I agree if a person enjoys bullying, they are unlikely to self-correct. But
an "interaction sentiment tool" makes it easier for the community to spot
these people, and look more closely into what they are doing. Then try to
get them to change, and <rinse and repeat> until such time as they ban them.
My comment about self-correcting behaviour is about people who don't intend
to be a bully but behave abrasively without realising it. We have a lot of
battle-weary editors out there who have just seen one too many vandalism,
one too many blatant self-promotional article, etc and they become inclined
to just shoot down "yet another" with increasing reluctance to check out the
merits of the specific case, or to be terse and unhelpful in a Talk message
etc. We've probably all had those moments of finding some new user's
contribution that needs so much work to improve and thought "I'm just too
busy, I don't have time to educate yet another one who probably won't stick
around anyway, I'll just delete it and move on". I believe that most of our
community does not intend to be a "bully" but may not be aware that is how
they might seem to others at times. Letting people be aware that their
interaction style is exhibiting higher than average "negative sentiment"
*is* likely to change the behaviour of that group.
Obviously if we were to put such a tool out there, I'd suggest adding some
general advice about what you might do if your score is "pretty negative",
e.g.
* think about the choice of words you use, don't use words like ..., instead
use ...
* are you terse or just point to a policy without being specific about your
concerns
* could you have suggested a solution rather than just pointing out a
problem?
* is it time for a wiki-break to recharge your batteries?
The sentiment score is likely to be generated from assessment of a number of
elements of the observed interactions, so, for an individual looking at
their score, it might be possible to make specific suggestions based on
specific component scores, e.g. pointing out specific "abrasive" words being
used regularly and suggesting alternatives.
Here's a suggestion for something a lot simpler than the "international
sentiment tool". Just produce some word clouds for:
* a user's edit summaries
* a user's edits on article Talk pages
* a user's edits on other people's User Talk pages
* a user's edits on their own User Talk page
What does that show us about people?
Kerry