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Some 3 sections recently removed from WP:CIVIL went to a new essay, Wikipedia:How to be civil which now appears in the See also section. This material is not gone, but it needs work. -- NewbyG ( talk) 23:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
The sections spun out to the essay have been restored to the project page. [1] Either way could work still. -- NewbyG ( talk) 01:05, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
The current article seems to be a patchwork of ideas. The sections are:
I would suggest a more organized story something like:
The definition of incivility
Common circumstances of incivility
How Wikipedia is harmed by incivility
Responses to incivility
Things to avoid when dealing with incivility
The examples should be embedded in the section they apply to. Please feel free to edit this. It is only a suggestion. Tom Butler ( talk) 00:17, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
I think it would be best if I did not host an article on wiki policy. I believe that one of the editors most vocally opposed to the civility article counts me amongst "certain people" whom he seems to believe live only to torment him. [3]
Many of you have complained about content disputes spilling over to this article. Moving a rewrite to one of my pages would only aggravate the situation. Thus you see the effect of "poisoned atmosphere" and driving away editors. It is time for me to concentrate on a new research project. We are funded now, you see [4]. Tom Butler ( talk) 17:28, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
New section. [5] DIFF -- NewbyG ( talk) 00:33, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
[6] (Restoring April 28 version)
[7] restoring 'User pages'. -- NewbyG ( talk) 11:15, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
While I agree Racism, sexism, and the like is a biggie, aren't these two statements approximately the same, except that the first is directed racism/sexism/etc, and the second directed or general racism/sexism/etc? Seems like they should be combined. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 01:56, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Is there some argument in favor of rudeness that I missed? We already have enough problems with editors pretending they don't understand what civility is. Let's not make it easier for them. Editors at Wikipedia should not be rude. Dlabtot ( talk) 02:28, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it means we should not be rude. However, I think "rudeness" is yet another word which should be defined closely. So why use it if we don't need it? "atmosphere of conflict and stress" is enough, and includes rudeness and more than rudeness, including tendentious editing. I don't see a need for another word in there.
The word "rudeness" is a fairly recent addition. I don't think it's needed. However, "Our code of civility states plainly that people must act with civility toward one another." is longstanding [8] and I think it makes things clearer and should be kept. —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 03:09, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Should Wikipedia's Civility Policy urge editors to avoid rudeness? Dlabtot ( talk) 02:40, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Minor incivility, medium incivility, major incivility? What are these but subjective value judgments about which there will always be debates? We ask our users to behave civilly, and we say that it is not an option but an expected behavior, period. Bust the line and you will get dinged. Is that simple. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:51, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Being civil essentially equals not being rude, and anyone with any common sense will avoid being rude. It's in the spirit of the policy, and you could also say it's in hte word.-- Serviam ( talk) 21:15, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
I think this is rather repetitive, and the second paragraph almost immediately says "After that, we request a reasonable degree of civility towards others. "Civility" is a principle that we can apply to online conduct, and is a reasonable way to distinguish acceptable conduct from unacceptable conduct." - which seems to me a much plainer statement of the matter. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 21:12, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
I think some extremely rude users are reasonably civil. Indeed, I've never seen a case of incivility that wasn't reasonable. That's because civility and incivility are emotional evaluations. How about just changing it to "don't cause so much offense that some admin who likes the other guy better will come in and have an excuse to block yo ass?" How about "Make sure that you're telling the truth before you call someone something which you know is going to cause them to report you" and then we can set up a jury to decide if the insult was true or not. Or maybe we should first define "reasonable," and then define civil around it. You know, have a Vulcan Civility Standard. Or maybe, just maybe, we should just stick with "be civil." —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 23:58, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
An interesting way to win a content dispute is to try to take out an editor with an opposing view via wiki-legal action. This is an important form of incivility harassment in that it is one editor threatening another by, in essence saying, "If you don't agree with me I'm going to tell the teacher."
