Talk page disturbances edit
Hi, first of all thanks very much for the time and effort you contribute to Wikipedia. You clearly want to improve the quality of the project and are here for the right reasons.
Regarding your debate on ARTICLE NAME it may be best not to make any more direct replies to or to directly address the editor with whom you are having what appears to be a personal dispute. While debate is often necessary to achieve consensus, some advice based on Wikipedia guidelines would be:
- Don't repeatedly address each other by name. Reduce or cease your use of the ping or alert templates. watching the page ensures that your replies or comments will be seen by the other party. Furthermore your cesation of addressing the editor directly will make other editors feel more included in your discussions. Personal attacks can be subtle and do not by definition contain abusive language, but they can be avoided if you only address content and not the editor.
- state your point only once. Your contributions on the talk page are there to demonstrate your ideas to a group of editors, not to convince one person of your point. Replying each time the other person replies not only weakens your own arguments and clutters the talk page, but it also misses the point of talk pages, which is to improve the article not to improve your peers.
- Don't continually point out flaws. A subtle way of doing this is pointing out what you consider to be inappropriate behavior on the part of your colleagues. Instructional comments like, "You shouldn't do this...", or "should do that", are not conducive to the improvement of the article and if repeated frequently, amount to an accusation which can be interpreted as not assuming good faith.
- scale back or cease your discussion with the party you are debating whilst a dispute resolution is in effect. The point of a dispute resolution is to achieve an outcome, not to achieve the outcome you prefer. While it may be tempting to reply to every comment made in a dispute, or to poison the well by pointing out what you see as an error on the part of the person who sought mediation, you need to have faith that the resolution system will run its course and provide a consensus for the outcome of the disputed article.
In summary, the way we behave on the talk page needs to be inclusive of all editors, focused on content and not on personal points or the people that make them. I have sent this advice, verbatim, to the other party involved in the debate and hope that the outcome will be that we are all able to have more fruitful discussions in the future. Thanks very much for your time and continued contributions.
