Wikipedia talk:Bright lines

Paid Editing Proposals

In November 2013, there were three main discussions and votes on paid editing:

No paid advocacy (talk) (closed: opposed)

Paid editing policy proposal (talk) (closed: opposed)

Conflict of interest limit (talk) (closed: opposed)

Lines written in stone?

"Wikipedia does not have firm rules: Wikipedia has policies and guidelines, but they are not carved in stone; their content and interpretation can evolve over time. Their principles and spirit matter more than their literal wording, and sometimes improving Wikipedia requires making an exception..." Wikipedia:Five Pillars

I fear that these "bright line" rules would, in effect, not be lines drawn in the sand but permanent carvings etched in stone, against which Editors can be judged, ones that are unyielding and never change. At least, that is what the intent appears to be when I read this:

"Bright lines is a series of lines which if a user crosses, will result in them being banned from Wikipedia."

Life, however, is not a matter of bright vs. dark. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:59, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

My concern is more that the currently proposed "bright lines" are malleable standards, that will be subject to a great deal of interpretation, which basically makes them not bright lines. Take one of the few really bright lines on wiki, WP:3rr, you revert 4 times in 24 hours, you violate it, only thing subject to dispute is what counts as reverts, and what the proper response to the violation is. Compare that to Remove or suppress reliably sourced information that appropriately balances praise or disparagement in an article which, looking at the remove element, will require a case by case determination about what the appropriate balance of praise and disparagement is for a particular article. Suppress is even more nebulous. The principles seem to be in the right direction, but I don't think bright line is a good description. Monty₈₄₅ 16:11, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

+1 (edit conflict) WP:CREEP completely applies here. Passing this or any other similar proposal would make us rewrite WP:5, namely

Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute

and

Wikipedia does not have firm rules

. Perhaps we can work with the COI editors rather than fighting them. KonveyorBelt 16:17, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Interesting idea, but needs work. Two examples:

1. A new editor adds a birth date to a bio. With an RS. Another editor reverts, warns, and says the date is wrong. The first editor thinks the RS is solid (although it turns out to be mistaken, as two other RS's confirm) and re-inserts it. According to the proposal, this editor can now be banned. I suspect the author meant "repeatedly" to mean more than twice, but I wouldn't ban a new editor for doing it five times. Short block, yes, but ban, no.
2. It is not hard to find reliably sourced negative items about many subjects. The rationale for exclusion is often Wp:Weight a policy I support, but one that is nuanced, and doesn't qualify for the Steart test. Good faith editors can disagree on where to draw the line between "appropriate" and 'inappropriate". While we want, and can insist that parties to such a dispute engage in talk page discussion to reach a consensus, we've all seen situations where a zealous editor crosses a line and gets, or deserves a block. Fair enough, but this proposal would allow a permanent ban for such a transgression.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 16:23, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Vague and Misleading

Any user will be banned from the project if, after an appropriate warning, they repeatedly and deliberately edit or amend an article to do any one of these

So what does this mean? What is an appropriate warning?

Insert false information

If someone mistakenly edits the article with a non reliable source, can he be banned?

•Inappropriately disparage the subject of the article without citing appropriate reliable sources, and without ensuring that the article contains any known concerns regarding the nature of the disparagement
•Inappropriately praise the subject of the article without citing appropriate reliable sources, and without ensuring that the article contains any known concerns regarding the nature of the praise

Same concerns as above.

Remove or suppress reliably sourced information that appropriately balances praise or disparagement in an article

Is cleanup discouraged?

