I'd like to also add that the entire analogy is
strained from the
outset. Wikipedia is a privately run website.
While the privilege of
editing is extended very generously, Wikipedia is
nonetheless *not* a
city park or free speech zone. No one has an
inherent right to edit
on our website, except as authorized by the
Wikimedia Foundation.
(Which is *very* generous about this, obviously.)
No, wikipedia is a wiki. Anyone can edit it and anyone
can delete it.
No one is ever locked up, not even figuratively.
It's a free country,
and people can always take the database and open
their own website if
they want, and write whatever they please.
[Actually, I realize that 'It's a free country' is a
peculiarly
American, er, United States-ian expression, and I
tried to retype it
as 'It's a free world', but that's not really true.
Well, you know
what I mean.]
There must be some equivalent in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Unfortunately, we USians
know nothing of it, and I'm not aware of any condensed
formes of the sections of it, except for "right to
life", which doesn't apply.
Oh, here's one: Freedom of opinion and expression
I just say all this so that people remember that our
policies of
openness and due process are policies, not
constitutional rights, and
so any discussion of what we ought to do should be
founded in the best
interests of the encyclopedia, as opposed to
abstract and stretched
analogies to what rights governments must respect in
order to be
proper governments. It isn't the same thing at all.
--Jimbo
Well, won't they become constitutional rights when we
form our orginizational bylaws?
LDan
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