Hello,
Recently the Mayor of a small town in Texas tried to pass an ordinance making it against the law to use the ³N² word within the city limits. Fine: $500 for each offense.
He went into this believing the ordinance¹s passage would be a slam dunk it wasn¹t. The vast majority of the multiracial citizens of the town protested to such a degree that he finally gave up and abandoned the idea. The citizens' basic argument: what word is next?
I bring this up because, when I first came to WP, the one policy I found most disturbing was the one concerning ³incivility². Most especially the practice of banning (punishing) members of the WP community for using words and phrases considered by whoever made up the policy to be ³offensive². This, to me, made WP free in every thing but speech.
I know this issue has been touched upon several times in this Mailing List just since I started participating in it, but I wanted to speak directly to the policy and its practice at this time.
If a particular word or phrase offends you hit delete and move on.
What are your thoughts and feelings about this?
Marc Riddell
On 1/30/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I bring this up because, when I first came to WP, the one policy I found most disturbing was the one concerning ³incivility². Most especially the practice of banning (punishing) members of the WP community for using words and phrases considered by whoever made up the policy to be ³offensive². This, to me, made WP free in every thing but speech.
I know this issue has been touched upon several times in this Mailing List just since I started participating in it, but I wanted to speak directly to the policy and its practice at this time.
If a particular word or phrase offends you hit delete and move on.
While I am a passionate advocate for free speech in the public sphere, Wikipedia is a private space dedicated to a specific goal. Allowing juvenile incivility, namecalling, racial slurs, etc. would be detrimental to that goal. It only makes sense to insulate as best we can productive contributors from moronic nonsense and harassment so they can continue to be productive contributors.
Rob wrote:
On 1/30/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I bring this up because, when I first came to WP, the one policy I found most disturbing was the one concerning "incivility". Most especially the practice of banning (punishing) members of the WP community for using words and phrases considered by whoever made up the policy to be "offensive".
If a particular word or phrase offends you hit delete and move on.
While I am a passionate advocate for free speech in the public sphere, Wikipedia is a private space dedicated to a specific goal.
And in fact the right answer here is not even to concede that Wikipedia isn't free or is censored, but rather, to observe that offensiveness is largely orthogonal to word usage. We do care about offensiveness; we don't generally care about specific words.
I can say the mere words "God damn", "fuck", and "cunt" here (or on a talk page) with little fear of being censured or banned. But if I were to say that Rob's mother is a deity-forsaken substance-abusing prostitute who regularly has carnal knowledge of sailors, winos, and goats, that's a horribly offensive thing to say regardless of the words I couch the statement in.
If someone gets banned for being offensive, they're banned for being offensive, not for using certain words. (But with that said, and although I just said the issues are orthogonal, for many people, and in particular for the people who are regularly horribly offensive and who do deserve censure, the two are of course pretty highly correlated.)
Wikipedia's freedom of speech is just about like Usenet's: you can say (post) anything you can get away with. (But that doesn't mean you can get away with anything and everything. And it's an imperfect policy, for one thing because different people are able to get away with different things. But like it or not, that's about the way it is right now.)
Steve Summit wrote:
Rob wrote:
On 1/30/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I bring this up because, when I first came to WP, the one policy I found most disturbing was the one concerning "incivility". Most especially the practice of banning (punishing) members of the WP community for using words and phrases considered by whoever made up the policy to be "offensive".
If a particular word or phrase offends you hit delete and move on.
While I am a passionate advocate for free speech in the public sphere, Wikipedia is a private space dedicated to a specific goal.
And in fact the right answer here is not even to concede that Wikipedia isn't free or is censored, but rather, to observe that offensiveness is largely orthogonal to word usage. We do care about offensiveness; we don't generally care about specific words.
I can say the mere words "God damn", "fuck", and "cunt" here (or on a talk page) with little fear of being censured or banned. But if I were to say that Rob's mother is a deity-forsaken substance-abusing prostitute who regularly has carnal knowledge of sailors, winos, and goats, that's a horribly offensive thing to say regardless of the words I couch the statement in.
