User:Certified Gangsta/CERFC

General questions

These questions are intended to try to determine what you may consider the "baseline" between what should be considered "valid collegiate discourse" and what should be considered "violation of the civility policy" (incivility). Please be as specific as you can in your responses.and yes, they are very cool words!!!!!!

Written versus spoken communication

When one is physically present when speaking with another person, body language, intonation, setting, and other physical factors, can suggest the intent of words in a way that words written on a page cannot.

Collegiality

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, it can help the words to be taken in the lighthearted manner in which it was intended.

Should such interaction as noted in the example above be considered incivility in the collegiate, collaborative environment of Wikipedia? Should the talk page location matter (such as whether the discussion is on a user talk page, an article talk page, or Wikipedia project-space talk page)?

• Reply: Well "don't be a dick" has been a popular phrase since the beginning of Wikipedia Wikipedia:Don't be a dick. The essay "don't be a dick" over at meta has been cited repeatedly [1] especially as part of "ignore all rules". I really don't see the difference between using expletives or one of the seven dirty words and calling someone a troll or a dick, which the "insiders" and self-important "voter guide writers" repeatedly refer to me as. Both instances are just as offensive and incivil. However, realistically editors would have a hard time on this project (and in the real world, for that matter) if they are so thin-skinned. Sometimes dickish behavior deserves being called out like when my friend Bishonen rightly called me a "vexatious litigant and a pest" [2] during our initial encounter back in my newbie days and I appreciate her candor in retrospect as it helped me learn how to become a productive part of the community. What we often forget is there are real people behind a screen behind every username. Emotion sometimes get out of hand. Incivility happens just like it does in real life. Guys need to grow a thicker skin and get over it and remember we are here to build an encyclopedia not to be a vexatious litigant and bitch about every minor instances over the use of expletives or sarcasm. If I had such thin-skin, I would had been gone years ago. Seriously, go look at what those voter guide writers are saying about me and it gets even worse on IRC. Like Jay-Z said, you gotta get that dirt off your shoulder. There's always going to be haters but just know that you are here to build a comprehensive encyclopedia not to engage in petty personal beef.--YOLO Swag (talk) 07:21, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Profanity

Should all profanity (such as the use of "bad words", "four letter words", "the Seven dirty words", etc.), be considered incivility?

• Reply: No it depends on the context. I'm well-known for having a potty mouth in real life and I don't think there's anything wrong with using the seven dirty words without directing at anyone in particular.--YOLO Swag (talk) 07:26, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

All caps/wiki markup

There is an established convention when using technology to communicate through a typed format that WRITING IN ALL CAPS is considered "yelling" and is generally not acceptable. Individuals also sometimes use italics bolding green or other colored text or even enlarged text or other formatting code to attempt to indicate intonation, or to otherwise emphasize their comments.

Should there be limits as to when this type of formatting should be used in a discussion? Is there any type of formatting which should never be acceptable in a discussion?

• Reply: Hell no. As I mentioned in the first question, grow the hell up and get over it. There are always haters and doubters out there. Remember, you are here to build an encyclopedia. Rise above and ignore.--YOLO Swag (talk) 07:28, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Enforcement and sanctions

Responsibility for enforcement

Who is responsible for maintaining a civil environment for collegiate discussion? Should it be it the responsibility of administrators, the arbitration committee, the broader Wikipedia community, or some combination of these?

• Reply: I don't consider maintaining a civil environment a major issue on Wikipedia. Too many people get blocked over petty instances of "incivility". Often times, these so-called "civility police" happens to be the same self-important pseudo-intellectuals who make very little mainspace contributions much less make any real attempt to write any featured articles. I don't think using one of the seven dirty words is blockable. If the incivility gets out of hand, usually there are other underlying issues punishable due to other violations. The bottom line is, if disputes get out of hand, the community would deal with it. Admins should not make unilateral determination on civility issue as different admin seems to have different interpretations.--YOLO Swag (talk) 07:37, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Appropriate sanctions

What sanctions, if any, do you think are appropriate for incivility? Should blocking be considered an appropriate response to incivility? Should topic banning or interaction banning be considered an appropriate response?

• Reply: Quite frankly, no. Incivility is undesirable but there are always underlying reasons that resulted in the incivility. Don't turn a blind eye on the real issues and merely punish for "incivility".--YOLO Swag (talk) 07:38, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Context

Should the context of the situation be taken into account when considering whether to apply sanctions to the individual due to incivility?

• Reply: Absolutely

Severity

How severe should a single incident of incivility need to be to merit some sort of sanction?

• Reply: No. The civility police needs to, for a lack of better words, get a life and go write some FAs.--YOLO Swag (talk) 07:39, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Instances of incivility

Should multiple instances of incivility in the same discussion be considered one offense or several? If a user is civil most of the time, but occasionally has instances of incivility, should these incidents be excused? If so, how often should such incivility be excused?

