User:Zenswashbuckler/CERFC

Note: I'm torn on all of this. It makes sense that the community should not be overtolerant of dickish behavior, as this defeats the purpose which we are here to perform. But on the other hand I know of no community that laid out official punishments for merely dickish behavior that didn't end like a hippie commune undone by a vicious personality cult. If below it sounds like I'm saying all incivility should be ignored, hand-waved, tolerated - that's not my intent. But people working together in person who can't get along naturally avoid each other in their interactions, and even instinctively keep a coldly polite tone in situations where they can't avoid each other. Trying to punish someone in real life for incivility is an exercise in the pettiest and most childish kind of dismal futility, like a neutered dog spitefully humping the veterinarian's leg.

I don't have a good solution. But there are plenty of bad ones that we would do well to avoid, even at the cost of some uncivil behavior.

Further information on civility enforcement: User:Fifelfoo/CERFC, User:Tarc/CERFC, and User:Elen of the Roads/CERFC

General questions

These questions are intended to try to determine what you may consider the "baseline" between what should be considered "valid collegiate discourse" and what should be considered "violation of the civility policy" (incivility). Please be as specific as you can in your responses.

Written versus spoken communication

When one is physically present when speaking with another person, body language, intonation, setting, and other physical factors, can suggest the intent of words in a way that words written on a page cannot.

Collegiality

Example: if a person is having a casual conversation with friends over a table covered with beer glasses and one of them wishes to contest a point another has made they might prefect their remarks with "listen up asshole and I'll explain it to you." If they are smiling and raising a glass towards the person this remark is pointed, it can help the words to be taken in the lighthearted manner in which it was intended.

Should such interaction as noted in the example above be considered incivility in the collegiate, collaborative environment of Wikipedia? Should the talk page location matter (such as whether the discussion is on a user talk page, an article talk page, or Wikipedia project-space talk page)?

• Reply:

As the example given indicates, context is everything. The same words delivered even in the same tone of voice will be taken utterly differently when said in different situations. This question is asking, basically, "can we preemptively legislate how people interpret words?" This touches on two of the most frequently bandied criticisms of online communication: 1) it's impossible to tell from an isolated piece of text precisely what the author's intent is; and 2) people will say things in an IM, email, or forum post that they would never have the balls to say to someone's face. In one sense this makes civility enforcement easier (since obvious trolls become obvious due to the overwhelming temptation to lose all subtlety in their attempted chaos-mongering), and in another sense it makes it vastly more difficult (since it's impossible to determine from text alone if something someone took offense at was actually an asshole thing to say, versus merely flowing naturally from a conversation between two [presumed] adults).

Sticking strictly to the form of these questions, therefore, the answers have to be No (it should not be considered incivility per se), and no (the specific type of talk page should not be presumed a priori to make a difference). While these factors may weight the subjective interpretation of civility vs. incivility, that interpretation remains subjective. The total context must always trump any attempt such as this to quantify a qualitative interpretation.

Profanity

Should all profanity (such as the use of "bad words", "four letter words", "the Seven dirty words", etc.), be considered incivility?

• Reply:

No. While the use of profane intensifiers may make an uncivil comment more uncivil, they cannot by themselves transform an innocent (if off-color) comment into outright incivility. Similarly any direct epithet, if it is uncivil, is uncivil regardless of whether you're being called a moron or a shithead (for example). There are many examples of people using profanity perfectly collegially, and the total context is what is measured. There is no scorecard or cheat sheet whereby if you check off the "Profanity used?" box, that can somehow put you over the top. There are plenty of ways to be uncivil without ever uttering a word of profanity, and plenty of ways to be collegial while cursing like a sailor.

Late addition: I recently discovered this unbelievable farce. I haven't ever been on the same talk page with the guy (or even edited the same articles as far as I know), but this is exactly the kind of time-wasting garbage that turns this project from "Let's all build a free encyclopedia" to "Oh wait, we're no smarter than every other stupid human idealistic cult ever." You want a civil encyclopedia? Stop clutching your pearls. Real humans swear in real life. Pretending they don't is an exercise in Puritan futility, and (in large part, though certainly not universally) an underhanded attempt to win content disputes by having the other party disqualified on technicalities rather than the merits. This is anathema to knowledge, wisdom, liberty, and justice. When the marketplace of ideas is walled off by such petty Machiavellian gatekeeping and divvied into satrapies by those who are skilled at playing the game of blocks, our species is fucking doomed.