If someone gets banned for being offensive, they're banned for being offensive, not for using certain words. (But with that said, and although I just said the issues are orthogonal, for many people, and in particular for the people who are regularly horribly offensive and who do deserve censure, the two are of course pretty highly correlated.)
Wikipedia's freedom of speech is just about like Usenet's: you can say (post) anything you can get away with. (But that doesn't mean you can get away with anything and everything. And it's an imperfect policy, for one thing because different people are able to get away with different things. But like it or not, that's about the way it is right now.)
I have no problem with the use of spicy epithets on the mailing list, and would see no reason to be like television and ban the "seven words". Where I object is with the use of terms as a clear personal attack on someone, but I would still give a person time to cool off before making a big fuss about it.
The occasional use of spicy language as emphasis can create an impact, but when it's taken to excess such practice is counter-productive.
Ec
on 1/31/07 3:39 AM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I have no problem with the use of spicy epithets on the mailing list, and would see no reason to be like television and ban the "seven words". Where I object is with the use of terms as a clear personal attack on someone, but I would still give a person time to cool off before making a big fuss about it.
It's about intent. Is that intent to harm, or simply to grab your attention and make oneself absolutely clear?
Some find George Carlin intolerably offensive - I find him hilarious. Of course that may simply be a statement about me :-).
Marc Riddell
Marc Riddell wrote:
on 1/31/07 3:39 AM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I have no problem with the use of spicy epithets on the mailing list, and would see no reason to be like television and ban the "seven words". Where I object is with the use of terms as a clear personal attack on someone, but I would still give a person time to cool off before making a big fuss about it.
It's about intent. Is that intent to harm, or simply to grab your attention and make oneself absolutely clear?
Some find George Carlin intolerably offensive - I find him hilarious. Of course that may simply be a statement about me :-).
He must have done something right to be allowed to play the conductor on the children's series, "Shining Time Station."
Ec
On 1/31/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I bring this up because, when I first came to WP, the one policy I found most disturbing was the one concerning ³incivility². Most especially the practice of banning (punishing) members of the WP community for using words and phrases considered by whoever made up the policy to be ³offensive². This, to me, made WP free in every thing but speech.
You have precisely two rights as a Wikipedia user:
1. The right to vanish; 2. The right to fork.
There is no right to free speech on Wikipedia.
If a particular word or phrase offends you hit delete and move on.
What are your thoughts and feelings about this?
Members of the community will tend to DefendEachOther [1] when they are attacked. This is to be expected and encouraged. This explains why there is opposition to people who are not civil towards others.
A good metric for whether a statement is offensive is whether the statement offends anyone. If the community sees fit to defend itself against a particular instance of incivility, so be it.
-- (1) http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?DefendEachOther
PS, before anyone mentions the First Amendment to the US Constitution, please read and understand it. Wikipedia is not the United States Congress.
On 30/01/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
I bring this up because, when I first came to WP, the one policy I found most disturbing was the one concerning ³incivility². Most especially the practice of banning (punishing) members of the WP community for using words and phrases considered by whoever made up the policy to be ³offensive². This, to me, made WP free in every thing but speech.
The (conceptual) reasoning for a civility rule translates to:
"This is a collaborative project. Civility is needed in order to work collaboratively with others. Not being civil rules out effective collaboration; ruling out effective collaboration means you're not working for the good of the project"
Basically, if someone doesn't play nice, they're not helping the project - indeed, there's a good chance they're harming it, as a combative and offensive attitude drives off contributors faster than anything. And if they're not helping the project, well, please tell them to bugger off. (in as many words...)
"Free speech" is a misnomer. Sure, free speech is limited on Wikipedia by its groundrules - but we're virtually required to do so in order to keep the project on track. We don't let you post lengthy theoretical discussions of how you think you've proved the Riemann Hypothesis, for example. You can think whatever you want, you can publish whatever you want, you can say whatever you want. But we reserve the right to say "no, not here", same as the New York Times reserves the right to say "no, not in our pages".
