On 1/30/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 1/30/07 8:24 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
To amplify something from my earlier comment, no forum which is a complete anarchy on the Internet survives. This is true of other forms of machine-mediated discussion such as IM, IRC, Usenet, BBSes, email, etc.
There has to be a social contract, preferably explicit, but implicit if not otherwise.
People tend to both be more aggressive in online discussions and to take offense more easily; the lack of visual and audio clues in both directions of a conversation is something which humans adapt in odd ways to. The moderating influence of nonverbal communications falls right away.
This is in no way local to Wikipedia; it's generic to online text-based communications. Combining immediacy with text-only format causes the problems.
George,
First, "civility" is a highly subjective thing.
To some extent, yes. But can be subject to widely held common agreement.
And, regardless of the setting, is being able to speak the words you want to speak really anarchy?
If we are face to face, and I don't like what you are saying, I have the right to leave. If it's written, I have the right to tear it up.
That to me is civil.
You always have the right to stop reading a Wikipedia talk page, email, or such.
The problem is that those forums constitute the only mechanisms by which nearly all decision-making happens in Wikipedia. You can't go "I'm going to go over to that room there, with these other people, and stop listening to the guy shouting into the megaphone". There's only one "room" per topic (or, a small set, of meta-topic rooms plus the right one). If someone's abusing others, their only options short of some form of community imposed censorship are to stop participating.
Every forum I have seen people try to build online, without exception, has failed and fallen apart if there wasn't a mechanism by which abusive contributors could be exiled. There have also been a fair number of places where tin-pot dictators stifle discussion - there's no doubt that there's a continuum from undercontrol to overcontrol. Wikipedia is operating comfortably in the middle ground, which is in my experience and opinion the only place that an online community can survive.
There have been various academic studies on the topic of interpersonal communications and community standards online; I don't have convenient citations, but it's out there. They have observed the same thing.