User:Squeamish Ossifrage/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.

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: There are going to be two themes that dominate my responses. Civility is a measure of whether a comment is constructive (or at least potentially so), and whether it is appropriate to the context. Neither of those can ever be judged from a sound bite in isolation. Broadly speaking, I can assume that the hypothetical quote above is less likely to be constructive and context-appropriate than otherwise, but attempting to devise a mechanical rubric by which this can be determined in isolation is essentially a novel implementation of the Scunthorpe problem. And I think there is a difference, key to enforcement, between "simple" incivility and disruption. And, yes, I think that location is part of the context. Editors don't "own" their plot of userspace, but that doesn't mean it isn't the Wikipedia equivalent of "home", complete with their name above the door, and that's probably important to recognize, especially when editors react badly to disputes that follow them home from elsewhere.

Profanity

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

• Reply: Blanket bans on specific verbiage are futile and counterproductive. There are contexts where harsh language may not be synonymous with incivility, much less with actual disruption. And, more importantly, banning specific profanity only encourages its replacement.

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: Ah, here's a question where I won't dodge the answer with a context matters reply. We have a relatively stable guideline that relates to formatting abuse, enforced at least somewhat uniformly. And that's WP:CUSTOMSIG, our discussion of the use of formatting for editor signatures. "A distracting, confusing, or otherwise unsuitable signature may adversely affect other users," our guideline states. "Your signature should not blink, scroll, or otherwise inconvenience or annoy other editors." All of that is, and should be, true of any and all formatting choices. It's one thing to italicize or bold for emphasis. Or, even, to jump to all-caps "Internet yelling"; a third party interrupting a WP:DUCKSEASON exchange by imploring the parties to "STOP THIS" is not necessarily (or likely, absent other issues) uncivil. But giant text, blinking letters, or a widespread abuse of color and font-weight that makes the page look as though a truck full of crayons crashed into the typographer's office is disruptive editing, regardless of whether it is also uncivil editing.

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: The very word civility is derived from the Latin word for citizen. Any sort of mandatory social compact must arise from below, not be imposed from above. And it will, and should, change over time as the editing population changes. Administrators and arbitrators both have defined roles in the community and the project, and neither of those should necessarily treat civility differently. Administrators are the community's means of enforcing the policies the community enacts, to the extent that those policies are enforceable and to the extent that enforcement is, itself, constructive. Arbitrators have the unique role of providing a binding conclusion to otherwise intractable disputes; sometimes this means erecting bright-lines (even ones that are novel solutions) in specific areas to break the back of disputes, but that's distinct from creating policy.

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: I don't think incivility qua incivility is the sort of thing that is a solid basis for blocking people, no. But that doesn't mean that an uncivil editor cannot be blocked; rather, the yardstick is whether their incivility is disruptive. One editor who tells another to "Fuck off!" is likely not editing in a civil manner. But if the latter editor has been engaged in a prolonged pattern of harassment, then the editor who used the "colorful metaphor" (as Star Trek IV put it) is the victim of disruption, not the cause of it. As for the specific sanctions available, administrators have a large toolbox with reason, and the toolbox of the arbitration committee is largely limited only by their imagination. Blocks, topic bans, and restrictions on interactions are all responses to disruptive behavior that may be appropriate for specific situations. As with just about all policy-enforcement topics, there is never going to be a single right answer.

Context

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

• Reply: Indeed, context is paramount. Any civility enforcement structure that does not take context into account is not enforcing civility at all, but implementing a wordfilter.

Severity

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

• Reply: Incivility that rises to the level of disruption is disruptive. Obviously, becoming disruptive in a single edit is a higher bar than being disruptive over a long period of time where a pattern is evident. Tracts of racist screed, Godwin's Law violation, and threats of violence are all uncivil. They are also disruptive, and the community has a long history of responding to that sort of thing with a rapid and firm response. But an isolated intemperate comment doesn't necessarily rise to the level of actionable offense because it includes the word "fuck", any more than a single personal attack is damning in isolation. Editors are people. We all make mistakes, have bad days, or let someone push our buttons too hard.

