On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 1:16 PM, Jake Wartenberg jake@jakewartenberg.com wrote:
I am not talking about "pedophilia activism", but instances where the individual in question is not disruptively editing.
There are a wide variety of reasons to permanently block people who were elsewhere identified (more commonly, self-identified) as pedophiles but edit here apparently harmlessly, including bringing the project into disrepute (Jimbo's wording, I think), the latent threat to underage editors, that they'd have to be watched continuously to make sure they did not start advocating or preying on underage users.
The Foundation and en.wp community policies are generally to be excessively tolerant of personal opinion and political and religious beliefs, etc. We do not want to let one countries' social mores, political restrictions, civil rights restrictions limit who can participate and how.
However, there's no country in the world where pedophilia is legal. It's poorly enforced in some, but there are laws against it even there.
What it comes down to - the very presence of an editor who is known to be a pedophile or pedophilia advocate is disruptive to the community, and quite possibly damaging to it, inherently to them being who they are and them being open about it.