Wikiquote:Civility

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This page is a draft policy on Wikiquote. It is available for consideration by the community, but does not yet reflect community consensus. Editors and sysops may follow the policies proposed here at their own discretion. Please edit this page or make a comment on Wikiquote talk:Civility.

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This page in a nutshell:
Being rude, insensitive or petty makes people upset and interferes with Wikiquote working well. Try to discourage others from being uncivil, and be careful to avoid offending people unintentionally. Mediation is available if needed.

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Civility is a rule for the conduct of edits, comments, and talk page discussions on all Wikimedia projects. Whereas incivility is roughly defined as personally targeted behavior that causes an atmosphere of greater conflict and stress, our rule of civility states that people must act with civility toward one another.

Our Wikiquote community has developed an informal hierarchy of core principles — the most important being that articles must be written with a neutral point of view. After that we request a reasonable degree of civility towards others. Even if "civility" is just an informal rule, it's the only principle that we can apply to online conduct, and it's the only reasonable way to delimit acceptable conduct from the unacceptable. We cannot always expect people to love, honor, obey, or even respect another. But we have every right to demand civility.

The problem

Wikiquote as a whole is not especially respectful of contributions, since anyone can edit. This makes praise and criticism of edits all the more pronounced when it does occur. Many people forget that criticizing an edit is easily conflated with insulting the person who made it — and so they are unnecessarily harsh on the giving end and unnecessarily sensitive on the receiving end. What starts with one uncivil remark becomes an exchange of them, until people are no longer interested in improving articles and instead focus on "triumphing" over the "enemy". This is not what Wikiquote is about.

Examples

Petty examples that contribute to an uncivil environment:

Rudeness
Judgmental tone in edit summaries ("fixed sloppy spelling", "snipped rambling crap")
Belittling contributors because of their language skills or word choice
Ill-considered accusations of impropriety of one kind or another
Starting a comment with "Not to make this personal, but..."
Calling someone a liar, or accusing him/her of slander or libel (even if true, it tends to aggravate rather than resolve disputes)

More serious examples include:

Taunting
Personal attacks
- Racial, ethnic, and religious slurs
- Profanity directed at another contributor
Lies
Defacing user pages
Giving users derogatory names via pagemove trolling
Calling for bans and blocks

Incivility happens, for example, when you are quietly creating a new page, and another user tells you, "If you're going to write a pointless page, could you spell-check it?" Escalation occurs when you reply, "Mind your own business."

This style of interaction between Wikiquotians drives away contributors, distracts others from more important matters, and weakens the entire community.

When and why does it happen?

During an edit war, when people have different opinions, or when there is a conflict over sharing power.
When the community grows larger. Each editor does not know all the others and may not perceive the importance of each individual to the project — so they don't worry about maintaining relationships that don't exist. Reputation does not count as much as in a smaller community.
Sometimes, a particularly impolite user joins the project. This can also incite other editors into being impolite themselves.

Most of the time, insults are used in the heat of the moment during a longer conflict. They are essentially a way to end the discussion. Often the person who made the insult regrets having used such words afterwards. This in itself is a good reason to remove (or refactor) the offending words.

In other cases, the offender is doing it on purpose: either to distract the "opponent(s)" from the issue, or simply to drive them away from working on the article or even from the project, or to push them to commit an even greater breach in civility, which might result in ostracism or banning. In those cases, it is far less likely that the offender will have any regrets and apologize.

Occasionally, some editors deliberately push others to the point of breaching civility, without committing such a breach themselves.

Why is it bad?

Because it makes people unhappy, resulting in discouragement and departure.
Because it makes people angry, resulting in non-constructive or even uncivil behavior themselves, further escalating the level of incivility.
Because people lose good faith, resulting in even less ability to resolve the current conflict — or the next one.

General suggestions

Preventing incivility within Wikiquote

Prevent edit wars and conflict between individuals. (Constraints on editing are set by the project — essentially a community answer.)

Force delays between answers to give time to editors to calm down and recover and to avoid further escalation of a conflict (protecting pages, or temporary blocks of editors in case of conflict).

Use positive feedback (praising those who do not respond to incivility with incivility).

Apply peer pressure (voicing displeasure each time rudeness or incivility happens).

Solve the root of the conflict between the offender and the other editor(s) or the community — or finding a compromise.

Use negative feedback (suggesting that an editor involved in conflict should leave a conflict or even temporarily avoid all controversial areas in Wikiquote). It may be worthwhile making such suggestions to both sides of the conflict.