KonveyorBelt 16:45, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

NPOV

The problem with balancing articles wrt neutral point of view, is that NPOV depends upon the observer. That German guy gained medals for bravery, turned his country around, made it prosperous, and was time magazine person of the year 1938. He was a vegetarian and encouraged his friends to stop eating meat out of compassion for animals.
Should this be given as much prominence as his other activities as it balances the disparagement in the rest of his article? NPOV has to be discussed using the WP:BRD cycle, and this new policy actively discourages WP:BOLD. The idea of banning editors for a simple breach is like using a sledge hammer to crack a nut, editors will not want to balance articles in case others think the edits unbalance them.Martin451 22:42, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

How To Keep Order In A Preschool

Imagine, if you will, that you are tasked with keeping some sort of order in a preschool. You have various tools available to you, but your go-to method is the "time out" -- making the child sit in a corner for some short amount of time while the other children have fun.

Now imagine that little 3-year-old Johnny has developed the bad habit of taking crayons from the other preschoolers. The first couple of times you talk to him, then you apply a five minute time-out, a ten minute time-out, and so on, and the bad behavior is greatly reduced. Johnny sometimes slips back into his old ways -- he is, after all, just a 3-year-old -- but your method is definitely working.

Meanwhile, little Suzy's parents ask for a meeting with the school board about the terrible problem of crayon stealing and they pass a bright line rule saying that any child that is caught stealing a crayon will be immediately and permanently banned from entering any public school building. No kindergarten. No elementary school. No middle school or high school. There. Crayon-stealing problem solved.

The next day little Johnny takes a crayon, and little Jimmy, who has never done anything like this before, sees him and steals a crayon too. And you get news that three teachers have been fired for not following the new bright-line rules by using time-outs. And you have a family to feed.

Do you:

[A] Use time-outs anyway, hoping that you don't get caught.

[B] Permanently ban both Johnny and Jimmy, sentencing them to a lifetime of illiteracy.

[C] Get together with the other teachers and march to where the school board meets, demanding that anyone who was stupid enough to vote for the bright-line rule be immediately and permanently banned from entering any public school building, without pay.

[D] Crayon stealing? I didn't see any crayon stealing. Did you see some crayon stealing? You must be imagining things. We haven't banned a single child for stealing a crayon since they instituted the bright-line rule.

[E] Tell the school board that they are not doing enough to stop crayon stealing, and ask for permission to shoot any child that steals a crayon. Which, being morons, they grant you.

What would you do?

--Guy Macon (talk) 09:45, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I would [F] laugh about the bad analogy and WP:OTHERSTUFF. KonveyorBelt 14:59, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Evasion noted. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:40, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Feedback

There was no intention to call a vote. This is intended to be the start of a working draft, hoping people would join in as we look for a solution to a situation causing the community some concern.

