[WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

[George Herbert]

On 1/30/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> on 1/30/07 7:00 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs at earthlink.net wrote:
>
> > People who are good editors, but take other
> > people's statement to heart, can get so upset that they no longer want
> > to work in WP, and that's certainly a loss to the project. So the
> > civility rule is partly about backing down to a level that reduces hurt
> > and misunderstandings across a broad range of individuals.
>
> Isn't this a rather paternalistic attitude? "We are censoring this for your
> protection" is the first reason given by powers that would be.

There's censorship, and then there's a social contract.

Civility should be about the social contract... we agree not to abuse
each other in the course of discussing things about which we may
disagree greatly.

If someone shows up who refuses to buy in to the social contract, then
we can ask them to behave or in extremis to leave.  No forum which is
a complete anarchy survives.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com