| Revision as of 04:11, 3 April 2008 editGTBacchus (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, File movers, Rollbackers60,420 edits →Civility and community: replies← Previous edit | Latest revision as of 17:47, 2 January 2025 edit undoSlatersteven (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, New page reviewers, Pending changes reviewers73,293 edits →What is liniment: nothing to do with civility is what it is.Tag: Manual revert | ||
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| {{Policy talk}} | |||
| {{Talk header|search=yes|WT:CIVIL|WT:CIV}} | |||
| :''The initial ] policy was largely authored by ] and others at ] () before being copied here. -]|] 19:56, 24 May 2005 (UTC) | |||
| {{WikiProject Policy and Guidelines}} | |||
| {{notice|1=The initial ] essay was largely authored by ] and others at ] (], Jan-Feb. 2004). It was copied here and put into substantive form ("Civility") by ] (Feb. 2004), who earlier raised the issue on wikien-l. & (Oct. 4, 2003). In codified form, it was thereafter referenced as a statement of principle and soon after considered "]." <br> | |||
| ==Archives== | |||
| Long before the creation of the formal policy, ] wrote his ], wherein certain points echo the idea of civility. ] raised the issue of "making more civil," , & (Nov. 2002) after reading ]'s essay ] (Mar. 2002). Jimbo Wales picked up on Sanger's point , and thereafter ] and others kept it alive, until the need for a formal policy came about in late 2003. Also, note a ] at the time in 2009.}} | |||
| * ] - old discussion to December 2005. | |||
| {{oldmfd | |||
| * ] - 2006, including discussions on whether WP:CIV should be a policy or an essay, or merged with another policy. | |||
| | date = 10 December 2006 | |||
| * ] - 2007 | |||
| | result = '''speedy keep''' | |||
| }} | |||
| {{oldmfd | |||
| | date = 2 February 2013 | |||
| | result = '''withdrawn''' | |||
| |page=Misplaced Pages:Civility (2nd nomination) | |||
| }} | |||
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| == Off-Wiki behaviour == | |||
| == Since the Death of ] have this policy and ] lost their teeth? == | |||
| I've made, and seen made, several complaints to ANI about users behaving in an uncivil manner. This often happens in article disputes where one person just feels too strongly and can't remain civil while trying to make their case. Most of these complaints have come with a host of examples, including warnings, and often other editors will indicate that they agree with the complaint, and yet they seemingly often just fade in to the archives and nothing is done about these disruptive editors. What is the point of this if editors can repeatedly behave in an uncivil manner even after warned, if there are no repercussions for their behaviour? How can you resolve a dispute if one person is continually making wild accusations and hurling insults. You can't, yet I've seen it happen over and over again since PAIN went away. There were all kinds of claims made when the made was removed that all people had to do was to report it to ANI instead of PAIN and it would be handled, yet I don't see that happening.--] (]) 23:23, 1 January 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :You can. You need to keep a calm head and remember there are administrators. <font face="Trebuchet MS">]]</font>] 22:01, 5 January 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ==Addition proposal== | |||
| Can we add another entry to the ]? This sort of thing has increasingly become more of a problem: | |||
| * Labeling and describing other editors with negative characterizations such as "]" "cranks", "idiots", "woo-woos" or other similar derogatory names. | |||
| :] <small>]</small> 00:58, 13 January 2008 (UTC) | |||
| *'''Absolutely object'''. I started an RfC on the subject at ]. ] (]) 01:09, 13 January 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :The discussion is here, ]. ] <small>]</small> 02:47, 13 January 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::] that this is a genuine suggestion for a change to the policy rather than the laundering of a dispute, here is my comment: A policy should not get into such detail as to list the infinite variety of ways one can insult another editor. ] (]) 09:06, 13 January 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::Thanks for the faith, Sunray. Sounds like this might actually be classified as a ] instead of just a civility issue, per "'' Insulting or disparaging an editor is a personal attack regardless of the manner in which it is done.''" Would this also fall under one of the ] or some other part of WP:CIV? Where exactly do you see something like this fitting? ] <small>]</small> 09:15, 13 January 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Perhaps my previous comment wasn't clear. The policy generally does not give examples of ways that one can be uncivil. The reason for that seems clear to me: The ways of being uncivil are infinite. Thus, I think we have to be cautious with examples or everyone will want to add their own favourite case. This is not the function of policy, IMO. I do have some further thoughts, but would like to wait until the RfC has settled. There may be further guidance from that discussion. ] (]) 22:41, 13 January 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::The RfC has settled, resulting in additional wording re: civility in ]. I'm looking in WP:CIV for where this type of insulting name-calling and labeling is covered. Can you identify it? Vague generalities about "''rudeness''" or seemingly very specific ones like "''Giving users derogatory names via Pagemove vandalism''" don't seem to cover this issue of calling others "pov-pushers" "cranks" "woo-woos", and etc. Many editors feel it is merely "]". What about "giving users derogatory names.." period? Or saying "via pagemove or by direct name calling or labeling. That sort of thing? ] <small>]</small> 18:54, 15 January 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Or, does it really fall under ] instead? Change the wording in ] from "uncivil" to "personal attack"? ] <small>]</small> 19:12, 15 January 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::Considering that most of those who commented in the ] considered the epithet "POV-pusher" to be uncivil, I think that it should go under "Examples" in the policy, thus: | |||
| :::::::*Name-calling (e.g., "POV-pusher" Note: Comment on the actions (POV-pushing), not the editor). | |||
| ::::::As the conclusion of the RfC was decisive, I will add this change to the policy. ] (]) 08:54, 16 January 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::That's awesome, Sunray! Thanks much! ] <small>]</small> 10:02, 16 January 2008 (UTC) | |||
| == &bot=1 == | |||
| I don't know what "&bot=1" is, but it is used without link or explanation on this page. Could it be added by someone who knows? ] (]) 17:48, 3 February 2008 (UTC) | |||
| == Acronym == | |||
| Before signing up for my user name "Bless sins" I didn't realize that when abbreviated to "BS" it can mean an English expletive. Since then I have had a problem with a user over this. | |||
| Previously I asked the user to refer to me as "Bless sins" and not "BS", to no avail. Recently the user said: "BS, stop your BS."" | |||
| I don't find that sentence to be appropriate. | |||
| Is it reasonable for me, under WP:CIVIL, to expect the user to refer to me "Bless sins" the user name I signed up for, and not something this user finds convenient?] (]) 08:12, 10 February 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :While this is not a discussion about the policy ''per se,'' it is a good example of something that occurs frequently, and does relate to the how this policy may be interpreted. Two users are engaged in an edit war. One user says: "Stop your false accusations." The other responds: "Stop your BS." The choice is always whether to follow the policy on ], or to cool off and let it go. My response to Bless sins is ]. ] (]) 21:23, 10 February 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ==Incivility is sometimes necessary== | |||
| Discuss. | |||
| ] (]) 14:56, 28 February 2008 (UTC) | |||
| All the extra templates make this page an eyesore in my opinion. I catch flack for having too much in my term papers. I'm taught on the principle of "keep it simple, stupid". Just state the policy without all the pazazz. All I have to say for now. <small>—Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 16:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC)</small><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot--> | |||
| :What's your point and please, just because you think templates are "eyesores" doesn't mean you have a right to remove them. --] (]) 17:15, 5 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| : Never. Ever. There are no excuses for lack of civility in Misplaced Pages. ] <small>]</small> 02:27, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :: Agreed. Not only that, but the ] logical fallacy is generally the first sign that the attacker is unable to defend his/her position otherwise. I think it was my high school debate teacher who told us that "the Ad hominem attack is the first refuge of the incompetent and the last refuge of the desperate". In short there should never be a "need" for incivility -- even if we cared nothing about a pleasant work environment. ] (]) 23:25, 14 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :Incivility is defined as "personally targeted behavior that causes an atmosphere of greater conflict and stress" according to the page. An atmosphere of greater conflict and stress I personally feel is okay if it leads to something productive in the long run (our aim shouldn't be to smother all conflict but to gain from it). Personally targeted behaviour isn't acceptable - ad hominem attacks don't further arguments logically and only serve to obscure the arena of debate. ----<span style="font-size:small; color:Ivory; background:Black">''']'''</span><span style="font-size:small; color:White; background:Black;">''']'''</span> 10:55, 20 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::Sorry. I Could not disagree more. Conflict and stress are probably the least productive methods of collaboration, if collaboration is even possible in those conditions. There are better ways. That's what civility is about - the better way(] (]) 12:54, 20 March 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| :::There is such a thing as , and stress can be motivational in small amounts. Conflict that helps clarify an issue, correct an incorrect point and/or improve content or policies in some way is productive and results in improvement, much better than having no conflict at all as that leads to ] and causes the wiki to stagnate. And the motivational effects of small amounts of stress are long established, as small amounts of stress provide a pushing force without overstressing users. --<font face="tahoma"><font color="black">'''WP'''</font><span style="font-size:small; color:AntiqueWhite; background:Black">holic</span></font><sup>]]</sup> 13:41, 20 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::A healthy conflict is not possible because the word conflict carries a negative connotation.I would agree that a healthy discourse is more attuned to what the readers and contributors of Wiki would prefer and accept. Incremental stress, if induced properly can lead to better results, but the meaning of stress is subjective relative to the side taken on the debated topic. Furthermore, introducing any stress factors can in fact be the reason why their is conflict , rather than civility. <small>—Preceding ] comment added by ] (] • ]) 10:14, 21 March 2008 (UTC)</small><!-- Template:Unsigned --> | |||
| :::::It appears we disagree on the meaning of the word "conflict"; what I was trying to say was that cognitive conflict (as described on the page I linked to), a disagreement in the cognitive sphere, can be positive as it leads to improvement in content and/or policies. Of course affective conflict leads to incivility and is best avoided; but cognitive conflict is actively good because it stops the wiki from stagnating. While the former rightly holds a negative connotation, the second should not and only does because of confusion with the first. Also, what do you mean by "the meaning of stress is subjective relative to the side taken on the debated topic"? | |||
| :::::In reply to your last point, I don't believe that civility was designed to squelch all conflict, rather it was designed to prevent ''affective'' conflict - I could be debating with you, yet without rudeness, sarcasm or personal attacks. --<font face="tahoma"><font color="black">'''WP'''</font><span style="font-size:small; color:AntiqueWhite; background:Black">holic</span></font><sup>]]</sup> 02:59, 21 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ==Lies== | |||
| Obuibo Mbstpo removed "lies" from the list of examples of incivility, with the edit summary; "since when is lying a breach of civility?" Dreadstar thinks that lies should remain in the list. However, Obuibo has a point IMO. If "lies" is to remain in the list, we should explain how lies are a breach of incivility. ] (]) 01:06, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :A lie is defined as "to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive" and "to create a false or misleading impression", if doing such things aren't uncivil, I'd be very surprised. ] <small>]</small> 01:20, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::Your definition says nothing about how lies might be uncivil. The policy defines incivility as: "personally targeted behavior that causes an atmosphere of greater conflict and stress." We surely need some statement that puts lies in the context of personally targeted behaviour. The next statement on the list ("Calling someone a liar...") does that. If I lie about something on an article or talk page, it may not be uncivil. How do lies become uncivil? ] (]) 01:29, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::Civility has a wider definition that might at first be indicated.... "intent to deceive", creating falseness or misleading are all indications of a lack of respect for other editors-incivility. One big problem on Misplaced Pages right now is the too narrow application of the term civility. IMO.(] (]) 01:32, 11 March 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| :::Sunray, you've quoted a "rough" definition of the civility policy, a definion which is clearly incomplete. Telling lies causes greater conflict and stress, no matter what the lie. Once you start "definining" how a lie is uncivil, then you open the door for those who would tell a lie but try to do so in such a manner that it escapes whatever definition we come up with. Lying is uncivil, period. ] <small>[[User talk:Dreadstar|<span | |||
| class="Unicode">†</span>]]</small> 01:36, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Yes, I have to agree with Dreadstar. Defining lies is a Pandora's box endlessly defining meaning and always more as food for loopholes. Good communication and collaboration do not happen with "lying" and that can only create a nonproductive environment . Its all about developing the article. People have to behave... seems pretty simple.(] (]) 01:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| :::::Neither of you have yet explained ''how'' lies connect to being uncivil. Incivility occurs between users. You need to explain how lying is uncivil, because lying is ''not necessarily'' uncivil. Keep in mind that the policy says: "Our code of civility states plainly that people must act with civility toward one another." I can tell a lie without it being directed towards another person. ] (]) 02:23, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::You don't have to make a comment directly towards a apecific person to be uncivil, the policy clearly states: ''"Our code of civility states plainly that "people must act with civility toward one another."'' and "''Civility is a ] that we can apply to online conduct, and it is a reasonable way to delimit acceptable conduct from the unacceptable."'' | |||
| ::::::Civility as ''"civilized conduct; especially: courtesy, politeness; a polite act or expression", "characterized by taste, refinement, or restraint",'' and ''"consideration, cooperation, and generosity in providing something".'' Does lying fit this definition? I think not. | |||
| ::::::Lying is unacceptable conduct; there can be no dispute about that. Secondly, when someone tells a lie, they're misleading whoever is reading that lie (e.g. other editors). Misleading someone by lying is not acceptable civil conduct, it shows disrespect for those being lied to and it foments distrust in the community. I can find no argument that lying is civil behavior, unless perhaps you're sparing someone's feelings...but that's an entirely different moral question. ] <small>]</small> 02:50, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::You know, I'd be really interested in your explanation of how lying is civil conduct. ] <small>]</small> 02:56, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| No need to editwar about this. There is something useful on Dreadstar argument, related of uncivil behavior as casting aspersions in the form of "lies" about another editor. Let's explore this in talk. ] <small>]</small> 02:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :I agree with Dreadstar that lying is not civil within the context of relations within wikipedia (it may be fine and good in other contexts)-- but to do so in wikipedia to your fellow editors in discussions about article content, is a clear breach of the implied trust and respect we are expected to afford and receive from one another. To deceive an editor in this context violates the civil norm of social discourse, and breeds strife, conflict, mistrust, and undoes the assumption of good faith and mutual respect that is necessary for cooperative editing. These are not luxuries they are requirement. So how is lying adhering to these norms of polite social intercourse within the context of what we do here at wikipedia? I think we need to look at the expanded meaning of civil, its practical meaning within the context of what we do here. In this light, we can see it is a rather clear violation of those social (civil) norms, and ergo uncivil. Ask yourself: Can lying here be marked by benevolence, and respect? That is, within the context of editor relations within and among wikipedians? I don't think so. Quite the contrary. Hence, lying in the context of work within wikipedia is an uncivil act. | |||
| :The form of lying that I have seen here are related to other violations of policy, such as to POV push, pretending not to know something, by continuing a line of argument that he/she has been shown is false, or falsely claiming that a source does not say (or does say) what he says he thought it did--but later comes back to making that up, again, hoping the other editor will not go back and read the source, after being pointed out the he/she was wrong. The assumption of good faith as an honest mistake is predicated upon a norm the rejects lying as an acceptable norm; thus repeated attempts with new editors is disruptive, and stems from this violation of a civil norm (deceptive practices, lying). That is bad faith editing, a manifestation of deceptive practices, i.e. lying. Same goes with using socketpuppets, or making false reports knowing they are false. So really the practical effect of lying turn out to violate other policies already. But the act of doing so is uncivil without a doubt. I have therefore restored this long standing aspect to the page.] (]) 04:09, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::It might have been preferable to continue this discussion until we had rephrased the entry in the article as suggested by Jossi, above. That is also what I was trying to get at. Giovanni33 gave some context: "deceiving another editor." I'm fine with that, so I have added it. ] (]) 16:32, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::I already happened to remove what you added before your message... But I thought it sounded like "you can lie if it's not misleading". Best regards ]]] 16:36, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :: Well argued, Giovanni. Thank you. ] <small>]</small> 16:34, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::Here's a question: Supposing someone has written a fraudulent article and it makes its way to ''Misplaced Pages.'' The article is a lie and the author repeats the lie on the talk page. The lie is criminal in this case, but how is it uncivil? I still do not think that anyone has dealt with my concern that lies are not invariably uncivil. Therefore, all I am suggesting is that we explain how lies my be used in an uncivil way. ] (]) 18:55, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Your example sounds like uncivil behavior, perhaps even libelous depending on the content. How are criminal acts civil? Since you're so focused on lies that you believe aren't uncivil, why don't you write something up and present it here on the talk page. To be honest, I'm having difficulty imagining civil lies. ] <small>]</small> 19:03, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::This policy focuses on the behaviour of one editor towards another. Thus a lie that is not directed at someone is not incivility (as defined in this policy). I already gave an example: A deliberate attempt to mislead another editor through a lie. ] (]) 19:11, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::I disagree, the policy focuses on the behavior of editors, whether towards a single editor or towards a group of editors, and even extends to offenses against ''anyone'' who may read the lie. Incivility isn't limited to comments directed to a single editor. Uncivil behavior doesn't even have to be directed towards ''any'' editors to be consdered uncivil and actionable - even though such behavior may break other behavioral guidelines and policies, it can still fall under WP:CIV. My suggestion is that you propose wording to clarify the simple entry "Lies". As I've stated before, ''all'' lies are deliberate attempts to mislead. An untruth that isn't always meant to mislead is generally referred to as a ] <small>]</small> 19:30, 11 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| In a larger context .... collaborative communities are in constant flux and are growing quickly everywhere. Redefining the paradigms that support the structure of these communities not only happens but is a necessity if the community is to maintain healthy growth. We must define and redefine civility in a larger sense of the word ..... more holistically. Misplaced Pages is not the same place it was even six months ago, and what worked them may not and obviously isn't working now. As the community gets larger so must our definitions to include multiple, and ever expanding possibilities.Getting trapped by an older definition of the the word may be counter-evolutionary for the encyclopedia.(] (]) 19:53, 11 March 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| :You certainly got my attention with that comment Olive. What do you think the parameters of a new definition would look like? ] (]) 05:39, 13 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::Haven't thought that far still thinking in terms of the underlying paradigm, but I suspect as is often the case once the paradigm shifts the rest is easier.... parameters and the more specific elements. | |||