Oppose: I don't see the benefit. All four lines stated are already behaviours which are not permitted per various policies so all this does is create some kind of "minimum sentence". I don't think that helps as it inhibits an admin (or ARBCOM) addressing problems on a case by case basis. Examples have been given where the penalty would plainly be wrong. At the same time, users are frequently banned for other forms of inappropriate behaviour, without the need for a rigid bright line. Babakathy (talk) 12:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC) Oppose mainly as WP:CREEP. The formulaic attempt at "bright lines" from an Arbitrator who failed to arbitrate (in the Tea Party Movement case) is rather laughable and only emphasized how little usefulness this policy proposal has. Someone not using his real name (talk) 13:11, 16 October 2013 (UTC) Oppose While these can all be real problems when repeated over and over again, and they are issues NOT properly addressed too often when you bring them to noticeboards (one reason I edit far less now a days), these statements are far too broad and can easily be abused. If the general ideas are NOT part of NPOV they could be put in there. User:Carolmooredc 14:14, 16 October 2013 (UTC) Kill it. Kill it with fire. A mandatory permaban for a kid whose one and only edit is writing "Taylor Swift is the best!" or "Obama is a poopy-head!", violations that currently don't even get a 24-hour ban, just a warning, and often not even that? I call WP:SNOWBALL. This proposal has zero chance of passing. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC) Oppose: Wikipedia already has more policies than the United Nations- and now it will have more lines than a barcode. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 16:17, 16 October 2013 (UTC) Oppose: There never should be any firm rules for Editors, life is gray. Frmorrison (talk) 18:43, 16 October 2013 (UTC) Nuke it from orbit: There is no explanation how this is not already covered by existing policies an improvement over existing policies "Bright lines" sounds awfully like zero tolerance, which is pretty much the opposite of the wiki mindset. No thanks. Paradoctor (talk) 20:40, 16 October 2013 (UTC) Oppose this seems like a page that will immediately be wielded as a weapon by nationalist/POV-warring editors, but does not effectively address the problem (paid editing) that sparked this rush to legislate. Sven Manguard Wha? 21:08, 16 October 2013 (UTC) Strong Oppose leads to witch hunting, zero tolerance is not the Wikipedia way. KonveyorBelt 21:11, 16 October 2013 (UTC) Oppose. Simplistic bad reaction to a complex problem. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:06, 16 October 2013 (UTC) Oppose This goes against the first message every new Wikipedian gets: Be bold! In itself, an unbelievably stupid piece of advice. If you read the BE BOLD guidelines you actually get the correct gist of it, being: be bold but really, really, really cautious. Currently it serves as an invitation to create an op ed or slam into an existing article and overwrite everything you don't like (no citations needed). Welcome to Wikipedia and don't even bother with checking talk pages or actually acquaint yourself with existing guidelines and policies. I swear that I don't know whether I'm editing Wikipedia or have inadvertently gone to Facebook half of the time... And on the 3 RfC's (I assume they're meant to be RfC's) I've found myself reading a plethora of hysteria about some fairly innocuous policy suggestions screeching about witch-hunts and being ludicrously unenforceable. Seriously? How do policies seeking some form of disclosure & attempts to curtail the activities of blatant interest groups suddenly become the equivalent of McCarthyism or internet Paedophile Outing lists? --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:50, 17 October 2013 (UTC) BOLD means we accept that users will initially make mistakes. If we demand that new users know what's what right from the beginning, we will not get any (<-exaggeration). Mandating self-disclosure is pointless, because cooperative editors are not the problem, and serves only to discriminate against them. Curtailing is done by enforcing the rules already in place. How does replacing the entire dispute resolution with a single warning improve the situation? Paradoctor (talk) 10:50, 17 October 2013 (UTC) Where is it stated that this is to 'replace' the dispute resolution process? --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:13, 18 October 2013 (UTC) Sorry, I proceeded from unwarranted assumptions. See below. Paradoctor (talk) 10:52, 18 October 2013 (UTC) As an aside, WHAT dispute resolution? When is the last time you stepped into a Slavic 'dispute' or an Israeli-Palestinian dispute? Where, pray tell, do these disputes get 'resolved' and how many editors are stupid enough to walk into these talk pages? Come and join me in the Kamikaze squadron and we'll discuss how successful 'dispute resolution' actually is... --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:29, 18 October 2013 (UTC) Just curious: If it makes you unhappy, why do you do it? Paradoctor (talk) 18:55, 18 October 2013 (UTC) Simply because I'm a masochist who, in principle, believes that there are serious issues being drawn into the articles and bounced out as 'fringe' or employing other policies/guidelines as a matter of convenience. Paradoctor. Bringing in a genuinely neutral third party as a first course of action is seldom useful unless it's something glaringly obvious (such as sections that are off-topic and would need to be developed elsewhere, etc.). As for 'dispute resolution', again, neutral parties don't want to involve themselves (understandably) and aren't knowledgeable enough in the area in question to do any more than use simplistic resources still stuck in the mentality of 19th century Empires as opposed to nation-states (whatever 'sovereign nation-states' means in reality): it's called regurgitating the anachronistic body of 'knowledge' regarding geopolitically suspect assumptions guided by old alliances and long built into popular concepts of history. If such grievances are brought up formally, the only takers are editors who belong to the interest groups wanting to retain the status quo as they're usually the same ones as were involved from the inception of the article. Hence, I have no objection to further policies and guidelines aimed at disempowering interest groups (and this DOES cover a broad spectrum of the types of editors/contributors promoting ideologically driven misinformation and disinformation). I can promise you that there are quite a few who are being paid in real money and aren't just fanatics. Not that any of these policies or guidelines are going to make a jot of difference... But I'm all for them in principle. Theory is nice; reality and theory seldom serve any form of justice. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:33, 20 October 2013 (UTC) Oppose I am quite surprised to see such a bad idea proposed by the usually-perspicacious Silk Tork. Joefromrandb (talk) 06:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC) Oppose I think it would be much better to enforce the rules that we already have in place rather than create new rules which are really vague. For example, this guidelines states that a person will be banned if they repeatedly "remove or suppress reliably sourced information that appropriately balances praise or disparagement in an article." For anyone editing a controversial article, this statement makes it risky to remove any information even if its inappropriate, unproven, or possibly libelous. DavidinNJ (talk) 18:22, 17 October 2013 (UTC) Oppose: All of the so called "brightlines" that this misguided proposal lists, are problems already covered and handled through existing content guidelines, behavioral policies and dispute resolution forums. All this proposal does is hand a big red hatchet to any experienced WP gamer who wants to rid himself of an editor with an opposing point of view. (see WP:POV Railroad) It bypasses all the progressive steps of behavioral modification and dispute resolution through discussion, BRD, DRN, ANI, ArbCom, AE etc.. -- — Keithbob • Talk • 18:52, 17 October 2013 (UTC) Oppose as too easily abused to justify a bad ban. Snow closure seems justifiable here. VQuakr (talk) 23:19, 17 October 2013 (UTC) Oppose - All these things are already handled. Forking those rules again here is guideline creep. We don't need to go "Bogey Bogey Bogey!!!" we need self-identification of COI editors so that their contributions may be monitored; and that requires a way for them to self-identify without self-immolating due to harassment from anti-COI extremists. Two simple rules: 1. You MUST declare. 2. If you harass someone who declares without cause, you WILL be in big trouble. Carrite (talk) 07:42, 20 October 2013 (UTC) Snow Close, Please. 16 opposes and 0 supports. Would someone who isn't involved please snow close this? --Guy Macon (talk) 15:44, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Questions for SilkTork

