QUOTE(Cock-up-over-conspiracy @ Fri 26th February 2010, 4:30am)
Wikipedia society is counter evolutionary.
Whereas Wikipedia Review is merely counter-revolutionary. (IMG:
smilys0b23ax56/default/bored.gif)
What we're really asking here is: if we know someone identifiably falls into a certain category, even when they are not violating any laws by editing (nor any internal regulations), should we bar that person from participation? Pedophilia is something that stirs particular outrage in people, but there are other classes of people we could consider in the same light.
My view is that letting pedophiles edit Wikipedia seems substantially the same as letting them wander about town, participating in normal economic and social activity. Generally there is no problem, and they can contribute to society in various ways, although people are going to view them warily. However, if they are hanging around outside the local elementary school, people should be very worried and should talk to the police--hopefully they would take action or at least pay close attention to the person. And of course there are analogous things one could be doing on Wikipedia that would warrant administrative action, or at least close attention. Personally, I doubt very much that the risk from pedophiles is any higher if one adopts an "identify and monitor" approach rather than a "ban immediately" approach--keeping in mind that anyone can start a new account, I think the important part is identification, although I'm sure that's less intuitively satisifying. Another thing to consider is that you would rarely have definitive evidence: I'd imagine you'd expect to see editing pushing a POV sympathetic to pedophilia, but you wouldn't expect to have knowledge of actual criminal convictions or an open declaration of sexuality.
My view may, of course, be poorly informed and poorly considered. I'm interested to know if this is a purely theoretical issue, or if there are known cases of this? I'm also curious as to how other websites have handled this issue.