On 3/20/06, Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yes, I agree that we cannot *force* people to answer other questions. But what I am saying is that we should be encouraging as *good practice* a spirit of listening. In the case of a troll, I fully reserve the right to ignore that person. But in the case of a lengthy question posed directly to a person (deliberately avoiding the particular page I was disputing to avoid people thinking badly of this person while we debated a point), and then that person simply deleting my question, I think this is very bad practice. It smacks of someone holding their hands over their ears and shouting "I'm not listening". I agree that we can't decree "Thou shalt answer all questions put unto ye". That's why I see this as a guideline, not a policy - we enforce a code of civility, but encourage an attitude of etiquette. Cormac

On 3/20/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote: Yup. Well, for reasons I won't go into, I think the talk page from whence the matter came is just as sensitive for the person in question, so I've asked to move to my talk page instead. Like I said, this user is quite new, so I'm just simply trying to encourage conversation. And lest anyone go off and do their homework trying to find out who this person is, let me say that it really doesn't matter - for now at least. I'm just trying to get opinions and ideas here for the moment. Cormac

On 3/20/06, Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se> wrote: This is all fine if we want to create a rule that gives flexibility to people acting in good faith, and doesn't expect them to answer stupid, petty, provocative or otherwise pointless questions. But that's not what I'm talking about here. To repeat, with a bit more context, what I'm talking about is a situation where i noticed that two users were in an edit conflict, which provoked a question on this person's talk page, which this person deleted. I then made a similar comment that was more broad in scope, and the user then deleted this. I restored my question, asking to please discuss the matter with me. He deleted again. I'm not being rude, I'm not trolling (I might have come across slightly authoritatively, and I've apologised for this). I'm asking for clarification on a point of conflict, and pointing out where their behaviour isn't very helpful, which this person refuses to talk about. (The full context of this makes it even worse, but I'm deliberately not giving it here to be fair to the person, who admittedly is pretty new.) I can't believe that people here don't think this is clearly being uncivil. What I'm arguing for is a general point of at least *trying* to engage with other people - this is showing good faith. Sure, we work as volunteers, but we also work in an inherently collaborative environment. Give them a chance - don't delete a comment on your first contact with someone, unless it is itself clearly uncivil. And, to be clear, I'm not talking about a rule or law to hold people to - I'm simply talking about setting out good and bad examples of behaviour. It'd be pretty clear if someone was trolling and used the fact that someone didn't respond to a question against them, that this person was still a troll. But that's just not the case here. Cormac

In this situation the user who is deleting other users attempts to communicate with them is clearly in the wrong. Two metapolicies are being violated, Assume good faith and our consensus decision making policy. If they are not willing to negotiate they are apparently trying to impose their will in other ways, reverting, etc. What we have here is a failure to communicate. It's a shame that that line was put into the mouth of a fascist in Cool Hand Luke. Talking things over in good faith is one of our basic assumptions. Fred On Mar 20, 2006, at 5:16 PM, Cormac Lawler wrote:

Fred Bauder wrote: It's been many years since I've seen the movie, but I would have seen Cool Hand as more an anarchist than a fascist. More like the kind of guy that you could go drinking with, and be almost certain that it would be an exciting evening. Ec