Wikipedia:Keine Drohungen mit rechtlichen Schritten
Vorlage:Pp-move-indef Vorlage:Dablink Vorlage:Dablink
Vorlage:Legal policy Vorlage:Policy in a nutshell Vorlage:Legal policy list
Do not make legal threats on Wikipedia. Users who do so are typically blocked from editing while the threats are outstanding. Legal threats should be reported to Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents or elsewhere to an administrator.
Rather than posting a legal threat, you should try to resolve disputes using Wikipedia's dispute-resolution procedures. If your issue involves Wikipedia itself, you should contact the Wikimedia Foundation.
That users are involved in a legal dispute with each other, whether as a result of incidents on Wikipedia or elsewhere, is not a reason to block, so long as no legal threats are posted on Wikipedia. Editors involved in a legal dispute should not edit articles about parties to the dispute, given the potential conflict of interest.
What is not a legal threat
A polite complaint in cases of copyright infringement or perceived defamation is not a legal threat.
If you are the owner of copyrighted material that has been inappropriately added to Wikipedia, a clear statement about whether it is licensed for such use is welcome. You may contact the information team or the Wikimedia Foundation's designated agent, or use the procedures at Wikipedia:Copyright problems.
Wikipedia's policy on defamation is to delete libelous material as soon as it is identified. A discussion of whether material is libelous is not a legal threat. If you believe that you are the subject of a libelous statement on Wikipedia, please contact the information team at info-en
wikipedia.org.
Perceived legal threats
It is important to refrain from making comments that others may reasonably understand as a legal threat. For example, if you repeatedly assert that another editor's comments are "defamatory" or "libelous," that editor might interpret this as a threat to sue, even if that is not your intention. To avoid misunderstandings, use less charged wording, such as “that statement about me is false and damaging, and I ask that it be corrected." Rather than immediately blocking users who post apparent threats, administrators should first seek to clarify the user's intention.
Rationale for the policy
While you may sue in a court of law, Wikipedia is not the place for legal disputes. Making legal threats is uncivil and 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 community, damaging our ability to proceed quickly and efficiently with an assumption of mutual good faith.
- We have had bad experiences with users who have made legal threats in the past. 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 law. If the dispute resolution procedures do not resolve your problem, and you then choose to take legal action, you do so in the knowledge that you took all reasonable steps to resolve the situation amicably.
Conclusion of legal threat
The Wikipedia community has a long-standing general principle that (almost) anyone is capable of reform. Accordingly, statements made in anger or misjudgment should not always be held against people for the rest of their lives once genuinely and credibly withdrawn.
This policy removes an editor who makes legal threats to prevent damage or deterioration to the project. The editor is not blocked just because "it's a legal threat", but rather because:
- It reduces scope for escalation of a bad situation,
- It reduces stress and administrative burden on the wiki,
- It reduces disruption to articles and the editorial environment,
- It prevents the difficult situation where a person is both seeking to be a collaborative partner and also setting themselves up as a litigious adversary (in general those two roles are mutually exclusive).
If these conflicts are in fact resolved (or a consensus is reached to test if they are resolved), then involved editors should be unblocked if there are no other issues that warrant a block.
Remember that a legal complainant may be someone who is genuinely hurt or upset. If someone is blocked for legal threats it is important to ensure that any possible factual basis for such a threat is not ignored or obscured. They should be instructed how to communicate with Wikipedia to correct errors, a link to Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Factual error (from subject) may be appropriate. Blocking admins should watch (or get others to watch) the user's talk page and encourage the user to identify any specific, verifiable factual errors in any article at issue; assisting with such errors is part of the core mission of neutral point of view and does not equate to proxying for banned editors. Repeats of legal threats on the user's talk page have limited scope for disruption or chilling effect and the user should not be prevented from using their talk page for communication until reasonable attempts have been made to open a civil discussion. Remember that the aim of this policy is to contain the effects of legal threats, not to prevent article subjects or their representatives from having bad content fixed. As usual we assume good faith while containing disruption. As usual, the assumption of good faith is not a suicide pact and persistent or vexatious complaints may indeed lead to the user being banned and prevented from editing their talk page, but this is a last resort.