[WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

[Rob]

On 1/30/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:

> I bring this up because, when I first came to WP, the one policy I found
> most disturbing was the one concerning ³incivility². Most especially the
> practice of banning (punishing) members of the WP community for using words
> and phrases considered by whoever made up the policy to be ³offensive².
> This, to me, made WP free in every thing but speech.
>
> I know this issue has been touched upon several times in this Mailing List
> just since I started participating in it, but I wanted to speak directly to
> the policy and its practice at this time.
>
> If a particular word or phrase offends you hit delete and move on.

While I am a passionate advocate for free speech in the public sphere,
Wikipedia is a private space dedicated to a specific goal.  Allowing
juvenile incivility, namecalling, racial slurs, etc. would be
detrimental to that goal.  It only makes sense to insulate as best we
can productive contributors from moronic nonsense and harassment so
they can continue to be productive contributors.