 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
| This is an essay on civility. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Some Thoughts on Incivility in Wikipedia
edit | This page in a nutshell: There are three main types of incivility by editors. |
I was asked by an editor to provide a few thoughts about incivility in the English Wikipedia, and will copy some of those thoughts into this essay for review in connection with the administrator election.
Civility is the fourth pillar of Wikipedia. It is not easy to define civility, which is not primarily a matter of the avoidance of certain offensive words, although the avoidance of those words is a very good idea. Civility includes treating other editors with respect. One known issue with electronic media is that some people don't automatically recognize that another source of words on the other side of the screen is also a human being with feelings, and so they don't use the same courtesy as they would in face-to-face conversation.
On the English Wikipedia, I think that incivility problems fall into three main classes:
- 1. Clearly inappropriate posts, typically having the nature of personal attacks. These usually result in a block, of any length from 31 hours to indefinitely. If these editors are unblocked, they either have learned their lesson, or have not learned their lesson.
- 2. Editors who are not only rude, but appear to be not here to contribute to the encyclopedia, who don't seem to be here to work on the encyclopedia. They are almost always indeffed.
- 3. Experienced editors who are clearly working to contribute to the encyclopedia but who treat other editors disrespectfully. These editors are problematic because the community cannot agree on whether they are net negatives or net positives. They often have lengthy block logs consisting either of short blocks for incivility, or of long or indefinite blocks that are then lifted after discussion. There is no right answer about these editors.
My own opinion is that ArbCom, who have agreed to handle cases that the community cannot decide because it is divided, should accept cases about a few of the most troublesome of these editors and decide whether they are net negatives, and should be either banned or greatly restricted, or net positives when restricted. That is my opinion, but it is not generally agreed that ArbCom needs to handle such cases. These editors will continue to divide the community, unless and until the community decides, for any such editor, that enough is enough, and deploys a ban hammer.
As an administrator, I will not go looking for uncivil editors to block. I will be ready to respond to any obvious cases of type 1 or type 2 incivility that are brought to my attention, or to the attention of the community at WP:ANI. My involvement with long-term editors with a long history of incivility will probably not be as an administrator, but as a member of the community, because if there is a proposal at WP:ANI or WP:AN to ban the editor, I will take part as an editor.