All caps/wiki markup

There is an established convention when using technology to communicate through a typed format that WRITING IN ALL CAPS is considered "yelling" and is generally not acceptable. Individuals also sometimes use italics bolding green or other colored text or even enlarged text or other formatting code to attempt to indicate intonation, or to otherwise emphasize their comments.

Should there be limits as to when this type of formatting should be used in a discussion? Is there any type of formatting which should never be acceptable in a discussion?

• Reply:

EVERYONE WHO WRITES A WHOLE SENTENCE IN ALL CAPS IS AN ASSHOLE!

But no, there's no quantitative, or otherwise a priori, restriction that can reasonably be leveled here. If someone is using lots of extraneous formatting to get his FUCKING point across or emphasize the most important words or stresses in a sentence, that will be clear quite quickly. If they are unable to tone down their Shatnerian sentence structure upon being asked, that's something to consider in the entire context of the thread/conversation. Some emphasis is not only OK, but even helpful to a discussion. Intelligent people must weigh these things calmly to determine how they should be interpreted.

Enforcement and sanctions

Responsibility for enforcement

Who is responsible for maintaining a civil environment for collegiate discussion? Should it be it the responsibility of administrators, the arbitration committee, the broader Wikipedia community, or some combination of these?

• Reply:

The last thing the community needs is to have civility sanctioning be in the hands of a specially-defined group of people. Admins are subject to quite enough politicking and mudslinging over the work they do, Arbcom even moreso. If sanctions must be handed down, the best way to hand them down is via something like a community-wide RFC closed by a neutral third party (ideally the closer is not limited to admins, but a requested admin is much better than any given first responder, drama-wise), taking the arguments rather than the raw !votes as the primary determinant. Having (say) admins do it, even according to pre-written policies and laws, is guaranteed to generate more drama and more wikivellian maneuvering than just letting everything slide.

Appropriate sanctions

What sanctions, if any, do you think are appropriate for incivility? Should blocking be considered an appropriate response to incivility? Should topic banning or interaction banning be considered an appropriate response?

• Reply:

TL;DR summary: 1. Almost none whatsoever; 2. almost never; 3. if you must. This is dangerous ground we're starting to tread, and if we're not careful we'll lose both creative expression and editors.

I would be extremely wary of punishing people for mere incivility. There's a certain extent to which the Wikipedia-as-workplace metaphor holds water, but if we try to overextend it it will come crashing down around our ears. You can't build an encyclopedia in an environment prone to racism and sexism and the other usual forms of assholery; but you also can't accomplish anything in an environment in which well-meaning and competent contributors are punished for a slipped tongue or a gruff demeanor. We can only filter and soften the coarse, harsh nature of the Internet - we cannot fix it, wall it off entirely, and yet still be a massively collaborative enterprise. If you set out to punish everyone who cut you off in traffic or swore at you in line at the post office (both clear examples of real-world incivility), you'd be utterly stymied (as well as even angrier as you came to realize the extent of your failure). That dynamic has been increasing on WP of late, and I haven't seen any proposal to address chronic incivility among real contributors that isn't worse than the problem.

While it's impossible to forget about a slight of this kind when it's written and archived permanently in black and white for the world to see, it's also incredibly petty to try to punish someone for something that, if it happened in real life, would like as not pass from your mind within a day or two at most. I can see interaction bans being reasonably imposed on two people who can't tear themselves away from each other's throats; but much more than that strikes me as problematic in situations that aren't "banning obvious troll."

If there were a way, on-wiki, to mimic the human mind's way of forgetting the specifics of any uncivil interaction without getting rid of the substance of arguments (keeping which is necessary for archival purposes and to show previous editors tried to solve various issues), that would solve the civility "problem." After a while of dealing with small petty incivilities in real life, eventually a human being's attitude boils these down to a generalized feeling of "Man, people are assholes," or "Boy, people can sure be mean, even if it's not necessarily intentional," without necessarily recalling any particular incident. If you can remember every time some dickface in a car gave you the finger when they cut you off and you honked at them, you have both a better memory and a harsher sense of personal honor than I do.