| ::I think most of us think of ourselves as standing outside of Misplaced Pages right now trying to fix the problems,trying to make it work well. Now turn that inside out or "inside in" and put us all ... all of the editors, inside Misplaced Pages. We are now Wikiepdia, its "heart", and as the heart we create the articles. Misplaced Pages flows outwards from us. We also are the problems. Outside of Misplaced Pages, we separate ourselves from the problems, and from each other, isolate ourselves, our thinking. Inside of Misplaced Pages we are the functioning unit, and are responsible for having created whatever happens in the encyclopedia including its problems. This isn't a physical shift obviously. Its a shift in our own habits, in the way we view the encyclopedia. | |||
| :: At the heart of the encyclopedia are also the hearts of the editors ... at the risk of sounding trite or schmultzy...damage one heart and you damage the whole. If we think as Misplaced Pages as this whole that gives rise to the parts of the encyclopedia....that's the picture. Dreadstar's point about lying, is so much larger than telling a lie given this paradigm, not that I am putting words into his mouth, but rather how I extrapolate from what he is saying. The heart of the encyclopedia, and the hearts of the editors are influenced by every single aspect that protects or damages it. Damage one heart in any way, and lies of any kind are a lack of openness in the heart, and you damage the whole. Editors lying, for whatever reason, whether the lie is found out or not , damages the editor's heart who tells the lie at least, and possibly the editors who deal with the lie, and that damages the whole larger heart of Misplaced Pages. This isn't just about lies obviously, but is about anything that damages or supports. | |||
| ::You can't tell people this necessarily. Many would scoff.... but you can begin to shift the paradigm, by saying lets look at ourselves as the functioning "heart" inside of, and of, this encyclopedia. | |||
| ::This paradigm is becoming known in other collaborative environments, and is an obvious movement toward the better functioning of a global sustainable world where we are connected to each other and to the world we are destroying/creating. | |||
| ::Parameters then have to be as holistic as we can make them I suspect, and based on the sense that every editor is an important functioning aspect of the encyclopedia just because they are inside there with us . They are part of the heart. We have to begin to design parameters based on this paradigm, it seems to me. Aren't you sorry you asked?!(] (]) 00:07, 14 March 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| :::Wow...Olive, one of the best posts I've seen on Misplaced Pages (actually, you made a few!). What amazes me is that anyone here could speak in defence of lying. ] (]) 22:23, 15 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::"What amazes me that anyone here could speak in defence of lying." No one has spoken in defence of lying. ] (]) 08:02, 20 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::I would venture that saying "lying is not uncivil" is certainly "speaking in defense of lying", at least in regards to civil discourse. | |||
| ::::::Ah, but that is not what I said. No matter. You missed my point and there is absolutely no reason to think that you will suddenly get it now. ] (]) 08:06, 21 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::Neither I nor Wndl42 said that you said "lying is not uncivil", that statement was implicitly made , contrary to your statement above that "No one has spoken in defense of lying". ] <small>]</small> 15:15, 21 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::You get the last word on this. Oh gosh, now you don't. ] (]) 15:19, 21 March 2008 (UTC) ;-) | |||
| :::::And Olive, that is truly an inspiring post, you've hit on the true heart of the matter...the very core of the nature of the effect of lies on any collaborative effort, whether it be a personal relationship or in a larger project. Lies are also destructive not only to others, but one's own self. This is the truth behind civility itself, without it...we're far less than we can be - if we're anything at all. Thank you Olive.. ] <small>]</small> 02:49, 21 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::Bravo, Olive. Civility isn't about refraining from cussing people out, or avoiding hate-speech - naturally those are part of it - but civility is about the whole atmosphere that we maintain here. Are we being excellent to each other, and treating all other editors as we would like to be treated, or aren't we? <p> This policy page bugs me in a way, because why would anybody read ]? What, didn't you already know what it means to be civil? It means always showing respect, and respect for oneself and for others doesn't leave room for lying. The point isn't to classify lies as a form of incivility according to section 3, subparagraph b, item (vii)... this isn't court. The point is, why would you lie to someone you're trying to collaborate with? That makes no sense. -]<sup>(])</sup> 16:42, 21 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| I wonder if there should be an over arching essay that encompasses the ideological components of Misplaced Pages as a holistic collaborative community ....Yes, I am starting to bore myself with that phrase but not sure how else to say it...that would include within itself notes on civility,for example. Within civility, then, would be more specific notes as we have now. Layers of understanding, but with a larger holistic view than we have now.(] (]) 20:19, 21 March 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| == Name calling == | |||
| I dispute the bit about ] recently added to this policy which suggests that somehow warning users that an editor is a POV pusher would violate our policies. Until mid-January, it has always been our policy that the benefit to the community of being able to simply call a ] far outweighed the contortions of having to call a spade a "manual geomorphological modification implement." We're here to write an encyclopedia, not ]. -- ]<sup>]</sup> 19:53, 13 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :Name calling as it's being used here is more accurately described in the ] article than it is in the article you linked to above on name calling. Feel free to open another RfC on this, Kendrick. The earlier one is ]. ] <small>]</small> 20:21, 13 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::Per ], an RfC on the ] ''how-to guide'' does not automatically create ] on this page. That RfC doesn't apply here. -- ]<sup>]</sup> 20:44, 13 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::Sorry, WP:BURO doesn't override what I've stated. Reread ]. Consensus was that name-calling such as calling someone a "pov-pusher" is uncivil, so it certainly does apply here. That RfC was directly related to WP:CIV, as illustrated ]. ] <small>]</small> 20:52, 13 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Everybody has a POV. Every time I've seen an editor calling someone a "POV pusher", it was always (to some extent) a case of the pot calling the kettle black. If an editor is ] in a disruptive way, why not just say "based on the pattern of edits you've made here, you might want to review ]". That way you are criticising the '''behavior''' and not the '''person''', which is the essence of all effective behavior modification. If continued disregard for ] is seen, then we have channels for dealing with it. ] (]) 23:47, 14 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| == The "Straw man" and other discrediting attacks == | |||
| I've written extensively and gotten some encouraging comments on my discriptions of the extended and persistent use of the ] discreditiing attack and the "corrosive" effect over time. I'd like to invite some input here. ] (]) 23:39, 14 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| == Conflict smothering? == | |||
| *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. (an individual approach) | |||
| *Alternatively, respond to perceived incivility with greater civility and respect. Many editors will rise to the occasion and moderate their tone to match yours. | |||
| *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) | |||
| *Walk away. Misplaced Pages is a very big place. Just go edit somewhere else for a while and return when tempers have cooled. | |||
| *Please. Thank you. I'm sorry. You're welcome. You're a good person and I know we'll work this out. Treat your fellow editor as a respected and admired colleague, who is working in collaboration with you on an important project. | |||
| *You do not have to like an editor as a person, to appreciate that they are also working for the good of the project. If you do not like a fellow editor, try not to hold that fact against them. | |||
| This seems to invite ]. "Soothing comments"? I would have thought that the issue at hand was more important, unless actual hurt feelings were expressed. "Do not answer offensive comments"? Right, let's just ignore comments that express issues or statements that may be offensive to some people. Anything can be offensive if a sufficiently hypersensitive person reads it. Maybe, just maybe, it's worth examining ''why'' the comment was written offensively before jumping the gun. | |||
| "Operate as if the offender does not exist" sums it all up. Ignore a fellow Misplaced Pages editor trying to express strong emotions, reducing him/her to the dehumanised label of "offender" and thus justify his/her treatment as nonexistent. How can a policy justify treating others as nonexistent? Forgive me, but I actually thought that addressing the editor as a ''person'' with emotions who makes mistakes sometimes would solve an issue better than operating under the illusion of a fellow Wikipedian's nonexistence. | |||
| The third-from-last point (walk away) also seems to encourage conflict smothering - walking away and returning when tempers have cooled is quite different from trying to cool tempers yourself. Suddenly dropping out from a conflict and returning on your own time has far-reaching consequences (e.g. other editors can grossly misrepresent your arguments and you won't be around to rebut them). | |||
| Basically, I am against ignoring fellow Wikipedians and treating them as if they were nonexistent. Forgive me if I was inadvertently uncivil. ----<span style="font-size:small; color:Ivory; background:Black">''']'''</span><span style="font-size:small; color:White; background:Black;">''']'''</span> 11:38, 19 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :I think you make a good point. My sense is that although the acts that might be considered "smothering" in isolation, are here placed in a larger context of what civility/incivility is and how to manage it, and so are meant to be used together with a larger understanding of how to treat other people in a collaborative situation. Possibly an even larger context would be a good thing, but not sure.... have to think about it.(] (]) 15:54, 19 March 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| ::Thanks! :) I think I get what you're saying. You're saying that we should follow the spirit of these guides (i.e. don't let it get to you etc.)? If so, I agree. ----<span style="font-size:small; color:Ivory; background:Black">''']'''</span><span style="font-size:small; color:White; background:Black;">''']'''</span> 06:33, 20 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| == Indecent suggestions and cursing == | |||
| Your point is exactly right. These are two different things entirely. ] suggestions are often sexual in nature, and are generally considered offensive to normal good taste. ] is considered to be use of words that are offensive rather than suggestions per say. Because these are quite different they should, if they need to be included at all, be in different lines rather than together in the same line.(] (]) 20:06, 26 March 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| :Cursing in and of itself is not necessarily uncivil behavior. Cursing is temperamental, and usually best avoided. Cursing in a way that escalates a dispute is certainly a bad idea. But an unqualified prohibition against cursing is not advisable.--] (]) 21:59, 26 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::I have no issue with removing this word, and didn't add it .... Although, I do think at the point when editors are cursing and loss of control is apparent, the environment is not going to be supportive of collaboration. I don't know. Maybe the word should stay.(] (]) 22:45, 26 March 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| ::There have been several discussion here on certain kinds of behaviour that although not incivilities in themselves can help to create a less than optimal collaborative environment. I think this is worth considering here.(] (]) 23:22, 26 March 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| ::: *Opens eyes, notices it's already on the list as "Profanity directed toward another contributor"* That says it fine, we can leave it at that.--] (]) 02:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| Father Goose, you said above, "''an unqualified prohibition against cursing is not advisable''". First of all, I would agree, but I'd go further and say that unqualified prohibitions are not advisable. This policy would be more effective, I think, if it presented civility, not as a rule you have to follow, but as a reality with which we live. It's not "you must be civil". It's "choosing not to be civil is pissing in the wind. You'll be covered in piss, and we told you so." <p> If it's presented as a rule, people will look for exceptions, or claim that they're improving Misplaced Pages by ignoring it. However, nobody claims they're improving the world by ignoring the law of gravity. Civility is just as inevitable in human interactions as gravity is in physics. We should present is as an inevitability, rather than as a rule that one may follow or not. -]<sup>(])</sup> 02:45, 27 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :It may be that it's structured this way to permit blocks for certain forms of unambiguous incivility. The subject of this page is not actually ''civility'' but ''incivility''. (I seem to remember that was the name of the meta page from which it was derived.) | |||
| :It did strike me several months ago, though, that we don't have a "be civil" policy, just a "don't be uncivil" policy, since the latter is enforceable. How could we go about improving that state of affairs?--] (]) 03:58, 27 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::Yeah... if it's worded the way it is to "permit" blocks for certain forms of unambiguous incivility, then it's wrong-headed. Our policies shouldn't permit, they should observe. "If you're blatantly uncivil, you're likely to be blocked for it," is better than, "if you commit one of the acts listed here, then an admin is permitted by policy to block you." <p> I don't know, am I making sense? -]<sup>(])</sup> 05:44, 27 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::You certainly are to me. Making a list of things that constitute incivility only invites Wikilawyering and the calculated abuse of ] as a tactic to gain advantage over an opponent. We see far too much of that already. I would replace this whole page with your sentence "If you're blatantly uncivil, you're likely to be blocked for it." As it presently stands the page is too preachy and verbose. ] (]) 06:04, 27 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::I think another good use of this page is to advise editors how best to respond to incivility in others. Accusing them of a "] violation" isn't actually the most de-escalatory move one can make. -]<sup>(])</sup> 06:09, 27 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Or here's an idea: have a bunch of pages on ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], etc. Take all of the behavior related policies (], ], ], ]) and recast them as a how-to guide, with the advice that not following the guide is unproductive, and may eventually lead to blocks, depending how unproductive it is. <p> It's a terrible idea, but kind of fun to think about. -]<sup>(])</sup> 06:16, 27 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::Yeah. That was my intent with ]. ] (]) 06:21, 27 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::It's not all bait, though. A clueless newbie isn't baiting you, and an irate POV-pusher isn't either. There are, however, better and worse ways to react to them. -]<sup>(])</sup> 16:51, 27 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ==Possible change in paradigm== | |||
| I agree with Olive in that there does need to be a new paradigm for the way editors interact in Misplaced Pages. It might be useful to consider who is editing Misplaced Pages. In my field, what I refer to as etheric studies, the association my wife and I run has a discussion board closed to the public. Only about 1% of the members regularly post there, yet the stats indicate that a much greater percentage visit the board every day. People willing to "put themselves out there" are too few. | |||
| Many of our members represent other organizations--usually hauntings investigation groups, and our website averages 1,400 to 1,700 unique visitors a day. I have attempted to recruit participation in Misplaced Pages from the larger community of interest in the paranormal but perhaps only one or two have tried and then quickly left. The most common response I receive is that the people who know this field have looked at the way I have been treated and tell me they do not want to subject themselves to the same. | |||
| I have stayed with EVP and Spiritualism with an occasional venture into other subjects, even though I have a lifetime of study in most things paranormal. It is just too painful to have someone who read a book tell me that EVP is singular (it hase many forms)or that it started where it did not. So who is editing in the paranormal articles? The editors with the most tenacity have proven to be the ones most certain that things paranormal are not possible and are determined to make sure the world understands as much. Since by their own admission, their knowledge of the subject is from reading a book or the equivalent, this amounts to an ideological point of view that dominates the paranormal subjects. Those who hold the view are slowly driving off or banning those who disagree--with little regard for fact or truth. | |||
| The people who are able to contribute in a meaningful way would probably have some difficulty adjusting to wiki rules. I know I did, and of course, I still find such rules as the omission of virtually the only meaningful reference material because of original research to be beyond comprehension when it leaves only skeptical reference to explain the subject. New people would probably not realize how sinful it is to claim they think something is real, so they really need advisors to help them understand balance, not punishers. | |||
| '''A possible solution might look something like this''': | |||
| *Develop a zero tolerance policy for incivility. | |||
| *Establish a class of editors known as mentors with the experience to guide editors, especially new editors. Mentors could adopt an article from the perspective of seeing to it that the article is balanced via the talk page, but would not edit the article themselves. | |||
| *Keep the admin appeal system, but establish a tribunal system patterned after the American legal system, with a few judges and a stable of advocates from which appealing editors can select to represent them to the tribunal. The appealing editors would not themselves address the judge. The tribunal system would hear appeals from all forms of disputes and have the authority to make final decisions. | |||
| *Develop a policy to have articles say what the subject is without attempting to certify it pro or con. It would be good to test articles for effectiveness by occasionally asking teachers to use the article as a classroom lesson: "Read the article and tell me what you learned." | |||
| *Rules concerning original research, fringe and reliable sources effectively defeat the ability of knowledgeable editors to even neutrally describe paranormal subjects. The rules are good in mainstream subjects, but frontier subjects are virtually all described via original research, so a "frontier" category needs to be established to allow for this. | |||
| *After all of these changes have been enacted, actively recruit subject matter specialists to act directly as representative editors or as advisors to experienced editors. | |||