If we're banning people over bad-word shibboleths - say, banned because they talked about a "fucking annoying" problem* - we have an issue, but the issue isn't "the policy is wrongheaded", the issue is "people are applying it wrongheadedly". That's a misapplication of the policy, which should deal with context and manifestations not with specific terminology - and there is a world of difference between "that might be construed as offensive" and "this person is being offensive".
Common sense is a precious, precious thing. If people need to use it more, please tell them...
on 1/30/07 12:18 PM, Andrew Gray at shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
The (conceptual) reasoning for a civility rule translates to:
"This is a collaborative project. Civility is needed in order to work collaboratively with others. Not being civil rules out effective collaboration; ruling out effective collaboration means you're not working for the good of the project"
Basically, if someone doesn't play nice, they're not helping the project - indeed, there's a good chance they're harming it, as a combative and offensive attitude drives off contributors faster than anything. And if they're not helping the project, well, please tell them to bugger off. (in as many words...)
WP and its various interaction pages is my first exposure to this type of dialogue between and among persons. The whole of my past experience has been, in person, face-to-face communication.
Yes, it¹s all about context. I can see being in a meeting about a particular issue, when two of the participants stray from the subject, and begin hurling personal attacks at each other that has nothing to do with the subject at hand. Their physical and verbal behavior is making it impossible for anyone else to be heard, and is, in fact, very much getting in the way of things. I can see turning to them and saying: ³If you¹re going to insist on that bullshit take it outside; it has no place here.²
But, in the context of WP, how does this apply? How does what two people say to each other on their personal Talk Pages disrupt the Project? For that matter, in that two-way conversation, if it is one person flailing at the other, can¹t that other person simply not respond? How does what one person writes in this Mailing List disrupt the progress of an issue being discussed? Simply ignore it or, as computer challenged as I am, even I know where the DELETE button is :-).
The only reason words are ever banned is out of fear of the consequence of their use.
Marc
Marc Riddell wrote:
But, in the context of WP, how does this apply? How does what two people say to each other on their personal Talk Pages disrupt the Project? For that matter, in that two-way conversation, if it is one person flailing at the other, can¹t that other person simply not respond? How does what one person writes in this Mailing List disrupt the progress of an issue being discussed? Simply ignore it or, as computer challenged as I am, even I know where the DELETE button is :-).
I suppose if someone had a note on their user page - "no need to be civil here", then it could be an exception to the general rule. I don't think there are very many people in that category though. One of the interesting aspects of online communication is that body language and nonverbal cues seem to be more important than anybody ever realized - misunderstandings in online interaction happen far more, and are more likely to spiral out of control. For instance, somebody could be saying something nasty-sounding in person, but they're smiling and relaxed while saying it, so you know they're probably leading up to a sardonic joke. Satire without a smiley face is routinely taken seriously, no matter how well-written. People who are good editors, but take other people's statement to heart, can get so upset that they no longer want to work in WP, and that's certainly a loss to the project. So the civility rule is partly about backing down to a level that reduces hurt and misunderstandings across a broad range of individuals.
The civility rule is also for one's own self-protection - everything you say online is publicly visible and recorded forever. I don't know about other people, but I've had things I've written online quoted back at me in job interviews - fortunately they were good things!
Stan
on 1/30/07 7:00 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
People who are good editors, but take other people's statement to heart, can get so upset that they no longer want to work in WP, and that's certainly a loss to the project. So the civility rule is partly about backing down to a level that reduces hurt and misunderstandings across a broad range of individuals.
Isn't this a rather paternalistic attitude? "We are censoring this for your protection" is the first reason given by powers that would be.