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: Does it matter whether we call it one offense or several? Wikipedia's not a court of law where enforcement begins with a specific enumeration of charges. Obviously, the long-term pattern matters, as does the nature and context of the incivility. Is this editor having a persistent problem with another specific individual? Have they been the target of harassment? Or do they just yell "fuck" at people on every second Thursday. These are different situations that call for different responses. Ultimately, however, the question is whether their behavior is disruptive.

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: The way this question is worded because it gives the impression that the editor in question is usually or always uncivil in discussions. Where that's the case, clearly, that editing is disruptive. Wikipedia has sanctioned (even banned) editors who do good work in mainspace but who are simply incapable of communicating with others. And we're right to do so, because this is a collaborative exercise. But that's distinct from editors with a history of quality contributions including quality discussions, but who are also capable of incivility. In those circumstances, there's not going to be a black and white answer, especially not in the real Wikipedia, where there are a number of long-running acrimonious disputes that simultaneously allow good editors to be goaded into bad behavior and allow bad editors to excuse poor behavior ostensibly for exactly the same reason.

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: Incivility is a poor reason to block, and probably ought to be deprecated as a block rationale, but not because of past drama. Rather, it is a poor block reason because it is vague and subjective, and all decisions of that type tend to attract scrutiny and argument. It's just messier when they also involved the administrator toolset. If an editor is doing things that warrant a block, it should be possible to more tightly define why a block is the best solution, and we have lots of Wikijargon to link to that end. WP:NPA, WP:HARASS, and WP:DE would be block rationales that cover many cases that today might be grounds for "incivility blocks". The danger, of course, is that one of these new rationales would become the next battleground ("I unblocked User:PoliticalFootball because what he did wasn't really disruptive!"). Such situations may require visits to the arbitration committee to resolve—and require an arbitration committee willing to get down into the trenches to provide a real resolution, which is probably not throwing the book at PoliticalFootball and calling it a day.

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: We do not require administrators to establish a consensus before blocking on any other grounds. However, administrators are expected to get sanity-checks for actions that may be controversial (and preferably to do so before making them). Because civility blocks, in their current form, are pretty much exclusively controversial, administrators should probably not make them unilaterally. Hopefully, a shift to more precise block rationales would mitigate some of this problem, although I'm sure that I'm being too optimistic there. Regardless, AN/I is not part of the dispute resolution process, and shouldn't be shoe-horned into becoming one.

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: First and foremost, I question whether the RFC system, especially regarding RFC/U, is constructive. I've never taken part in one, but looking through their history, they seem more like shooting galleries than avenues for dispute resolution. As American political attack ads demonstrate, it's very easy to make someone look bad through selective quotation, and much harder for that individual to provide a nuanced rebuttal. Especially when incivility is taking place as part of a larger dispute with defined sides, I cannot help but think that RFC/U adds fire, not light. That opinion aside, they are currently part of the dispute resolution process. Blocking, however, is not dispute resolution, but a preventative action made in the context of policy enforcement. A user behaving badly can be blocked. An otherwise good user repeatedly behaving badly should be entered into the dispute resolution process. So should long-term users in complex situations fraught with factionalism, but that latter case is almost certainly solely under the arbitration committee's remit, should they choose to wade in.

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: The personal attack policy says to comment on the content, not the contributor. But RFA is a measure of the community's trust in the contributor, not the content, so some things that are appropriate in RFA probably wouldn't be appropriate at an article's Talk page. But that's not free reign. Are the comments, as this question asks, unwarranted? Are they invective? I'm of the opinion that substantial dialogue on RFA (including the sort of paragraph-long responses that sometimes accompany opposes) should occur on the Talk page, rather than in threaded debates with supporters/opposers in the midst of the voting (I won't pretend that RFA consists of !votes). But that would require a structural revision of the RFA format, frankly. Who has two thumbs and won't be the editors advocating for that? Me.

