On 11/30/06, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Nobody was banned for being a Nazi. They were banned for proclaiming it on their userpage. Which is disruptive. You are welcome to edit Wikipedia as a Nazi, or as a pedophile, or as anyone else. You are, however, expected not to use Wikipedia as a platform for proclaiming controversial views.
What's hard here?
Is everyone displaying any of the userboxes on these pages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GRBerry/German_userbox_solution#Political_... going to banned?
The only reason I can see for treating Nazis differently from anyone else is because people don't like Nazis. It boils down to banning someone for being unpopular.
If Wikipedia were based in Germany, it would be an obvious ban for breaking the law, but Wikipedia is under US jurisdiction, and the US doesn't have any such law.
I would assume that the reasoning is that the negative image potentially created by tolerance of such a user box outweighs any free-speech rights (besides, wiki under the TOS has set its own limits on free speech as do most web-based institutions). Note: this is an attempt at an explanation, not a taking of sides, so no hate mail. ;)