You all should know that Shoemaker's Holiday is in the process of "telling the teacher" on Martinphi [10]. He has also accused Olive of being Martin's meat puppet--without offering evidence. Tom Butler ( talk) 17:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I have restored (and edited and trimmed) this section from the original version of this page. I didn't bother to dig through difs and find out when it was removed. IMO the civility policy has been steadily creeping in the wrong direction - rather than applying it to thwir own actions and trying to be civil, and attempting to calm, rather than escalate, uncivil situations, people have been using CIVIL as a stick to attack others with. This is the Wrong Direction. I welcome suggestions for getting this moving in a more productive direction. KillerChihuahua ?!? 12:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
Sure we do - right off the top of my head, NPA - instructs editors to comment on the content, not the contributor. KillerChihuahua ?!? 13:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I've been bold and added a little bit to the lead about scope. Let's see how it holds up against other editors. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 17:24, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I removed the new "accusations of lies" bullet point. This sort of rule would prevent speaking plainly about real problems, and simply would promote camouflaged speech. Accusations of lies, especially when well-founded and fact-supported, are not uncivil. They are, invariably, a reflection of undesirable behavior: either that of the accuser, or that of the accused. But this edit here makes an awfully incorrect prejudgment. Hence my removal of it. Antelan talk 05:39, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I think the addition of "taken out of context" to "Insisting that an editor be sanctioned for a single minor offense... is also disruptive, and may result in you being warned or blocked." has the effect of implying that in context, it must not be an offense at all. I don't think that's true - any behaviour that insists on a punishment far out of line with the offense is disruptive. I've tried a compromise by changing "single" to "isolated", since I think "isolated" gets the intent of the "taken out of context" bit without going further. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 16:33, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I've converted the section on Wikipedia:Civility#The_community.27s_role_in_reducing_incivility (Well, that's what it's called now...) into prose, and expanded it a little bit. I think it's a lot clearer now. We are writing here for users, not admins, right? Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 01:13, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
.. to massive changes to a policy page. If editors want to change consensus, go slow and request abundant feedback. jossi - 22:23, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Right. let me try to detail the only real sections:
This becomes
Several policies and guidelines seek to lessen the disruption and drama caused by incivility and
problems with editors not listening to each other. Policies such as our
No Personal Attack policy, and
Harassment policy set firm lines in the sand, which anyone crossing cannot expect to escape retribution for.
The three-revert rule seeks to place firm limits on
edit-warring.
Blocks allow disruptive editors to be prevented from editing, and topic bans allow otherwise productive editors to be prevented from editing the few pages or topics which regularly incite them to disruptive behaviour.
For broader issues, page protection allows admins to stop editing on an article in heated and unproductive dispute (to allow editors time to calm down), and the the mediation cabal and other forms of dispute resolution exist to step in and attempt to solve the root of problems between editors, or suggest compromises.
Reasoning Surely this policy is not meant to be written solely for admins. By presenting it this way, we provide the same information in a more user-friendly way. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 00:16, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
The following is added to the start of the section
Where the incivil comment is yours, any of these options will help to reduce the impact:
Reasoning
Thre rest of the section is on removing others' comments. We surely want people tro deal with their own comments as well.
Shoemaker's Holiday (
talk)
00:16, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
The other changes were purely rearrangement of sections. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 00:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I couldn't really make sense of this sentence, so have removed it for now until someone can either explain it re add it with a context for meaning.( olive ( talk) 21:49, 24 May 2008 (UTC))
oops ... just in case you're wondering what the sentence actually is:( olive ( talk) 22:15, 24 May 2008 (UTC))
"it is not appropriate to make another editor appear to be more courteous than he truly is."
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 |
Some 3 sections recently removed from WP:CIVIL went to a new essay, Wikipedia:How to be civil which now appears in the See also section. This material is not gone, but it needs work. -- NewbyG ( talk) 23:16, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
The sections spun out to the essay have been restored to the project page. [1] Either way could work still. -- NewbyG ( talk) 01:05, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
The current article seems to be a patchwork of ideas. The sections are:
I would suggest a more organized story something like:
The definition of incivility
Common circumstances of incivility
How Wikipedia is harmed by incivility
Responses to incivility
Things to avoid when dealing with incivility
The examples should be embedded in the section they apply to. Please feel free to edit this. It is only a suggestion. Tom Butler ( talk) 00:17, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
I think it would be best if I did not host an article on wiki policy. I believe that one of the editors most vocally opposed to the civility article counts me amongst "certain people" whom he seems to believe live only to torment him. [3]
Many of you have complained about content disputes spilling over to this article. Moving a rewrite to one of my pages would only aggravate the situation. Thus you see the effect of "poisoned atmosphere" and driving away editors. It is time for me to concentrate on a new research project. We are funded now, you see [4]. Tom Butler ( talk) 17:28, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
New section. [5] DIFF -- NewbyG ( talk) 00:33, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
[6] (Restoring April 28 version)
[7] restoring 'User pages'. -- NewbyG ( talk) 11:15, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
While I agree Racism, sexism, and the like is a biggie, aren't these two statements approximately the same, except that the first is directed racism/sexism/etc, and the second directed or general racism/sexism/etc? Seems like they should be combined. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 01:56, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Is there some argument in favor of rudeness that I missed? We already have enough problems with editors pretending they don't understand what civility is. Let's not make it easier for them. Editors at Wikipedia should not be rude. Dlabtot ( talk) 02:28, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it means we should not be rude. However, I think "rudeness" is yet another word which should be defined closely. So why use it if we don't need it? "atmosphere of conflict and stress" is enough, and includes rudeness and more than rudeness, including tendentious editing. I don't see a need for another word in there.