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: Context is important. One quote out of context is easy to spin in either direction, especially since—let's be honest here—some people read "that's not a very good idea" as indistinguishable from "you're stupid". Of those cited, I'd finger the third one as being the least likely to have a role in acceptable debate. It implies a history of poor editing and poisons the well. But even there, I don't think the right answer is to jump to sanction the editor making that statement. While it's possible that the "uncivil" editor is the problem, it's equally plausible that the editor they are attacking is the one responsible for disruption (such as a persistent nationalist POV editor) and that the resulting incivility is simply the reaction of an editor who isn't familiar with the dispute resolution process (or who simply isn't good at that sort of thing; if we expected all our editors to meet ideal levels of decorum when dealing with others' bad behavior, we wouldn't need an RFA process).

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: 3.5. Argumentative and a borderline personal attack by implication, but it's important to see what the wider context is here.

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

rating: 4. Fundamentally a personal attack, suggests the presence of a wider conflict. This sort of thing is a warning flag that someone has probably been behaving disruptively, but it is impossible to tell whether that is this editor or the other user from this quote in isolation.

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

rating: Sigh. I hate WP:CIR, at least as far as its language choice is concerned. I don't have another suggestion for what to title that, but we really need to change the name if its going to be widely cited (which it is). It took me awhile to find a similar situation, because it substantially predates me, but there's a reason that WP:VANITY was deprecated a long time ago. I'll call this a 2, but I really almost refused to assign a number here. There's no good way to tell whether the problem here is the editor making this statement, or the community for not providing a better way for him to phrase it.

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

rating: 3. Until I noticed a link to it a few days ago, I wasn't aware of the existence of WP:UAA. I think it's safe to assume the general populace isn't aware of it, either. My hunch is that this sort of comment is most likely with editors complaining about apparently-disruptive names or clearly promotional ones. In either case, the administrative action should be to explain that UAA is better than this sort of comment. On the other hand, if the username in question is one that suggests, for example, a Jewish background, and the editor making this comment has a history of dodgy contributions to white supremacist articles, well....

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

rating: 2. I'm sure that could be copy-edited to sound better, but let's not beat around the bush, nationalist POV pushing is probably in the Top 5 current problems for the project. Ideally, this would be followed up with some information to help the other user acclimate and understand NPOV, but we don't mandate that sort of handholding from random editors (or we wouldn't have any). And, of course, there's always the possibility that this editor is himself a "civil POV pusher" for the other side; any time nationalist debates are implied, the odds are sadly good that there are unclean hands on both sides of the issue.

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

rating: 2.5. And now we take one step down the ladder from the comment above. That doesn't mean it isn't true, but this is a case where the editor making the comment should probably receive a friendly word about how we'd rather these situations be handled (including where to report real problems to). The concern about competing nationalist viewpoints holds here, as well.

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

rating: 4. That last part is problematic. But especially from the perspective of an administrator getting involved here, best practice is to discern which party (or, likely, parties) are the sources of disruption. This is not a civil comment, and my guess is that it was made by someone very much a part of the nationalist dispute, but that's not necessarily the case. And if it is simply an angry reply to an editor who consistently pushes the idea that Washington state is supposed to be the southernmost province of Canada, it's understandable.

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

rating: 3. Not the best way to word things, but editors are entitled to their opinions, and sometimes its important to reject bad ideas with strong language.

• Whoever proposed this should have their head examined

rating: 5, in that this is fundamentally a personal attack. However, it's also the way that (at least some) normal people phrase things when passing judgment on bad ideas in real life. A responding administrator may want to see if there's wider problems with this editor's phrasing, but in general, while this isn't acceptable, it's the sort of thing that I think could be ignored in isolation or responded to with education rather than sanction. As with any time I rate one of these at 5, "unacceptable" should absolutely not be construed to mean immediately actionable.

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

rating: 4. The real problem here is the poisoning of the well which can be disruptive even if this might not strictly be a personal attack under the current policy wording.