• Reply: As I mentioned above, I don't consider incivility (however you interpret it to be) itself to be blockable under any circumstances. We have to understand what caused the dispute, why the user has to resort to incivility, and if there are other violations committed by either party of the dispute. I would use a common sense approach instead of just yelling "block" because someone said fuck.--YOLO Swag (talk) 07:44, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Weighing incivility and contributions

Should the quality and/or number of contributions an individual makes outside of discussions have any bearing on whether an individual should be sanctioned due to incivility? Should the incidents of incivility be taken on their own as a separate concern?

• Reply: Yes. Some users are here simply to troll and seek attention and they are usually very easy to identify. Once again, I think it would be a mistake to punish someone based on civility alone.--YOLO Swag (talk) 07:53, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Outcry

In the past, when an individual has been blocked from editing due to "violating the civility policy" (incivility), there has, at times, been an outcry from others concerning the block, and sometimes the block has been overturned subsequent to that outcry.

In an effort to reduce incidences of such an outcry ("drama"), should incivility be deprecated as an appropriate reason for blocking an individual? Should admins instead be required to have a more specific reason (such as personal attacks, harassment of another user, etc.), when blocking a user for incivility?

• Reply: It would be inappropriate to block someone solely because of incivility. Find out the circumstances that caused the incivility and get more input from the community. Admins who block strictly because of incivility is asking for trouble and baiting for a wheelwar.

AN/I prerequisite

Should a demonstrable consensus formed through discussion at WP:AN/I (or other appropriate forum) be required as a prerequisite to blocking an individual due to incivility? If so, should there be a minimum time frame for such discussions to remain open before the individual may be blocked?

• Reply: Yes there should be consensus for blocking to avoid wheel-wars. It also appears that different admins have vastly different definition of incivility or if incivility is a blockable offense at all. I think there needs to be a significant community consensus to block someone, no matter what the violation is. Incivility itself should not be blockable as incivility blocks always result in more Wikipedia:More_heat_than_light--YOLO Swag (talk) 20:28, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

RFC prerequisite

A request for comment (RFC) gives the community the opportunity to discuss a behavioural concern (such as incivility) directly with the individual, with the intended goal of attempting to find a voluntary solution.

Should an RFC be required as a prerequisite for blocking a user of incivility? Should it be suggested and/or encouraged?

• Reply: As I mentioned earlier, incivility shouldn't be a blockable offense as such blocks always generate controversies and bring Wikipedia:More_heat_than_light. A user conduct RFC is a good medium to resolve disputes before going to the ArbCom or any other more serious dispute resolution body. But I am pretty sure that if someone resorts to incivility, it would be for reasons that could brought forth other more serious misconducts/violations by either the offender or the "offendee" of the insult or perhaps even both.

Personal Attacks

Requests for adminship

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship (RFA) is a place where an editor requests the additional tools and responsibilities of adminship. In the discussion concerning the specific request, each commenting editor is to convey whether (and why) they would (or would not) trust the requester with those tools and responsibilities. Due to this, typically the requester's actions, behaviour, and contributions are noted, evaluated, and sometimes discussed.

Due to the nature of RFA (a question of trusting an individual), should it be considered necessary for the standards concerning personal attacks be somewhat relaxed at RFA? What, if any, should be the limits to this? How personal is "too personal" at an RFA? What types of criticisms cross the line between being considered merely an evaluation of a candidate and being considered an unwarranted attack? Should comments considered to cross that line be left alone, stricken, moved to the talk page, or simply removed altogether?

• Reply: Admins need a particular sort of temperament to resolve and mediate disputes. I also believe admins need to be hold to a higher standard than the rest of the community. Quite frankly, if the editor could not handle criticism, he/she should not be an admin.

Attacking an idea

The Wikipedia community has a long tradition of not tolerating personal attacks. However, it may be difficult to differentiate whether an individual is commenting on a user's ideas or is commenting on the user themselves. The same is true concerning whether an individual may understand a particular idea.

How should this be determined? Should any of the following be considered a personal attack? Should any of these comments be considered the kind of incivility that we should not tolerate on Wikipedia?

"That idea is stupid"

"That is idiotic"

"That is yet another one of <username of proposer>'s stupid ideas and should be ignored"

"You don't understand/misunderstand"

"You aren't listening"

"You don't care about the idea"

• Reply: I don't think there is anything wrong with attacking an idea in those examples above. The only way to move this project forward is to have serious discussions as to how to improve the encyclopedia for the readers. Editors who take everything personally would no doubt have the hard time here. Conflicts are inevitable but we must never lose sight of the project's only objective: to build a comprehensive encyclopedia. If an editor can't put the "I" aside and handle criticism in discussions, too bad for him.

