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Revision as of 15:36, 14 March 2004 by 200.165.255.225 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Template:Civics Civility is a rule here on Misplaced Pages. Where incivility here is defined as behavior that causes an atmosphere of animosity, disrespect, conflict and stress, the Civility rule states that people must act with civility toward one another.
Our Misplaced Pages:Community has by experience developed an informal hierarchy of core principles — the first being neutral point of view. The second demands a reasonable degree of civility towards others. Even if "civility" is just an informal rule, its the only term that can apply, and it's the only reasonable way to delimit acceptable conduct from the unacceptable. We can't always expect people to love, honor, obey, or even respect another. But we have every right to demand civility.
The Problem
Misplaced Pages as a whole is not especially respectful of other contributors. This directly affects the quality of the community experience at Misplaced Pages. By hurting the community, the quality of articles is affected as well.
Examples
Petty examples that contribute to an uncivil environment:
- Use of profanity
- Judgemental tone in edit comments ("fixed sloppy spelling", "snipped rambling crap")
- Belittling contributors because of their language skills or word choice
- Ill-considered accusations of impropriety of one kind or another
More serious examples include:
- Personal attacks
- Lies or attempts to slander or discredit
- Defacement of personal pages
- Calls for bans
- Racial, ethnic, and religious slurs (these are often unclear)
Rewrite:
Incivility happens for example when you are quietly creating a new page, and another user tells you, "If you're going to write a pointless page, you could spell check it." Escalation occurs when you answer him to, "Mind your own business."
This style of interaction between Wikipedians drives away contributors, distracts others from more important matters, and weakens the entire community.
When and why does it happen?
- In case of an edit war, when people support different opinions, or for power sharing.
- When the community grows big. An editor does not know all the others, he may not perceive their individual importance in the project, so do not feel like preserving bonds that do not exist. Reputation does not count so much.
- Sometimes, a specifically impolite outsider unfortunately gets in the project
Most of the time, insults, in particular, are used in the heat of the conflict. They are essentially a way to wind up. It might be mentioned that the offender often regrets having used such words afterwards. Which in itself is a reason to remove the offending words.
In other cases, the offender is doing it on purpose, to distract his opponent from the issue at stake, or to drive him out of the article or out of the project, or to push him to commit an even greater breach in civility (which might result in ostracism or banning). In those cases, it is far less likely that the offender will have any regrets and apologize.
It might be mentioned that some editors deliberately push other editors to a breach of civility, without committing one themselves.
Why is it bad?
- because it makes people unhappy, resulting in discouragement and departure.
- because it makes people angry, resulting in non-constructive or even uncivil behavior themselves, further escalating the level of incivility.
- because people lose good faith, resulting in reduced ability to resolve the current or following conflict.
General suggestions
Preventing uncivil comments to enter the Misplaced Pages sphere
- prevent edit war and conflict of Wikipedians (constraints set by the project itself. Community answer essentially).
- preventing the access of Misplaced Pages to some class of people more likely to be offensive (reduce openness).
- force delays between answers to give time to editors to recover and avoid further escalation of conflict (protect pages, or temporary blocks of editors in case of conflict).
- offer feedback (praise the ones who did not answer to incivility with incivility themselves)
- play on negative feedback (let or suggest an editor in conflict to leave Misplaced Pages, whether or not he is the offender, to reduce level of conflict)
- apply peer pressure (voice displeasure each time uncivil words are used)
- solve the root of the conflict between the offender and the editor or the community. Or find a compromise.
- block a user from editing specific pages which often trigger violence
- set a new rule based on word usage, that will allow temporary blocking or banning an editor using them more than a certain number of times. Enforce it.
- request the use of real names to force editors to take responsibility of their behavior (generally considered undesirable on Misplaced Pages)
- filter mails by the offender, or filter mail based on some key words, and reject an email to the mailing list when offending
- consider that uncivil words can't be avoided in such a project, and accept their existence.
Reducing the impact
- compensate each uncivil comment by providing a soothing or constructive comment
- Do not answer offensive comments. Forget about them. Forgive. Do not escalate.(individual answer)
- Make as if the offender does not exist. Set a wall between the offender and the community.
- Revert edits with a veil of invisibility (&bot=1) to reduce the impact of the offensive words when made in comment box
- consider that uncivil words can't be avoided in such a project, and accept their existence.
Removing uncivil comments
- striking offensive words or replacing them by milder ones on talk pages (often seen as controversial, as it is refactoring other people words)
- removing offensive comments on talk pages (they stay in the history however, anyone can find them back or refer to them later on)
- revert an edit with &bot=1, so that the edit made by the offender appears invisible in recent change (do-able on IP contributions, require technical help for logged-in user)
- deleting entirely and permanently an edit made by the offender (require technical help)
- delete permanently an offensive comment made on the mailing lists (require technical help)
- replace a comment made in a comment box by another comment less offensive (require technical help)
Management of incivility during the mediation process
Parties sometimes attempt to negotiate an agreement while one party is not ready. For example, if the source of the conflict is a specific point in an article, dispute resolution may be impaired if discussion is still clouded by an uncivil exchange between both parties. It is best to clear up that issue as soon as possible, so disputants can regain their wit.
Explain incivility
Some editors are badly shaken by the use of uncivil words toward themselves, and can't focus on the source of the conflict itself. It may help to point out to them why unpleasant words were used.
The offended may realise the words were not always meant literally, and could decide the forgive and forget them.
It might be beneficial to point out at breaches of civility even when done on purpose to hurt, as it might help the disputant to refocus on the issue (controversial).
Rephrasing disputants comments
During the mediation process, a third neutral party is in contact with both disputants, and ensuring communication between them both.
It is the mediator role to promote reasonable discussion between the two disputants. Thus, beneficial to remove incivilities voiced by UserA, in rephrasing his comment to UserB.
- For example, if UserA and UserB are flaming each other, by e-mail through a mediator, it might be best if the middleman turns "I refuse to allow Neo-Nazi apologetics to infest the Misplaced Pages" to "UserA is concerned that you may be giving too much prominence to a certain view."
Rephrasing flames publicly exchanged before or during the mediation process
It might be beneficial that at the end of the mediation process, the mediator suggests that the disputants come over the agreement to remove incivilites left in user and article talk pages. The editors might agree to delete a page uniquely created to flame the other, and/or to remove all flaming content not relevant to the article discussion, and/or to refactor a discussion. This may allow to forgive and forget offenses more quickly.
Similarly, the disputants might agree to apologize to each other.
See also: Misplaced Pages:Wikiquette