Wikipedia talk:Remove personal attacks

This is just a proposal. It is an experiment that I would like to run for a while to see how it works out -- I don't think it can do much harm, if any, with the framework described here. I believe the benefits to the Wikipedia discussion climate could be great, and it might be a good way to harness the power of wiki -- talk pages are kind of clunky, but this is one of the things you can't do on a bulletin board or mailing list.—Eloquence 06:31, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

Please read the complete proposed guideline before adding your username to one of the positions below.

Let's definitely do it, and keep doing it (refine guideline if necessary):

1. Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 07:32, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
2. Martin - I already do this. If people genuinely feel that their sniping adds value, they are of course free to reinstate it.

Let's give it a try and see how it works:

1. —Eloquence 06:31, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
2. Toby Bartels
3. Kosebamse, methinks that attacks should perhaps not be removed entirely, but disinfected (i.e. replaced by "personal attack removed"), so that the intention of a comment can still be inferred. After all, we want to be able to spot problem users, and we don't want to give them a censorship argument for free.
4. Morven, I'd like to see some way of cutting down on the heat and smoke and let us focus on what matters.
5. Fantasy with two changes: User should reword himself, only if not collaborative a uninvolved/neutral user should delete, see comment below.

Let's not do this at all:

1. Taku 08:12, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
2. Tim Starling, reasons below.
3. Daniel Quinlan, reasons below.
4. sannse, reasons below (summary: don't delete, reply positively.)
5. Fred Bauder 11:13, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC) Let's not do this particular thing, but routinely ban users who engage in ugly behavior such as this.

Other / undecided:

Longer comments

I've been staunchly anti-refactored-talk for quite some time now. Refactoring leads to confusion. A personal attack permanently changes the attitudes of the participants in a debate towards each other -- refactoring does nothing but confuse late-comers by obscuring the reasons for the attitudes subsequently expressed. I would happily revert the removal of personal attacks directed at me. -- Tim Starling 08:20, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

I think this as an actual policy will hurt more than it helps. I'm okay with people removing personal attacks in rare situations, but I don't want to see this policy-ized. For one thing, I think personal appeals from more experienced users often work better than a forceful edit surrounded by subjective judgements about what is a personal attack and what is not. The gray area is too big. It's just too heavy-handed. Daniel Quinlan 08:24, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

My suggested tweak would be that removed insults be stacked like BJAODN into a central file, attributed. This would curb overenthusiasm in editing others texts, and also leave a centralised paper-trail of repeat offenders. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 08:31, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

That's one of the reasons I don't want this: the politeness police. Your suggested tweak is akin to the dreaded and semi-mythical "permanent record" or demerit system of high school. "I have removed insults from [name of person who I don't like] and placed them in the insult file.", etc. If you want to drive all but the most politically savvy Wikipedians away, then it might work. Politeness should not be enforced, but lead by example. I doubt any of us is perfect, some less perfect than others, but this big brother approach is a bad idea. Daniel Quinlan 09:05, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

I doubt if it would really work in that worst case scenario manner. The "blowing off steam" file might infact give some perspective to how a particular users rhetoric should be evaluated, in reference to his usual register of expression. When newcomers come here, they generally don't know that this or that user has a wider register of expressing displeasure than others. This might even lessen the impact of rudeness, when newcomers can quickly learn to understand that User X always talks that way, and it need not be taken too seriously.

I frankly don't see there is any enforcement aspect to this as such. Any enforcement of civility would procede just about like it does now. Only the debates on talk pages would be more focused on useful information, and new and old users would have a central place to check to see what kind of rhetorical palette other users are in a habit of employing. Any and all formal repercussions for uncivility would of course be a totally unrelated matter. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 09:27, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

Two changes:

• As in real live, The offender should be able to say "I am sorry, I take back what i said". To get to this point, we should have a standard-frase like "Dear XY, in Wikipedia we agreed on not to accept personal attacks (see xxx). Could you please try to reword your comment on page yyy. Thank you very much, your Wikipedia community"
  • Only, if the person is not willing to collaborate, there should be "action taken", but a comment should be left like "offensive wording deleted" or so.
• The person deleting the offense or taling to the offender should be always a person not involved in the discussion. I see this as very important. We have neutrality as our high value in Wikipedia and a person involved in a discusson can not be neutral.

