Drug making instructions are a gray area. Most countries have laws restricting what you're allowed to publish - and they're all a bit arbitrary and different. It sounds like Wikipedia is trying to push American values onto everyone else.
Imagine if Wikipedia was based in a country that didn't respect copyright. Would people in America be upset that it was getting banned for hosting pirated content?
I'll take American values over applying random norms to encyclopedia contents.
Russian language speakers are not limited to Russia, there's tens of millions speakers in other countries. Wikipedia can't cave to demands from specific country. That is a road that will quickly lead to removal and censorship of any information not in line with what state TV in that country say, "or else".
Moral arguments aside, what makes you think this will work?
Tomorrow, some town judge in Zazhopinsk, Udmurtia (population 5000) will open this single page in some sort of anonymizer and will issue blocking orders on, in some order: Wikipedia, anonymizer, Internet Explorer.
And yes, she will specifically search for such thing because she is promoted by the bulk of cases.
American values? While I would agree in many cases of disputes about wikipedia content, this is not one of them. How is free and unrestricted access to information an American value?
>How is free and unrestricted access to information an American value?
I think the OP meant that American laws (based on American values) govern the content that's legal on Wikipedia. For example, there is no content on the site showing child pornography based on the US legal definition. Note that US legal definition doesn't fit with the definitions from other countries.
The legal standards for suppression of information and the categories of information that can potentially trigger those standards are stricter and narrower in most respects in the U.S. than in most other jurisdictions. Also, many segments of society often express pride in the breadth and depth of U.S. legal protections for free expression, and argue that it's something that makes the U.S. or the U.S. legal system great.
Foreign law students sometimes find it hard to believe that some of the rules are so protective of speech (source: three different U.S. law professors have told me this).
A few examples:
* All fictional depictions of violence are protected.
* There are no restrictions on blasphemy or insults to religious doctrines, religious beliefs, religious believers or communities, or religious believers' feelings.
* Advocacy and glorification of any kind of illegal action (including war crimes and genocide) are fully protected if they aren't reasonably likely to lead to a specific imminent lawless action.
* Advocacy against the state or its powers is mostly completely protected for citizens, as is teaching that the prevailing political or economic system is inherently wrong. Urging resistance to or evasion of military conscription is mostly understood as protected now (unlike during World War I). Same thing with taxation, if you're not teaching people how to do it with the intention that they act on your advice.
* Detailed information about how to commit crimes is usually protected if the person publishing it didn't have a sufficiently specific intention to help people actually commit them in practice and didn't have some other responsibility to keep the published information secret.
* Insulting present or past state leaders or the virtue or legitimacy of the state or any political party is fully protected.
* It's protected to advocate regional or ethnic secession or territorial separatism (though not to conspire to effectuate it by force). It's protected to display flags or emblems of militant groups, even those that the U.S. is trying to oppose or suppress or is engaged in armed conflict with. It's protected to show disrespect to national symbols or emblems of the United States.
* Contrary to increasingly common popular belief, there are no restrictions on "hate speech" or group libel (for example saying that a particular group in society is bad, using slurs against a group, saying that some negative stereotype is true or that members of some group commonly or always have a negative characteristic, or wishing for or justifying ill treatment of a group).
* Most sexualized depictions of adults (and most sexualized depictions of fictional children) are now legally protected in practice, although there can theoretically be restrictions in various circumstances that seem to be becoming increasingly rare and exceptional.
* It's hard to punish people for downstream republication of leaked or misappropriated information.
* It's hard to punish people for repeating truthful negative information about other people, especially if they weren't originally involved in obtaining that information.
Imagine if Wikipedia was based in a country that didn't respect copyright. Would people in America be upset that it was getting banned for hosting pirated content?