[Foundation-l] Compulsory policies for all Wikipedias

[Andre Engels]

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 9:25 PM, Jaska Zedlik <jz53zc at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you, but not obligatory a list. I meant any form, even a number
> of rules written on this mailing list. Otherwise we (may) have a
> situation when, for instance, a user puts some inflammatory or
> divisive content on their user page and administrators are unable to
> delete it, until a policy which regulates this is adopted locally.
> NPOV and Wikimedia Founding principles regulate only "articles and
> other encyclopedic content" and can't be applied in this case.

I don't think this is something that can be decided for all Wikipedias
on beforehand. To me, this would fall under one rule that might be
said to apply generally: ignore all rules. More specifically, if there
is a situation that has a negative effect on a Wikipedia, and there
are no local rules regarding the situation, anyone has the right to
take the action that they seem best.

If we're talking about general rules, there are two that I can think
of. The first is NPOV, which has already been mentioned, the second is
GFDL. Or rather, free licensing. All Wikipedia material should be free
as in speech. And reading through the foundation principles, I see a
third: freedom to edit. Everyone should be free to edit (unless they
have actually misused this right).


-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com