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.
6. Anthère; removal or refactoral should be done only per attacked user request; the attacker should be asked to rephrase first. If he does not, a neutral party should do the job. In case of long term issue (such as an edit war, refactoring by a neutral party should only be done after the debate is over, to be meaningfull of people action for those coming late in the debate
7. Dandrake: partly agreeing or mostly disagreeing with Anthère. Comments 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:

1. Vancouverguy 16:04, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
2. Angela 16:09, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

Examples

Talk:Zionism and racism, wikipedia:votes for deletion/copyvio [1]...

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)

Why should latecomers care about the attitude of people towards each other? Article talk pages are for discussing articles, not people, and not attitudes. Wikipedia is not a soapbox. It's different on a user talk page, of course, where standards can be more relaxed. Martin 12:55, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

true. But if someone tries to mediate an issue, but do not understand the history of the fight, he is likely to do a poor job. Articles matter, but they are written by people, so those matter as well. Anthère 14:14, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I dunno. Mediators are generally advised to avoid trying to find out the truth, such things being an issue for arbiters (who should be checking the page history anyway). I do see your point though - and you're right: people do matter. Still, if reworking obscures the fact that Alice hates Bob's guts, I'm unsure what has been lost. Martin 17:15, 25 Oct 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, and purged monthly, fortnightly, quarterly or whatever (see forgive and forget). The Jubilee is a milennia old institution. This would curb overenthusiasm in editing others texts, and also leave a centralised paper-trail of repeat offenders. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 12:56, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I do not like the option to stack lists of attack in a central place, unless it is clearly meant in the goal of having a procedure taken against the attacker. Otherwise, it is gonna against forgiving to let insults stand somewhere Anthère

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)

I agree. One does take attacks much more easily when he knows it is in the attacker habit to do so. This should not remove the right for an attacked one to ask for the attack to be removed. Anthère

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-phrase 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)

I'm not sure a standard phrase is good, but discussion is good. Sometimes that's best in advance, sometimes best afterwards: "I removed a few harsh words you wrote on such-and-such a page, because I think they obscure your (very valuable) point. Hope that's ok with you. :)". Martin 13:23, 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)

that is all true. But first it is not necessarily easy to do in practice :-) and second, if the matter of interpretation is difficult, I think it is up to the one attacked to be the main judge of how offended he thought he was. Anthère 14:14, 25 Oct 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.

(cutting in) serves them right for speaking filth. If you don't respect civilisation, civilisation won't necessarilly respect you. We'll do our best, but if you get screwed over by your own inability to be polite... oh well. *shrug* Martin 12:52, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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)

Another obvious circumstance: I insult Alice, Alice insults me back, and I refactor to remove both my insult, and Alice's response, and apologise to Alice on her talk page for my completely unnecessary departure from the requirements of the civilised world. If I only removed my own comment, that would be unfair on Alice.

The people throwing mud and having mud thrown at them often have the most to gain from it being cleaned up. Ideally people would clean up after themselves, instead of leaving the talk page looking like the inside of a slaughterhouse, ready to "delight" the next visitor who only wanted to, say, check Mother Teresa's middle name. Martin 12:52, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Mmmm... Martin and I have crossed swords on this one before. I respect Martin's opinion, but unfortunately this sort of refactoring gets on my nerves. -- Tim Starling 13:25, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)

And likewise I respect Tim's opinion (and thus tend to avoid reworking his words). He's right that when reworking is done badly, it can obscure more than it can enlighten. Mind you, refactor later reduces the problem of different people reading different versions of events. If I rework a flame war from a couple of years ago, nobody will be mad at me - if I do the same to Erik's recent bout of fisticuffs with James, there's more of an issue. Martin 17:27, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It also matters where insulting comments are found. I really don't care much if somebody insults me on my or their talk page, and unless such insults include falsifications or biased statements of facts, I would perhaps leave them as they are and let them speak for themselves. On an article talk page however, I would like to see article-related discussion and not much else. Sometimes personal arguments are moved elsewhere (subpages, "deletion" pages, personal talk pages) and that looks like a sensible approach. Perhaps it would be a good first step for the proposed sanitization of Wikipedia to tackle article talk pages and move insulting comments out of these (or, which I would prefer, rephrase them). Kosebamse

I think setting up a page to say it is "authorized" to remove or refactor personal attacks is important; it makes it possible to point to a page in case we do so, when the opponent objects to the removal or refactoring of his bad talk.

However, I think in the term "personal attack", there is an important word that is "personal". Personal attacks may be bad in two ways : either because they are "hurting" the one who is attacked, or either because it could damage somehow wikipedia image.

In the first case, it is up to the person attacked to decide whether she finds it offensive, not to anybody else. Because he may not have the same sensibilities than others, or because different culture do not have the same references of what is offending. That means, for this case, it should be the attacked one prerogative to indicate the comment is offending and that he wishes that something is done about it. I don't think it would a good idea that other people decide what is offending, and start remove stuff because of their perception. Likely, most people will not be offended very often, because usually they handle attacks well. It means most attacks should stay. When someone feels attacks, he should have the right to request that the offense is either removed or refactored. It should always be asked to the offender first that they remove or refactor, because again, it is very likely it was just something said too quickly, or in the middle of a war; and thought too hasty afterwards. However, if the attacker refuses to comply, someone neutral should do the job. As respect to the attacked one. In any case, rephrasing is *much* better than removal; Removal should be avoided.

When it comes to the point it could be said to be hurting wikipedia image, probably because it is common practice by the attacker, and done at large scale, I think it requires a community approach. In this case, the issue is not so much to remove the attack, than to find a way to convince the attacker to be nicer, more often, in his comments. Perhaps in this case, the attacks should not be removed, so there is a clear trail of the user behavior. Anthère 14:14, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I differ here: The idea is that personal attacks are bad in principle, causing cumulative damage to Wikipedia. Naturally, the attackee's opinion is significant, but attacks are everyone's business.

The normal action should be a polite request for a change, made directly to the offender. If the piece is unsigned, one shouldn't feel obliged to take time finding the author; forget courtesy and grace periods, and just make the change.

Some few attacks may be so serious as to call for an immediate change. In any case, if there's no prompt response to the request, the person making it should proceed with a change. Older hands may be able to suggest what's a reasonable time here.,

No file of deleted insults seems necessary or desirable; there are other ways of looking up someone's old offenses. Vandalism, edit-warring, personal attacks: all are handled by the fact that people notice how people are behaving, and call attention to it when it seems necessary (and resent this waste of their time, but it's the price for being open to every bozo on the Internet, which is conscious policy). Dandrake 16:46, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)