But on-wiki, this boiling down cannot take place and every slight against you is there in black and white for the world to see, forever. It is impossible to let anything go when you're in an environment where everything can be recalled verbatim just by looking for the right diff or archive page. Unless comments are actively hatted or refactored, nobody will ever be able to let anything go, unless they grow a thicker skin. Either incivility by itself needs to be deprecated as a reason for sanctions or even a poor reputation, or there needs to be a scheme in place to edit all uncivil comments away. And in case it's not clear, the latter is the reductio ad absurdum solution and will destroy everything we're about here.

Man... cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him. (Nietzsche)

Context

Should the context of the situation be taken into account when considering whether to apply sanctions to the individual due to incivility?

• Reply:

Is this a trick question? What is the argument for not considering the context of the situation? Is someone seriously proposing a robotic system of "Whup, that's four pieces of Schedule I profanity on Article talk pages in the last 168 hours - you are hereby automatically blocked from editing for two days"????? I'm afraid of the results of people taking this question seriously. Please, please, please for the love of anything you may happen to consider divine or worthy of reverence, do not adopt some moronic variant of a three strikes law - not only are they unrelated to actual justice, but every thinking being should have a serious existential problem with conscious decisions requiring sound human judgment being turned over to dumb machine algorithms. Justice requires that people think through the consequences of laws and punishments before enacting them. Always.

Severity

How severe should a single incident of incivility need to be to merit some sort of sanction?

• Reply:

To warrant an official response or sanction the "incident" must go beyond mere incivility and reach the level of disruption. In other words, so severe as to warrant another description entirely (e.g. PA, HAR, et al).

Instances of incivility

Should multiple instances of incivility in the same discussion be considered one offense or several? If a user is civil most of the time, but occasionally has instances of incivility, should these incidents be excused? If so, how often should such incivility be excused?

• Reply:

Weighing incivility and contributions

Should the quality and/or number of contributions an individual makes outside of discussions have any bearing on whether an individual should be sanctioned due to incivility? Should the incidents of incivility be taken on their own as a separate concern?

• Reply:

In theory, no - if it's wrong for one person, it's wrong for all. But if we find ourselves with a great big clot of very nice people who edit for shit, that's something to avoid as well. I don't pretend it's the ideal attitude, but the world is not an ideal place. Everyone's met someone who is an asshole and yet is tolerated by their boss, peers, whoever, precisely because of the contributions they make to whatever a workplace's endeavor is. I can see both sides of this one.

Outcry

In the past, when an individual has been blocked from editing due to "violating the civility policy" (incivility), there has, at times, been an outcry from others concerning the block, and sometimes the block has been overturned subsequent to that outcry.

In an effort to reduce incidences of such an outcry ("drama"), should incivility be deprecated as an appropriate reason for blocking an individual? Should admins instead be required to have a more specific reason (such as personal attacks, harassment of another user, etc.), when blocking a user for incivility?

• Reply:

Well, that seems like a clear "yes" to me; yes to more specific and dire actions prerequisite to blocking, yes to deprecation of mere incivility as sufficient rationale for punishment. "Outcry" could also be replaced by the word "feedback" and retain its accuracy in the above (minus the slight tang of implied moralizing). Hint: when you "enforce the rules" and thereby generate lots of dissent and discontent, you're doing it wrong. In such a case either the punishment is excessive or the law is a bad one. And the traditional first response to bad laws is civil disobedience.

AN/I prerequisite

Should a demonstrable consensus formed through discussion at WP:AN/I (or other appropriate forum) be required as a prerequisite to blocking an individual due to incivility? If so, should there be a minimum time frame for such discussions to remain open before the individual may be blocked?

• Reply:

RFC prerequisite

A request for comment (RFC) gives the community the opportunity to discuss a behavioural concern (such as incivility) directly with the individual, with the intended goal of attempting to find a voluntary solution.

Should an RFC be required as a prerequisite for blocking a user of incivility? Should it be suggested and/or encouraged?

• Reply:

Personal Attacks

Requests for adminship

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship (RFA) is a place where an editor requests the additional tools and responsibilities of adminship. In the discussion concerning the specific request, each commenting editor is to convey whether (and why) they would (or would not) trust the requester with those tools and responsibilities. Due to this, typically the requester's actions, behaviour, and contributions are noted, evaluated, and sometimes discussed.

