On 24/12/2007, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Earlier, Oldak Quill wrote:
"[P]aedophiles are banned from editing Wikipedia" is quite meaningless. Surely something like "those advertising themselves as paedophiles are banned from editing Wikipedia" is more actionable? We can't ban thought, only action.
The implied semantics of "...who we haven't caught yet" applies to any number of miscreant categories, from pedophiles (in thought or action) to banned trolls.
We don't have to say so explicitly. Nobody's going to laugh at us because we state something we can't strictly enforce without reading minds. A policy which rather clearly says "no" in no uncertain terms with no wiggle room is a lot easier to state and enforce than one which acknowledges the grey area.
Introducing a ban on thought would be a new precedent for us (and largely unenforceable) and it is frankly not our business. If we ban paedophiles, it becomes our responsibility to ensure none of the editors are paedophiles (an impossible). If we make it our responsibility to ensure paedophiles do not edit, it will be our fault if the media discovers that some of our editors are.
IMO, our policies should be limited to what we can control - no paedophilia-related userboxes, advertising and that kind of thing. Anything beyond that (policy governing the thought processes of our editors) strikes me as a knee-jerk, emotive reaction (à la the tabloid press).