[WikiEN-l] Libel chill

[Jimmy Wales]

Michael Snow wrote:
> Unfortunately, the community has proven unable on a number of occasions 
> to actually produce a neutral encyclopedia article in a timely fashion. 
> This tends to draw complaints from affected parties, who not 
> surprisingly want the Wikimedia Foundation to be responsible once it has 
> been put on notice of problems on a site it operates. I shall not 
> comment on whether any particular case truly involves actionable libel, 
> but I think to speak of "libel chill" misapprehends the situation.

Agreed.  And my own view is that "not libelling people" is the absolute
minimum standard, and we should hold our heads in shame if the best
thing we can say of our work is that it doesn't libel people.  There are
a hundred other ways an article can royally suck in a way that is
painful for the person being written about, and we should take
absolutely serious such complaints.

> First of all, a neutral encyclopedia article is not an unrestrained free 
> speech zone, and I think the rhetoric of someone's freedom of speech 
> being chilled is out of place to begin with. Second of all, it is 
> entirely consistent with our mission to seek to "chill" content that is 
> decidedly non-neutral and in most cases fails to provide verifiable, 
> reputable sources for its assertions besides. 

Absolutely right!

> I won't speak for the other participants on that mailing list, but from 
> my personal interaction and observation, I trust Brad Patrick to handle 
> outside concerns appropriately when they arise. There hasn't been much 
> discussion of these cases on that list; I won't speculate as to whether 
> that's due to apathy, or because nobody thinks it's that big of a 
> concern. Certainly anybody who's worried that we're not aware of these 
> situations is welcome to email the list and call them to our attention.

I should add that Brad and I speak frequently about such things, and I
can say that he deeply understands and shares my own views of freedom of
speech, neutrality, openness, etc.

He and I might differ on individual cases, but ironically enough, I
think the difference would be that I am much more likely to want to call
FOUL on an article than he is... because his primary concern as counsel
for the foundation is that we continue to live strongly up to our legal
obligations, whereas my primary concern is for a much much higher level
of quality than that.

--Jimbo

-- 
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################