In other words, as a community we create a climate where poor behaviour is
the most effective means to motivate needed changes, where our policies and
practices can be used as weapons both to support negative behaviour and also
to "punish" positive behaviour, where the boundaries of unacceptable
behaviour vary widely dependent on a large number of factors and enforcement
is extraordinarily inconsistent, and where we openly claim to follow a
behavioural model that *sounds* progressive but is in reality possibly even
more nasty than our own.

On reading far, far back into archives, it appears that "incivility" has
been a problem almost since the inception of the project.  In the early days
of the project, blocks and bans were almost non-existent, and huge amounts
of time were invested in trying to "correct" behaviour (considerably more
per capita than today, the community cuts its losses much earlier now than
in 2002-04). In fact, blocks and  bans were very rare until the arrival of
extensive trolling and vandalism in 2005-06, which led to the appointment of
a massive number of administrators in 2006-07 in order to address these
problems.

None of this speaks to solutions, I know.  But it is important to put the
discussion into a more historical context, and to recognize the flashpoints
where incivility is often identified.

Risker/Anne