On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 10:44 PM, J.L.W.S. The Special One hildanknight@gmail.com wrote:
I think most participating in the discussion on this mailing list do not hold that attitude, thankfully. But I do see quite a few "ZOMG CENSORSHIP!"-like comments on IRC and AN. On IRC, an American actually did say something like "If the rest of the world want to censor, screw the rest of the world".
Many Americans feel very strongly about censorship, I wouldn't take this as an affront really. Even the ones that say stupid things like "screw the rest of the world" are probably talking more out of frustration than anything else. For most americans, when they know that other places are censoring, they assume it is against the will of the people, that may or may not be true, but it does change how they interact with the situation.
While I agree with Gregory, it's not as black and white as caring about British editing vs stopping censorship. If it were that simple though, I think a great many americans would say stopping censorship is more important than having British users edit Wikipedia if it means that the censorship will end, and they can edit again uncensored.
This is not really a double standard, it's just a difference in values. If the state I lived in, say, started censoring things on the web I would *want* wikipedia to block access completely in order to cause people the most interruption until the censorship stopped. I would also want there to be protests in the streets. When many americans see censorship in other areas they almost assume that is their opinion too, when it might not be.