How much is too much

There is one image of the flag of the Hitler Youth. Someone appears to be trying to make a name for themselves.

Also, where is the Paris Hilton angle?

Don't mention the War

I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.........

So to avoid promoting fascism...

...the Germans like to restrict free speech.

Every time the issue of Nazi symbolism in Germany comes up I chuckle at the irony.

Come on everyone, chuckle with me.

Failing to grasp?

"Katina Schubert fails to grasp the self-regulating mechanisms that work in Wikipedia"

I think that Heiko Hilker fails to grasp the fact that ANYONE can edit Wikipedia articles - and so the people with the strongest commitment to spreading information (or misinformation) are most likely to win out. I wouldn't call this self-regulating - any more than tabloid newspapers are self-regulating.

By the way, Register - the 'Remember me on this computer' box is a great idea but doesn't appear to work - cookies on, Firefox 2.0.0.11 / Win XP.

Is this a beat up ?

If you look at the English entries on Hitler Youth you will see a lot of images of Hitler Youth flags and other paraphernalia.

Go to the German version and there is a single flag image plus a very Germanic organization structure.

Either someone has got in and edited the German site in a hurry or this is a major beat up over a single relatively harmless image (Swastika on a field of red and white stripes)

Jeremy

censored

It looks like the page has already been censored, good job wikipedia keeps an archive. The original http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hitler-Jugend&diff=39782488&oldid=39781313 looks much better and much more informative especially when you consider what a large part it played in modern German history.

Am I missing something?

It's Wikipedia. You don't agree with the content, you edit it. If everyone else shares that opinion, the offending imagery/text will soon be removed.

@ AC "Am I Missing Something?"

"It's Wikipedia. You don't agree with the content, you edit it. If everyone else shares that opinion, the offending imagery/text will soon be removed."

Or if an admin-type disagrees with it it will soon be removed and you'll be banned....!

Withdrawn

Just for the record: Miss Schubert has already (or will in short) withdraw the case/file/action (don't know what's correct here) after speaking to a German Wikipedia member, which she should of course have done in the first place.

RE: David Farrell

Kudos on your post. Neither I, nor Thomas Jefferson (assuming he were still alive instead of just spinning in his grave) could improve one bit!

Freedom is unquestionably one of my hot buttons and I'd love to get up a good rant about it, but I couldn't really improve on anything you said.

I will add my undying thanks to whatever idiot(s) chooses to hold his tongue about free speech meaning you can yell fire in a crowded theater. That was dealt with over 150 years ago (in the US) and if you thought David's comments supported that you probably shouldn't go out in public unattended.

Can't be right.

If neo-nazi Hitler youth are trying to take over Wikipedia, someone's cheating.

There's no Wikipedia card in *my* Illuminati set.

WTF ?

"Her primary concern was that images could be easily re-purposed because they were online rather than in books."

How can someone. in Government, be so clueless ?

Oh... wait.... nevermind.

@Rob

We ARE all entitled to free speech, that's the point. You either support free speech or you don't, but what you can't do is pick and choose who is entitled to it just because you might not necessarily agree with someone.

"Incitement" is a convenient tool used by dictators the world over to silence their critics. Robert Mugabe regularly uses it to silence and lock up his opponents. And where do you draw the line? Should Karl Marx be held responsible for the excesses of Stalin and various other crackpot communist dictators? Under today's laws he might very well be held responsible for some or other "incitement".

To paraphrase the anti-gun lobby: "Free speech doesn't harm people, people harm people".

Freedom of Expression

What many are missing here is that this isn't something occuring in the US or UK, where free expression is a right guaranteed by our respective constitutions. This happened in Germany, where the law says Germans do NOT have unfettered freedom of expression.

Get off the idealistic high horse for two seconds and understand that when US documents talk about "all men [being] endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights", it is a statement of belief, not necessarily one of fact. According to German law, to which Germans agree to live by, by continuing to reside in the country, They do NOT have the right to free expression when it comes to Nazi imagery. If Germans feel the law is unjust, they have two choices, vote it down, or leave the country.

When will people realize that different nations have different laws, and that we have no place imposing OUR beliefs upon them???

@Rob

".... it's an ideal not a given, so stop banding it around like we're all entitled to it, some of us clearly shouldn't be entitled to it, especially if their main aim is to use it to harm others."

Oh for fucks sake, another one of the "Freedom comes with responsibility to only use it for things that I think are OK" idiots.

I'd argue the toss with you, but I really can't be arsed, you're clearly immune to logic.

I love it when you sad fuckers make this argument, never seeming to realise what an utter prick you are making of yourselves in the process.

That's the real power of freedom of speech in any form, it allows really stupid people to unmask themselves for all to see.

Carry on, dickwad.

@The Other Steve (aka “dickwad”)

No one said, “Freedom comes with responsibility to only use it for things that I think are OK”. I think the idea is that speech needs to be limited when, in the eyes of the demos, it is being used against the common good or to unjustly harm a minority group. Are you clever enough to see the difference between this idea and the one you are throwing a fit about? You also assert one shouldn’t suggest that speech needs to be used responsibly because doing so makes one look like a “prick.” In other words, you assert that it is indecorous to say that speech needs to be responsible. How bizarre is that? You write an indecorous message and then suggest decorousness should regulate the speech behavior of those who don’t agree with you about the meaning of “free speech.” You then state, “That's the real power of freedom of speech in any form, it allows really stupid people to unmask themselves for all to see,” and for this I must commend you, for your statements themselves give us such a wonderful example of the principle. I am not sure if you are “immune” to logic, but at the least you’ve made it obvious that you are ignorant of it.