Wikipedia:No legal threats
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This page documents an official policy on the English Wikipedia. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
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This page in a nutshell: Do not make threats or claims of legal action against users or Wikipedia itself on Wikipedia. If you have a dispute with the Community or its members, use dispute resolution. A polite report of a legal problem such as defamation or copyright infringement is not threatening and will be acted on quickly. If you do choose to take legal action, please refrain from editing until it is resolved and note that your user account may be blocked. |
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Neutral point of view |
| Working with others |
Do not make legal threats on Wikipedia.
You should always first attempt to resolve disputes using Wikipedia's dispute resolution procedures.
If you must take legal action, we cannot prevent you from doing so. However, we require that you do not edit Wikipedia until the legal matter has been resolved to ensure that all legal processes happen via proper legal channels. You should instead contact the person or people involved directly. If your issue involves Wikipedia itself, you should contact Wikipedia's parent organisation, the Wikimedia Foundation.
If you make legal threats, you may be blocked from editing so that the matter is not exacerbated through other than legal channels. Users who make legal threats will typically be blocked from editing indefinitely, while legal threats are outstanding.
[edit] Legal complaints
A polite, coherent complaint in cases of copyright infringement or attacks is not a "legal threat".
If you are the owner of copyrighted material which has been inappropriately added to Wikipedia, a clear statement about whether it is licensed for such use is welcome and appropriate. You may contact the information team, contact the Wikimedia Foundation's designated agent, or use the procedures at Wikipedia:Copyright problems.
It is Wikipedia policy to delete libellous material when it has been identified. If you believe that you are the subject of a libelous statement on Wikipedia, please contact the information team.
[edit] Rationale
Apart from being uncivil, making legal threats causes a number of serious problems:
- It severely inhibits free editing of pages, a concept that is absolutely necessary to ensure that Wikipedia remains neutral. Without this freedom, we risk one side of a dispute intimidating the other, thus causing a systemic bias in our articles.
- It creates bad feelings and a lack of trust amongst the Wikipedia community, damaging our ability to proceed quickly and efficiently with an assumption of mutual good faith.
- Wikipedia has had bad experiences with users who have made legal threats in the past, and by making legal threats, you may damage your reputation on Wikipedia.
Attempting to resolve disputes using the dispute resolution procedures will often lead to a solution without resorting to the blunt tool of the law. If the dispute resolution procedures do not resolve your problem, then you can rest in the knowledge that you have taken all reasonable steps to resolve the situation amicably, should you then choose to take legal action.