Due to the nature of RFA (a question of trusting an individual), should it be considered necessary for the standards concerning personal attacks be somewhat relaxed at RFA? What, if any, should be the limits to this? How personal is "too personal" at an RFA? What types of criticisms cross the line between being considered merely an evaluation of a candidate and being considered an unwarranted attack? Should comments considered to cross that line be left alone, stricken, moved to the talk page, or simply removed altogether?

• Reply:

Recused due to ignorance.

Attacking an idea

The Wikipedia community has a long tradition of not tolerating personal attacks. However, it may be difficult to differentiate whether an individual is commenting on a user's ideas or is commenting on the user themselves. The same is true concerning whether an individual may understand a particular idea.

How should this be determined? Should any of the following be considered a personal attack? Should any of these comments be considered the kind of incivility that we should not tolerate on Wikipedia?

1) "That idea is stupid"

2) "That is idiotic"

3) "That is yet another one of <username of proposer>'s stupid ideas and should be ignored"

4) "You don't understand/misunderstand"

5) "You aren't listening"

6) "You don't care about the idea"

• Reply:

(Added numeration for clarity). The third and sixth phrases seem designed to shift discussion onto the shortcomings of the editor's interlocutor rather than any content question, and so should be deprecated; but only (3) rises to the level of a personal attack. (5) is the most useful one in a discussion, as it may often be both true and a useful segue into re-emphasizing the real meat of an argument that is being ignored, red-herringed, or straw-manned; and the others vary between neutral and unambiguously (though mildly) unhelpful. None of them except (3) warrant anything stronger than "Hey, let's keep this on-topic, huh?" and (3) seen in isolation only warrants a warning.

Rate examples

In this section example comments will be presented. You are asked to evaluate each comment on the following scale:

• 1 = Always acceptable
• 2 = Usually acceptable
• 3 = Acceptability entirely dependent on the context of specific situation
• 4 = Usually not acceptable
• 5 = Never acceptable

Proposals or content discussions

• I assume you realize how foolish this idea sounds to the rest of us

rating: 2

• Typical of the foolishness I have come to expect from this user

rating: 3

• After looking over your recent edits it is clear that you are incompetent.

rating: 3

• Anyone with a username like that is obviously here for the wrong reasons

rating: 2

• You seem to have a conflict of interest in that you appear to be interested in a nationalist point of view.

rating: 2

• It is obvious that your purpose here is to promote your nationalist point of view.

rating: 2

• You are clearly here to support your nationalist point of view, Wikipedia would be better off without you.

rating: 3

• This is the stupidest proposal I have seen in a very long time.

rating: 2

• Whoever proposed this should have their head examined

rating 2

• I don't know how anyone could support such an idiotic proposal.

rating: 2

• This proposal is retarded.

rating: 4

• The person who initiated this discussion is a moron.

rating: 3

• This proposal is crap.

rating: 2

• This proposal is a waste of everyone's time.

rating: 2

• What a fucking waste this whole discussion has been

rating: 3

• A shitty proposal from a shitty editor.

rating: 4

• The OP is a clueless idiot.

rating: 4

• Please just stop talking, nobody is listening anyway.

rating: 4

• Just shut up already.

rating: 4

• File your sockpuppet investigation or STFU.

rating: 3

• Shut your fucking mouth before you say something else stupid.

rating: 4

admin actions

• The blocking admin has a long history of questionable judgements.

rating: 1

• The blocking admin needs to be desysopped of this is representative of their decision making abilities.

rating: 1

• The blocking admin is well known as an abusive rule nazi.

rating: 3

• I'm sure their admin cronies will just censor me like they do to anyone who points out the hypocrisy of all WP admins, but this was a terrible block.

rating: 2

• How could anyone with a brain in their head think it was ok to issue a block like this?

rating: 2

Possible trolling

• Your comments look more like trolling to me.

rating: 1

• Stop trolling or I will find an admin to block you.

rating: 3

• All I can say about this user is "obvious troll is obvious".

rating: 3

• Go troll somewhere else.

rating: 2

• Somebody block this troll so those of us that are here in good faith can continue without them.

rating: 3

removal of comments

(Assume all removals were done by a single user and are not part of a suppression action for privacy, libel, etc)