| Most of the people in my field I speak to know that they are working at the fringe, and do not expect to have their views represented as fact. But at the same time, they (we) do expect our subjects to be honestly represented and this is not happening as often as needed to maintain Misplaced Pages's good reputation. These suggestions are just ideas, but they do offer a way of keeping Misplaced Pages from being a platform for ideologues. ] (]) 20:22, 29 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :"Rules concerning original research, fringe and reliable sources effectively defeat the ability of knowledgeable editors to even neutrally describe paranormal subjects." No response necessary. ] (]) 21:04, 29 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::Hummm ... meet constructive comments intended to further discussion with sarcastic dismissal. Interesting tactic on a civility talk page. ] (]) 23:28, 30 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| I'd have thought you'd embrace that, Arritt, after all how can the scientific position on fringe subjects of which scientists have not spoken be presented, except by OR? ——''']'''</span> ] Ψ ]<span style="color:#ffffff;">——</span> 01:00, 31 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :Again, no response necessary. ] (]) 01:03, 31 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::I don't know why. There was a specific vote on doing OR in that context over at the ] article, and SA, Fyslee, and a few others were for it. If they didn't think it necessary, why'd they vote for it? I believe I properly represented their reason- science hasn't spoken on certain notable subjects. ——''']'''</span> ] Ψ ]<span style="color:#ffffff;">——</span> 01:40, 31 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::: If science hasn't spoken on it, then whatever is written about it is likely real world OR and Misplaced Pages is not the place to publish OR and speculation. There could be several reasons for why the scientific world hasn't spoken on it. If it's not about ] reality, then it is of little interest to science. If it is, but is not dealt with in the scientific world, but is ignored, it is likely considered so absurd as to be unworthy of comment. IOW they consider it absurd OR, and Misplaced Pages should not give it mention in any sense that could be taken to mean it is a viable idea on a par with other well proven ideas. It should be clearly labeled as a fringe and scientifically unproven idea. -- <i><b><font color="004000">]</font></b></i> / <b><font color="990099" size="1">]</font></b> 03:50, 31 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Dare I say this conversation is not about civility or WP:CIVILITY?--] (]) 06:34, 31 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Thank you Father Goose. This page is for discussion of improvements to the WP:CIV policy. I feel like I just walked into a room marked "Speculation about why we shouldn't have a policy on ] so we can write what we want about anything." ] (]) 06:41, 31 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| Fair enough. Consider it a demonstration then. | |||
| The problems with Misplaced Pages are systemic and any solution is going to be more comprehensive than simply modifying a policy a little. For instance, I see increased support for the idea that we should be even more lenient about civility and that it is the responsibility of the offended editor to tell the offending editor that he or she is offended before taking any other action. So okay, I expressed the fact that I found Raymond Arritt's response to be "sarcastic dismissal." Both mild incivility, and he responded with more sarcastic dismissal. But please do not respond to that. I am just saying that such modification to the rules seldom have the desired results. | |||
| The line about OR, fringe and such are flash points in Misplaced Pages. You can do all you want with civility, but if the encyclopedia is not changed from a platform to push ideologies--on both sides--then it will both be a target for people who think it is a misleading source of information and a truly nasty place to spend time trying to do good on the Internet. It is up to you. | |||
| Before you decide, however, take a look at the growing understanding of what is often called the "perception of danger" as a modifying influence in behavior. See ''Hazard and Risk Perception among Young Novice Drivers'' | |||
| Hiding behind screen names has given you the ''Lord of the Flies'' . How can such an environment produce great reference articles? ] (]) 16:14, 31 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :As a demonstration of civility, it is fine. As a discussion on changes to this policy, I'm not sure that it passes muster. However, I do want to reply to your statement about screen names. I think it is clear that most serious WP editors realize at some point that their credibility (their "name" if you will), '''is'' based on what they write and how they interact with other editors. Thus policies like this one are crucial. ] (]) 16:30, 31 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| == Adding Paradigm == | |||
| As I mentioned several days ago I am interested in what the article would look like with some information on an over-arching paradigm. I thought I'd try this out to see what it looks like, reads like ... I am not attached to it, but thought we could look at something like this as a start to looking at the civility issue in a more holistic way.(] (]) 16:53, 31 March 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| :It will probably backfire. Although well intended, the touchy-feely nature of the new section is liable to alienate many content-oriented editors from ] even more than we already are. ] (]) 16:59, 31 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::Point taken. It might be more accurate to describe the nature of the section as whole- brained in terms of content and in style rather than left brained or specific and point value ladened. I may be able to edit the section more towards a left brain reader....At the same time the rest of the article is very point-driven, and there may be a place for both in the article . Although scientists may be more left brain in functioning, those in the arts and humanities may not be and so this might appeal to them.(] (]) 18:07, 31 March 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| ::Olive, the statement looks reasonable, but I do have a couple of questions. First, do you see the community of Misplaced Pages editors a reflection of the larger community of, say, the English speaking world, or should it be a role model for the larger community? | |||
| ::Second, You end with, "If behavior doesn't contribute this environment don’t do it, whatever it is." I can name a number of editors who apparently see no problem with fighting to the bitter end to win a point, honestly believing (I assume good faith) they are doing the best thing for Misplaced Pages and humankind. Should more conservative/considerate editors give them control of the article to avoid conflict? ] (]) 17:19, 31 March 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::I don't see Misplaced Pages as a reflection of the English speaking world. I see Misplaced Pages as one of the first four collaborative communities in the world and rather than a reflection, I see it as a very real part of the world, and one that gives a sense of where the world is headed. We have been accustomed to dealing with people when we can see them, but the world is moving to a situation where people may be known and understood even at the other end of a machine. Interesting development. The world is smaller because of the web and of other communication advancements. Misplaced Pages marks the way, but must also advance in the environment that is now exploding into existence all around us. | |||
| ::I don' think it hurts to fight to the bitter end. What hurts is how the fighting is done. The back and forth between intelligent, well-meaning editors is exhilarating, in my mind . When editors enter the situation and cannot or will not treat other editors as part of a community of which they are also part, as equals, and do not see that in harming someone else whatever that means, they harm the project and so themselves, well thats the problem. What hurts me, may not hurt you. The job of a good editor is not only to create good articles/edits but also to be able to collaborate effectively with all kinds of people . Collabration is not just a skill in writing editing but is a skill in dealing with people so the optimum result is achieved.(] (]) 18:01, 31 March 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| :::I like the idea you're shooting for here, but as currently written it's too gauzy. The last two sentences show some promise -- ''"Civility is that which contributes to the most positive working environment possible. If behavior doesn't contribute this environment don't do it, whatever it is."'' -- though they still overstate the case. Sometimes you have to do things that make people upset, like disagree with them. What you don't have to do is insult them in the process.--] (]) 05:09, 1 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Another version, less "touchy-freely", and "gauzy" I hope, :0).... with Sunray's copy edits. Fr. Goose, my take on the last lines would be that, although someone may become upset, still that may be the most positive situation in those circumstances. At any rate please edit if you can find better wording. I'm trying this on for size to see if and how it works, and or fits.(] (]) 16:06, 1 April 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| It's a good section. I made it less gauzy. ——''']'''</span> ] Ψ ]<span style="color:#ffffff;">——</span> 05:03, 2 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| "Holistic paradigm"? This new section fails at effective communication in the first two words. The policy was clearer before it had an unclearly-written essay stuck on the top of it. I would support changing it back. I don't understand what your goal is with the new section, but I'd encourage making it a separate page and clearly marking it as an essay. ] / ] 08:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::rspeer, what we're trying to do, basically, is change the focus a little. Misplaced Pages is a community. Editors too often focus on whether he said and she said this or that naughty word. But civility is about the working environment, and not matter what words you say, if it doesn't poison the environment, it isn't really uncivil. But if and editor, under current application, refers to "those idiots who think X," (when the offending editor knows very well that there are a lot of X thinkers looking on) it ''is'' uncivil, even though under current understanding it is fine because you didn't say the magic word that made it uncivil. In this case, the magic word would have been the user's name, "NAME is one of those idiots who think X." It's about environment, holism, atmosphere, not just specific wording. ——''']'''</span> ] Ψ ]<span style="color:#ffffff;">——</span> 20:57, 2 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::Discussion is already occurring on this section. So rather than delete unilaterally, please discuss and get some agreement from other editors. | |||
| ::I am also including a earlier version of the section here in case there is some desire to use that version.(] (]) 19:19, 2 April 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| <blockquote>Civility refers to the quality of the collaborative environment created and inhabited by Misplaced Pages editors, and assumes the importance of the encyclopedia as paramount. Rather than being external and separate from the encyclopedia and its functioning, editors as a group, constitute the internal, central, core of the encyclopedia and as such are responsible not only for the creation of contributions to the encyclopedia, for the problems that arise and their solution, but also for environment in which collaboration takes place. Damage one part of the functioning core of the encyclopedia, one editor, and you damage the whole of Misplaced Pages, and thus yourself. Civility must be seen as that which contributes to the most positive, holistic working environment possible. If behavior doesn’t contribute to this environment don’t do it, whatever it is.</blockquote> | |||
| :::I know what I did was a deep edit, and changed the focus to community and away from holism sort of. I'm not going to be insulted if you revert it back. I think I did keep the general essense of what you were getting at though. ——''']'''</span> ] Ψ ]<span style="color:#ffffff;">——</span> 20:49, 2 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Not a a problem. I think you did keep the essence of what I was saying. The same thing is being said in two different ways and I think thats fine. The editors as a group can choose one or the other or neither. Editing had been pretty friendly here, and we can keep it that way... c'est vrai? ;0) | |||
| It's written a little better now, but I still don't consider this section to be an improvement to the policy. It's policy creep, and it contains statements that range from meaningless to inappropriate. | |||
| Let's start with the first sentence and analyze it in detail: "Civility refers to the quality of the collaborative environment created and inhabited by Misplaced Pages editors, and asserts the paramount importance of the encyclopedia." Here are my objections: | |||
| *Civility doesn't refer to "the quality of the collaborative environment": it refers to the way you treat other people. Improving the quality of the collaborative environment is one ''reason'' to be civil. But then, a software upgrade of MediaWiki also improves the quality of the collaborative environment, and upgrading software isn't the same thing as civility. | |||
| *It doesn't make sense to say that civility itself asserts something. | |||
| *"The paramount importance of the encyclopedia" sounds like something that belongs on ], not here. If we suddenly decided we were writing an almanac instead of an encyclopedia, we would still need to be civil while doing so. | |||
| Now, some objections from later on: | |||
| * It's odd to describe the Misplaced Pages environment as more or less "livable". People do not live on Misplaced Pages. Hopefully. | |||
| * "Incivility occurs because of personal disrespect." I don't think you can pin down one reason that incivility occurs. Incivility can also occur, for example, due to people editing while tired or drunk. | |||
| * "...damage to this environment is the essence of incivility." Oh man, I sure hope our vandals don't know where to buy some Essence of Incivility. To be more serious, this introduces another unnecessary abstraction - by now, you're referring to the ''essence'' of a ''negation'' of a ''quality'' of a ''collaborative environment''. Really, I think it's better to stick with what we know civility and incivility are, which are the way you treat people. | |||
| * "Incivility is that which poisons the community environment." Another definition that equates two different abstractions. Astroturfing, for example, also poisons the community environment. The statement would be more correct if you simply said "Incivility poisons the community environment", but the rest of the page says that adequately enough. | |||
| * "Misplaced Pages editors should bear in mind that the encyclopedia is meant to neutrally express all notable ideas..." Should they? That's a pretty strong statement about the content of the encyclopedia. That's taking an opinion about ] -- a Misplaced Pages concept that isn't even a policy -- and for some reason codifying it in the civility policy where it doesn't even belong. | |||
| There are many more problems. Again, I would encourage you to work on this as an essay, not to alter the civility policy just because two editors want to. ] / ] 21:27, 2 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :I have to side with Rspeer here. There might be something in it, but what you've written so far is not especially comprehensible nor particularly correct. I wouldn't mind an overview of what ''civility'' is (as opposed to what incivility is, the actual topic of the guideline at this time), but a "holistic paradigm" is not it.--] (]) 00:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :Though I don't wish to edit-war over it, I'd like to ask that you remove the "paradigm" section until it is rewritten to the point where what it says it is clear and correct. So far, it's neither.--] (]) 00:55, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::Fr Goose I am not sure who you are addressing. If you don't like the version in place either see the one I wrote, and if you don't like that remove the version in place and leave the section as is. There was discussion on the ideas in this paradigm which I was attempting to deal with in writing this section. Please note that the section was written by me copy edited by Sunray and later on by Martin. However as I said I am not attached. I would however like to ask for "assume good faith" from the editors here. Sheesh(] (]) 01:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| == Removing uncivil comments == | |||
| Someone went overboard on this section, making it appear to be acceptable to edit other people's comments in the event that you believe that they have been uncivil. I've edited the section to make it conform more to the actual norms of Misplaced Pages.] (]) 14:20, 2 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :I think your version is better. It's better to see what people actually said. If that makes them lose face, they can strike it themselves. ——''']'''</span> ] Ψ ]<span style="color:#ffffff;">——</span> 20:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| == A reminder to get consensus before editing == | |||
| To those of you who have been editing this page recently, please remember, "''Before editing this page, please make sure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.''" I'd strongly second that, and would add that most revisions should be considered in doubt unless they are typographical in nature. <font color="#0000b0">]</font><sup><font color="#b00000">]</font></sup> 20:53, 2 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :On that note, I'd like to remove the essay-ish section entitled "Context", which was added based on only an agreement between two editors. It's putting inappropriate things in the policy, including opinions about notability, and it doesn't really say anything informative about civility that the rest of the page doesn't say. See my list of objections above. ] / ] 21:30, 2 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::In my opinion, the only question remaining is "do we need to get consensus to go back to the consensus version"? <font color="#0000b0">]</font><sup><font color="#b00000">]</font></sup> 21:34, 2 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::Could I refer you both, please, to the discussion that has been ongoing on these pages in a relatively peaceful manner, for context to this addition. There has been as well editing that has gone on in this article, and which did not require consensus and to say now that consensus is required may not be appropriate or true. Please also note the discussion on "paradigm shift in an understanding of civility", and to the comments of other editors on this topic some of whom agreed with the change in the article, and some of who were openly discussing the pros and cons of the change. Please note also that there was only one person who added this change , Olive, that would be moi, and that edits were than carried on that version by Sunray who seems to have agreed with Olive's addition,(check history for verification) and Martinphi. This section was added as a more contextual underpinning for the civility section as had been discussed on these discussion pages. That context by necessity is less concrete and literal, and more abstract than the rest of the article because it refers to an shift in understanding of how we fundamentally view Misplaced Pages. Please refer to discussion for more details on that . I would like the editors involved in that discussion to weigh in on this before the section is removed. I am personally not attached to the section I added, please see a copy on talk above, but am interested in having all editors interested in this topic discuss if they want to or need to.(] (]) 23:09, 2 April 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| ::::Commenters in that section noted how it veered off topic into the paranormal. This makes me suspect that you and Martinphi have a vested interest in "shifting" the "paradigm" of civility. I was content to discuss the new section in isolation, but if you insist that I should look at it in context, I'll tell you what I think of it in context. | |||
| ::::The new section has language buried within it about being disrespectful to a "group" of editors. I have noted that a certain group of editors feel disrespected when they are asked to back up their fantastic claims with reliable sources. This group apparently includes you and Martinphi, and is united by the goal of making Misplaced Pages articles say that the paranormal is real. | |||
| ::::I find the civility policy very important. And one of the most important things about the policy is that it does not take sides. To put this in context some more: While I disapprove of the kind of things you want to add to Misplaced Pages, I disapprove even more strongly when JzG tells you to fuck off. The issues have nothing to do with it. We don't need a paradigm shift to know that JzG shouldn't be telling ''anyone'' to fuck off. | |||
| ::::I now oppose this change even more strongly, because I suspect that the new language conceals phrases that would be used as a lever in a content dispute. The one about notability is the most glaring example. | |||
