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Welcome to the question phase of Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Civility enforcement. In this phase you will be asked to fill out the following questionaire and submit your results. You may answer as many or as few of the questions as you like, and give any answer you like to any of the open-ended questions. Once this phase is complete a team of volunteers will review all submissions and attempt to create a concrete proposal for the community to review based on those results.
Do not edit this page to reply. You will need to create your own user subpage for your questionnaire, please use this format: Your username/CERFC. Create this subpage and then add {{subst:Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Civility enforcement/q and a}} to the page and save it. You should then have your own "copy" of the questionnaire to fill out. Please feel free to take your time answering the questions. When you are done, save your changes and add your subpage to Category:Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Civility enforcement/questions so that your results can be evaluated.
Thanks for participating! The community will be informed when the results are posted. Please be patient, evaluating the large volume of replies anticipated will take a while.
| WARNING In order to come up with realistic situations to evaluate, strong language, including profanity, is present in some of the following questions. |
general questions
In this section we will attempt to establish a baseline of what the average Misplaced Pages user considers to be unacceptably incivil behavior. Please be as specific as you can in all answers.
Is a very negative comment on an idea a personal attack?
The Misplaced Pages community has a long tradition of not tolerating personal attacks. However, it has proven difficult to establish where the line is between commenting on a user's ideas and commenting on the user themselves. When does criticism of an idea cross the line into incivility? If a user says "this idea is stupid" or words to that affect is that a personal attack? If they say "this is yet another one of <username of proposer>'s stupid ideas and should be ignored" is that a personal attack? Are either of these comments the kind of incivility that we should not tolerate on Misplaced Pages?
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Swearing
Is all swearing, as in the use of "bad words" "four letter words" "the Seven dirty words" etc incivility? That is, should context be taken into account or is any use of this type of language unacceptable? Does it matter if it is on a user talk page as opposed to an article or Misplaced Pages-space talk page?
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All caps/wiki markup
There is an established convention on Misplaced Pages that WRITING IN ALL CAPS is considered "yelling" and is generally not acceptable. Users sometimes also use italics bolding green or other colored text or even enlarged text or other formatting code to emphasize their comments. Are there limits as to when this type of formatting should be used in a discussion? Is there any form of formatting that is never acceptable in a discussion?
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Responsibility for enforcement
Where does the responsibility for maintaining a civil environment lie? Is it up to administrators, the arbitration committee, the broader community, or some combination of these?
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One-off outbursts and chronic incivility
How severe does a single incident need to be to merit some sort of sanction? Are multiple incivil remarks in the same discussion one offense or several? If a user is civil most of the time, but occaisionaly is extremely rude, how many times may these incidents be excused? Does the amount of good contributions they make outside of discussions have any bearing, or should the incidents of incivility be taken on their own as a separate issue from the quality of their content contributions?
Written versus spoken communication
When one is speaking in person with another other factors such a body language and vocal inflection can suggest the intent of a remark in a way that words written on a page cannot. For example if a person is having a casual conversation with friends over a table covered with beer glasses and one of them wishes to contest a point another has made they might prefect their remarks with "listen up asshole and I'll explain it to you." If they are smiling and raising a glass towards the person this remark is pointed the person will probably taken in the lighthearted manner in which it was intended. On Misplaced Pages there is no smile, no glass, no table, and it is sometimes hard to tell who your friends really are. How can we, as a community deal with this discrepancy without resorting to outright censorship? How can we differentiate between lighthearted remarks taken with no context and actual attacks?
Appropriate sanctions
What, if any, are appropriate sanctions for incivility? Should short blocks, longer blocks, or indefinite blocks ever be used as a sanction for incivility? Are topic banning or interaction banning ever an adequate or appropriate response?
Requests for adminship
Because WP:RFA is by its very nature a discussion of a user the standards for personal attacks must by necessity be somewhat relaxed there. What are the limits of this? How personal is too personal at an RFA? What types of criticisms cross the line between genuine evaluation of a candidate and an unwarranted attack on another user? Should such comments be stricken, moved to the talk page, or simply removed altogether?
Deprecating civility as a stand alone reason for blocking by a single admin?
Where the project often sees the most drama related to civility is when a user is blocked for incivility. Such blocks are often overtuned, Should admins be required to have a more specific reason, such a personal attacks, harrasment of another user, etc, when blocking a user for incivility? Alternately should administrators be required to have a demonstrable consensus formed through discussion at WP:ANI or another appropriate forum before issuing civility-based blocks? Should there be a minimum time frame for such discussions to remain open before any action is taken?
Request for comment prerequisite
An approach that is often ignored is the use of user requests for comment, which gives the community the opportunity to discuss the issue directly with the user causing the problem an attempt to find a voluntary solution, as opposed to simply seeking sanctions for the disputed behavior. Should a completed RFC be a prerequisite for blocking a user of incivility? If not a hard requirement, should we encourage its use as an alternative to the often unproductive and acrimonious open discussions at the incident noticeboard?
Examples
In this section example comments will be presented. You are asked to evaluate each comment on the following scale:
- 1 = Always acceptable
- 2 = Usually acceptable
- 3 = Acceptability entirely dependent on specific situation
- 4 = Usually not acceptable
- 5 = Never acceptable
Proposals or content discussions
- I assume you realize how foolish this idea sounds to the rest of us
- rating:
- Typical of the foolishness I have come to expect from this user
- rating:
- After looking over your recent edits it is clear that you are incompetent.
- rating:
- Anyone with a username like that is obviously here for the wrong reasons
- rating:
- You seem to have a conflict of interest in that you appear to be interested in a nationalist point of view.
