[Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility

[Robert Scott Horning]

Cormac Lawler 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.
>
>Cormac
>  
>
The issue here is really the ability of the "owner" of a user talk page 
to censor the content on that talk page.  I'm using the term "owner" 
very loosly here, and I know that, but in this case the talk page is 
directly tied to a specific user account by default with MediaWiki 
software, and has features built in where that user will be notified 
with a special message if some new content is added to that page. 
 Certainly by custom among Wikimedia users this has been used as a 
communications venue for asking questions that are addressed to a 
specific user.  Sometimes, like in the case of Jimbo's user page, it 
sometimes becomes a community forum, but this is really quite unusual. 
 Admins sometimes have this happen occasionally to a lesser degree, or 
for very active Wikimedia users.

In this sense, the user who has set up the account should also be able 
to control what the public in general is going to be seeing associated 
with this user.  And in the specific case of the user that you have been 
having a conflict with Cormac, he is using his user talk page as a 
registration site for people who are interested in enrolling in the 
Wikiversity class that he is putting together and offering to teach. 
 Keeping it free from non-registration comments seems to be a general 
goal of this user in this situation.  This is not a standard practice or 
a typical experience for a user talk page, but it certainly is an 
interesting and innovative use for user talk pages.

I think it would breech common courtesy and ettiquette (not necessarily 
policy here) if you were delete content from somebody else's user talk 
page, and IMHO would be a much larger concern or a sign of vandalism 
even.  That is certainly not the issue being discussed.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning