[Wikipedia-l] Censorship and self-censorship [Ex: French netcensorship law]

Thu Jan 15 02:51:07 UTC 2004

----- Original Message -----
From: "Delirium" <delirium at rufus.d2g.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 5:43 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Censorship and self-censorship [Ex: French
netcensorship law]

> Ruimu wrote:
>
...
> I understand you're likely not a lawyer, but do you (or anyone else)
> know to what extent this requires *you* to be presenting the arguments,
> vs. reporting on others?  For example, we *do* have articles on
> Holocaust deniers, summarizing their arguments (including that infamous
> "there were no Nazi gas chambers" report a few years back), and we *do*
> have information on the arguments of philosophers who wrote in favor of
> suicide.  We're not personally promoting these viewpoints, but to be a
> reasonable encyclopedia we do have to give them a fair summary.  In the
> Holocaust denier case we can fairly easily point to a lot of other
> evidence that the Holocaust actually did exist, and conclude that
> historians generally disagree with them, which probably covers us.  But
> with suicide, we can't really reasonably conclude "these philosophers
> were wrong, and suicide is bad and you shouldn't do it", since there is
> no accepted consensus answer to "is suicide always bad, sometimes bad,
> or never bad?"

I hope the consensus is easier to find on "apologia for suicide is never
good"...

> So I guess my question is: can we still get in trouble for publishing a
> neutral description of pro- and anti-suicide arguments (and those in
> between), without concluding in favor of either?

I suppose that the answer is "non". As "neutral description" is usually very
far from apologia, WP won't have any troubles. Same with negationism: what
is forbidden is to deny the Holocaust existed, to report that someone
denied it is not forbidden.