- rating:
- It is obvious that your purpose here is to promote your nationalist point of view.
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- You are clearly here to support your nationalist point of view, Misplaced Pages would be better off without you.
- rating:
- This is the stupidest proposal I have seen in a very long time.
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- Whoever proposed this should have their head examined
- rating
- I don't know how anyone could support such an idiotic proposal.
- rating:
- This proposal is retarded.
- rating:
- The person who initiated this discussion is a moron.
- rating:
- This proposal is crap.
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- This proposal is a waste of everyone's time.
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- What a fucking waste this whole discussion has been
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- A shitty proposal from a shitty editor.
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- The OP is a clueless idiot.
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- Please just stop talking, nobody is listening anyway.
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- Just shut up already.
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- File your sockpuppet investigation or STFU.
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- Shut your fucking mouth before you say something else stupid.
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admin actions
- The blocking admin has a long history of questionable judgements.
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- The blocking admin needs to be desysopped of this is representative of their decision making abilities.
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- The blocking admin is well known as an abusive rule nazi.
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- I'm sure their admin cronies will just censor me like they do to anyone who points out the hypocrisy of all WP admins, but this was a terrible block.
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- How could anyone with a brain in their head think it was ok to issue a block like this?
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possible trolling
- Your comments look more like trolling to me.
- rating:
- Stop trolling or I will find an admin to block you.
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- All I can say about this user is "obvious troll is obvious".
- rating:
- Go troll somewhere else.
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- Somebody block this troll so those of us that are here in good faith can continue without them.
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removal of comments
(Assume all removals were done by a single user and are not part of a suppression action for privacy, libel, etc)
- Comment removed from conversation with edit summary "removed off topic trolling"
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- Comment removed from a conversation and replaced with <redacted> or {{RPA}}
- rating
- Entire discussion closed and/or collapsed using {{hat}} or other such formatting
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- Comment removed from a conversation and replaced with "redacted twattery, don't post here again" with posting users signature still attached
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- Comment removed from conversation and replaced with File:DoNotFeedTroll.svg
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Enforcement
The general idea that Wikipedians should try to treat each other with a minimum of dignity and respect is widely accepted. Where we seem to have a serious problem is the enforcement or lack thereof of this ideal. This section will submit various scenarios and ask to you to suggest what an appropriate response would be. Possible options include:
- ignoring it
- warning the users involved
- WP:RFC, WP:ANI, or other community discussions,
- blocking, either indefinitely or for a set period of time
- topic or interaction banning
- Any other response you feel would be appropriate
Please bear in mind that what is being asked for is not what you believe would happen but what you believe should happen.
Scenario 1
Two users are in a dispute regarding the name of a particular article on a geographic region. The debate is long and convoluted, and the motivations of the two users unclear to those unfamiliar with the topic. They have not used any form of dispute resolution to resolve the content dispute. They have not edit warred in the article but the discussion the talk page has gotten extremely long and seems to be devolving into the users accusing one another of having ethnic/nationalist motivations. One users has said "You only believe that because you were educated in the Fubarian school system which filled your head with their lies." To which the other user replies "That is exactly what I would expect from someone who live in Kerzbleckistan. Everyone knows that Fubaritol has always been part of our great empire. Only Kerzblecki fat heads believe it isn't. "
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Scenario 2
A long term user is blocked for edit warring. The proof that they did edit war is clear and obvious. On their talk page they are hosting a discussion regarding the block but are not formally appealing it using the unblock template. The blocking admin, seeing this discussion of their actions, attempts to explain that they are not making a value judgement on the appropriateness of the edits, just doing their job by enforcing the edit warring policy. The blocked user removes the admins actual comments but leaves their signature attached to the phrase "asshattery removed". Several of the blocked users friends comment on what a dumb block it is, how the blocking admin is a disgrace, that they should be desysopped, and sp on. The blocking admin comments again, asking that they either be allowed to participate in the discussion or that their comments and all discussion of them be removed entirely, not replaced with an insult with his signature attached to it. The blocked user again removes the admin's comments and adds the same insulting phrase in their place.
- Response
Scenario 3
A user is apparently an expert in the field of eighteenth-century horse drawn carriages. Practically every word Misplaced Pages has on this subject was written by them. Their content contributions are generally above reproach. Unfortunately they are also extremely abrasive in interpersonal conversations. They routinely tell any user who disagrees with them to fuck off, that they were obviously educated in a barn, that their ignorance is matched only by what a douchebag they are, and so forth. They also exhibit a tendency to actually be on the correct side of an argument when they are at their most abrasive. They apparently believe that this excuses their condescension and insults. one such incident is brought up at WP:ANI. It is approximately the fifteenth time such an incident has occurred. Again, the user is making excellent content contributions and is probably right as to the facts of the actual dispute, but they have verbally abused the user who disagrees with them, insulting their intelligence and using profanity. An admin decides to block them for chronic incivility about three hours onto the conversation at the noticeboard.
- Response
Scenario 4
Users A and B are in a dispute. They have already stated their positions many times each. As previously uninvolved users begin commenting on the situation user A stops commenting on the relevant talk page. User B opens a thread on user A's user talk page relating to the dispute and challenging user A's position. User A posts a reply indicating they feel they have stated their position enough times and they do not see any purpose in continuing. User B replies, asking for more details about some aspect of the dispute. User A closes the discussion on their talk page and in both a closing comment and their edit summary they say "User B please stop posting here." User B posts again anyway. User A removes their comments and in their edit summary they write "Stay the fuck off my fucking talk page, LIKE I SAID ALREADY."
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