| ::::] / ] 00:14, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Whoa there! I have never edited a paranormal article, see no mention of paranormal in any discussion, have never interacted with JzG. There is no paradigm for incivility which is why I was interested in discussing it, and writing one. The version in place was edited after mine so perhaps comments about what I am doing could reference what I actually wrote. Please assume good faith. Completely confused by your accusations.(] (]) 01:24, 3 April 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| :I'd have to say I disagree with the opening suggestion in this thread. One is entitled to make changes to any page, including policy pages, at any time, if one acts in good faith. If you disagree with the edits, you are entitled to revert them, and then discuss your differences with the other editor(s) (i.e., to practice ]). | |||
| :What you can't do is say "no changing the page until you obtain consensus". ] recently got a block for trying to insist on such a stipulation regarding changes to ]. | |||
| :If you oppose specific changes, oppose them for specific reasons (discuss them, with or without reverting them), but do not express a reflexive opposition to change.--] (]) 01:03, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::Mind you, I am simply quoting from the template that is plastered across the front page of this policy. I stand by the ''request'' that changes to official policy be aired before being enacted. Do people need to honor it? No. Does it make for good policy-making? I certainly think so. <font color="#0000b0">]</font><sup><font color="#b00000">]</font></sup> 01:06, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ==Civility and community== | |||
| I don't know what in the world rspeer could have seen that related to the paranormal, unless he's having a paranormal experience (-:. This section reflects the general consensus of the way that WP is changing, and that discussion has been going on in multiple pages, such as JzG's RfC, the Raymond Arritt Expert withdrawal page, the essays WP:SPADE, WP:NOSPADE, Wiquitte (sp?) and others. Civility is moving away from focus on specific words to focus on the general environment, and that is what this section is attempting to address, without curtailing the ability of editors to communicate frankly, and without making it easier to use CIV as a weapon. So, this is not just out of the blue. | |||
| I am sure this issue has been raised several times and I'd like someone to point me to the relevant guideline, discussion or ArbCom decision. | |||
| The mention of notability is just a mention- and it is absolutely nothing new. ] just says we can include whatever meets that guideline. WP as community is an old concept. | |||
| Short of harassment (]), does WP:CIVIL apply also to off-wiki behaviour? Apparently it doesn't, if I'm not mistaken: {{tq|Misplaced Pages's civility expectations apply to all editors during all interactions <u>on Misplaced Pages</u>}} and so they apply {{tq|in any other discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians}} only when they take place on Misplaced Pages. | |||
| Here is a quote: | |||
| A couple of hypothetical examples to clarify the issue: | |||
| The Misplaced Pages community is:personal. This may seem strange: after all, the goal is to create entries which are as objective and without personal bias as possible. But the openness of Misplaced Pages allows total self-expression within those bounds (and even without it in the personal pages); Wikipedians define themselves within the context of the project through their interests and goals. This brings both benefits and complications--Misplaced Pages takes advantage of personal qualities like trust, insight, imagination, idiosyncracy and empathy which bureaucratic institutions cannot; but it cannot do so without also having some of the downsides, including confusion, bias, mistakes, and hurt feelings. A healthy community doesn't eliminate the problems, but it understands how to deal with them. | |||
| A) Twitting or posting on a social media something like "Those morons at Misplaced Pages deleted my article! I'm sure someone is paying them" (without naming editors) - violates WP:AGF - is this sanctionable? | |||
| In other words, don't be so shocked. | |||
| B) "User:Whatever is most blatant rightwing/leftwing POV-pusher I have ever encountered" on a blog or social media (without doxxing) - can this ] be sanctioned as such, or can it only be considered an "aggravating factor" in the case of an on-Wiki dispute? | |||
| More highly relevant links: | |||
| If anyone could link a discussion where this issue came up, I'd be grateful. ] (]) (]) 09:14, 23 April 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :I would be against this, as (for a start) how do you prove who they are here? ] (]) 09:37, 23 April 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::Let's assume this is not controversial, so as to focus on the principle rather than on the practicalities of its enforcement. We know for a fact that User:Somene posted on twitter that User:Gitz6666 is an idiot (this never happened: it's purely hypothetical). I understand that in principle this is none of the admins' business, right? The sentence {{tq|Misplaced Pages's civility expectations apply to all editors during all interactions on Misplaced Pages, including discussions at user and article talk pages, in edit summaries, and in any other discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians}} can be interpreted in two ways, if I'm not wrong: | |||
| ::1) "Misplaced Pages's civility expectations apply to all editors during all interactions on Misplaced Pages (including discussions at user and article talk pages, in edit summaries, and in any other discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians)" > ''a contrario'', they don't apply to interactions outside WP. | |||
| ::2) "Misplaced Pages's civility expectations apply to all editors during all interactions on Misplaced Pages (including discussions at user and article talk pages), in edit summaries, and in any other discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians" > they apply to "discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians" taking place outside WP. | |||
| ::I believe that 2 is wrong. ] (]) (]) 09:35, 29 April 2024 (UTC) | |||
| == Anti-religious bigotry == | |||
| What we're trying to do is to state these basic principles of the Misplaced Pages community in the context of civility. It think it is obvious that civility is an aspect of the WP community. ——''']'''</span> ] Ψ ]<span style="color:#ffffff;">——</span> 02:09, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| There's ] about how editors handle certain types of religious content. <small>(No, please, don't add to it. Really. But pinging the most active participants: @], ], ], ], ], ], ], ])</small> | |||
| :Is that meant to be an argument against discussing policy changes on the relevant talkpage first? <font color="#0000b0">]</font><sup><font color="#b00000">]</font></sup> 02:09, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| I've run across a talk page comment in which an editor declared "Religion is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking", and when I pushed back against this inappropriate comment, he doubled down, saying that his belief is "a very good one. The moral very high ground in fact. Also it's not bigotry". | |||
| ::There was no problem with the editing on this article until just recently, and there were several editors involved in the discussions. If agreement needs to be reached by editors at this point to make progress than thats fine. Its not a issue, just a change.(] (]) 02:34, 3 April 2008 (UTC)) | |||
| I'm wondering if it might help, in a long-term kind of way, to mention anti-religious comments in this policy as something the community does not need more of. There's a list of "direct rudeness" that begins this way: | |||
| Martinphi, I hope you realize the irony in the fact that you used on the WP:Civility talk page. Nobody, yourself included, is under any impression that my implied that I was going to become confused if you didn't. Stop with the goading. <font color="#0000b0">]</font><sup><font color="#b00000">]</font></sup> 02:49, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| # ], insults, name-calling, gross ] or indecent suggestions | |||
| :And no one told you to ] that the new heading had anything to do with what you put on my talk page. You could, correctly, have assumed it was a response to your last post, viz: | |||
| # ], including racial, ethnic, sexual, disability-related, gender-related and religious slurs, and derogatory references to groups such as social classes or nationalities | |||
| and while I believe this falls into the "insults" category (but not necessarily into "personal attacks", as that is generally interpreted as requiring a comment to be directed at an individual, or "religious slurs", because they're individually polite words), I doubt whether someone who believes himself to be expressing "righteous disapproval" of "evil" would be able to see his actions in that mirror. Consequently, I'm wondering whether it would be appropriate to expand this policy. However, I don't want to see genuine content discussions derailed ("My religion says it's turtles all the way down, and it's a violation of WP:CIVIL to say that the Earth moves through space due to inertia and gravitational attraction"). What do you think? ] (]) 22:18, 23 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :"Is that meant to be an argument against discussing policy changes on the relevant talkpage first?" | |||
| :Hard needle to thread. I'm not sure I would describe the comment you saw as inappropriate, but I understand why someone might. Part of the problem I have with our civility policy is that it doesn't really account for differences of opinions as to what is civil and what is not. A better outcome when someone says something like this would be to have a difficult discussion where there was a meeting of minds so that each person could actually come to an ''understanding'' of the other's position. Even if opinions did not change about whether and how one's comments might be civil or uncivil; right or wrong, there should at least be an acknowledgement than in a pluralistic environment like Misplaced Pages you have to work with others who do not share your perspective. | |||
| :Seems by putting my post on community under your heading "A reminder to get consensus before editing:" I caused confusion, for which you have my apology. ——''']'''</span> ] Ψ ]<span style="color:#ffffff;">——</span> 02:55, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :As such, I would not really be thrilled with an expansion of this policy in that direction. But, then again, I never liked this policy in the first place so I'm probably not the right community member to consult on this matter. | |||
| ::I said ''edit summary'' not ''section heading''. <font color="#0000b0">]</font><sup><font color="#b00000">]</font></sup> 02:59, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :] (]) 00:15, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::I'm not sure that coming to a mutual understanding is the goal. (It'd be a fine goal for social media, which seems to be catastrophically bad at it.) I think a more relevant goal would be: if someone tells you you're saying bigoted things, you should probably post some words that could be interpreted as an apology, even if they're something as ambivalent as "didn't mean to offend anyone", or at least change the subject. | |||
| ::I remember seeing a case at ANI a long time ago. A (presumably white) editor posted something like "Boy, you sure screwed up there" or "You've been a busy little boy today". A (self-identified) Black man told him not to address him as a "boy", because ] is a thing. The first editor acted like the feelings of the person he was speaking to, not to mention the uninvolved people reading the comments, didn't matter. Except, you know, they do. He could have just said "Sorry, didn't know" and stopped repeating the offensive content. Or just stopped repeating it. It's not ''that'' hard to stop poking people's sore spots when they've told you to stop it. ] (]) 01:36, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::{{tq|if someone tells you you're saying bigoted things, you should probably post some words that could be interpreted as an apology, even if they're something as ambivalent as "didn't mean to offend anyone", or at least change the subject.}} I actually think ''mandating'' an apology whenever someone tells you that you are being bigoted would be an improvement over the current civility policy of just "be civil, but we're not going to be clear what that means -- you just have to navigate the community yourself." This is somewhat different than your original suggestion, of course. ] (]) 02:06, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::That sounds ambitious. | |||
| ::::It reminds me of ], which is IMO excellent and which you might be interested in reading, if you haven't seen it before. ] (]) 06:09, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :I think that would be stretching ''civility'' to mean "don't say anything that might offend anyone" which is not possible and not desirable. This is not yet Wokepedia. ] (]) 00:24, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::I'll be honest, if saying bigotry is bad makes this "Wokepedia" then I will happily be part of it. Who even uses woke unironically anymore? ] (]) 15:40, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :Ambivalent about the central question, but wouldn't ] cover the comment at the top? And if someone too frequently posts citation-free rants about religion on a talk page, I presume they can be dealt with via ], et al. Putting that aside, wouldn't "religion is the domain of confused, old an illogical thinking", which is very clearly directed at a religion rather than any specific editors, be the same as strongly criticizing absolutely any subject that someone has made part of their core identity, whether religion, politics, or fandom? I know people who take it very personally when Taylor Swift or Donald Trump or Lord of the Rings are insulted, for example. As long as we're talking about the thing itself and not a specific believer/supporter/fan, it seems like we're in the realm of ] and ] rather than ]... although I'm sure there are some obvious gray areas. — <samp>] <sup style="font-size:80%;">]</sup></samp> \\ 01:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::I also think NOTAFORUM would apply, since it's really off topic. | |||
| ::I don't think this is equivalent to the Swifties. I think this could well be equivalent to saying that Trump supporters are stupid. ] (]) 01:21, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :{{tq| I'm wondering whether it would be appropriate to expand this policy.}}: Perhaps we could use language inspired by the Inclusivity principle of the ], which I think addresses why the type of language mentioned in OP is inappropriate for the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community: {{tq|The Wikimedia projects are developed in many languages, reflecting many regions and cultures. All activities are based on mutual respect for the diversity of the participants of the Wikimedia Movement. This respect is enforced through measures to support safety and inclusion.}} The quoted editor's insistence that saying {{tq|Religion is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking}} is {{tq|The moral very high ground in fact}} is rather plainly contrary to the principle of {{tq|mutual respect for the diversity of the participants of the Wikimedia Movement}}. Wikimedia and Misplaced Pages are international projects, and our movement charter sets an expectation of respect for the plurality of cultural backgrounds that exist throughout the world. We should no sooner tolerate behavior like the quote in the OP than we should tolerate it if the same had been said of other manifestations of experience and/or culture. That's to say that lots of other formulations along these lines would be just as wrong and we should have just as little tolerance for them (which is to say, we shouldn't tolerate such intolerance); for examples: | |||
| :* <s>Religion</s> The Middle East is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking (that's ]) | |||
| :* <s>Religion is</s> Women are the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking (that's ]) | |||
| :* <s>Religion is</s> The elderly are the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking (that's ]) | |||
| :* <s>Religion</s> The working class is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking (that's ]) | |||
| :I don't think expressing sentiments like these—whether about religion generally, specific religions, or forms of identity or culture other than religion—in vague terms makes it okay. It still ]. ] (] | ] | ]) 01:30, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::Your comparison to other subjects highlights the difference that struck me, too. When he says this about religion, we accept it. If he said the same thing about (e.g.,) "Jews" or "gay people" or "Black people", we'd be in insta-block territory. ] (]) 01:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::Yes... but what if he had said "My grandfather on his death bed was in the domain of the confused, old and illogical thinking". There is a legitimate question as to whether the claim at issue is actually true or not. The problem with the other examples is that they are demonstrably false generalizations. Is the identification of ''religion writ large'' as the domain of confused, old, and illogical thinking an incorrect generalization? It depends entirely on what you define a religion to be. For certain definitions, it is absolutely incorrect. But for others (for example, those definitions which ''define'' a religion to be those ideas which are a part of confused, old, and illogical thinking), then it is not really so much bigoted as it is a truism? ] (]) 02:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::An individual grandfather is not 'the elderly', which is an entire category of people. And if {{tq|It depends entirely on what you define a religion to be}}, I'm not sure how that'd be anything more than word games. I'd hardly think it all that justified if someone were say on Misplaced Pages ']' and then defend themselves by explaining that when they say 'Jews' they personally define that to only mean people who supposedly really are penny-pinching. ] (] | ] | ]) 02:27, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Because there are legitimate definitions of religion which deal with the hard-to-demonstrate aspects of the idea. After all, "religion" as a category is a difficult-to-define construct when we get right down to it, and it is even vaguely Eurocentric. A comparison to the category of Jews just doesn't work as far as I'm concerned because there is no argument about whether and how antisemitic stereotypes are definitional for Jews except in utterly bigoted contexts. I suppose you might argue that studies of comparative religion or philosophy of religion are utterly bigoted contexts, but I don't think that is a normal tack. ] (]) 02:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::There are many legitimate definitions of religion, and it is hard to define and rooted in Eurocentrism. But I'm hard pressed to consider the example ('confused' and 'old') as being like any of the academically legitimate definitions. ] says that religion is the ; ] says religion is ; ] says religion is in people; ] says religion is ; one could go on. These are legitimate definitions. By comparison, 'the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking', meanwhile, is an expression of bigotry. ] (] | ] | ]) 03:16, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::{{tq|I'm hard pressed to consider the example ('confused' and 'old') as being like any of the academically legitimate definitions}} "Old" is a somewhat common way for certain academics to offer a clear demarcation between the popular distinctions between "]" and "legitimate religions" with a nod to the irony that the truth-value of the claims are similar. Similarly, "confused" is just a synonym for descriptions provided by those who argue, in some academic contexts as the majority position, that religious belief is fundamentally irrational. You found four excellent scholars who provide functional definitinons of "religion" in terms of its social construction, but there is a strong academic tradition that goes back as far as the philosophes of the Enlightenment which defines religions in terms of the implausible and persistent claims people who follow them make. ] (]) 11:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::True but not really relevant. Using age as a distinction between traditional vs newer religious groups doesn't involve calling the traditional beliefs "old thinking". "Confused thinking" is not a synonym for saying that religious belief is fundamentally irrational; it is disparaging language that scholars avoid. ] (]) 15:52, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::I disagree. The idea that religious thinking is a kind of "old thinking" is not even particularly controversial given that most religions are based on ideas of fairly old provenance. The only issue is that it is not a ''universal''. For my part, describing thinking as "irrational" and describing thinking as "confused" are basically synonymous. I see no strong taboos in the literature in identifying religious thinking in similar sorts of disparaging ways: | |||
| :::::::::* | |||
| :::::::::* | |||
| :::::::::Etc. | |||
| :::::::::] (]) 18:39, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::In past discussions, you have often emphasized ]. While the two articles you've linked aren't on their face irrelevant, being academically published in ''Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences'', close consideration makes me prioritize them less compared to the definitions offered by the religious studies scholars I quoted.{{pb}}Elsevier shows a total of 25 citations between the two articles you linked, and Google Scholar shows and respectively. This isn't nothing, and for some topics could be meaningful and sufficient. But for a topic as big and as studied as religion, those citation counts, comparatively, don't suggest that the descriptions of religion offered there are as influential or legitimate as definitions of religion as the aforementioned non-disparaging examples quoted above. To use two examples: | |||