Marc
On 1/30/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 1/30/07 7:00 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
People who are good editors, but take other people's statement to heart, can get so upset that they no longer want to work in WP, and that's certainly a loss to the project. So the civility rule is partly about backing down to a level that reduces hurt and misunderstandings across a broad range of individuals.
Isn't this a rather paternalistic attitude? "We are censoring this for your protection" is the first reason given by powers that would be.
There's censorship, and then there's a social contract.
Civility should be about the social contract... we agree not to abuse each other in the course of discussing things about which we may disagree greatly.
If someone shows up who refuses to buy in to the social contract, then we can ask them to behave or in extremis to leave. No forum which is a complete anarchy survives.
George Herbert wrote:
On 1/30/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 1/30/07 7:00 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
People who are good editors, but take other people's statement to heart, can get so upset that they no longer want to work in WP, and that's certainly a loss to the project. So the civility rule is partly about backing down to a level that reduces hurt and misunderstandings across a broad range of individuals.
Isn't this a rather paternalistic attitude? "We are censoring this for your protection" is the first reason given by powers that would be.
There's censorship, and then there's a social contract.
Civility should be about the social contract... we agree not to abuse each other in the course of discussing things about which we may disagree greatly.
If someone shows up who refuses to buy in to the social contract, then we can ask them to behave or in extremis to leave. No forum which is a complete anarchy survives.
The implicit message in that is that the social contract is written in stone. Abiding with the social contract does not mean having to buy in. Mature institutions resist change, even good change. Establishments and vested interests become hardened into place. That can make newcomers with fresh ideas unwelcome. By the same token a newcomer should not expect that his improvements will be implemented immediately. The newcomer needs hope.
It seems a natural tendency in people who have fought hard for some aspect of the system to do what they can to keep it in place, sometimes long after its usefulness has been exhausted. If voting is used to bring about the feature the winners can easily be content in the feeling that the issue must never again be revisited; defence becomes a virtue in its own right. In time the original supporters drift away for unrelated reasons, and we are left with a rule that has been stripped of its raison-d'être. Attempts to change such rules can be a daunting task, if only because such proposals can too easily be ignored and wander off into some limbo of consciousness. It would be nice if we could adopt some policy that says that virtually all decision making processe remain open perpetually.
Ec
Marc Riddell wrote:
on 1/30/07 7:00 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
People who are good editors, but take other people's statement to heart, can get so upset that they no longer want to work in WP, and that's certainly a loss to the project. So the civility rule is partly about backing down to a level that reduces hurt and misunderstandings across a broad range of individuals.
Isn't this a rather paternalistic attitude? "We are censoring this for your protection" is the first reason given by powers that would be.
True, it's never been put to a vote of all the editors. I am confident however that support for this rule would be 80-90% or even higher. There are online communities that are more rough-and-tumble, but the crowd here is generally not like that. No doubt there is an element of self-selection involved, but I note that it's always been possible to fork WP, and yet there's no forked Nastypedia where anybody can say anything to each other - so either the uncivil aren't sufficiently organized to create a fork (perhaps they're still flaming each other over which wiki software to use :-) ), or the people most interested in encyclopedia-building tend to dislike incivility. I could theorize further, but then I'd be treading on your territory. :-)
Stan
on 1/30/07 8:35 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
True, it's never been put to a vote of all the editors. I am confident however that support for this rule would be 80-90% or even higher. There are online communities that are more rough-and-tumble, but the crowd here is generally not like that. No doubt there is an element of self-selection involved, but I note that it's always been possible to fork WP, and yet there's no forked Nastypedia where anybody can say anything to each other - so either the uncivil aren't sufficiently organized to create a fork (perhaps they're still flaming each other over which wiki software to use :-) ), or the people most interested in encyclopedia-building tend to dislike incivility. I could theorize further, but then I'd be treading on your territory. :-)
Stan,
I have no doubt that what you say here is true. I simply have a difficult time with telling anyone what they can and cannot say.
And, please, theorize all you want. Theorizing is the high falootin' term for saying "what if" - and we all have the right and the responsibility to say that.
