User talk:Jbhunley/Archives/2019/July

Precious

"Let's just leave it as is and avoid complications"

Thank you for quality articles such as Innocenzo Leonelli, for sifting new pages for nonsense and assessing, for welcoming new users and offering them your "quick and dirty introduction" to talk page editing, for adding refs, removing tags, for proposing tban before indef, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:46, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: Wow! Thank you very, very much! Jbh ^Talk 22:07, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, love smileys. Don't miss my talk today, happens to be first edit day, and I decorated ;) - Imagine you were a candidate for arbitration, there was one question the last round. What would you have said? (Just for curiosity, I won't change my vote.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:53, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: I assume you mean 'a candidate for ArbCom' rather than 'a candidate for arbitration' although... . Jests aside I agree with some of the specifics; a second bite at the close that was adjusting some aspect 'upon further reflection' would, in general, be OK only if the outcome stayed of the same magnitude e.g. making ban conditions more specific, maybe adding an editing restriction on the expiration of a medium/long term block, etc. However essentially vacating one's own close in order to open an ArbCom case oneself seems like a bad call to me. I also agree with her comments on Civility templating – I would go further and say use such a template should be curtailed. If one needs to remind someone to be civil then one should use one's own words. Templating someone in that situation is just going to escalate things. Taking a break before responding is good advice as well but there are several situations where that will probably not result in an outcome which is considered appropriate to, potentially, anyone. As would always 'letting it slide'.

Where I disagree with her is the assertion that there is really any consensus that "white-collar office politesse" is really a baseline even among white-collar Americans, much less our British and Indian colleagues. I address this difference a bit in a comment I made at AN about 'forced apologies' [1].

Civility, in the context of Wikipedia, can, partly, be seen as a collection of rules which prescribe the boundaries within which it is OK to express one's frustration, anger or manage conflict with others. In the context of inter-personal conflicts, it is possible for a bad actor to 'weaponize' civility norms as well. Defining it and adjudicating it on Wikipedia has been difficult because, like so many other social norms the rules and expectations are mostly unwritten and based upon and based upon the society/culture one lives within. In the case of a 'white-collar office' those norms have evolved over time and each new member assimilates the common baseline shared and enforced by all. Wikipedia has only the most rudimentary baseline with uneven social/actual sanctions for violating even that. The missing parts of what baseline there is becomes filled by the values of either the values an editor formed elsewhere, by the values of a charismatic individual present in a given group/time or through mutually re-enforced virtue-signaling. All of this prevents the promulgation of a consistent set of norms across the project other than of the most rudimentary sort and often they fall prey to situational effects.

If anyone is interested I may consider expanding that brief discussion of apologies into civility on Wikipedia in general although it boils down to the idea that, even if we could come to an agreement about a baseline the continued churn of editors with different social and cultural norms would make policing it impossible – assuming we do not want some draconian, authoritarian enforcement regime. Although I would beg your indulgence to wait until after my RfA as I am positive any such writings by me would be seen as self-serving, inflammatory or, more likely, both.

Ah… almost forgot. From a procedural point of view I would have declined because 1) the admin who brought the case was taking not only a second bite at the apple but was biting a whole different apple; 2) the requesting admin said they 'were requesting the case to "save" the editor from a possible community indef so, as OR said, the community had not exhausted all options for resolution; and 3) from the initial case request the complaint does not seem suitable to use as a vehicle for attempting to sort out the "civility" issue.

More than I meant to write and probably more than you expected but the writing was relaxing... Jbh ^Talk 20:28, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, - right, much more than a simple yes or no, but all good if relaxing. - Civility is such a tricky thing, - one of the things I found hurtful came in form of a barnstar, - I stubbornly leave it on my talk ;) - Once I told a user who found it difficult to apologize how he perhaps could, he then did, and the bystanders didn't think it was sincere, - I won't do that again. - Back to writing about music. Don't miss the video of the singer who said "Sometimes, particularly with a piece as radical as 'Le Grand Macabre', there is the space to stand up for what we believe in and to connect it to our times." (also on my talk, next to the lead pic that I took). --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:53, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

A year ago, you were recipient no. 1989 of Precious, a prize of QAI! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:33, 31 July 2019 (UTC)