This really caught my eye when I visited Wikipedia as a logged-in editor yesterday:<p>"Under the following conditions:<p>"Responsibility — You take responsibility for your edits (since we only host your content).<p>A huge number of I.P. edits, and not a few edits by logged-in editors, currently show no sense of personal responsibility.<p>"Civility — You support a civil environment and do not harass other users.<p>This is why I edit very little on Wikipedia anymore. If I try to edit on any subject that I actually have a lot of sources for,<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellige...</a><p>I get into time-wasting edit wars, without even much by way of administrator enforcement of the existing civility rules.<p>"Lawful Behavior — You do not violate copyright or other laws.<p>Some of highest-volume "contributors" on Wikipedia, including at least one person who made it onto the Arbitration Committee, appear to have been serial plagiarists.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Spotting_possible_copyright_violations" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Spotting_possible_cop...</a><p>"No Harm — You do not harm our technology infrastructure.<p>"Terms of Use and Policies — You adhere to the below Terms of Use and to the applicable community policies when you visit our sites or participate in our communities."<p>A reasonably noble set of aspirations, but with number of active administrators declining in "unsustainable fashion,"<p><a href="http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Wikimedia_Editors#Chapter_Three:_The_future_.282007-present.29" rel="nofollow">http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Wikimedia_Editor...</a><p>and many of those administrators being callow and inexperienced besides, it's not clear how any of these goals can be achieved.
I think one can argue with Wikipedia's statement that "we only host your content". If Wikipedia empowers editors with administrative privileges, including the ability to enforce rules like "no original research", lock and delete articles, block users, etc., they would seem to wield a lot of indirect power over what kind of content users can and can't post.<p>Contrast this with a web hosting provider like Rackspace or Amazon AWS who really "only hosts your content". They generally won't delete your content unless there are legal issues (e.g., alleged copyright infringement, court order, etc.).