1. Is this meant to be a proposal for a policy or a guideline?
2. Does "an appropriate warning" mean just one warning, no escalation?
3. How is "appropriate" determined, and by whom?
4. How does this proposal relate to WP:BAN?

Paradoctor (talk) 11:40, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

• Something I started quickly, hoping others would build on it. I didn't have time to do any more work on it at the time. Now I do have, I will make adjustments. Others are free to jump in and edit it. I just started the idea as a talking point, not as something to be rejected or accepted as it stood. I wasn't calling for a vote, though I think that may be because I copied a template that suggested this was a proposal rather than a working draft. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 17:45, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

What's the point?

What does this add that existing policies do not already say? What problem is this attempting to solve? Basically all this says is that if you violate one of half a dozen or so policies after a warning, you will get "sanctioned." Do we have a problem with users inserting false information after warnings and not getting blocked? All this seems to do is lock in a requirement for sanctions for certain actions, which has a high potential for unintended consequences. What if information from a normally reliable source is known to be wrong? Should users still be sanctioned for removing it? And of course, there are many shades of gray between definitely correct and definitely false. WP:VNT gives many examples of potential cases where just because material appears in a RS doesn't necessarily mean we should reproduce it in an article. Mr.Z-man 20:03, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

"Appropriate warning"

This, along with the section titled "Warning", poses more issues. It says that an appropriate warning may be a message on the user's talk page identifying the behavior and the article where it occurred. It is not at all uncommon for the guilty party to "warn" the user attempting to undo his or her mess. While I assume such "warnings" wouldn't be applicable here, it presents the problem of having to delve through histories and ascertain the validity. Joefromrandb (talk) 10:28, 12 November 2013 (UTC)