• This proposal is retarded.

rating: 4. Again, poor word choice, but common in informal communication. I know that "retarded" is a hot-button word among advocates of rights for the mentally handicapped, and flies totally under the radar for a lot of other people. If this is causing (or appears likely to cause) a problem, the best solution here is to engage the editor in non-template dialogue, explaining the potential problem, and asking if they'd reword it. How they respond is likely telling.

• The person who initiated this discussion is a moron.

rating: 5. Everything that applies to the "head examined" and the "retarded" comments above applies here. This isn't acceptable, but in isolation it's impossible to tell if that's because of a problematic editor making personal attacks, or a naive editor not synchronized with community expectations.

• This proposal is crap.

rating: 3. As with the "stupidest proposal" comment. Ideally, these editors would say why they dislike proposals, and in many contexts in Wikipedia, this sort of thing might be discarded come time to discern consensus, but it's not forbidden to be dismissive.

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

rating: 2. Sometimes they are.

• What a fucking waste this whole discussion has been

rating: 3. I'm not sure it's helpful, but this is sadly sometimes accurate. I'm sure veterans of those four-screen long train-wreck AFDs that close "no consensus" or any of several RFCs I could link to feel this way, even if they don't all say it.

• A shitty proposal from a shitty editor.

rating: 5. Everything from the "idiotic proposal" comment with the additional of a direct attack on the contributor. Note that the problem here is not the profanity, and changing shitty to something you can say on network TV doesn't make it better.

• The OP is a clueless idiot.

rating: 5. Indistinguishable from the "moron" comment above.

• Please just stop talking, nobody is listening anyway.

rating: 3. Might be an effort to squelch opposition. Might be an effort to end WP:DUCKSEASON.

• Just shut up already.

rating: 3. Might be an effort to silence dialogue. Might indicate a problem with harassment, POV pushing, or the like. If this editor is not the source of disruption, letting them know how to handle issues in future is probably helpful.

• File your sockpuppet investigation or STFU.

rating: 1. Claims of sockpuppetry absent evidence are personal attacks per policy. Telling someone to STFU isn't friendly, but the unsupported allegations are the disruption not the intemperate response. Unless, of course, SPI determines this editor was a sockpuppet, in which case the puppetry is the disruption, not the comment.

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

rating: 4. I suspect that the vast majority of the time, this an effort to stifle legitimate debate. But, if this is posted on User:PoliticalFootball's talk page by someone on "his" side of the current drama-flareup, it can probably be read as a desperate attempt to get his attention before he's ensnared by that week's drama trap. Context is important here, but perhaps more important is the response of the editor it was directed at; unlike some of these hypothetical comments that poison the well for wider discussion, this looks like it is addressed to a single editor, and how that editor interprets the purpose and tone is important to judging its acceptability.

admin actions

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

rating: 3. Acceptability requires support for the claim.

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

rating: 2. Administrators hold their positions on the basis of community trust in their judgment. Expressing a loss of such trust is not a personal attack, nor is it uncivil. Context may be important here, but in general, editors are allowed to express dissatisfaction with admins (not unlike how people the world over always wish that that person wasn't a political office holder; insert any politician's name, ever).

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

rating: 4. I'm sure that someone will argue that "rule[s] nazi" is a Godwin's Law invocation and that comparing admins to the architects of the Holocaust is an "always unacceptable" personal attack, and probably anti-Semitic, too. I ... do not hold with that opinion, but that doesn't mean this is moving the dialogue forward. This is saved from getting a 5 by the possibility that the posting editor could back up his claims of admin abuse/poor judgment in borderline cases with actual evidence; if meritorious, the insult should probably be overlooked.

• 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: 5. The "admin cronies"/"all admins" broad brush is the problem here because it makes it more difficult to have the discussion that may very likely be necessary. That said, taking immediate sanctioning action in this sort of circumstance helps no one. Eh, my response here does not feel internally consistent with my other responses. Editors are permitted to have the opinion that the admins are a collective cabal of hive-minded robots, even if such an opinion is demonstrably incorrect. Nor does this sort of complaint require evidence to support, because it is not actionable. Regardless of whether it is strictly civil, it is irrelevant bluster made during a stressful situation. 2.

