[WikiEN-l] When goals conflict: There is no "right" for everyone to edit Wikipedia

Mon Feb 21 02:37:26 UTC 2005

Robert wrote:

>There is no God-given right to use a Wiki or work on an
>encyclopedia.  We have a rather open-minded editorial
>policy, and it does not constitute censorship.  Thus, we
>should not allow "contributors" whose admitted endgoal is
>to intimidate, or to incite violence.  If we scare away the
>blacks, the Jews, the gays and the Catholics by opening up
>this encyclopedia to violent hate groups, then what are we
>left with?  We will end up limiting the free speech of the
>many other people who will certainly be driven away, and we
>will be damaging our own reputation for no good reason.
>  
>
But we're going to scare off people no matter what we do.  *Not* banning 
openly gay activists scares off already a large portion of the earth's 
population, namely conservative Christians and Muslims.  Obviously that 
isn't a good enough argument for banning gay activists from the 
encyclopedia.  There's a whole list of mutually antagonistic groups, 
differing mostly in degree of antagonism.

Which of these groups would qualify?
 -- Supporters of segregation.  E.g. black separatists; white 
separatists; supporters of "population transfer" of Palestinians out of 
Israel; etc.
 -- Supporters of theocracy.  E.g. supporters of the Iranian government; 
the Taliban; and other such groups.
 -- Supporters of Sharia law.
 -- Supporters of terrorism as a legitimate military/political tool, at 
least in some cases.  (Note that Noam Chomsky and like-minded people 
would fall under here.)
 -- People who argue that homosexuality is immoral and unnatural.
 -- People who argue things that are considered "blasphemous" by many 
religions.

The list could go on, but with just this list here, we've already cut 
out a very large percentage of the earth's population.  And one could 
easily make the argument that e.g. supporting Sharia law is directly 
threatening women and non-Muslims in the same way black and white 
nationalists threaten non-blacks and non-whites.

-Mark