Just my thought :-) Fantasy 09:25, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

-

My concern is that perception of personal attacks varies drastically. I've often seen comments described as attacks when I really can't see them as such. I think removing comments usually leads to more conflict and makes conversations impossible to follow. I would prefer to see people subject to personal attacks refusing to respond in kind. If a comment feels like an attack, ignore that part of the message and respond as though you read the comment as friendly criticism.

• "Your prose is horrible, it could have been written by a third grader."
  • "Thanks for your feedback. I will reread my work and see if I can improve the writing. Perhaps you could also make any improvements you feel would help?"

• "Once again, you have shown that you have no interest in being neutral."
  • "I understand that you feel the article has neutrality problems, could you explain which parts you think are a particular problem? Maybe we can work together to clarify them."

Even a comment such as "This is just typical for you and your ilk" usually comes with other comments that can be responded to positively. It's better to ignore that part of the comment than inflame things by deleting.

I would agree to a policy of removing attacking comments some time after a dispute has ended. But if the attacks are neutralised in this way it probably isn't necessary. I think just moving old conversation to archive is enough. I'm tempted to say *very* strong attacks should be removed, but that just reintroduces the problem of interpretation.

sannse 09:42, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I agree. Don't delete personal attacks, just try to turn the conversation away from them. Concentrate on other aspects of the comment in your reply. Try to understand the other person's point of view -- if the point they were trying to make was obscured by emotion, ask them to clarify. And above all, don't get angry. -- Tim Starling 09:51, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

Good advice in all seasons, but does not in and of itself alter the fact that the mere presence of nastygrams on talkpages has a bad effect on wiki-atmosphere whatever the target does.

As to Sannses objection about differing interpretations of what is offensive. Maybe this problem could be eased by a graduated response. Like for instance adding <s> and </s> tags around mild personal insults, and only egregious examples cut and moved to the specific file intended for such. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 10:09, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

I don't want to sound hypocritical, so I should mention one other thing: sometimes I ridicule personal attacks, implying that they are simple minded and challenging the person to say some intelligent about the actual subject. That's a sign of anger, so I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not. -- Tim Starling 10:00, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

I feel that having attacks present, but handled well, will give a better atmosphere than deletion of attacks. To me, deletion says we are unable to respond well to attacks and prefer to brush them under the carpet. I think it also risks making the person writing the comment feel victimised or ignored and so escalating the conflict. Refactoring is an improvement over deletion in some ways. If "you write like a child" is changed to "I think the writing standard in this article needs improvement" then the writer would at least feel that their comments are not being totally disregarded. But there would still be potential problems: perhaps they really meant, "too many words in this article are misspelled" or "this article doesn't cover enough technical aspects". Refactoring to one of these specific criticisms would potentially be putting words into their mouth.

I think Cimon Avaro's suggestion of a graduated response is a good one. If this policy is introduced I'd like to see that as part of it. I don't think it totally removes the problem of interpreting benign comments as attacks, especially if a person is feeling particularly sensitive and is prone to interpret all comments as attacks. I think Fantasy's point that the people involved in the dispute should not be the ones refactoring is very important. That would help remove some of the interpretation problems caused by being too emotionally involved. -- sannse 11:38, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Under no circumstance should the "target" be the one to implement the policy. Well, I can actually envision one circumstance, where that might be permissible, but that would be a circumstance in which I would expect the target to have every right to respond under the system we have now. (i.e. so called simple vandalism). But letting the target remove the insult is definitely not a good idea; bound to bias the interpretation in almost every case. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 12:13, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)