the law that they don't know anything about. A better approach might be to put a disclaimer at the top of every user page saying that the page represents the views of the user alone, and that we collectively accept no responsibility for what this person says even though it may sometimes be outrageous. Wikipedia got where it is by applying a vision boldly, not by engaging in a PR paranoia game. To be sure being bold puts the leaders on a media hotseat. The media thrive on confrontationist journalism, but respecting free speech is not a defect. They should be encouraging free speech, not manipulating interviewees into making distorted and compromising statements. Sometimes what is written or spokend does ignite the passions of the ignorant into stupid action, but if we allow that argument to hold sway we are dumbing down our efforts for the sake of pandering to our societies' lowest common denominators. We end up sacrificing NPOV because we are afraid that some of the constituents that must be balanced to achieve neutrality are too embarassing or too contentious. Ec

Sam Korn wrote: This depends on what you define as contributing to "the good of the project". I would define it as something like contributing to the ability to write a high-quality Free encyclopedia. In that case, it's unclear to what extent policing what sort of people contribute, and who they may say they are, is a positive. It's conceivable that we could lose some good contributors who refuse to contribute to a project that has neo-Nazi contributors (or Satanist contributors, or Stalinist contributors), but it's also conceivable that we could lose some good contributors who refuse to contribute to a project that has that sort of vetting (or even themselves run afoul of it). My personal opinion, as is probably obvious, is that it does the project no good to wade into the morrass of trying to determine which opinions are "across the line" and which are "offensive to me personally but not bannable". -Mark

On 2/10/06, Sam Korn <smoddy(a)gmail.com> wrote: I proposed disallowing potentially controversial opinions. Or some phrasing that discourages people from "hit and run" type statements that can't be debated by virtue of user pages being off limits. Sorry to say I don't see what smoking marijuana has to do with anything, or why it would be a problem that someone proudly proclaims to be a marijuana smoker on their user page. Steve

Sam Korn wrote: When we start describing common sense as unrealistic we have a problem. Ec

On 2/10/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: The term "common sense" is meaningless so it doesn't really matter how you describe it. -- geni

Sam Korn wrote: I agree. You're talking about the Arbcom, right?