Wikipedia:No legal threats

This page documents a Wikipedia policy with legal considerations.

This page in a nutshell: If you post a legal threat on Wikipedia, you are likely to be blocked indefinitely. A polite report of a legal problem, such as defamation or copyright infringement, is not a threat and will be acted on quickly.

Do not post legal threats on Wikipedia. A legal threat, in this context, is a threat to engage in an external (real life) legal or other governmental process that would target other editors or Wikipedia itself. It does not refer to any dispute-resolution process within Wikipedia. Legal threats should be reported to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents or elsewhere to an administrator. Users who post legal threats on Wikipedia are typically blocked from editing while the threats are outstanding.

Instead of 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.

With all that said, that a legal dispute exists between users, whether as a result of incidents on Wikipedia or elsewhere, is not a valid reason to block, so long as no legal threats are made on Wikipedia. The only concern of this policy is the posting of legal threats on Wikipedia. Editors involved in a legal dispute should not edit articles about parties to the dispute, given the potential conflict of interest.