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

rating: 5. Admin version of the "head examined" quote earlier. Because of how the blocking environment works, though, this doesn't have much potential for disruption. It's a stressful situation, and so uncivil comments, while not acceptable, should not necessarily result in any sort of further administrative action.

Possible trolling

• Your comments look more like trolling to me.
• Stop trolling or I will find an admin to block you.
• All I can say about this user is "obvious troll is obvious".
• Go troll somewhere else.
• Somebody block this troll so those of us that are here in good faith can continue without them.

rating: 2.5, but with qualifications. Covering all of these in a sort of trolling omnibus response. Persistent vandals, including the drive-by sort, are a problem for Wikipedia. Editors who are used to the wider Internet don't have any hesitation to call that sort of behavior trolling. Here, at least on paper, we extend the hand of civil discourse even to those least deserving of it. That's a cultural shift for a lot of new editors, especially ones unfamiliar with AIV and its ilk. The case can be made that calling someone a troll, even if that's what they'd be called on websites without the tea and crumpets, is a personal attack, but I'm not sure I'm on board with that, any more than calling someone a "vandal" is—if done with justification. Obviously, if the "troll" in any of these quotes is nothing of the sort, then these are all just as unacceptable (indeed, disruptive) as calling constructive editors vandals.

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: 2, assuming the edit summary is accurate. No one (I don't think) has a problem with edit summaries along the lines of "revert vandalism" for, well, reverting vandalism. That's the same thing being described here, except that what we call "vandals" are trolls in most other Internet venues. Of course, if the removed text wasn't vandalism or otherwise inappropriate, then intentionally misleading edit summaries are disruptive.

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

rating: 2. Was the removed text even vaguely construable as a personal attack, and was it made on the editor's user talk page? If so, zero problems. Was it an unquestionably disruptive personal attack on another talk page? Also fine. Borderline cases are borderline; RPA doesn't have the best history. Using this to suppress dialogue that can't be interpreted in good faith as a personal attack is bright-line disruption.

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

rating: 3. Sometimes a dismissive means to silence debate, sometimes the only way to make pages readable. It's important to determine whether the useful conversation had concluded (which is rarely the end of all conversation).

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

rating: 3. My focus here isn't on "twattery", as follows from my opinions on profanity, but on the "don't post here again" aspect and its violation of WP:OWN. Is this in user talk? I'm going to assume so; I'd be much less generous about the acceptability here if this took place somewhere else. I think it's important to discern whether this is actually an attempt to disengage from an acrimonious conflict, or an effort to stifle legitimate communication. We should encourage the former, even when the user trying to back things down is testy in their verbiage. We should sanction the latter as disruptive. An administrator looking into this is going to need to go into the history of this dispute to respond appropriately. This statement is uncivil, certainly, but out of context it tells us nothing about where the disruption lies, and is an example of a facially uncivil comment that may nevertheless serve a constructive purpose (here, a voluntary disengagement from dispute). As a side topic, I'm not sure what my opinion is about the original signature remaining with the redaction notice. If I was going to do this, I'd put the redaction notice in square brackets and leave the signature (although I probably wouldn't call anything "twattery"). RPA doesn't provide guidance about what to do with signatures, and the case can be made that it's valuable to know whose comment was removed; I don't think there's a risible claim of impersonation or misattribution to be made with this example though.

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

rating: 5. Just like images are disruptive in signatures, I'm not a fond of images as a proxy for actual communication. They might be worth a thousand words, but if so, that's way over the word limit for most reasonable responses! Appropriate troutings seem a justifiable exception. I wouldn't suggest anyone be sanctioned for this in isolation, though. A "please don't do that" should suffice. Hopefully.