| ::::::::::* I quoted Talal Asad's ''Formations of the Secular'', which has | |||
| ::::::::::* I quoted Clifford Geertz's ''The Interpretation of Cultures'', which has . | |||
| ::::::::::The publications with less casual and less disparaging definitions seem to carry more influence in academic scholarship. ] (] | ] | ]) 00:15, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::::Congratulations! You have successfully demonstrated the fallacy of the excluded middle. ] (]) 00:58, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::::When the difference in influence is on the level of orders of magnitude, it looks more like the ] fallacy on your part. ] (] | ] | ]) 01:09, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::::::Do you know what different contexts are? ] (]) 01:43, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::I think you are on some level right about differences in targets, though I have also seen similarly dismissive and derisive sentiments expressed without much community pushback and no administrative censure about transgender people and topics, or, in the words of others*, "nutty academics with all their postmodernist queer theory" and "ideologues" with whom supposedly "o dissent is brooked". From some points of view it's an unintuitive Venn diagram, though ]. | |||
| :::<small>*I can provide the links to these quotations on request but did not do so in the original post since this thread is not about specific individual editors' behavior but rather about whether the civility policy can be expanded to clarify a community consensus against expressing bigotry.</small> | |||
| :::] (] | ] | ]) 02:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::<small>Deciding whether to bring someone into a conversation as a "bad example" is such a tricky thing. You need concrete examples, or some editors won't believe that the comments actually happened. (I once had a wiki-friend – a woman I really like and whose editing was superb – say that she couldn't quite believe that oversight-worthy sexual harassment ever happened, because whenever someone mentioned an example, the oversight volunteers had always cleaned it up before she got there.) But when someone's comment is accidental, or being used as merely one example, then I think it's kind of mean to rub their faces in it, especially if they're less experienced than you.</small> ] (]) 06:03, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::"Religion" isn't analogous to "The Middle East" or "Jews". If we're going in that direction, it's analogous to "earth" or "people". If we got more specific and said e.g. "Christianity is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking" I'd be more sympathetic to the comparison. — <samp>] <sup style="font-size:80%;">]</sup></samp> \\ 02:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::I am sure some people interpret "religion" with ], though, as in "'''religious people''' are...." ] (]) 02:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::I'm sure you're right. If you hear a statement about a stereotype, like "Mental illness is the domain of delusions and violence", one tends to read this as a claim about how people with mental health conditions interact with others, and not about what happens to them. ] (]) 05:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::But it's a key skill in intellectual endeavours of all sorts to be able to dissociate statements about concepts, ideas and things from statements about people (especially about oneself). Ultimately Misplaced Pages editing is an activity based in the propagation of knowledge whereas in some aspects religion lies in the realm of antiknowledge (rather, there is 'faith'). Thus there is always going to be a tension between (say) an encyclopedia that insists on asserting the Earth is not 6,000 years old and a fundamentalist Christian who might feel attacked by that knowledge. It in no way means Misplaced Pages should extend special treatment to any concept merely because of some religious association. But this doesn't mean either that Misplaced Pages or Wikipedians should be banging on about these tensions in a tedious Dawkinsesque manner. ] (]) 06:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::Phrenology is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. Human sacrifice is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. Geocentrism is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. Viatlism is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. Lamarckism is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. It's shocking how when you change key terms in a statement it can become reasonable or unreasonable. Unless religions are possessed of personhood I don't see why they must be treated with civility. The real problem is that going on non sequitur rants about one's feelings on things aren't important to Misplaced Pages, but that's already covered by NOTFORUM and the like. ] (]) 02:22, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :I'm sort of of two minds here, because two things are simultaneously true: | |||
| :1. A lot of articles on obscure religious topics make ] claims that are not supported by secular sources, this is bad, and we should be much more vigorous in trying to fix it. | |||
| :2. Many editors that deal with ] topics have a sort of hyperskeptical attitude that tends to lead to ] problems when writing about religion or religious belief. (Would I call this "anti-religious bigotry"? Absolutely not, I don't think that exists. But it definitely can lead to tone issues when writing about religion.) ] (]) 03:21, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :I think that in accusing {{Ping|Lycurgus}} of anti-religious bigotry you've crossed over the civility line yourself. Looking at the context on ] its hard to see your side here. ] (]) 03:51, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::Probably this revolves around the distinction between ideas and people. In general it's ok to be dismissive of certain religion-associated ideas (miracles, supernatural beings, fake history, etc.) there is no need to extend that to being dismissive about ''people'' who might have faith in those ideas. It's fallacious to argue that "religion" should have some kind of protected characteristic in the same way as a certain group of people (women, Jews ...) because "religion" is a big umbrella term not a group of people. ] (]) 05:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::I think theres more to it than that... People who are genuinely religious are largely incapable of NPOV when it comes to religious topics, we've seen that demonstrated time and time again... The problems largely seem to arise from people not making it clear that they're addressing a NPOV issue and not the reasons behind it. ] (]) 17:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::Hard to have religion without people, to the extent that we take scholars to be right that by people. (Likewise, one's hard pressed to have atheism or humanism without people, those being socially constructed as well, so I'd just as soon say it's inappropriate to say something like 'atheism is a philosophy of unhappiness', a claim that happened at the ] talk page not so long ago. I don't think 'vagueposting bigotry is bad' is going to be special and specific to religion, though it's the example highlighted in the OP and in this thread). ] (] | ] | ]) 23:22, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::And it would be fine to argue, or rather profess a belief, that atheism or humanism or anything is illogical or irrational or whatever. Bigotry in this sense clearly refers to ideas towards people, not ideas about ideas that other people have ideas about. ] (]) 02:27, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::{{tq|Looking at the context on Talk:Celibacy its hard to see your side here}}: What I see looking at that thread is WhatamIdoing offering respectful clarification, and looking at this thread I notice WhatamIdoing deciding to make the discussion about a general idea rather than a specific editor, unlike your approach of personalizing the matter and unnecessarily turning up the temperature. ] (] | ] | ]) 06:39, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::They provided direct quotes from a specific editor alongside an attack on that editor, I didn't personalize anything beyond what was already there. The only one making this more personal is you, who has decided to attack me personally instead of addressing the point raised. ] (]) 17:34, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :NO, as we should be able to talk about ideas freely, it is only people we should not be able to insult. ] (]) 11:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::That is a super fine line and pretty subjective. ] (]) 15:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::Not really, if you think about it. A person is not an idea. That some people identify with ideas is unfortunate, but not something Misplaced Pages can fix. ] (]) 15:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::I'm with Pack on this. Editors should neither be writing "Gays are evil" ''nor'' writing "Homosexuality is evil". I want to see nothing even remotely like that, because it is homophobic bigotry. ] (]) 15:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Indeed not, there are some very bad ideas it is unacceptable to espouse. I really cannot see why anybody should be espousing any (non-Misplaced Pages-related) ideas anyway - this is ]. (Ironically it's a view in several religions that gays/homosexuality is evil, which brings us full circle.) ] (]) 15:50, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::So what you're saying is that you believe it's acceptable to espouse anti-religious sentiment, but you believe it's not acceptable to espouse anti-gay sentiment. | |||
| ::::::I don't think it is acceptable to espouse either of these viewpoints on wiki. ] (]) 15:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::I think that's exactly true and a big reason why analogies do not work here. | |||
| :::::::Take the following three statements: | |||
| :::::::* Homosexuality is evil. | |||
| :::::::* Nazism is evil. | |||
| :::::::* Christianity is evil. | |||
| :::::::One of those three statements is definitely bigotry. One of those three statements is definitely not bigotry. The form of the sentence is not helpful for identifying bigotry; only the content of the sentence is useful, and that involves subjective decisions about, frankly, how plausible you think "Christianity is evil" is. ] (]) 16:17, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::Insofar as the category of Christianity is capacious and includes ] practitioners resisting colonialism, ], anti-racist activists like ] and the ], etc., I'm pretty comfortable considering the phrase 'Christianity is evil' to be the kind of bigotry I expect to encounter in, say, particularly virulent takes by Ayn Rand, not a neutral expression appropriate to see on Misplaced Pages.{{pb}}Things that ] include racism, misogyny, queerphobia, antisemitism, Nazism, Islamophobia, colonialism, etc., and these are all both narrower (because they aren't universal to) and wider (because they also exist elsewhere) than categories like 'religion', or 'Islam', or 'Christianity', etc. Calling out specific patterns of injustices or specific cases of injustice with certain persons or institutions is different from expressing intolerance about entire people categories. ] (] | ] | ]) 23:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::One is an intrinsic characteristic a person cannot control, one isn't. ] (]) 02:29, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::The idea that your religion is voluntary and changeable is very Christian. Some other religions and cultures believe that religion is also an intrinsic characteristic that a person cannot control. ] (]) 02:39, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::Some believe that but I think Akbar the Great made it clear those beliefs were mistaken. Some people believe sexuality is a choice too, luckily there's a word for those people: "wrong". ] (]) 20:48, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::A young man bragged to me once that, on a trip to southeast Asia, his traveling companion had been recognized as the reincarnation of some famous Buddhist priest. If that were true, how was his friend supposed to choose any of that? Can he say "Nope, I don't choose to have already been reincarnated"? Or "You aren't allowed to believe that about me"? | |||
| ::::::::::Some people believe they are very smart ]. Some people believe they are not smart ]. Their beliefs do not change their intrinsic characteristics. You might ''believe'' you aren't smart, but you still are, and your belief does not change that fact. | |||
| ::::::::::Someone who believes in reincarnation would say the same about people who don't: you might not ''believe'' you are reincarnated, but you still are, and your belief does not change that. (Or, naturally, the other way around: if reincarnation is not real, then you aren't reincarnated, even if you believe it, and your belief does not change that fact.) ] (]) 18:51, 26 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::::The whole tourists as reincarnated priests thing is a common scam. Examining it as a sincere religious belief seems to be missing the point entirely. ] (]) 18:54, 26 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::::<small>Well, that was my first thought, but I kept my mouth shut, because it seemed to be a deeply significant experience to him.</small> ] (]) 22:52, 26 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::Ethnic religions like Judaism make this dichotomy not so clear-cut. ] (] | ] | ]) 02:40, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::I don't see how; secular and atheist Jews are still Jewish while not believing in the Jewish religion, to varying degrees, it's not some kind of ethnic obligation. ] (]) 20:53, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::But in accordance with above it would be perfectly fine to say Jews, gays, trans, or whatever are okay to attack and that is simply not true. As a community we decide what is acceptable. Remember, attacking ideas or groups like that also stifles the free exchange of ideas. ] (]) 15:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::Jews are a race, not just an idea, and none of the others are just ideas they are actually biological, not one has Christian DNA, and no one is biologically Muslim. ] (]) 15:56, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::Being a Jew is not a race. But if we want to go that route, we show Nazis the door all the time and rightly so. ] (]) 16:07, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::Oh boy... So this is going back to basics but ] are in large part an ethnoreligious group and the vast majority of modern Jews beleive that they are part of an ethnoreligious group... The vast majority of modern Jews are not Nazis. You've jumped the shark so hard its not even funny. ] (]) 17:37, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::Yes jews are not Nazis, I'm not sure what you are arguing. I think you missed the point if that is your takeaway. ] (]) 17:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::::The point is that the majority of modern Jews would agree with the idea that "Jews are an ethnic as well as religious community" ] (]) 18:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::<small>For what it's worth, I wouldn't say that there is Jewish DNA either, since ]. What is true is that Judaism is ethnoreligious to an extent beyond that of many other ']'-esque categories. 'Secular Jew' has more legs and history than 'secular Christian', and even to the extent that the latter isn't nonexistent, it's not as readily conceived of in ethnic terms as the former. ] (] | ] | ]) 23:53, 24 October 2024 (UTC)</small> | |||
| :::::::Jews, gays, and trans people are not okay to attack, but fascists are (arguably it's obligatory to attack them, in fact). Sorry, but there is no content-neutral rule to be found here: you cannot just say "it would be bigoted to say this about gay people" because the important part of that phrase is "about gay people". ] (]) 16:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::Agreed, its a fine line and subjective for what is acceptable and appropriate to attack or not. Which the community at large defines over time. We cannot use a simple open ended rule anymore. ] (]) 16:48, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| The conversational rulebook with regards to this varies with location, politics and time. Of course everybody considers their current version of it to be the "correct" one. IMO it's a bad and impossible idea to try to write the "correct" rulebook regarding this for Misplaced Pages. For neutral venues, the unwritten rule is that if ~95% agree, it's OK to treat it as fact, and so saying "Nazism is evil" is OK. But lots of people try to pretend that their 50% view is a 95% view. | |||
| :::I'm sorry you're confused, Antelan. I know what you said, and my edit summary was a response to your confusion, which I attempted to fix by putting in a new heading. ——''']'''</span> ] Ψ ]<span style="color:#ffffff;">——</span> 03:18, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| Regarding the OP and civility, IMO wp:civility is about how to treat editors that one is conversing with. If the comment was somehow referring to someone in the conversation, I would consider any choosing of value-laden disparaging terms to be contrary to wp:civility. If not, not. Sincerely, <b style="color: #0000cc;">''North8000''</b> (]) 18:55, 24 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::This is the goading that I'm asking you to stop. This is three times now that you're calling me confused. For the second time, I'm telling you that I'm not confused. Nowhere did I suggest that ''I'' was confused, and instead I offered you a more ''helpful'' way of threading comments. Please stop now. Follow? <font color="#0000b0">]</font><sup><font color="#b00000">]</font></sup> 03:22, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :I would expand upon your idea to say: Civility is about more than just how you treat the editors you are conversing with. It is also about the effects you have on people who might 'overhear' that conversation. We don't let two straight men talk about how glad they are not to be gay, even if they think it's a fine way to treat each other, because we know that a gay editor might see the conversation and feel marginalized by the community's tolerance of this display of intolerance. The same is true for comments about race, sex, gender, and many other things. I think it should be equally true for religion (or lack thereof; I believe that comments against atheism or agnosticism hurt our community in an exactly equal fashion). ] (]) 02:21, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::No, not really. The confusion was that you a) thought that my discussion of community was really about not discussing edits, and b) that my edit summary about confusion was a response to your edit to my talk page, instead of a response to your last post on this page. If I am wrong about you being confused, then you, again, have my apology. ——''']'''</span> ] Ψ ]<span style="color:#ffffff;">——</span> 03:25, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::There are people who are uncivil in very subtle ways, but Misplaced Pages is ill-equipped to handle it because there is no venue for helping to moderate personal disputes between two different users. The assumption of this policy seems to be that everyone should just learn to get along by themselves until the PvP is so intolerable that you go off to complain to the authorities at the dramaboards. ] (]) 13:13, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::The one making what appear to be specious assertions of religious bigotry is not in a position to tell anyone else how to be civil... Making accusations of intolerance which aren't supported by the context and evidence is a civility issue, ] etc. ] (]) 17:24, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::Whatamidoing But this is a ''policy'' and going by your standard, it would be a violation of Misplaced Pages policy to write anything that offends any (not-in-the-conversation) person based on whatever set of behavior rules that they wish to apply. <b style="color: #0000cc;">''North8000''</b> (]) 18:48, 25 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::I think what Whatamidoing is saying is that there is sometimes editors who say things to impose superiority of views or jab at another editors views, when we should be focusing on what sources actually say. Usually sources are more nuanced and not as insulting as editors here sometimes are. I have seen people say things like "sky daddy" or "stupid believers" and other internationally provoking terms, which of course shows their rotten mindset since even nonreligious editors defend religious content because it is encyclopedic and vice versa.] (]) 20:51, 26 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::You really can't be on Misplaced Pages talk:Civility saying " which of course shows their rotten mindset" ] (]) 20:53, 26 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::North, I don't think so. First, I think we should differentiate between "upset" and "offend". Being told that (e.g.) "Scaryitis is uniformly fatal in babies" is upsetting (if you happen to know a family whose baby has this), but it's not offensive. | |||