Marc
-- You can dream of a moment for years, and still somehow miss it when it comes. You¹ve got to reach through the flames and take it - Or lose it forever.
Hi, Marc.
Marc Riddell wrote:
I have no doubt that what you say here is true. I simply have a difficult time with telling anyone what they can and cannot say.
Is that always true for you?
If people would like to say something privately, or even in a public square, I'm not willing to tell them they can't, even when I might be happy to say that they're wrong.
But a couple of times I have without hesitation thrown people out of events at my house for mistreating my guests. Do you draw lines like that?
For me, Wikipedia is more akin to the latter than the former. It's different in that the standards are something we come up with together. But it's the same in that I have caution but no compunction in enforcing those standards when somebody is harming what brings us together.
William
on 1/31/07 12:29 AM, William Pietri at william@scissor.com wrote:
Hi, Marc.
Marc Riddell wrote:
I have no doubt that what you say here is true. I simply have a difficult time with telling anyone what they can and cannot say.
Is that always true for you?
In my work (which is a large part of my life) yes. In my personal life I don't find words directed at me to be harmful - simply educational. Persons teach me a great deal about themselves by how they express themselves.
If people would like to say something privately, or even in a public square, I'm not willing to tell them they can't, even when I might be happy to say that they're wrong.
But a couple of times I have without hesitation thrown people out of events at my house for mistreating my guests. Do you draw lines like that?
Yes. If the words and/or behavior are meant to harm, I will intervene as best I can.
For me, Wikipedia is more akin to the latter than the former. It's different in that the standards are something we come up with together. But it's the same in that I have caution but no compunction in enforcing those standards when somebody is harming what brings us together.
I absolutely agree with you. Nicely said. Thank you.
Marc
William
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Marc Riddell wrote:
on 1/31/07 12:29 AM, William Pietri at william@scissor.com wrote:
Marc Riddell wrote:
I have no doubt that what you say here is true. I simply have a difficult time with telling anyone what they can and cannot say.
Is that always true for you?
In my work (which is a large part of my life) yes. In my personal life I don't find words directed at me to be harmful - simply educational. Persons teach me a great deal about themselves by how they express themselves.
Wouldn't this be an important part of your professional experience. A psychologist who helps people to find their own solutions is bound to be more successful than one who is always giving solutions to the clients.
Ec
on 1/31/07 8:06 PM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Wouldn't this be an important part of your professional experience. A psychologist who helps people to find their own solutions is bound to be more successful than one who is always giving solutions to the clients.
Yes. The solution is within the person - the way to the solution is within me I'm the guide. Therapy is that conversation between the hiker and the guide. And, as the journey progresses, the voice of the guide is heard less and less as the hiker becomes more confident with the path.
Marc
Stan Shebs wrote:
I suppose if someone had a note on their user page - "no need to be civil here", then it could be an exception to the general rule. I don't think there are very many people in that category though. One of the interesting aspects of online communication is that body language and nonverbal cues seem to be more important than anybody ever realized - misunderstandings in online interaction happen far more, and are more likely to spiral out of control. For instance, somebody could be saying something nasty-sounding in person, but they're smiling and relaxed while saying it, so you know they're probably leading up to a sardonic joke.
The smile is very important when presnting awards for meretricious service to the community.
Satire without a smiley face is routinely taken seriously, no matter how well-written. People who are good editors, but take other people's statement to heart, can get so upset that they no longer want to work in WP, and that's certainly a loss to the project. So the civility rule is partly about backing down to a level that reduces hurt and misunderstandings across a broad range of individuals.
The smiley face is often ignored by those determined to be offended. The obvious hyperbole of statements like, "You ought to be shot for saying that," tends to be ignored in favour of an impossible litersal interpretation.