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: Well, the dialogue is going down a bad path, but that's because these editors are never going to find compromise or common ground on their own. They're not making a mess of the article itself, so there's a good chance that they're reasonable people who can be brought back to the table. A friendly hand needs to intervene and guide these editors to one of the low-impact dispute resolution boards. In my what should happen world, WP:CCN and WP:DRN are staffed with helpful, friendly folks who make a good effort at mediating the situation. In any case, what needs to not happen is immediate sanctions. I wouldn't even warn here unless problems continued, because adding more drama is contrary to the desired outcome. If problems continued, or they refused to come to the table at some place like WP:CCN, then that's a different kettle of fish.

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: Editors suffering sanctions are allowed to be unhappy about those sanctions. Editors are allowed to be unhappy about sanctions placed on other editors. However, even my willingness to allow lassitude regarding users' talk pages doesn't go this far. Blocked users are not intended to use their talk page as a venue for diatribe, or to coordinate with others. The acting administrator, however, should take no further action here per WP:INVOLVED, which means this is probably on its way to ANI. The responding administrator could consider providing a warning about the need to use the formal unblock request process if a protest against the block is intended (and the likelihood of further bad outcomes if nothing changes) or could simply strike talk page access with an explanatory note, likely depending on the history and intensity of the dispute at hand. Talk page protection for the block duration is a possibility if the page remains a locus of wider dispute (to prevent third-party abuse of the the talk page as well as de facto proxy editing for a blocked user). Note that such actions are not "civility enforcement", but rise from the talk page use and blocking policies. This is also very different from the "redacted twattery" question above or the "fucking talk page" scenario below, because there is no possibility that this serves to de-escalate a dispute. Rather, it does the contrary.

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: This takes more than one step to respond to. First, it's important to see what the locus of the actual dispute was. We talk about "civil POV pushers", but there are also "civil vandals". I've personally encountered some very friendly-seeming editors who have gotten well-earned indef blocks for intentional hoaxing. Was the expert editor having problems keeping his cool in the face of Randy from Boise, who insisted that 18th-century carriages were actually pulled by small dragons wearing horse costumes? Or was he just over-reacting to a legitimate difference of opinion? Likewise, although this may have been the fifteenth incident, what was the dispute resolution history here? If there was no effort to resolve the dispute prior to someone dropping by ANI with a dozen diffs, that's a different situation than a fifteenth effort to resolve the problem. Does the expert editor seem capable of editing cooperatively under better circumstances? If yes, that's a significant sign that the problem may be in the background of the dispute, rather than the background of the editor. But ultimately, Wikipedia is under stress from two directions. We do not do well at retaining expert editors, the sort of people who know what the reliable sources for these sort of topics, are easily able to access them, and are capable of distilling them into brilliant and approachable prose. On the other hand, we have trouble retaining rank and file editors who feel the community environment is a negative one (albeit, I suspect, often for reasons other than "simple" civility). If the expert here is usually able to communicate, but is easily goaded into poor reactions, that calls for a different long-term response strategy than if he is simply unwilling to edit cooperatively whatsoever (in which case, expert or not, he is ultimately unsuited for this project). Note that continued sanctions here, if necessary, also are not "civility enforcement", but are the result of disruptive editing; specifically, the blockable issue is not being mean or using naughty words, but the refusal to engage in good-faith cooperative dialogue.

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: A user who attempts to disengage from an active and acrimonious dispute should not be punished for doing so. The administrative response here should be to sternly warn User B, who is engaging in tendentious editing by continuing to press the argument at User A's talk page. Further attempts by User B to press the dispute (which is distinct from good-faith dispute resolution) should result in blocks on that grounds. No sanctions against User A for frustration or fuck.