| :::Second, we need to distinguish between a comment that repeats a group stereotype ("blondes are dumb") and a comment about an individual behaviors ("that televangelist is a scammer"). Editors who post something like "religious believers are so stupid they believe a sky daddy exists" are posting offensive stereotypes about groups. This should not be permitted. Editors should, however, be able to post a comment about an individual, based on their personal behavior. Commenting on personal behavior would include statements such as: | |||
| :::* "User:EveEditor, please stop post insulting remarks about groups of people based on religious stereotypes per WP:CIVIL." | |||
| :::* "User:PaulPushy, Misplaced Pages is not the place to post your proofs that your religion is correct." | |||
| :::In short, I think Ramos is correct: It is wrong and a violation of this policy to post insults about large groups of people (e.g., "stupid believers"), and it is still okay and acceptable under this policy to say that specific individual editors have problems (e.g., describing an individual editor's stereotyping as showing a "rotten mindset" ). ] (]) 23:34, 26 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::You have a rotten mindset, and you are a bigot. It is your opinion that this is a civil way to talk to you, right? Or did I misunderstand what you are saying? If I misunderstood you, regard those remarks as struck. | |||
| ::::To avoid misunderstandings: I would never say this ({{tq|You have a rotten mindset, and you are a bigot}}) to any other editor here, since I regard it as really uncivil. I am not seriously accusing WhatamIdoing of those things. I am using it here only to make a point. --] (]) 07:34, 27 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Glad you've been crystal clear that's just hypothetical there Hob. They don't come anymore non-bigoted than WAID. That said, above analyse from Loki et al on why it's challenging to draw clear bright line general rules, and to make useful analogies, seems bang on point. Looking at the specifics may be helpful. The actual sentence that triggered concern here seems to be {{tq|Religion is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking but this is a practical term which has uses outside that. I'm sure in a medical context it's made clear.}} from ]. In context, that's clearly not an attempt to insult large groups of people - rather, it's talking about religion in the sense that it can be understood as a set of social institutions , and especially as believe systems aiming to influence how folk think. Such a -ve view on religion is less common these days than 20 years ago, but it's still a respectable minority view, not a fringe one. | |||
| :::::So my view is no change needed to the policy - the existing wording against "religious slurs" is sufficient. We can trust admins to distinguish between such slurs & valid POVs that are clearly relvent to article improvement, on a case by case bases. ] (]) 14:13, 27 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| No, incredibly, you are wrong for the fourth and fifth times about ''my'' thoughts. It is a basic tenet of civility that you state what ''you'' think, not what ''I'' think, because you clearly do not know what I think. Stop. Now. <font color="#0000b0">]</font><sup><font color="#b00000">]</font></sup> 03:29, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::Thank you for the kind words, Feyd, and for the clear example, Hob. I wonder whether we have mistaken civility for friendliness. Hob's example would be an unfriendly thing to say, but if, in the particular context, it builds up the community, I don't think it would necessarily be uncivil. ] (]) 22:11, 27 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :This: "''It is a basic tenet of civility that you state what ''you'' think, not what ''I'' think, because you clearly do not know what I think.''" ...is awesome. What do you call an essay that just says that? Thank you, Antelan. -]<sup>(])</sup> 03:40, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::That is an extremely weird idea of civility. I cannot see how being unfriendly "builds community", except by bullying away those one wants to exclude from it for arbitrary reasons. The reasoning also smacks a bit of "the ends justify the means": be friendly unless you want to achieve a specific goal. I will unwatch this page now. This is not a community I want to be part of. --] (]) 10:27, 28 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::Maybe WP:MINDREADER? WP:LOCUSOFCONTROL? :) <font color="#0000b0">]</font><sup><font color="#b00000">]</font></sup> 03:43, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::: @ Hob, it will be a shame if you don't return as at bottom we're probably all of like mind on this one. If someone literally said {{tq|You have a rotten mindset, and you are a bigot}} to an obviously non bigoted editor then even the more lenient among us would probably agree it warrants an insta block. I think WAID's point was more that even your hypothetical example could come across as a little unfriendly - though not at all uncivil, and also providing valuable clarity that had seemed helpful in guiding us towards a resolution of this thread. | |||
| :::::::: @ WAID - yes I think you're exactly right on the distinction between friendliness & civility. IMO more friendliness is desirable in that it would encourage more collaboration & might be especially good for diversity. Unlike with civility though, no attempt should ever be made to enforce friendliness. For many, it doesnt feel natural or authentic to be especially friendly online, esp. with those who have ideological differences. Going back to the exchange on Talk:Celibacy that triggered all this, the editor's doubling down when you raised the bigotry concern was arguably unfriendly but not uncivil. For folk with certain life experiences or have been exposed to too much one sided analyses, it can indeed seem the moral high ground to criticise religion. Huh, even celebrated encyclopaedist ] was anti-religious, so much so that he's often cited (incorrectly I think) as having said {{tq|Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the guts of the last priest}}. All this isn't to say anti-theists have a blank cheque to be critical of religion, as in many contexts doing so is divisive & gratuitous. But on the TP of an article where it's clearly relevant, like Celibacy, it's ok. Just my opinion. If nothing else this thread has shown how fiendishly difficult it can be to draw bright lines, as theres so many valid conflicting perspectives in play. Which I guess is why trusting to admin discretion on a case by case bases may be the best we can hope for? ] (]) 11:45, 28 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::I think Hob's example is good because it could be civil or uncivil, depending on the context. Demanding sanctions against someone at ANI because they have a rotten mindset is probably just an instance of name-calling. Approaching someone to say "Hey, I think you need to take a break from that noticeboard. You're always ranting about it, and, to be blunt, it looks like you have developed a rotten mindset about the editors discussed there. Maybe get back to the kind of editing you actually enjoy for a while? If you're worried nobody will step up if you don't handle things, I'm willing to put some hours into it for the next month" might be startling to the recipient, but it's probably civil. A joke with a friend, along the lines of getting his mind out of the gutter, is harmless friendly banter. Same words, three contexts, three responses. | |||
| :::::::::This maybe a bit of an ], but civil comes from ]: the united citizens. On wiki, we call that 'the community'. It isn't just about individual, one-on-one behavior. Civility is about the collective effects, too. At some level, anything that helps the community is civil, and everything that hurts the community is uncivil. ] (]) 16:07, 28 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::::::While I agree context matters—if, say, posts at ANI to say ' posted antisemitic slurs in a discussion, and here are the diffs so they clearly have a rotten mindset, and we should indeff', I think we should prioritize sanction against rather than against —I don't think it's usually necessary to use 'unfriendly language' like that, and to the extent it isn't necessary we might as well avoid it. We don't need to try to assess someone's mindset or personality and then describe such in a crass way if describing their behavior and/or a pattern of behavior is sufficient, so we might as well avoid the former and prioritize the latter.{{pb}}That said, to Hob's concern about omething samounting to {{Tq|exclud}} {{tq|for arbitrary reasons}}—there are various ideas and behaviors we want to exclude from Misplaced Pages, but I don't think our reasons our arbitrary. In editor interactions, we want to exclude any bigotry that would violate the ] on {{tq|using slurs or stereotypes}} or would abridge our ] to take {{tq|active responsibility for ensuring that the Wikimedia projects are productive, pleasant and safe spaces}}. ] (] | ] | ]) 19:20, 28 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::::Even if the UCOC didn't exist, we'd still have a legitimate interest in encouraging a "productive, pleasant, and safe space", because that's what results in editors producing good content instead of (e.g.,) spending all their time at the drama boards or deciding that contributing is no longer worth the hassle. | |||
| :::::::::::Hydrangeans, what you said about {{xt|to the extent it isn't necessary we might as well avoid it}} is a good summary of the first half of ] of communication. ] (]) 19:48, 28 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::To put my last post in another shorter way, this is a ''policy'' (which editors can be sanctioned for for violating) covering treatment of editors which one is conversing with. As a policy with teeth (and which is often weaponized) , I don't think it would be a good idea to broaden it to include references to all other groups and people in the world. This is a policy about treatment of editors who you are conversing with. Sincerely, <b style="color: #0000cc;">''North8000''</b> (]) 15:43, 28 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| {{Collapse top|Slightly off topic analysis and discussion thereof}} | |||
| :::I'm sorry, Antelan, it was ''my'' thought that your inaccurate factual assumptions and assumption of bad faith were the result of confusion. My mistake. | |||
| Seems to be a great deal of chat on VP & elsewhere on the Skeptic| religion intersection. If I'm reading correctly, those concerned about sceptics are coming mainly from non-believing perspectives- i.e. the ] type mainstream faction where members typically show no discernible faith themselves, yet are strong believers in being respectful towards what they see as the more +ve sorts of "Woo". | |||
| But maybe some saw the slew of news from around the world earlier this month showing apparent religious decline in several countries, e.g. claims that in UK, Maybe there's some kind of chivalrous feeling that believers are some kind of endangered minority, in need of protection? | |||
| Ironically, it's those on the skeptic side of the mainstream who better understand what's going on. The recent reports are lagging indicators, long term the world is becoming unstoppably more religious & believing. Social media has seen an explosion of supernatural content recently, even sites like Reddit have many believers subs when any trying to argue from a skeptic perspective are instantly perma'd as trolls. I guess theoretically this could change, but tech titans are likely to be quite resistant to tweaking algo's against supernatural content. It's understood to be part of the reason why the decade+ trend of worsening mental health metrics for young people has finally turned for the good (Compare this with the . A turn around that came just in time to potentially stall global efforts to massively regulate their platforms. | |||
| :::GTB, if someone says they think X, it is not uncivil to say that they think X. If they don't, then they can correct you. Contortions such as "I think you think based on what you say" are very seldome necessary. | |||
| But the key long term trend is one that not even the most influential militant atheist can begin to contend with. Our ] article is outdated & understates plumeting birth rates . And also wrong in that the global average births per women needed to sustain a population is 2.2 (2.1 is true in global north only). Birth rates are now below replacement rates in every single part of the world except sub Saharan Africa. In several countries, birth rates per woman are now well under 0.9. The situation becomes far more pleasing when you look at more granulated data sets. They show that for secular women and moderate believers, the birth rate is sometimes lower than 0.5, whereas for deeply religious women, birth rate per woman tends to be well above 4! The consensus among social scientists who study these matters is that by far the biggest predictor on whether a child will grow up to be religious in the religiosity of their parents. Trends for religious families to have far more children have been underway for two decades now, have only accelerated in the last 5 years, and have already substantially changed the culture in some parts of the world. | |||
| :::GTBacchus thinks civility is important. ——''']'''</span> ] Ψ ]<span style="color:#ffffff;">——</span> 03:46, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Martin, you're right of course, that there's no problem stating another's thoughts when everyone is clearly on the same page about who holds what position. As soon as that comes into question though, it becomes unwise to tell others what they think. If I say, "no, I don't think that civility is important, why are you mischaracterizing my position?", then you... might be rather surprised, but it would not be helpful for you to insist that you know what I believe better than I do. It would be better at that point to request clarification. <p> Does it make more sense that way? I feel that's how I see it so often in context. People often restate another editor's position in ways that the other editor would never agree to state it; that seldom helps advance the discussion. I think we do much better when we ''ask'' other people what they think rather than ''telling'' them, unless it's been made quite clear, but different people will think that different things are "clear". If it's clear that it's clear, then it's clear... clear? <p> I'm already outlining in my head a couple of paragraphs to go at ] or something. These things are no good without snappy shortcuts, though; nobody remembers them. -]<sup>(])</sup> 03:49, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| In the anglophone world, it may take 2-3 generations before the shift towards religiosity will be sufficient for all our articles to be re-written in a way that's pleasing to believers. But that it's going to happen is all but inevitable. (Sketpics are free to think otherwise, there are certain moonshot tech projects that could break the trend. But from a believer perspective, much as we accept that God allows mainstream science to accomplish amazing things to humanity’s benefit, the types of knowledge being sort by those moonshots (e.g. unlocking the knowledge to allow secularists to become ] ) are exactly the sort of knowledge that God forbids. (Genesis 3:24). | |||
| ::::If I accept this apology, I accept that I made "inaccurate factual assumptions and assumption of bad faith." Clearly this apology is unacceptable, and instead constitutes goading, which I have already asked you to stop. <font color="#0000b0">]</font><sup><font color="#b00000">]</font></sup> 03:50, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Um.... really? I don't think he's goading you here. -]<sup>(])</sup> 03:57, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Oh, I see it now. That is a pretty crummy apology, actually. -]<sup>(])</sup> 03:57, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| What's not inevitable is whether the forthcoming re-invigorated religious culture will be benign. And it's here that skeptics can be of great value. Like Blake said over 200 years back, when the voice of sceptics was near its peak of intellectual power, "the greatest enemy of religion is religion itself." Or as per Seraphim Rose , it is Christ Who works on atheist's souls. "The Antichrist is not to be found in the deniers, but in the small affirmers, whose Christ is only on the lips." (Cf. Revelation 3:15-16). | |||
| :::::It wasn't an apology in general, only for stating your thoughts. The only thing I feel perhaps I did wrong was mention confusion in an edit summary, but it wasn't really a jibe against you. See, even if my edit summary was such a bad thing, (and "confusion" was pretty obviously factual even if perhaps it seemed insulting to you), when I explained you seemed to decide to take it as goading. Then, you said you weren't confused, when you seemed to have clearly stated something which was not factual- that I was responding to your post on my talk page, which I was not (and I explained that). Well, I'll not respond any more here, because it seems trying to explain things only makes you write back as if you are angry. ——''']'''</span> ] Ψ ]<span style="color:#ffffff;">——</span> 04:03, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::Well, duh, Martinphi. Look at what you wrote: "I'm sorry, Antelan, it was ''my'' thought that your inaccurate factual assumptions and assumption of bad faith were the result of confusion." If you're apologizing sincerely, don't surround it with other crap, like implicit accusations that he was assuming bad faith (as well as "inaccurate factual assumptions"). You can't read his mind, you don't know what he was assuming, and stating what you think he was assuming, as if you know, is a very unhelpful thing to do. Your shortcut below says it all. Don't put assumptions in his mind. <p> Seriously, if you're going to apologize like that, don't apologize. His reaction really isn't surprising, is it? -]<sup>(])</sup> 04:11, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| All this recent concern about skeptics is understandable, I used to see them as a problematic faction too for my first 12 or so years on Misplaced Pages (albeit to a much lesser extent as certain other factions.) But they are the only ones with the energy to protect us from harmful fringe on needed scale, such as article manipulation that could aid scammers and other types of folk looking to exploit the vulnerable. So even from an immediate PoV, skeptics should be seen as net +ve. Trying to limit skeptics on Misplaced Pages is at best fighting yesterday's battle today. I see WAID made a comment on one of the VP threads lamenting what the community did to the once mighty ARS. Considering both their anti fringe work & the long term considerations, Skeptics could now be seen as a more valuable faction than even the squad in its hey day, so it may be time for all these skeptic concern threads to stop. ] (]) 14:13, 27 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| GTB, yes, I agree, it's much better not to say what others think. I did think the misunderstanding, and that one existed, were obvious here. Here is a good shortcut: ] Don't Put Words In My Mouth. ——''']'''</span> ] Ψ ]<span style="color:#ffffff;">——</span> 04:06, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| :These arguments read more as conspiracy theories than anything else, do you have a source which supports your argument that "long term the world is becoming unstoppably more religious & believing" because that contradicts the best available science as I understand it. ] (]) 15:57, 27 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :That is a good shortcut. Thank you. -]<sup>(])</sup> 04:11, 3 April 2008 (UTC) | |||
| ::Re-collapsing, this discussion is best set to one of your two's user talk pages. This is ] and off topic to the discussion at hand. ] (]) 16:02, 27 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::Considered bad form don't you know... It appears to be on topic and if true is something that we should take into consideration in the discussion at hand (I just don't think it is true)... It rambles, but its all on topic. ] (]) 16:28, 27 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::It's not though. Leave other peoples talk page contributions alone please. ] (]) 17:54, 27 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::What part is off topic? Collapsing is not one of those talk page contributions unless the collapsed text is also yours... Which is not the case here. ] (]) 17:57, 27 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::The collapsed part? Also yes, collapsing is part of ones talk page contributions, clearly. ] (]) 18:18, 27 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::] "Involved parties must not use these templates to end a discussion over the objections of other editors." if your involved collapse is objected to walk away, you don't edit war it back in especially when the direction given is "Your idea of what is off topic may differ from what others think is off topic, so be sure to err on the side of caution." ] (]) 18:27, 27 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::: Would prefer the box stays collasped. The bit about the world becoming unstoppably more religious is from a Christian perspective - anyone who doesn't believe God set an angel to guard the Tree of Life (i.e., as per mentioned Genesis 3:24) is entitled to dismiss it as conspiracy theory. Naturally I have mainstream sources on the demographics in play, which I'd be happy to share if you visit my talk or ping me to yours. Per PackMecEng that seems too tangential to discuss here, where the focus seems to be on whether or not we should modify policy to further discourage anti-religious bigotry. ] (]) 18:48, 27 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| :::::::::So be it then. ] (]) 19:58, 27 October 2024 (UTC) | |||
| {{Collapse bottom}} | |||
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Off-Wiki behaviour
I am sure this issue has been raised several times and I'd like someone to point me to the relevant guideline, discussion or ArbCom decision.
