On 1/15/07, Pilotguy pilotguy.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Sorry, this is not a place for you to play around Chris. This is a serious project and we have serious work to do here. We do not have time for all the nonsense that goes on these days. What one may view as "incivilty" may be viewed by another as an entirely different thing. The point is simply, to cool down and keep things serious here. We're not here to entertain people.
On 1/15/07, Mark Ryan ultrablue@gmail.com wrote:
I certainly did not expect this issue to be taken to the mailing list itself. Because you took the issue to the mailing list, I shall respond to you on the mailing list.
The best reaction would have been to reply with something to the effect of 'okay, I won't call people's arguments "b.s." or suggest that they be "taken out and shot"'. Not to turn around and claim that I am equally uncivil (for violating the "etiquette" which somehow demands that people who do the wrong thing not be told they are doing so), humourless, suffering from some sort of psychosis, and a dick.
I instituted a rule of civility on this mailing list a couple of years ago in response to some extremely abusive posts by someone who demanded to know what rule they had broken to get themselves moderated on the list. It does not follow [[WP:CIVIL]] to the letter (in fact I don't think I've even read that wiki page completely). It follows common sense (specifically, the common sense of the list administrators).
If you cannot see that calling people's arguments 'specious' and 'b.s.', and suggesting that the founder of such arguments should be 'taken out and shot' can be interpreted to be personal attacks, then I'm not sure anything I say to you is going to do any good.
~Mark Ryan WikiEN-l mailing list admin
P.S. Your emails are breaking mailing list threads in Gmail.
On 16/01/07, Christopher Thieme cdthieme@gmail.com wrote:
I just got admonished by "Mark" for being "uncivil" on this list with
regard
to a comment I made in my initial message on "Moving the Main Page."
I don't think I was. At least, from how I read the strict construction
of
the policy, I didn't say anything ruled to be incivility by the dictates of WP:CIVIL.
And going back to my post on what psychosis might be hidden in some of users, I forgot one of the biggest problems underneath the surface of Wikipedia...
We have too many humorless people.
Humorless people who enforce WP:CIVIL thinking that something benign and rhetorical and not even mentioned in WP:CIVIL is "incivility."
And those who don't realize that it's incivility to admonish others for acting with "incivility."
Here's probably the only circumstance where I'll state that WP:DICK and WP:FUCK are not a cop-out.
Regards, Christopher D. Thieme
P.S. I know I'm not alone in saying that I have considered leaving
Wikipedia
on several occasions not because of incivility or personal attacks, but because there are people who can't and refuse to take an obvious
joke. The
humorless people will ruin Wikipedia before those who aren't prim,
proper
and civil.
I would like to both agree and disagree; this should not be so serious that people cannot lighten up. Workplaces and projects with low communal humor do terrible things to their participants.
That said, I don't think that the comments which started this all came across as funny, I agree that they came across as abusive, and whether we have a laugh from time to time or not, abusive is a bad idea.