I've always believed that a man must be aware of the wide consequences of their actions. Fulfilling one's obligations with regard to their roles is important; but whenever these obligations clash with basic human decency, or in other words - obvious moral values, the latter should be prioritized, not the former.
However, the longer I live, the harder I learn that the general consensus seems to be the total opposite; and I only feel more and more surprised.
I understand that I may have not been clear enough in what I wrote above, so I'll try to give some examples to better explain what I mean.
Example 1: There was a discussion on Polish Wikipedia a few years ago on whether or not to decorate a biographic article with a photo. The issue was that the photo of that person had been taken during the funeral of their son, and the photo had been showing a very prominent grimace of pain and sorrow.
Some editors wanted the picture out for ethical reasons. Others were adamant that any ethical arguments are nonsubstantitive, because they are not based on Wikipedia's rules and they also do not mention improving the quality of the encyclopedia. They were claiming that the encyclopedia needs photos for biographic articles, and this is the only relevant argument, while all ethical or moral arguments should be rejected since they were off-topic.
The photo finally got removed, but for other reasons - namely, its legal status was found to be questionable. However, the official reason of this deletion explicitely said that any issues regarding a mourning father were irrelevant.
Example 2: In Politics SE some user asked how to defect from UK to North Korea. Other users posted comments below this question, arguing that defecting to North Korea was an insane idea. These comments got deleted. There was a proposal to restore the comments, but it was rejected; the reasons for the rejection of this proposal was that (1) the comments were off-topic and in a violation of the commenting guidelines of SE sites and (2) There were no reasons to believe that the author of the question really wants to defect to NK and even if they do, nothing in the world could convince them not to do this. I have feeling that reason (1) was the primary reason.
To be frank, I am disgusted by this outcome. Even though it is only possible, not certain, that the author of the question wants to seek asylum in NK - lives may be in danger here. The person who chooses to flee to NK places themselves in a grave danger of being tortured and/or executed. Giving advice on how to commit this mistake and not even trying to dissuade it and even forbiding all attempts to dissuade it - this, for me, means taking partial responsibility for the bitter end this man may soon meet.
There are many such examples; I'll limit myself to these two for the sake of brevity.
To sum up, we see a clear consensus that a man should - to the greatest extend permitted by applicable laws - only guide himself with the obligations that come with their roles, insofar as they are acting under this role, while disregarding all wider implications of their actions. THerefore, if one is an editor of Wikipedia, then, as long as they act as an editor of Wikipedia, they should only be concerned with the quality of Wikipedia and its rules, even if this means publicly disrespecting other person's grief; and if one is a participant of an SE site, they should only be concerned with the rules and completeness of this site, even if a potential life-or-death situation would require withhodling the rules of this site.
What is the basis for this belief and why does it seem to be the general consensus?
people with different ethical opinions, to choose one of them makes it not representative of the others.
;to choose one form of morality over another in a way that excludes players.
Not helping someone defect to one of the worst regimes ever or respecting someone's grief over their lost son should hopefully be pretty common to all moral systems, excluding amoralism only?