Short of harassment (WP:OWH), does WP:CIVIL apply also to off-wiki behaviour? Apparently it doesn't, if I'm not mistaken: Misplaced Pages's civility expectations apply to all editors during all interactions on Misplaced Pages
and so they apply in any other discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians
only when they take place on Misplaced Pages.
A couple of hypothetical examples to clarify the issue:
A) Twitting or posting on a social media something like "Those morons at Misplaced Pages deleted my article! I'm sure someone is paying them" (without naming editors) - violates WP:AGF - is this sanctionable?
B) "User:Whatever is most blatant rightwing/leftwing POV-pusher I have ever encountered" on a blog or social media (without doxxing) - can this off-wiki personal attacks be sanctioned as such, or can it only be considered an "aggravating factor" in the case of an on-Wiki dispute?
If anyone could link a discussion where this issue came up, I'd be grateful. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 09:14, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
- I would be against this, as (for a start) how do you prove who they are here? Slatersteven (talk) 09:37, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
- Let's assume this is not controversial, so as to focus on the principle rather than on the practicalities of its enforcement. We know for a fact that User:Somene posted on twitter that User:Gitz6666 is an idiot (this never happened: it's purely hypothetical). I understand that in principle this is none of the admins' business, right? The sentence
Misplaced Pages's civility expectations apply to all editors during all interactions on Misplaced Pages, including discussions at user and article talk pages, in edit summaries, and in any other discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians
can be interpreted in two ways, if I'm not wrong: - 1) "Misplaced Pages's civility expectations apply to all editors during all interactions on Misplaced Pages (including discussions at user and article talk pages, in edit summaries, and in any other discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians)" > a contrario, they don't apply to interactions outside WP.
- 2) "Misplaced Pages's civility expectations apply to all editors during all interactions on Misplaced Pages (including discussions at user and article talk pages), in edit summaries, and in any other discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians" > they apply to "discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians" taking place outside WP.
- I believe that 2 is wrong. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 09:35, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
- Let's assume this is not controversial, so as to focus on the principle rather than on the practicalities of its enforcement. We know for a fact that User:Somene posted on twitter that User:Gitz6666 is an idiot (this never happened: it's purely hypothetical). I understand that in principle this is none of the admins' business, right? The sentence
Anti-religious bigotry
There's a huge long discussion at WP:VPP about how editors handle certain types of religious content. (No, please, don't add to it. Really. But pinging the most active participants: @Bon courage, Warrenmck, Horse Eye's Back, SamuelRiv, jps, Hydrangeans, Firefangledfeathers, Loki)
I've run across a talk page comment in which an editor declared "Religion is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking", and when I pushed back against this inappropriate comment, he doubled down, saying that his belief is "a very good one. The moral very high ground in fact. Also it's not bigotry".
I'm wondering if it might help, in a long-term kind of way, to mention anti-religious comments in this policy as something the community does not need more of. There's a list of "direct rudeness" that begins this way:
- rudeness, insults, name-calling, gross profanity or indecent suggestions
- personal attacks, including racial, ethnic, sexual, disability-related, gender-related and religious slurs, and derogatory references to groups such as social classes or nationalities
and while I believe this falls into the "insults" category (but not necessarily into "personal attacks", as that is generally interpreted as requiring a comment to be directed at an individual, or "religious slurs", because they're individually polite words), I doubt whether someone who believes himself to be expressing "righteous disapproval" of "evil" would be able to see his actions in that mirror. Consequently, I'm wondering whether it would be appropriate to expand this policy. However, I don't want to see genuine content discussions derailed ("My religion says it's turtles all the way down, and it's a violation of WP:CIVIL to say that the Earth moves through space due to inertia and gravitational attraction"). What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:18, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
- Hard needle to thread. I'm not sure I would describe the comment you saw as inappropriate, but I understand why someone might. Part of the problem I have with our civility policy is that it doesn't really account for differences of opinions as to what is civil and what is not. A better outcome when someone says something like this would be to have a difficult discussion where there was a meeting of minds so that each person could actually come to an understanding of the other's position. Even if opinions did not change about whether and how one's comments might be civil or uncivil; right or wrong, there should at least be an acknowledgement than in a pluralistic environment like Misplaced Pages you have to work with others who do not share your perspective.
- As such, I would not really be thrilled with an expansion of this policy in that direction. But, then again, I never liked this policy in the first place so I'm probably not the right community member to consult on this matter.
- jps (talk) 00:15, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not sure that coming to a mutual understanding is the goal. (It'd be a fine goal for social media, which seems to be catastrophically bad at it.) I think a more relevant goal would be: if someone tells you you're saying bigoted things, you should probably post some words that could be interpreted as an apology, even if they're something as ambivalent as "didn't mean to offend anyone", or at least change the subject.
- I remember seeing a case at ANI a long time ago. A (presumably white) editor posted something like "Boy, you sure screwed up there" or "You've been a busy little boy today". A (self-identified) Black man told him not to address him as a "boy", because Boy#Race is a thing. The first editor acted like the feelings of the person he was speaking to, not to mention the uninvolved people reading the comments, didn't matter. Except, you know, they do. He could have just said "Sorry, didn't know" and stopped repeating the offensive content. Or just stopped repeating it. It's not that hard to stop poking people's sore spots when they've told you to stop it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:36, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
if someone tells you you're saying bigoted things, you should probably post some words that could be interpreted as an apology, even if they're something as ambivalent as "didn't mean to offend anyone", or at least change the subject.
I actually think mandating an apology whenever someone tells you that you are being bigoted would be an improvement over the current civility policy of just "be civil, but we're not going to be clear what that means -- you just have to navigate the community yourself." This is somewhat different than your original suggestion, of course. jps (talk) 02:06, 24 October 2024 (UTC)- That sounds ambitious.
- It reminds me of m:So you've made a mistake and it's public..., which is IMO excellent and which you might be interested in reading, if you haven't seen it before. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:09, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I think that would be stretching civility to mean "don't say anything that might offend anyone" which is not possible and not desirable. This is not yet Wokepedia. Johnuniq (talk) 00:24, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I'll be honest, if saying bigotry is bad makes this "Wokepedia" then I will happily be part of it. Who even uses woke unironically anymore? PackMecEng (talk) 15:40, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Ambivalent about the central question, but wouldn't WP:NOTAFORUM cover the comment at the top? And if someone too frequently posts citation-free rants about religion on a talk page, I presume they can be dealt with via WP:DE, et al. Putting that aside, wouldn't "religion is the domain of confused, old an illogical thinking", which is very clearly directed at a religion rather than any specific editors, be the same as strongly criticizing absolutely any subject that someone has made part of their core identity, whether religion, politics, or fandom? I know people who take it very personally when Taylor Swift or Donald Trump or Lord of the Rings are insulted, for example. As long as we're talking about the thing itself and not a specific believer/supporter/fan, it seems like we're in the realm of WP:NOTAFORUM and WP:DE rather than WP:CIVILITY... although I'm sure there are some obvious gray areas. — Rhododendrites \\ 01:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I also think NOTAFORUM would apply, since it's really off topic.
- I don't think this is equivalent to the Swifties. I think this could well be equivalent to saying that Trump supporters are stupid. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:21, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm wondering whether it would be appropriate to expand this policy.
: Perhaps we could use language inspired by the Inclusivity principle of the Wikimedia Movement Charter, which I think addresses why the type of language mentioned in OP is inappropriate for the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community:The Wikimedia projects are developed in many languages, reflecting many regions and cultures. All activities are based on mutual respect for the diversity of the participants of the Wikimedia Movement. This respect is enforced through measures to support safety and inclusion.
The quoted editor's insistence that sayingReligion is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking
isThe moral very high ground in fact
is rather plainly contrary to the principle ofmutual respect for the diversity of the participants of the Wikimedia Movement
. Wikimedia and Misplaced Pages are international projects, and our movement charter sets an expectation of respect for the plurality of cultural backgrounds that exist throughout the world. We should no sooner tolerate behavior like the quote in the OP than we should tolerate it if the same had been said of other manifestations of experience and/or culture. That's to say that lots of other formulations along these lines would be just as wrong and we should have just as little tolerance for them (which is to say, we shouldn't tolerate such intolerance); for examples:ReligionThe Middle East is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking (that's orientalism)Religion isWomen are the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking (that's misogyny)Religion isThe elderly are the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking (that's ageism)ReligionThe working class is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking (that's class discrimination)
- I don't think expressing sentiments like these—whether about religion generally, specific religions, or forms of identity or culture other than religion—in vague terms makes it okay. It still inhibits the creation of a respectful, collegial editing environment. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 01:30, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Your comparison to other subjects highlights the difference that struck me, too. When he says this about religion, we accept it. If he said the same thing about (e.g.,) "Jews" or "gay people" or "Black people", we'd be in insta-block territory. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Yes... but what if he had said "My grandfather on his death bed was in the domain of the confused, old and illogical thinking". There is a legitimate question as to whether the claim at issue is actually true or not. The problem with the other examples is that they are demonstrably false generalizations. Is the identification of religion writ large as the domain of confused, old, and illogical thinking an incorrect generalization? It depends entirely on what you define a religion to be. For certain definitions, it is absolutely incorrect. But for others (for example, those definitions which define a religion to be those ideas which are a part of confused, old, and illogical thinking), then it is not really so much bigoted as it is a truism? jps (talk) 02:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- An individual grandfather is not 'the elderly', which is an entire category of people. And if
It depends entirely on what you define a religion to be
, I'm not sure how that'd be anything more than word games. I'd hardly think it all that justified if someone were say on Misplaced Pages 'Jews are stingy' and then defend themselves by explaining that when they say 'Jews' they personally define that to only mean people who supposedly really are penny-pinching. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 02:27, 24 October 2024 (UTC)- Because there are legitimate definitions of religion which deal with the hard-to-demonstrate aspects of the idea. After all, "religion" as a category is a difficult-to-define construct when we get right down to it, and it is even vaguely Eurocentric. A comparison to the category of Jews just doesn't work as far as I'm concerned because there is no argument about whether and how antisemitic stereotypes are definitional for Jews except in utterly bigoted contexts. I suppose you might argue that studies of comparative religion or philosophy of religion are utterly bigoted contexts, but I don't think that is a normal tack. jps (talk) 02:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- There are many legitimate definitions of religion, and it is hard to define and rooted in Eurocentrism. But I'm hard pressed to consider the example ('confused' and 'old') as being like any of the academically legitimate definitions. Bruce Lincoln says that religion is the
desire to speak of things eternal and transcendent
; Robert Orsi says religion iswhat human beings do, for, and against the gods
; Clifford Geertz says religion isa system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, persuasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations
in people; Talal Asad says religion iseverything the modern state can afford to let go
; one could go on. These are legitimate definitions. By comparison, 'the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking', meanwhile, is an expression of bigotry. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 03:16, 24 October 2024 (UTC)I'm hard pressed to consider the example ('confused' and 'old') as being like any of the academically legitimate definitions
"Old" is a somewhat common way for certain academics to offer a clear demarcation between the popular distinctions between "cults" and "legitimate religions" with a nod to the irony that the truth-value of the claims are similar. Similarly, "confused" is just a synonym for descriptions provided by those who argue, in some academic contexts as the majority position, that religious belief is fundamentally irrational. You found four excellent scholars who provide functional definitinons of "religion" in terms of its social construction, but there is a strong academic tradition that goes back as far as the philosophes of the Enlightenment which defines religions in terms of the implausible and persistent claims people who follow them make. jps (talk) 11:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)- True but not really relevant. Using age as a distinction between traditional vs newer religious groups doesn't involve calling the traditional beliefs "old thinking". "Confused thinking" is not a synonym for saying that religious belief is fundamentally irrational; it is disparaging language that scholars avoid. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:52, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I disagree. The idea that religious thinking is a kind of "old thinking" is not even particularly controversial given that most religions are based on ideas of fairly old provenance. The only issue is that it is not a universal. For my part, describing thinking as "irrational" and describing thinking as "confused" are basically synonymous. I see no strong taboos in the literature in identifying religious thinking in similar sorts of disparaging ways:
- Etc.
- jps (talk) 18:39, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- In past discussions, you have often emphasized how much a source or author has been cited as one potential measure of approximating the pertinence or influence. While the two articles you've linked aren't on their face irrelevant, being academically published in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, close consideration makes me prioritize them less compared to the definitions offered by the religious studies scholars I quoted.Elsevier shows a total of 25 citations between the two articles you linked, and Google Scholar shows 35 citations and 25 citations respectively. This isn't nothing, and for some topics could be meaningful and sufficient. But for a topic as big and as studied as religion, those citation counts, comparatively, don't suggest that the descriptions of religion offered there are as influential or legitimate as definitions of religion as the aforementioned non-disparaging examples quoted above. To use two examples:
- I quoted Talal Asad's Formations of the Secular, which has over 10,000 hits for citations on Google Scholar
- I quoted Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures, which has over 100,000 hits for citations on Google Scholar.
