The Wikipedia community has a long-standing general principle that (almost) anyone is capable of reform. Accordingly, statements made in anger or misjudgement should not always be held against people for the rest of their lives once genuinely and credibly withdrawn.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:

1. It reduces scope for escalation of a bad situation,
2. It reduces stress and administrative burden on the wiki,
3. It reduces disruption to articles and the editorial environment,
4. It prevents the difficult situation where a person is both seeking to be collaborative partner and also setting themselves up as litigatious 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 in fact there may be no current issue against which to protect the project.

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See also

• Wikipedia:Don't overlook legal threats
• meatball:LegalThreat

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