There is also on the net a frequent tendency toward one-dimensionality. Thus "LOL" is most frequently taken to mean "Lots of Laughs", and in some circumstances readers will read it as some kind of insult by laughing at their work. For others it can mean, "Lots of Luck," in the same way that one would say, "Break a leg," to someone about to go on stage. No-one would seriously take that expression literally. "Lots of Luck," can also be used ironically meaning, "I don't believe you can accomplish that without luck." When I first encountered the abbreviation it meant, "Little Old Lady." Cf [[The Little Old Lady from Pasadena]].
It's also important to recognize that the same event can have quite a different cultural impact in different societies. The now infamous super-bowl "wardrobe malfunction" outraged some people, but for others of us it was hilarious that such a trivial event should get such an overblown reaction. Here along the border it frequently happens that the same movie shown with full dialogue on Canadian television will have offensive words bleeped on US television. As more countries mix more different vegetables into the soup the flavours become more nuanced. Those of us who don't like olives on pizza need to find an accomodation with those that do, and bulldozing all the olive trees in the world is not an option. Things do mean exactly what the user intends. Alice understood this, both in Wonderland and in Her Restaurant. Great works of art, literature and music will say entirely different things to each person who experiences them. We need to guard against obligatory equation of meanings between the artist and his audience.
Yes, we have lost good editors who got upset with our form of social darwinism. I can imagine that this has been especially difficult from some of our American Wikipedians who have now found a raven or coyote sitting on the pulpit of their values. I say this with the utmost sympathy, for I know that some have adapted well. In the present world climate it can't be easy to be an American.
I think we have barely touched the surface of the paradigm shift implicit in the developments of communications technology. I've been reading the book, "Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything," by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. The authors mention Wikipedia extensively, along with many of the other well-known on-line initiatives. In a paradign shift the shakedown of the old ways can be brutal. Intellectual property and economics are only the first areas to feel the heat. In the United States Lou Dobbs of CNN is constantly carrying-on about incompetent politicians, many of whom leave the impression that the primary duty of an elected politician is to get re-elected. Even if you remove the understandably nationalistic tone of his statements, they remain applicable. It's only a matter of time until the denizens of the blogosphere discover that maybe they should suggest alternatives that are more people friendly than the constitutional brick that was proposed for the European Union. Maybe we don't need countries at all.
The civility rule is also for one's own self-protection - everything you say online is publicly visible and recorded forever.
That application is not limited to WP. Many are there who never learn it.
on 2/1/07 2:25 PM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The smiley face is often ignored by those determined to be offended. The obvious hyperbole of statements like, "You ought to be shot for saying that," tends to be ignored in favour of an impossible litersal interpretation.
There is also on the net a frequent tendency toward one-dimensionality. Thus "LOL" is most frequently taken to mean "Lots of Laughs", and in some circumstances readers will read it as some kind of insult by laughing at their work. For others it can mean, "Lots of Luck," in the same way that one would say, "Break a leg," to someone about to go on stage. No-one would seriously take that expression literally. "Lots of Luck," can also be used ironically meaning, "I don't believe you can accomplish that without luck." When I first encountered the abbreviation it meant, "Little Old Lady." Cf [[The Little Old Lady from Pasadena]].
It's also important to recognize that the same event can have quite a different cultural impact in different societies. The now infamous super-bowl "wardrobe malfunction" outraged some people, but for others of us it was hilarious that such a trivial event should get such an overblown reaction. Here along the border it frequently happens that the same movie shown with full dialogue on Canadian television will have offensive words bleeped on US television. As more countries mix more different vegetables into the soup the flavours become more nuanced. Those of us who don't like olives on pizza need to find an accomodation with those that do, and bulldozing all the olive trees in the world is not an option. Things do mean exactly what the user intends. Alice understood this, both in Wonderland and in Her Restaurant. Great works of art, literature and music will say entirely different things to each person who experiences them. We need to guard against obligatory equation of meanings between the artist and his audience.