• Comment removed from conversation with edit summary "removed off topic trolling"

rating: 3

• Comment removed from a conversation and replaced with <redacted> or {{RPA}}

rating: 3

• Entire discussion closed and/or collapsed using {{hat}} or other such formatting

rating: 1

• Comment removed from a conversation and replaced with "redacted twattery, don't post here again" with posting users signature still attached

rating: 3

• Comment removed from conversation and replaced with File:DoNotFeedTroll.svg

rating: 3

Enforcement scenarios

The general idea that Wikipedians should try to treat each other with a minimum of dignity and respect is widely accepted. Where we seem to have a serious problem is the enforcement or lack thereof of this ideal. This section will submit various scenarios and ask to you to suggest what an appropriate response would be. Possible options include:

• ignoring it
• warning the users involved
• WP:RFC, WP:ANI, or other community discussions,
• blocking, either indefinitely or for a set period of time
• topic or interaction banning
• Any other response you feel would be appropriate

Please bear in mind that what is being asked for is not what you believe would happen but what you believe should happen.

Scenario 1

Two users are in a dispute regarding the name of a particular article on a geographic region. The debate is long and convoluted, and the motivations of the two users unclear to those unfamiliar with the topic. They have not used any form of dispute resolution to resolve the content dispute. They have not edit warred in the article but the discussion on the talk page has gotten extremely long and seems to be devolving into the users accusing one another of having ethnic/nationalist motivations. One users has said "You only believe that because you were educated in the Fubarian school system which filled your head with their lies." To which the other user replies "That is exactly what I would expect from someone who live in Kerzbleckistan. Everyone knows that Fubaritol has always been part of our great empire. Only Kerzblecki fat heads believe it isn't. "

• Response:

Scenario 2

A long term user is blocked for edit warring. The proof that they did edit war is clear and obvious. On their talk page they are hosting a discussion regarding the block but are not formally appealing it using the unblock template. The blocking admin, seeing this discussion of their actions, attempts to explain that they are not making a value judgement on the appropriateness of the edits, just doing their job by enforcing the edit warring policy. The blocked user removes the admins actual comments but leaves their signature attached to the phrase "asshattery removed". Several of the blocked users friends comment on what a dumb block it is, how the blocking admin is a disgrace, that they should be desysopped, and sp on. The blocking admin comments again, asking that they either be allowed to participate in the discussion or that their comments and all discussion of them be removed entirely, not replaced with an insult with his signature attached to it. The blocked user again removes the admin's comments and adds the same insulting phrase in their place.

• Response

Scenario 3

A user is apparently an expert in the field of eighteenth-century horse drawn carriages. Practically every word Wikipedia has on this subject was written by them. Their content contributions are generally above reproach. Unfortunately they are also extremely abrasive in interpersonal conversations. They routinely tell any user who disagrees with them to fuck off, that they were obviously educated in a barn, that their ignorance is matched only by what a douchebag they are, and so forth. They also exhibit a tendency to actually be on the correct side of an argument when they are at their most abrasive. They apparently believe that this excuses their condescension and insults. One such incident is brought up at WP:ANI. It is approximately the fifteenth time such an incident has occurred. Again, the user is making excellent content contributions and is probably right as to the facts of the actual dispute, but they have verbally abused the user who disagrees with them, insulting their intelligence and using profanity. An admin decides to block them for chronic incivility about three hours into the conversation at the noticeboard.

• Response

The blocking admin should explain to the I utterly hate the word "victim" in this context that sometimes the so-called "aggressor" is just a son of a bitch sometimes; we're sorry, but sometimes people are assholes, and this particular asshole happens to be right this time. The "aggressor" should be unblocked after a few hours, with no expectation of 1) any legitimate grievance against the blocking admin or 2) any continuation of the discussion that led to the block; and the "victim" should be encouraged to either move to another topic area or bone up better on this one. It's not an ideal solution, but nothing ever is.

Scenario 4

Users A and B are in a dispute. They have already stated their positions many times each. As previously uninvolved users begin commenting on the situation user A stops commenting on the relevant talk page. User B opens a thread on user A's user talk page relating to the dispute and challenging user A's position. User A posts a reply indicating they feel they have stated their position enough times and they do not see any purpose in continuing. User B replies, asking for more details about some aspect of the dispute. User A closes the discussion on their talk page and in both a closing comment and their edit summary they say "User B please stop posting here." User B posts again anyway. User A removes their comments and in their edit summary they write "Stay the fuck off my fucking talk page, LIKE I SAID ALREADY."

