Kaldari, I think you and I are very much of the same mind on the importance of civility in general. However, I am skeptical about inserting a civility requirement into the Terms of Use.

I think it's important to keep in mind that the primary purpose of this document is to establish bright lines [1] that would define where the *Wikimedia Foundation* (as distinct from the community) can or should take action. Just because something is not present in the TOU does not mean it is unimportant. Geoff Brigham (the WMF general counsel, who is leading the TOU rewrite process) said one of the key goals of the TOU is to reduce potential litigation costs by establishing a clear framework that makes it possible to settle disputes out of court, rather than going to trial.

Civility is perhaps the most important ground rule of a collaborative project, but I don't think it belongs in the TOU. To quote from the TOU draft, "The community undertakes the critical function of creating and enforcing policies on Projects." I think that's the right way to go about it: the TOU should create and support an expectation that the community is the entity empowered to guide the projects, not the WMF.

I think that section 10 covers extreme cases pretty nicely: "In an unusual case, the need may arise or the community may ask us to address an especially problematic user because of significant Project disturbance or dangerous behavior." It establishes that this is the exception, not the rule; it sets "disturbance or danger" as the bar that will invoke WMF intervention, not mere incivility.

I think civility is one of the main things we should be working to improve, but am skeptical about the TOU (or the threat of WMF intervention) as the appropriate tool to do so.

-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] on English Wikipedia etc.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright-line_rule

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 12:00 PM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.orgwrote:

There is a discussion at the talk page for the new Terms of Use about removing mention of civility:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Terms_of_use#Civility_and_related_minef...

As I believe that civility is an important issue for retaining new editors, I'm interested in what others on this list think of the idea.

Ryan Kaldari

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