Value, respect, and strive for diversity in editors

I also think that the civility guidelines are too lenient. We're here to work on an encyclopedia. Sometimes people will disagree in the course of that work, but that's no reason to treat people without basic respect. This occurs in multiple forms, but one that I see as serious is that experienced editors know where the "civility line" is, so they have adapted, learning to belittle, devalue, and disrespect fellow editors without overtly crossing that line. Such an editor will not say "You're an asshole," because they know the consequences, but that same editor knows full well that nobody will ban him for saying "Stop whining about your issue." Yet the basic respect isn't there. This demonstrates that basic respect is not a requirement at this point and time. I hope it will be in the future.

Noraft18:30, 6 May 2010

I don't think it's as easy as that. The bigger and more "complete" projects need to concentrate on quality rather than quantity, and for that we need experts. For many topics the pool of experts is very small, and if one of them comes to help us we should be able to use that help even when the expert is not particularly good at cooperative editing with Randy and his mates. A university professor who comes to Wikipedia to edit an article about their field cannot be expected to "cooperate" with a teenager who is trying to educate them on their field in a patronising tone. Many will not remain civil in such a situation, and it's not their fault, but it's our fault for exposing them to this in the first place. (Cooperation about presentation and accessibility is a different matter.)

Perhaps we could have an external peer review system. We might have a cooperation with certain academic institutions, and when an article in their field goes through something like featured article candidacy it is sent to them for review. This allows experts to contribute without editing Wikipedia directly, but it is also likely to increase the number of experts active in certain fields, creating a more expert-friendly environment.

But this isn't strategy any more, it's much more fine-grained, and I think the current version of the strategy page has taken these things in account.

Hans Adler10:14, 7 May 2010

I agree with most of what Hans Adler wrote. I have never seen any great divide between inclusionists and deletionists, no matter how popular this is among Wikipedia-watchers. Instead the great divide is between those with a prescriptive mindset and those with a descriptive mindset. Much of the infrastructure is aimed at encouraging the prescriptive mindset; all those Help-pages (proclaiming that anyone can edit, etc), emphasis on edit-counts, etc.

Nevertheless, putting an encyclopedia together requires a descriptive mindset. Wikipedia is not likely to make much more progress than it has already, not with the "facts, who care about facts? I am going to apply my favorite, and personal, rule!" attitude running rampant, and being aware of more than a single texbook on a topic being pretty much a shooting offensive. - Brya 07:38, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Brya07:38, 8 May 2010
 

And how do you intend to judge which university professor is "qualified" to review, for example, an article dealing with aspects of the "middle east conflict" ? Which academic institution should we rate as competent - an which one not? I fear that we are about to import the entire range of some hundered years of academic rivalry into the project.

Alexpl18:33, 8 May 2010
 

From my experience as an arbitrator on the English Wikipedia, I must say that increased, and strict, enforcement of civility has diminishing returns especially as attention turns to subtle forms of disrespect. Essentially, your putting yourself up for a game of whack-o-mole as convincing the community that subtle insults are a serious matter is a losing proposition. The clever individual always has the advantage over a committee.

Fred Bauder14:44, 7 May 2010

Yeah, I sometimes want stronger enforcement of civility, but then I worry it would just become a game of Wikilawyering and passive aggressive "did you see what he said? I believe that editors would construe that as disrespectful."

That said, there are some editors who manage to operate at the borderline of good behavior for years before they are eventually banned. There has to be something we can do to improve our behavioral standards.

Randomran15:31, 7 May 2010

I think that coming together to say "Hey, there is a problem here," is a good first step. Wikilawyering becomes possible when rules and guidelines are detailed. When they are vague, it is less possible. For example, if the civility guideline simply said "Be respectful of each other," and administrators gave a warning the first time and then a 24 hour ban the second, people would quickly realize that the best way to "play the game" was not to get near the boundary in the first place. While some would argue about the interpretation of "respect," all would quickly figure out that conservative definitions serve them better. Sure, we might lose a few editors, but I think we're losing more now from how loose the civility rules are. To be frank, I don't deserve to be treated with disrespect because of my opinions. I'm a volunteer and volunteers are generally treated well by the organizations they volunteer for (because those organizations want them to continue volunteering).

Further, nobody deserves to be treated with disrespect, even if they act badly. Administrators can (and should) be respectful even when applying bans, in the same way that a judge will still address a murderer as "Mister" when delivering a jail sentence. Basic respect should be suspended for no one.

If the civility rules were tightened, we'd of course have to have some training to make sure that warnings and bans were handed out properly, but I think that's do-able.

Noraft18:15, 7 May 2010

It's a huge change that you're asking for. I kind of wish we had done this right from the start. You're right that training would have to become a part of it. But we wouldn't just have to train admins. We'd have to train editors as well.

And even then, the biggest challenge is distinguishing between legitimate criticism and "disrespect". I mean, if you said "Randomran keeps re-adding information that is untrue and unverified", I shouldn't be able to say "Noraft should be banned for calling me a liar".

Randomran00:14, 8 May 2010

I think you're right about everything you've said. And I agree that it is a huge change, but I think it is one that we really need to make.

Regarding differentiating between criticism and disrespect, I think clear, nonspecific guidelines again save the day. In this case, establishing a guideline that editors should request things for themselves, not for others (i.e. it is okay to say "I feel I'm being disrespected and I'd like administrator intervention," but not "Ban Noraft for calling me a liar.")

In the same way that current rules (such as WP:Notability) give rise to typical/common outcomes in Articles for Deletion discussions, the new rules will also have common outcomes. For example, I would suspect that if we instituted the aforementioned guideline, a common outcome of requesting a ban on another user would be an administrator warning and referral to the guideline stating that calling for bans on others is not respectful.

Noraft03:16, 8 May 2010