Yes, we have lost good editors who got upset with our form of social darwinism. I can imagine that this has been especially difficult from some of our American Wikipedians who have now found a raven or coyote sitting on the pulpit of their values. I say this with the utmost sympathy, for I know that some have adapted well. In the present world climate it can't be easy to be an American.
I think we have barely touched the surface of the paradigm shift implicit in the developments of communications technology. I've been reading the book, "Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything," by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. The authors mention Wikipedia extensively, along with many of the other well-known on-line initiatives. In a paradign shift the shakedown of the old ways can be brutal. Intellectual property and economics are only the first areas to feel the heat. In the United States Lou Dobbs of CNN is constantly carrying-on about incompetent politicians, many of whom leave the impression that the primary duty of an elected politician is to get re-elected. Even if you remove the understandably nationalistic tone of his statements, they remain applicable. It's only a matter of time until the denizens of the blogosphere discover that maybe they should suggest alternatives that are more people friendly than the constitutional brick that was proposed for the European Union. Maybe we don't need countries at all.
Excellent post. Thank you.
Marc Riddell
On 1/30/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
WP and its various interaction pages is my first exposure to this type of dialogue between and among persons. The whole of my past experience has been, in person, face-to-face communication.
Ah. Ok. This explains the question somewhat.
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.
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.
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.
Marc
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.
on 1/30/07 9:11 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
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.
George,
I bow (ever so slightly ;-) ) to your experience with the online forum. I have, and still am, learning a lot about it from all of the responses I've gotten here - that's why I brought it up in the first place.
I'm going to check out some of the studies you referred to. But, as in the session room, I usually learn more of what I need to know from the person(s) who are experiencing it everyday.
Marc
George Herbert wrote:
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.
This is precisely the situation and lack of consensus that makes most of those rules meaningless.
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.
Yes, and it's difficult to explain what happened to keep it growing long and strong.. NPOV was only one factor. So too was the need to face certain issues of conflicr (like British vs. American English) from the very beginning. Unlike the various Yugoslave wikipedias we dealt with the problem head on with a problem-solving attitude.
Ec
On 1/30/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
But, in the context of WP, how does this apply? How does what two people say to each other on their personal Talk Pages disrupt the Project? For that matter, in that two-way conversation, if it is one person flailing at the other, can¹t that other person simply not respond? How does what one person writes in this Mailing List disrupt the progress of an issue being discussed? Simply ignore it or, as computer challenged as I am, even I know where the DELETE button is :-).
Well, let's offer a counter-example -- suppose one person blanks a talk page and replaces it with "FUCK YOU." Suppose they do this several times a day. Suppose they use sockpuppets and various IP addresses to do so. Is this offensive? Definitely. Is this disruptive? Definitely. I would anticipate very little disagreement with a proposal to discourage such behavior.
To me, this isn't a black-and-white issue. There's a question of degrees. Surely not all examples of disruptive behavior are quite as severe as what I just offered, but once we admit that there *are* cases where offensive behavior is bad and should be stopped, then it becomes a question of where we draw the line.
My personal metrics? (1) Is the person acting in good faith? (2) Is the person helping solve more problems then they help to create? Once we've answered those two questions, the path to an answer will frequently become more apparent.
Just my thought. -Luna
Luna wrote:
Well, let's offer a counter-example -- suppose one person blanks a talk page and replaces it with "FUCK YOU." Suppose they do this several times a day. Suppose they use sockpuppets and various IP addresses to do so. Is this offensive? Definitely. Is this disruptive? Definitely. I would anticipate very little disagreement with a proposal to discourage such behavior.
The issue is not with the obvious miscreants and what to do about them, but about the often ephemeral idea of good behaviour.
To me, this isn't a black-and-white issue. There's a question of degrees. Surely not all examples of disruptive behavior are quite as severe as what I just offered, but once we admit that there *are* cases where offensive behavior is bad and should be stopped, then it becomes a question of where we draw the line.
"Drawing the line" is itself a troubling concept. It suggests rigidity of thought. The future is in maintaining a high degree of flexibility.
