Yes, the civility message is garbled.

Because:

1) the qualities one needs to get anything done in Wikipedia are generally, tenacity and bullheadedness. Drawing enough attention to the issue and breaking through the natural apathy and inertia of the wider community is also essential (and that, frankly, often involved strategic drama-stirring and a willingness to battle vested-interests).

2) whether one engages in (1) above or not, if you involve yourself in attempting to change things it is likely to be a very emotional experience. You will need to care passionately about your issue (or you'll give up) and then deal with the frustration caused by the fact that changing anything is almost impossible. Strategic or not, that's liable to make many of us irritable and angry in the long-run.

3) When you are dealing with an issue that matters, and having to battle all the way, nice, well-meaning, people picking you up on minor points of civility are likely to have an effect utterly reverse of their intention - they are likely to illustrate how Wikipedians pick up on internal etiquette and ignore the issue. More frustration and anger.

Of course, the reverse argument is that being nice, civil and persuasive is actually a more effective way of getting things changed. Unfortunately, I am not at all convinced that is true. And the experience of trying it, and finding it doesn't work, is likely to lead to more frustration and short-temperedness (rinse and repeat).

What we need are structures that allow calm debate and effective communication to work efficiently. A structure that rests of punishing incivility will simply lead to more bureaucracy and gaming and will be used as a partisan weapon. It is entirely the wrong response.

Scott

-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Carcharoth Sent: 01 February 2011 16:24 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors} - repost

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 4:07 PM, wiki doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:

A leader(ship) would find it easier to say "thank you, you're right, we should do this, but please could you tone it down a bit".

I thought that is what (some) arbitrators *did* say to you! Maybe the message got garbled in the transmission.

But that is the problem. Even if ArbCom says something like that, there is no guarantee that people will listen, or that sometimes subtle points will come across in the rather civil language arbitrators have to use. After all, if the people involved in disputes were the listening sort, there would be less disputes.

Carcharoth

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