Cool; drop it on the talkpage. The fact that enwiki's policy is consensus-based, of course, does not mean it's a good policy; it can just mean that it's mealy-mouthed enough to not annoy the majority enough to fight for a change. And that's very different. The issues we've seen on that project around enforcing that policy suggest comprehensiveness is not the issue, more community will, and that's not a problem that would hit this proposal given the enforcement structure.
On 10 August 2015 at 15:34, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hmm. I think enwiki has the benefit of having the widest reach and most extensive development of its policies under a consensus model. On the other hand, I think that the enwiki example shows that more rules don't necessarily lead to friendlier communities. As I said earlier, I think that our goal here is social change, and more rules may or may not help very much.
I liked Sumana's discussion awhile back about the need to balance the values of (A) freedom of expression and (B) hospitality. That said, I'm not sure where that balance is, and even if we can describe it in policies (which is uncertain), I'm not sure how we enforce it in an impartial, transparent, and civil way.
I'm starting to lean in Neil's direction of thinking that an imperfect solution is better than the status quo. The tree here is still thinking. I might propose a variation of Matt's proposal when I've had more time to think about this.
Pine
On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 9:13 AM, Oliver Keyes okeyes@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm not sure why we would be using enwiki as a model for civility, or civility enforcement ;). As said in my email, there are a lot of examples being brought up on the talk page of tech-specific or tech-centric codes of conduct. I'd suggest we avoid fragmenting the discussion and move it there; I'm sure there are elements in those which would provide the clarity you seek.
On 10 August 2015 at 12:09, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Just to clarify a few points: I support the concept of having a global friendly spaces policy. I'm ambivalent and reluctant when it comes to the particular proposal that we're discussing here. And I think that we
should
keep in mind that any policy's usefulness for social change will be much higher if it has community consensus.
Two emails that I'm revisiting in my thought process are from Frances. I agree that personal attacks can be demoralizing and uncivil, and they do happen in our communities on occasion. I'm unclear about how to word a policy that spells out how to AGF and prohibit the kind of incivility in Oliver's example. Would it make sense, I wonder, to copy some of English Wikipedia's highly developed policies into technical spaces like WP:NPA? This gets us back into the rules creep and policy fragmentation problems. Maybe that's an acceptible opportunity cost. I think there might be
greater
support for a specific NPA proposal than for a broader proposal. I could see myself voting in favor of appling English Wikipedia's WP:NPA to technical spaces. I think that this would address a specific issue, and could be a net positive.
If there are other specific kinds of problems that are ongoing in
technical
spaces and which would be improved by legislating policy, I would like to hear about them. In my personal travels in technical spaces, my
experience
is that the vast majority of people are civil most of the time. I think a general statement of principles about civility could be fine. I'm curious to hear if more legislation for technical spaces is needed than that. Personally, I think that a global policy might work better.
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