My personal metrics? (1) Is the person acting in good faith? (2) Is the person helping solve more problems then they help to create? Once we've answered those two questions, the path to an answer will frequently become more apparent.
The question about good faith is a tricky one, because it begs the question about defining good faith, and that one is more difficult than defining civility. If one assumes good faith the evidence must come before a determination of bad faith.
Ec
I bring this up because, when I first came to WP, the one policy I found most disturbing was the one concerning ³incivility². Most especially the practice of banning (punishing) members of the WP community for using words and phrases considered by whoever made up the policy to be ³offensive². This, to me, made WP free in every thing but speech.
You misunderstand the policy. It's not about words, it's about behaviour. Using a particular word is not, in itself, incivil. It's what use you put the word to that is important, not what word it is. You can be incivil without cursing, and you can curse without being incivil - they are completely independent.
On Jan 30, 2007, at 14:27, Thomas Dalton wrote:
I bring this up because, when I first came to WP, the one policy I found most disturbing was the one concerning ³incivility². Most especially the practice of banning (punishing) members of the WP community for using words and phrases considered by whoever made up the policy to be ³offensive². This, to me, made WP free in every thing but speech.
You misunderstand the policy. It's not about words, it's about behaviour. Using a particular word is not, in itself, incivil. It's what use you put the word to that is important, not what word it is. You can be incivil without cursing, and you can curse without being incivil - they are completely independent.
In the context of the news story he supplied, I think the point is not to go, "OMG WIKIPEDIA IS NOT LIKE THAT," but instead to consider the inherently "offensive" nature of certain words and whether the mindset of "some words are so offensive that nobody should be allowed to say them" has permeated our culture. Also, where does one draw the line? "Nigger" has been rendered inoffensive in limited contexts, but what of other racial epithets? Where and why does one draw the line?
I think that Wikipedians have enough common sense to recognize that words are independent of their intentions. However, some are more sensitive about racial epithets or even references to race. While we strive to be collegial, slang certainly creeps into talk page and user talk pages. If one were of the mindset that some words are just so divisive that they shouldn't be used, how would one factor in slang use? Or would one just chalk it up to "they think it's slang, but they're actually racist"?
While WP:CIVIL does not say that the use of certain words merits a ban, I do see accusations flying left and right due to certain words in mediation and arbitration cases from time to time. So where is community feeling? Certain words shouldn't be used, but it's far too subjective for policy and better for a lot of people to object first? Do the loudest objectors win? (Well, they will, but do we want them to?)
I think it's an interesting topic, certainly not something which should be dismissed as a misunderstanding of policy. --keitei
In the context of the news story he supplied, I think the point is not to go, "OMG WIKIPEDIA IS NOT LIKE THAT," but instead to consider the inherently "offensive" nature of certain words and whether the mindset of "some words are so offensive that nobody should be allowed to say them" has permeated our culture. Also, where does one draw the line? "Nigger" has been rendered inoffensive in limited contexts, but what of other racial epithets? Where and why does one draw the line?
The news story is about arbitrarily banning a word, rather than banning using the word offensively. Wikipedia has no comparable rules, and I see no evidence that we are going to get such rules.
on 1/30/07 2:27 PM, Thomas Dalton at thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It's not about words, it's about behaviour. Using a particular word is not, in itself, incivil. It's what use you put the word to that is important, not what word it is.
This is very slippery reasoning. If this person were speaking to you in person would you look at it the same way?
Marc
This is very slippery reasoning. If this person were speaking to you in person would you look at it the same way?
Of course. To be offended by an arbitrary sequence of sounds is completely irrational. It is the meaning of those sounds that can be offensive, and the meaning of them is whatever the speaker intends them to mean. If they are not intended to mean something offensive, then they are not offensive (the speaker doesn't have to agree that the intended meaning is offensive, but you can't argue with the speaker about what those intentions are [unless you suspect the speaker of lying about his intentions, I suppose...]).