Block certain users from editing specific pages that often trigger incivility.

Create and enforce a new rule — based on use of certain words — that allows temporary blocking or banning an editor using them more than a certain number of times.

Filter emails by the offender, or filter mail based on certain keywords and reject emails to the Wikiquote mailing list with those words.

Accepting that incivility and rudeness can't be entirely avoided in such a project, and not responding in kind.

Reducing the impact

Balance each uncivil comment by providing a soothing or constructive comment.

Do not answer offensive comments. Forget about them. Forgive the editor. Do not escalate the conflict. (This is an individual approach.)

Ignore incivility. Operate as if the offender does not exist. Set up a "wall" between the offender and the community.

Revert edits with a veil of invisibility (&bot=1) to reduce the impact of the offensive words used in edit summaries (the comment box). (This requires technical help from a sysop.)

Walk away. Wikiquote is a relatively small place, but there are thousands of pages. Just go and edit somewhere else for a while and return when tempers have cooled.

Removing uncivil comments

Strike offensive words or replace them with milder ones on talk pages. (This is often seen as controversial, as is refactoring other people's words.)

Remove offensive comments on talk pages. (Since they remain in the page history, anyone can find them again or refer to them later on.)

Revert an edit with &bot=1, so that the edit made by the offender appears invisible in Recent Changes. (This can be done for IP contributions, but requires technical help from sysop.)

Delete (entirely and permanently) a revision made by the offender. (This requires technical help from a sysop.)

Permanently delete an offensive comment made on the mailing lists. (This requires technical help from a developer.)

Replace a comment made in an edit summary by another less offensive comment. (This requires technical help from a developer.)

Management of incivility during the mediation process

Parties sometimes attempt to negotiate an agreement while one party is not ready to negotiate. For example, if the source of the conflict is a specific point in an article, you may invite the community to review the discussion on Wikiquote:Village pump to impair the impact, if the discussion is still clouded by an uncivil exchange between both parties. It is best to clear up that issue as soon as possible, so disputants can regain their balance and clarity when editing.

While the English Wikiquote has no official meditation process, you may always ask a third neutral party to comment your dispute on Wikiquote:Village pump.

Explain incivility

Some editors are badly shaken by uncivil words directed towards them, and can't focus on the source of the conflict itself. It may help to point out to them why unpleasant words were used, and acknowledge that while incivility is wrong, the ideas behind the comment may be valid.

The offended person may realize that the words were not always meant literally, and could decide to forgive and forget them.

It can be helpful to point out breaches of civility even when done on purpose to hurt, as it might help the disputant to refocus on the issue (controversial).

Rephrasing disputants' comments

While not in an official capacity, a neutral third party may play a mediator role, being in contact with both disputants and ensuring communication between them. For convenience, we may call him or her "the mediator" below. The role of the mediator is to promote reasonable discussion between the two disputants. Therefore, it is helpful to remove incivility voiced by User A, in rephrasing comments to User B.

For example, if User A and User B are flaming each other by e-mail through a mediator, it might be best if the intermediary turns "I refuse to allow Neo-Nazi apologetics to infest Wikiquote" to "User A is concerned that you may be giving too much prominence to a certain view."

Rephrasing flames publicly exchanged before or during the mediation process

At the end of the mediation process, the mediator may suggest that the disputants agree to remove uncivil comments that have remained on user and article talk pages. The editors might agree to delete pages created specifically to abuse or flame one another, and/or to remove all flaming content not relevant to the article discussion, and/or to refactor a discussion. This may allow disputants to forgive and forget offenses more quickly.

Similarly, the disputants might agree to apologize to each other.

Suggest apologizing

Mediation regularly involves disputes in which one party feels injured by the other. The apology is an act that is neither about problem-solving and negotiation, nor is it about arbitration. Rather, it is a form of ritual exchange between both parties, where words are said that allow reconciliation. In transformative mediation, the apology represents an opportunity for acknowledgement that may transform relations.

For some people, it may be crucial to receive an apology from those who have offended them. For this reason, a sincere apology is often the key to the resolution of a conflict: an apology is a symbol of forgiveness. An apology is very much recommended when one person's perceived incivility has offended another.

External links

w:Wikipedia:Civility
meta:Incivility — Anthere's original article on this topic
meta:Don't be a dick, another rule that encompasses civility