Ryan, you are a kind and good person. So forgive me for having to be truthful here. 

Not once in the history of Wikipedia has a 24-hour block for civility problems ever resulted in the blocked editor becoming more civil.  Instead, it is almost guaranteed to result in their being *less* civil. I don't even need to know the name of the editor you blocked to know that with each subsequent civility block, he's become more uncivil.    The reason is, I'm afraid, terribly obvious.  You've treated him like a five-year-old and made him sit on the naughty step - and let's be honest, that barely works with five-year-olds.  Treating an adult in that way can be counted on to have an even more dramatically perverse effect than it does on a child.

A six-month civility block may be appropriate, with a clear directive that the block could be extended promptly with return to treating people poorly. But a six month block for this kind of behaviour is much easier to defend than a 24 hour one, given the fact that short blocks for civility problems create more incivility than they've ever solved.

Now, I won't be very popular for saying this.  Yes, I think that civility is important. But attempting to discipline adults in the same way as small children is pretty uncivil too.  If the behavior is that bad, then the person needs to be shown the door, not the naughty step.


Risker/Anne

On 26 October 2011 01:06, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Earlier today, a long-standing editor was reported to AN/I for making
personal attacks. The specific attacks were the following two posts:
"You simply display your ignorance."
"Please carry on, so everyone can see what an ignorant arse you are."

As I had recently warned this same user for making personal attacks, and
they have a long history of attacking other editors (blocked 4 times
previously for personal attacks), I put a 24 hour block on their account
for violating WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA.

Even though this seems like a pretty minor slap on the wrist, my block
was quickly undone by another admin and a slew of editors then
vociferously attacked me for blocking (calling me a "petty tyrant", a
"wannabe big-dick admin", etc.).

I looked more carefully at the editor's block log and noticed that every
one of their blocks for personal attacks had been undone by another
admin (usually without much delay).

This seems to say a lot about the current culture of en.wiki. Namely,
that WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA are not taken seriously by our community (or at
least a large percentage). As civility seems to be a recurring issue in
gendergap discussions (and Sarah's recent survey), I was wondering what
people's thoughts on this issue are. Has en.wiki become a toxic
environment or am I just overreacting to normal behavior?

Ryan Kaldari

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