[Wikipedia-l] Jimbo ? Others advices ?

[Jimmy Wales]

The policies of wikipedia, even the French wikipedia, are not
constrained by French law.  Yahoo caved in to French censorship
efforts because they are a large company with many business interests
in France.  We do not have that problem.

However, I will say this in addition:
>  To allow wikipedia to be accessible, I
> thus will delete any article which directly
> contradicts the first and the second article of the
> universal declaration of the humans right:

There is a great irony here.  It is suggested that we should delete
any article that contradicts the first and the second article of the
universal declaration of human rights, because of a French law that is
itself a strong violation of article 19 of that same document!

Article 19:
>Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
>right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
>seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
>regardless of frontiers.

Anyhow, no article in Wikipedia should ever directly contradict or
directly support any controversial statement of moral principle such
as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  That's not NPOV, and
it's not our mission.

Nonetheless, I suppose it is possible that there could be NPOV
articles on valid topics which would be banned by various countries
around the world.  I suppose that an Arabic-language encyclopedia
might contain many true statements, properly contextualized, written
in NPOV, but which still might run afoul of censors in some hardline
Islamic countries.

Then, so be it.  If the French people are not free of human rights
violations by the French government, we should be all the more
inspired in our mission to help them.

--Jimbo