The word "rudeness" is a fairly recent addition. I don't think it's needed. However, "Our code of civility states plainly that people must act with civility toward one another." is longstanding [8] and I think it makes things clearer and should be kept. —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 03:09, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Should Wikipedia's Civility Policy urge editors to avoid rudeness? Dlabtot ( talk) 02:40, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Minor incivility, medium incivility, major incivility? What are these but subjective value judgments about which there will always be debates? We ask our users to behave civilly, and we say that it is not an option but an expected behavior, period. Bust the line and you will get dinged. Is that simple. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:51, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Being civil essentially equals not being rude, and anyone with any common sense will avoid being rude. It's in the spirit of the policy, and you could also say it's in hte word.-- Serviam ( talk) 21:15, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
I think this is rather repetitive, and the second paragraph almost immediately says "After that, we request a reasonable degree of civility towards others. "Civility" is a principle that we can apply to online conduct, and is a reasonable way to distinguish acceptable conduct from unacceptable conduct." - which seems to me a much plainer statement of the matter. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 21:12, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
I think some extremely rude users are reasonably civil. Indeed, I've never seen a case of incivility that wasn't reasonable. That's because civility and incivility are emotional evaluations. How about just changing it to "don't cause so much offense that some admin who likes the other guy better will come in and have an excuse to block yo ass?" How about "Make sure that you're telling the truth before you call someone something which you know is going to cause them to report you" and then we can set up a jury to decide if the insult was true or not. Or maybe we should first define "reasonable," and then define civil around it. You know, have a Vulcan Civility Standard. Or maybe, just maybe, we should just stick with "be civil." —— Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 23:58, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
An interesting way to win a content dispute is to try to take out an editor with an opposing view via wiki-legal action. This is an important form of incivility harassment in that it is one editor threatening another by, in essence saying, "If you don't agree with me I'm going to tell the teacher."
You all should know that Shoemaker's Holiday is in the process of "telling the teacher" on Martinphi [10]. He has also accused Olive of being Martin's meat puppet--without offering evidence. Tom Butler ( talk) 17:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I have restored (and edited and trimmed) this section from the original version of this page. I didn't bother to dig through difs and find out when it was removed. IMO the civility policy has been steadily creeping in the wrong direction - rather than applying it to thwir own actions and trying to be civil, and attempting to calm, rather than escalate, uncivil situations, people have been using CIVIL as a stick to attack others with. This is the Wrong Direction. I welcome suggestions for getting this moving in a more productive direction. KillerChihuahua ?!? 12:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
Sure we do - right off the top of my head, NPA - instructs editors to comment on the content, not the contributor. KillerChihuahua ?!? 13:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I've been bold and added a little bit to the lead about scope. Let's see how it holds up against other editors. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 17:24, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I removed the new "accusations of lies" bullet point. This sort of rule would prevent speaking plainly about real problems, and simply would promote camouflaged speech. Accusations of lies, especially when well-founded and fact-supported, are not uncivil. They are, invariably, a reflection of undesirable behavior: either that of the accuser, or that of the accused. But this edit here makes an awfully incorrect prejudgment. Hence my removal of it. Antelan talk 05:39, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I think the addition of "taken out of context" to "Insisting that an editor be sanctioned for a single minor offense... is also disruptive, and may result in you being warned or blocked." has the effect of implying that in context, it must not be an offense at all. I don't think that's true - any behaviour that insists on a punishment far out of line with the offense is disruptive. I've tried a compromise by changing "single" to "isolated", since I think "isolated" gets the intent of the "taken out of context" bit without going further. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 16:33, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I've converted the section on Wikipedia:Civility#The_community.27s_role_in_reducing_incivility (Well, that's what it's called now...) into prose, and expanded it a little bit. I think it's a lot clearer now. We are writing here for users, not admins, right? Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 01:13, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
.. to massive changes to a policy page. If editors want to change consensus, go slow and request abundant feedback. jossi - 22:23, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Right. let me try to detail the only real sections:
This becomes
Several policies and guidelines seek to lessen the disruption and drama caused by incivility and
problems with editors not listening to each other. Policies such as our
No Personal Attack policy, and
Harassment policy set firm lines in the sand, which anyone crossing cannot expect to escape retribution for.
The three-revert rule seeks to place firm limits on
edit-warring.
Blocks allow disruptive editors to be prevented from editing, and topic bans allow otherwise productive editors to be prevented from editing the few pages or topics which regularly incite them to disruptive behaviour.
For broader issues, page protection allows admins to stop editing on an article in heated and unproductive dispute (to allow editors time to calm down), and the the mediation cabal and other forms of dispute resolution exist to step in and attempt to solve the root of problems between editors, or suggest compromises.
Reasoning Surely this policy is not meant to be written solely for admins. By presenting it this way, we provide the same information in a more user-friendly way. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 00:16, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
The following is added to the start of the section
Where the incivil comment is yours, any of these options will help to reduce the impact:
Reasoning
Thre rest of the section is on removing others' comments. We surely want people tro deal with their own comments as well.
Shoemaker's Holiday (
talk)
00:16, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
The other changes were purely rearrangement of sections. Shoemaker's Holiday ( talk) 00:19, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I couldn't really make sense of this sentence, so have removed it for now until someone can either explain it re add it with a context for meaning.( olive ( talk) 21:49, 24 May 2008 (UTC))
oops ... just in case you're wondering what the sentence actually is:( olive ( talk) 22:15, 24 May 2008 (UTC))
"it is not appropriate to make another editor appear to be more courteous than he truly is."