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: Wikipedia administrators are not the Internet police, and our WP:NPA policy says so. However, "personal attacks made elsewhere create doubt about the good faith of an editor's on-wiki actions". The user in question has not done anything actionable as of this scenario. However, should they eventually fail to adequately separate their on-wiki good hand from their off-wiki bad hand, the history of this conflict will be an aggravating factor in the assignment of sanctions at that time. Although the victim of the harassment would receive sanctions (beginning, however, with warnings) if he chose to pursue the conflict on-wiki, administrators should be on guard for the possibility that the harassing editor will attempt to goad the other into action. If such a situation seems likely (but not automatically), an interaction restriction is a plausible measure to prevent disruption.

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: Given unilateral power over the civility policies, I would formally implement my opinions regarding its (un)suitability as a blocking rationale. I think we're much better off with the death of "civility blocks", but instead identifying bad behavior as personal attacks, disruptive editing, tendentious editing, harassment, and so on. The community has historically done a much better job defining those narrower issues. Trying to draw lines that define whether someone is "too mean" or "too abrasive" or "uses too many bad words" absent any clear violation of the other topics—well, it feels like those lines are being drawn in the sand, well below the high tide line. However, if the proposal to appoint me civility overlord were actually raised as a serious suggestion, it would permit an example of how "This is the stupidest proposal I have seen in a very long time." can sometimes be a necessarily strong refutation of a proposed outcome!

Comments

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

Writing survey questions is a science. Survey data collection and social research are topics that have a volume of literature behind them. I mean no offense to the creator(s) of this particular effort, but this is clearly not the work of experts in the field. I've filled this out more for my personal benefit, to make sure that I'm happy with my thought processes on Wikipedia's odd editing environment, than with any illusion that this will have broader impact. There are two reasons for that. First, there's very little here that can be easily subjected to analysis. There are some questions that elicit quantitative data, but it's of an odd sort. Everything else is open-form essay response. I don't think I've written this many short-answer essays since well back into my college days (in fact, the length of this thing might be a third problem, because it's a substantial barrier to participation). But the most important problem is that I don't think the examples and scenarios provided are either neutral or representative.

These longer questions are obviously intended to give some context to the situations, but a lot of the context that needs to be there is absent. Has anyone given warnings in scenario 1 or 3? How long were the blocks in scenario 2 and 3? And some of them seem contrived to the points of surrealism. Scenario 1 is a name-slinging battle between two nationalist culture warriors who ... don't edit war? Has that happened? It can't be representative. I looked at the article history of an archaeology topic with a vague connection to one of the big nationalist dust-ups and concluded that my editorial skills were going to live a long and full life without ever stepping into that minefield. Scenario 5 is equally odd to my eyes. Are the people who make a hobby of personal mockery at ED or WR or whatever the other site for that sort of thing is these days generally paragons of virtue when they're on-wiki? I mean, I guess that's possible, but ... is that the sort of workaday question we need to solve to move forward on civility? Because if so, this is a way weirder place than I thought it was.

And, frankly, at least a couple of these questions seem like they're baiting for an answer. Scenario 3 is probably the worst offender. I can't help but think that this scenario was written in a way to draw out support for sanctions against "vested contributors". Why is this expert in so many disputes? 18th century horse drawn carriages are not the sort of thing that is likely to attract much discussion, let alone debate. To be honest, an expert editor on that topic could probably go virtually unnoticed, even if his interpersonal skills were so wretched that a network TV reading of his talk page would need more bleeps than R2D2. Frankly, I suspect that there's a predetermined response for the socially naive admin and the unruly talk page in scenario 2, and I'm a little personally dismayed that I may have walked into that one.

But the bottom line is that these questions don't strike me as examples of the most frequent incivility problems except maybe the broad profanity topic (and is anyone really suggesting the Scunthorpe solution?). Misrepresentation of sources. Civil POV pushing. Non-native speakers with significant communication barriers. Refusal to respond as a form of incivility. Serial reincarnation (possibly by proxy). These are all important, nuanced topics, but I don't see them here. I see a lot of ways to ask people whether they're offended by the word fuck and at least a couple attempts to ask whether we should fast-track blocks and bans for long-term editors with the same facility that we use to show to door to edit-warriors with redlinked user pages.

I just don't understand what anyone is going to learn from this.