Rate 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 the context of 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: 1

• Typical of the foolishness I have come to expect from this user

rating: 1

• After looking over your recent edits it is clear that you are incompetent.

rating: 2

• Anyone with a username like that is obviously here for the wrong reasons

rating: 2

• You seem to have a conflict of interest in that you appear to be interested in a nationalist point of view.

rating: 1

• It is obvious that your purpose here is to promote your nationalist point of view.

rating: 1

• You are clearly here to support your nationalist point of view, Wikipedia would be better off without you.

rating: 1

• This is the stupidest proposal I have seen in a very long time.

rating: 1

• Whoever proposed this should have their head examined

rating 1

• I don't know how anyone could support such an idiotic proposal.

rating: 1

• This proposal is retarded.

rating: 1

• The person who initiated this discussion is a moron.

rating: 1

• This proposal is crap.

rating: 1

• This proposal is a waste of everyone's time.

rating 1

• What a fucking waste this whole discussion has been

rating: 1

• A shitty proposal from a shitty editor.

rating: 3

• The OP is a clueless idiot.

rating 2

• Please just stop talking, nobody is listening anyway.

rating: 1

• Just shut up already.

rating: 2

• File your sockpuppet investigation or STFU.

rating: 1

• Shut your fucking mouth before you say something else stupid.

rating: 4

admin actions

• The blocking admin has a long history of questionable judgements.

rating: 1

• The blocking admin needs to be desysopped of this is representative of their decision making abilities.

rating 1

• The blocking admin is well known as an abusive rule nazi.

rating: 1

• 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.

rating 1

• How could anyone with a brain in their head think it was ok to issue a block like this?

rating: 1

Possible trolling

• Your comments look more like trolling to me.

rating: 1

• Stop trolling or I will find an admin to block you.

rating: 1

• All I can say about this user is "obvious troll is obvious".

rating: 1

• Go troll somewhere else.

rating: 1

• Somebody block this troll so those of us that are here in good faith can continue without them.

rating: 1

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"

rating: 1

• Comment removed from a conversation and replaced with <redacted> or {{RPA}}

rating 1

• Entire discussion closed and/or collapsed using {{hat}} or other such formatting

rating: 1

• Comment removed from a conversation and replaced with "redacted twattery, don't post here again" with posting users signature still attached

rating: 3

• Comment removed from conversation and replaced with File:DoNotFeedTroll.svg

rating: 3

Enforcement scenarios

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 on 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. "

• Response: They are having a productive discussion in the relevant article talkpage. Leave them be. The encyclopedia content is not being threatened. Ignore it until an edit war ensues then both sides could be either blocked for 3RR or placed on revert warring parole.--YOLO Swag (talk) 20:44, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

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: The "asshattery" needs to be removed but everything else stays. The admin needs to get a grip, grow a thicker skin, and deal with it. Admins are held to a higher standard. If the block is controversial, don't block. The editor and his friends have the right to voice their opinion about the admin's competence no matter if they are correct or not.

Scenario 3

A user is apparently an expert in the field of eighteenth-century horse drawn carriages. Practically every word Wikipedia 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 into the conversation at the noticeboard.

• Response: Inappropriate. The block would no doubt generate Wikipedia:More_heat_than_light Using profanity is not blockable. What's so bad about using profanity? Is Wikipedia that puritan? I thought Wikipedia is not censored. As long as he is contributing and is not committing any policy violation, he shouldn't be blocked. In fact, he should probably be commended for the "straight talk".

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."

• Response: User B should be blocked for harassment, baiting, and trolling. User A already made it clear that User B should stay away from him.

Scenario 5

A user is unfailingly civil in their on-wiki interactions with other users. They have never been blocked. Yet it is discovered that on an off-wiki forum dedicated to discussing Wikipedia they constantly make grossly insulting profane remarks about other WP users. Another user emails them asking about this discrepancy, and they receive an email reply through the Wikipedia email system that is equally insulting and profane. When the issue is brought up at WP:ANI the user is again perfectly polite. They openly acknowledge that they are in fact the user making the comments on the off-wiki forum, and that they sent an insulting email. They feel none of that is relevant as their on-wiki communication has been above reproach.

• Response: If we could not even forcefully police off-wiki stealth canvassing with clear-cut IRC logs as evidence, why should we start worrying about something as trivial as incivility off-wiki?

Scenario 6

(Please bear in mind that this is a hypothetical scenario, not a description of the current situation)

The Wikipedia community is in a time of crisis. Arguments about civility are leading to more and more disruption and the project seems in danger of losing many long time contributors as a result. In desperation, the community decides to appoint one user to modify WP:CIVIL in any way they see fit in order to resolve these issues and restore order. In their wisdom they select you as that person.

• Response: I would refuse. Any modification of WP:CIVIL needs to have community consensus. I do not have the right to do that. I already let my opinions be known in this questionnaire. People know where I stand. But I won't force my view without input from the entire community. Yes, I said "entire" community, not just the admins/arbs/insiders.

Comments

Please use this section for any additional comments, observations, recommendations, etc.