Wikipedia:No legal threats

Don't make legal threats against other users of Wikipedia. Doing so causes a number of serious problems:

It severely inhibits free editing of pages, a concept that is absolutely necessary to ensure that Wikipedia remains neutral. Without this freedom, we risk one side of a dispute intimidating the other, thus causing a systematic bias in our articles.

It causes bad feelings and a lack of trust amongst the Wikipedia community, damaging our ability to proceed quickly and efficiently and with an assumption of mutual good faith.

It involves lawyers. Lawyers are evil.

Instead, first attempt to resolve disputes using the dispute resolution procedures. This will oftentimes lead to a solution without resorting to the blunt tool of the law. If the dispute resolution procedures do not resolve your problem then you can use the law in the knowledge that you have taken all reasonable steps to resolve the situation amicably.

But, if you really feel the need to take legal action, we cannot prevent you from doing so. However, we ask that if you do so then you do not edit Wikipedia until the matter of law is settled, one way or the other.

Bans on users taking legal action

proposed, see Talk

If you ignore the advice above and take legal action against another Wikipedia contributor, then we regret to inform you that we may have to temporarily revoke your editing privileges on Wikipedia. We do this for the protection of all parties involved: both you, the person against whom your legal action is directed, and Wikipedia as a whole.

The revocation of editing privileges is effective solely as long as the legal action is underway, and will be lifted as soon as we are informed that it has completed, either by the case being dropped, or settled, or resolved in a court of law.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.