Viewpoint censorship

(English) This is an essay. It expresses the opinions and ideas of some Wikimedians but may not have wide support. This is not policy on Meta, but it may be a policy or guideline on other Wikimedia projects. Feel free to update this page as needed, or use the discussion page to propose major changes.

Viewpoint discrimination occurs when a particular viewpoint or school of thought is singled out for censorship. It is different from broader forms of censorship which may find content objectionable not because specific opinions are objectionable, but because the expression of any opinion on a given subject is off-topic for the venue.

So, for example, it would not be viewpoint discrimination for Wikipedia to ban all userboxes, all userboxes expressing political beliefs, or all userboxes expressing political beliefs concerning public policy X. It would be viewpoint discrimination to ban userboxes supporting public policy X while allowing userboxes opposing public policy X. Given that Wikipedia is somewhat of a mobocracy, and then even hierarchical systems depend partly on the cooperation of users to report behavior that violates rules, there will probably always be some viewpoint discrimination.