• Response

None necessary that I see.

Scenario 5

A user is unfailingly civil in their on-wiki interactions with other users. They have never been blocked. Yet it is discovered that on an off-wiki forum dedicated to discussing Wikipedia they constantly make grossly insulting profane remarks about other WP users. Another user emails them asking about this discrepancy, and they receive an email reply through the Wikipedia email system that is equally insulting and profane. When the issue is brought up at WP:ANI the user is again perfectly polite. They openly acknowledge that they are in fact the user making the comments on the off-wiki forum, and that they sent an insulting email. They feel none of that is relevant as their on-wiki communication has been above reproach.

• Response

This seems to be another question entirely. We would do best here to keep these civility questions and thought experiments limited to on-wiki conduct, and then later decide more broadly the extent to which ALL off-wiki conduct (not just that re: WP:CIVIL) is fair game for on-wiki enforcement (to whatever extent this requires changing from the status quo).

Scenario 6

(Please bear in mind that this is a hypothetical scenario, not a description of the current situation)

The Wikipedia community is in a time of crisis. Arguments about civility are leading to more and more disruption and the project seems in danger of losing many long time contributors as a result. In desperation, the community decides to appoint one user to modify WP:CIVIL in any way they see fit in order to resolve these issues and restore order. In their wisdom they select you as that person.

• Response

Not sure where to begin here. Let's start, arbitrarily, with the word "crisis." Some people see a crisis around every corner; others do not acknowledge threats until they themselves are drowning (or homeless, or shot, or captured, or insert whatever other shrill metaphor you like here). I can't see where there could be a crisis about civility without a good deal of it being caused by personal attacks, which are more blatant, much less morally ambiguous, and much less likely to lead to blaming the victim (if "victims" of incivility there be).

But OK, I'll play. In the ludicrous situation where I am given the keys to the Edsel that is WP:CIVIL, I write at the very top of the page the following disclaimer:

Before taking any action or making any response based on what you think is another user's incivility, PLEASE consider growing a thicker skin first. While we cannot, and do not wish to, foster an environment indistinguishable from the more disgusting parts of the broader internet, sometimes shit happens and psychologically healthy people have to learn to let things go. If we placed a higher priority on not offending people in a kindergarten-safe space than we did on getting cold hard facts with well-sourced citations, pretty soon we wouldn't have an encyclopedia. In the high levels of any organization that has ever accomplished anything, sometimes some people have gotten their feelings hurt. While the community may be forced eventually to determine that someone who is constantly uncivil to other users is NOT HERE to build an encyclopedia, please consider that if you find yourself constantly offended so badly that you cannot focus on articles, you may not be suited for a collaborative project such as this one. Nothing here is intended to denigrate your feelings, but on the internet as in all walks of life, sometimes less than ideal things happen, and the best thing is to just move on. You won't be telling your grandkids about it either way.

Comments

The single most ticklish part of this entire discussion is what to do about highly competent content contributors who are sometimes assholes. What I would like to see is no sanctions for mere incivility (personal attacks are something different), and whenever User:X complains about User:Y's conduct, if Y actually was uncivil, have some respected editor say something like, "Yeah, sorry about that, User:Y is just a dick sometimes. If you still think he's wrong about Article:P, just find some RSs that support your thesis. If your sources actually are reliable and he's still being a dick, then that means he's moved from WP:DICK to WP:TROLL/WP:NOTHERE and we don't stand for that here. If your sources are crap, though, we're certainly not going to punish him for being right. It may be tough to swallow, and we're sorry about that, but these things happen sometimes."

This is after all the internet. Sometimes a thick skin is required in real life; often a thick skin is required online. People should not have a free hand to be assholes to each other; but enforcement of anti-asshole laws is often so small-minded as to border on asshole behavior itself. And we sure as shit must not reward people for getting their better-equipped opponents blocked or topic-banned, leaving our articles open to incompetent (or worse) editing. Our crowdsourcing model just isn't yet good enough to justify punishing good editors who happen to get into verbal scrapes with inexperienced (or worse) editors.