Wikipedia:No legal threats

This page is a policy on the Simple English Wikipedia. Many people agree with it. They see it as a standard idea that all users should normally follow. When changing this page (except for minor errors like typos), please check that other people agree with your changes. Use the talk page when you are not sure or when you want to suggest a change.

When something happens on Wikipedia that makes a person unhappy, they should try to solve it by talking to the other people. Making legal threats will not help the problem, and may get the person blocked. This is because legal threats:

1. Make a bad situation even worse by bringing real life concerns into it.
2. Add stress to the community and especially to administrators, who have to decide what to do about it.
3. Stops people from working on articles, especially from keeping then neutral. If one side is afraid of the other, it is hard to find a compromise.

Legal threats are very serious. If someone threatens to sue Wikipedia, they may actually do it. This would cause Wikipedia a lot of trouble and cost a lot of money. Making a legal threat can make other users afraid to change pages, or make them angry at you. There are almost always better ways to solve the problem.