[WikiEN-l] Libel chill

[Jimmy Wales]

Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 21/04/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> 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. Finally, in terms of
> 
> I would be curious to know - not necessarily with examples - whether
> we have had legal threats related to articles that did meet WP:V. That
> is, we published something which was by all accounts true, and had
> verifiable sources to back it up - and yet was deemed offensive by
> some miffed party.

To my knowledge, no.  Of course some people complain excessively, and we
do get a fair number of frivolous complaints.  But if after some really
hardcore scrutiny (the purpose of the WP:OFFICE policy is to give us as
a community time to do that) we find the complaints frivolous, and
someone still wants to sue us, we will not back down.

NPOV, as I have always said, is non-negotiable.



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