- The publications with less casual and less disparaging definitions seem to carry more influence in academic scholarship. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 00:15, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- Congratulations! You have successfully demonstrated the fallacy of the excluded middle. jps (talk) 00:58, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- When the difference in influence is on the level of orders of magnitude, it looks more like the cherry picking fallacy on your part. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 01:09, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- Do you know what different contexts are? jps (talk) 01:43, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- When the difference in influence is on the level of orders of magnitude, it looks more like the cherry picking fallacy on your part. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 01:09, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- Congratulations! You have successfully demonstrated the fallacy of the excluded middle. jps (talk) 00:58, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- In past discussions, you have often emphasized how much a source or author has been cited as one potential measure of approximating the pertinence or influence. While the two articles you've linked aren't on their face irrelevant, being academically published in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, close consideration makes me prioritize them less compared to the definitions offered by the religious studies scholars I quoted.Elsevier shows a total of 25 citations between the two articles you linked, and Google Scholar shows 35 citations and 25 citations respectively. This isn't nothing, and for some topics could be meaningful and sufficient. But for a topic as big and as studied as religion, those citation counts, comparatively, don't suggest that the descriptions of religion offered there are as influential or legitimate as definitions of religion as the aforementioned non-disparaging examples quoted above. To use two examples:
- True but not really relevant. Using age as a distinction between traditional vs newer religious groups doesn't involve calling the traditional beliefs "old thinking". "Confused thinking" is not a synonym for saying that religious belief is fundamentally irrational; it is disparaging language that scholars avoid. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:52, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- There are many legitimate definitions of religion, and it is hard to define and rooted in Eurocentrism. But I'm hard pressed to consider the example ('confused' and 'old') as being like any of the academically legitimate definitions. Bruce Lincoln says that religion is the
- Because there are legitimate definitions of religion which deal with the hard-to-demonstrate aspects of the idea. After all, "religion" as a category is a difficult-to-define construct when we get right down to it, and it is even vaguely Eurocentric. A comparison to the category of Jews just doesn't work as far as I'm concerned because there is no argument about whether and how antisemitic stereotypes are definitional for Jews except in utterly bigoted contexts. I suppose you might argue that studies of comparative religion or philosophy of religion are utterly bigoted contexts, but I don't think that is a normal tack. jps (talk) 02:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- An individual grandfather is not 'the elderly', which is an entire category of people. And if
- I think you are on some level right about differences in targets, though I have also seen similarly dismissive and derisive sentiments expressed without much community pushback and no administrative censure about transgender people and topics, or, in the words of others*, "nutty academics with all their postmodernist queer theory" and "ideologues" with whom supposedly "o dissent is brooked". From some points of view it's an unintuitive Venn diagram, though not an unprecedented one.
- *I can provide the links to these quotations on request but did not do so in the original post since this thread is not about specific individual editors' behavior but rather about whether the civility policy can be expanded to clarify a community consensus against expressing bigotry.
- Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 02:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Deciding whether to bring someone into a conversation as a "bad example" is such a tricky thing. You need concrete examples, or some editors won't believe that the comments actually happened. (I once had a wiki-friend – a woman I really like and whose editing was superb – say that she couldn't quite believe that oversight-worthy sexual harassment ever happened, because whenever someone mentioned an example, the oversight volunteers had always cleaned it up before she got there.) But when someone's comment is accidental, or being used as merely one example, then I think it's kind of mean to rub their faces in it, especially if they're less experienced than you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:03, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- "Religion" isn't analogous to "The Middle East" or "Jews". If we're going in that direction, it's analogous to "earth" or "people". If we got more specific and said e.g. "Christianity is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking" I'd be more sympathetic to the comparison. — Rhododendrites \\ 02:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I am sure some people interpret "religion" with metonymy, though, as in "religious people are...." jps (talk) 02:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I'm sure you're right. If you hear a statement about a stereotype, like "Mental illness is the domain of delusions and violence", one tends to read this as a claim about how people with mental health conditions interact with others, and not about what happens to them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- But it's a key skill in intellectual endeavours of all sorts to be able to dissociate statements about concepts, ideas and things from statements about people (especially about oneself). Ultimately Misplaced Pages editing is an activity based in the propagation of knowledge whereas in some aspects religion lies in the realm of antiknowledge (rather, there is 'faith'). Thus there is always going to be a tension between (say) an encyclopedia that insists on asserting the Earth is not 6,000 years old and a fundamentalist Christian who might feel attacked by that knowledge. It in no way means Misplaced Pages should extend special treatment to any concept merely because of some religious association. But this doesn't mean either that Misplaced Pages or Wikipedians should be banging on about these tensions in a tedious Dawkinsesque manner. Bon courage (talk) 06:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I'm sure you're right. If you hear a statement about a stereotype, like "Mental illness is the domain of delusions and violence", one tends to read this as a claim about how people with mental health conditions interact with others, and not about what happens to them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I am sure some people interpret "religion" with metonymy, though, as in "religious people are...." jps (talk) 02:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Yes... but what if he had said "My grandfather on his death bed was in the domain of the confused, old and illogical thinking". There is a legitimate question as to whether the claim at issue is actually true or not. The problem with the other examples is that they are demonstrably false generalizations. Is the identification of religion writ large as the domain of confused, old, and illogical thinking an incorrect generalization? It depends entirely on what you define a religion to be. For certain definitions, it is absolutely incorrect. But for others (for example, those definitions which define a religion to be those ideas which are a part of confused, old, and illogical thinking), then it is not really so much bigoted as it is a truism? jps (talk) 02:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Phrenology is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. Human sacrifice is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. Geocentrism is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. Viatlism is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. Lamarckism is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. It's shocking how when you change key terms in a statement it can become reasonable or unreasonable. Unless religions are possessed of personhood I don't see why they must be treated with civility. The real problem is that going on non sequitur rants about one's feelings on things aren't important to Misplaced Pages, but that's already covered by NOTFORUM and the like. XeCyranium (talk) 02:22, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- Your comparison to other subjects highlights the difference that struck me, too. When he says this about religion, we accept it. If he said the same thing about (e.g.,) "Jews" or "gay people" or "Black people", we'd be in insta-block territory. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I'm sort of of two minds here, because two things are simultaneously true:
- 1. A lot of articles on obscure religious topics make WP:EXTRAORDINARY claims that are not supported by secular sources, this is bad, and we should be much more vigorous in trying to fix it.
- 2. Many editors that deal with WP:FRINGE topics have a sort of hyperskeptical attitude that tends to lead to WP:NPOV problems when writing about religion or religious belief. (Would I call this "anti-religious bigotry"? Absolutely not, I don't think that exists. But it definitely can lead to tone issues when writing about religion.) Loki (talk) 03:21, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I think that in accusing @Lycurgus: of anti-religious bigotry you've crossed over the civility line yourself. Looking at the context on Talk:Celibacy its hard to see your side here. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 03:51, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Probably this revolves around the distinction between ideas and people. In general it's ok to be dismissive of certain religion-associated ideas (miracles, supernatural beings, fake history, etc.) there is no need to extend that to being dismissive about people who might have faith in those ideas. It's fallacious to argue that "religion" should have some kind of protected characteristic in the same way as a certain group of people (women, Jews ...) because "religion" is a big umbrella term not a group of people. Bon courage (talk) 05:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I think theres more to it than that... People who are genuinely religious are largely incapable of NPOV when it comes to religious topics, we've seen that demonstrated time and time again... The problems largely seem to arise from people not making it clear that they're addressing a NPOV issue and not the reasons behind it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Hard to have religion without people, to the extent that we take scholars to be right that
religions are socially constructed
by people. (Likewise, one's hard pressed to have atheism or humanism without people, those being socially constructed as well, so I'd just as soon say it's inappropriate to say something like 'atheism is a philosophy of unhappiness', a claim that happened at the atheism talk page not so long ago. I don't think 'vagueposting bigotry is bad' is going to be special and specific to religion, though it's the example highlighted in the OP and in this thread). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:22, 24 October 2024 (UTC)- And it would be fine to argue, or rather profess a belief, that atheism or humanism or anything is illogical or irrational or whatever. Bigotry in this sense clearly refers to ideas towards people, not ideas about ideas that other people have ideas about. XeCyranium (talk) 02:27, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
Looking at the context on Talk:Celibacy its hard to see your side here
: What I see looking at that thread is WhatamIdoing offering respectful clarification, and looking at this thread I notice WhatamIdoing deciding to make the discussion about a general idea rather than a specific editor, unlike your approach of personalizing the matter and unnecessarily turning up the temperature. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 06:39, 24 October 2024 (UTC)- They provided direct quotes from a specific editor alongside an attack on that editor, I didn't personalize anything beyond what was already there. The only one making this more personal is you, who has decided to attack me personally instead of addressing the point raised. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:34, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Probably this revolves around the distinction between ideas and people. In general it's ok to be dismissive of certain religion-associated ideas (miracles, supernatural beings, fake history, etc.) there is no need to extend that to being dismissive about people who might have faith in those ideas. It's fallacious to argue that "religion" should have some kind of protected characteristic in the same way as a certain group of people (women, Jews ...) because "religion" is a big umbrella term not a group of people. Bon courage (talk) 05:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- NO, as we should be able to talk about ideas freely, it is only people we should not be able to insult. Slatersteven (talk) 11:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- That is a super fine line and pretty subjective. PackMecEng (talk) 15:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Not really, if you think about it. A person is not an idea. That some people identify with ideas is unfortunate, but not something Misplaced Pages can fix. Bon courage (talk) 15:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I'm with Pack on this. Editors should neither be writing "Gays are evil" nor writing "Homosexuality is evil". I want to see nothing even remotely like that, because it is homophobic bigotry. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Indeed not, there are some very bad ideas it is unacceptable to espouse. I really cannot see why anybody should be espousing any (non-Misplaced Pages-related) ideas anyway - this is WP:NOTAFORUM. (Ironically it's a view in several religions that gays/homosexuality is evil, which brings us full circle.) Bon courage (talk) 15:50, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- So what you're saying is that you believe it's acceptable to espouse anti-religious sentiment, but you believe it's not acceptable to espouse anti-gay sentiment.
- I don't think it is acceptable to espouse either of these viewpoints on wiki. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I think that's exactly true and a big reason why analogies do not work here.
- Take the following three statements:
- Homosexuality is evil.
- Nazism is evil.
- Christianity is evil.
- One of those three statements is definitely bigotry. One of those three statements is definitely not bigotry. The form of the sentence is not helpful for identifying bigotry; only the content of the sentence is useful, and that involves subjective decisions about, frankly, how plausible you think "Christianity is evil" is. Loki (talk) 16:17, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Insofar as the category of Christianity is capacious and includes Latin American liberation theology practitioners resisting colonialism, denominations that affirm LGBTQ+ rights, anti-racist activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, etc., I'm pretty comfortable considering the phrase 'Christianity is evil' to be the kind of bigotry I expect to encounter in, say, particularly virulent takes by Ayn Rand, not a neutral expression appropriate to see on Misplaced Pages.Things that are unjust and evil include racism, misogyny, queerphobia, antisemitism, Nazism, Islamophobia, colonialism, etc., and these are all both narrower (because they aren't universal to) and wider (because they also exist elsewhere) than categories like 'religion', or 'Islam', or 'Christianity', etc. Calling out specific patterns of injustices or specific cases of injustice with certain persons or institutions is different from expressing intolerance about entire people categories. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- One is an intrinsic characteristic a person cannot control, one isn't. XeCyranium (talk) 02:29, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- The idea that your religion is voluntary and changeable is very Christian. Some other religions and cultures believe that religion is also an intrinsic characteristic that a person cannot control. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:39, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- Some believe that but I think Akbar the Great made it clear those beliefs were mistaken. Some people believe sexuality is a choice too, luckily there's a word for those people: "wrong". XeCyranium (talk) 20:48, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- A young man bragged to me once that, on a trip to southeast Asia, his traveling companion had been recognized as the reincarnation of some famous Buddhist priest. If that were true, how was his friend supposed to choose any of that? Can he say "Nope, I don't choose to have already been reincarnated"? Or "You aren't allowed to believe that about me"?
- Some people believe they are very smart when they are not. Some people believe they are not smart when they are. Their beliefs do not change their intrinsic characteristics. You might believe you aren't smart, but you still are, and your belief does not change that fact.
- Someone who believes in reincarnation would say the same about people who don't: you might not believe you are reincarnated, but you still are, and your belief does not change that. (Or, naturally, the other way around: if reincarnation is not real, then you aren't reincarnated, even if you believe it, and your belief does not change that fact.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:51, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
- The whole tourists as reincarnated priests thing is a common scam. Examining it as a sincere religious belief seems to be missing the point entirely. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:54, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
- Well, that was my first thought, but I kept my mouth shut, because it seemed to be a deeply significant experience to him. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:52, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
- The whole tourists as reincarnated priests thing is a common scam. Examining it as a sincere religious belief seems to be missing the point entirely. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:54, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
- Some believe that but I think Akbar the Great made it clear those beliefs were mistaken. Some people believe sexuality is a choice too, luckily there's a word for those people: "wrong". XeCyranium (talk) 20:48, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- Ethnic religions like Judaism make this dichotomy not so clear-cut. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 02:40, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- I don't see how; secular and atheist Jews are still Jewish while not believing in the Jewish religion, to varying degrees, it's not some kind of ethnic obligation. XeCyranium (talk) 20:53, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- The idea that your religion is voluntary and changeable is very Christian. Some other religions and cultures believe that religion is also an intrinsic characteristic that a person cannot control. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:39, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- But in accordance with above it would be perfectly fine to say Jews, gays, trans, or whatever are okay to attack and that is simply not true. As a community we decide what is acceptable. Remember, attacking ideas or groups like that also stifles the free exchange of ideas. PackMecEng (talk) 15:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Jews are a race, not just an idea, and none of the others are just ideas they are actually biological, not one has Christian DNA, and no one is biologically Muslim. Slatersteven (talk) 15:56, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Being a Jew is not a race. But if we want to go that route, we show Nazis the door all the time and rightly so. PackMecEng (talk) 16:07, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Oh boy... So this is going back to basics but Jews are in large part an ethnoreligious group and the vast majority of modern Jews beleive that they are part of an ethnoreligious group... The vast majority of modern Jews are not Nazis. You've jumped the shark so hard its not even funny. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:37, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Yes jews are not Nazis, I'm not sure what you are arguing. I think you missed the point if that is your takeaway. PackMecEng (talk) 17:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- The point is that the majority of modern Jews would agree with the idea that "Jews are an ethnic as well as religious community" Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Yes jews are not Nazis, I'm not sure what you are arguing. I think you missed the point if that is your takeaway. PackMecEng (talk) 17:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Oh boy... So this is going back to basics but Jews are in large part an ethnoreligious group and the vast majority of modern Jews beleive that they are part of an ethnoreligious group... The vast majority of modern Jews are not Nazis. You've jumped the shark so hard its not even funny. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:37, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- For what it's worth, I wouldn't say that there is Jewish DNA either, since the notion that race or ethnicity are genetically determined is pseudoscience. What is true is that Judaism is ethnoreligious to an extent beyond that of many other 'world religion'-esque categories. 'Secular Jew' has more legs and history than 'secular Christian', and even to the extent that the latter isn't nonexistent, it's not as readily conceived of in ethnic terms as the former. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:53, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Being a Jew is not a race. But if we want to go that route, we show Nazis the door all the time and rightly so. PackMecEng (talk) 16:07, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Jews, gays, and trans people are not okay to attack, but fascists are (arguably it's obligatory to attack them, in fact). Sorry, but there is no content-neutral rule to be found here: you cannot just say "it would be bigoted to say this about gay people" because the important part of that phrase is "about gay people". Loki (talk) 16:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Agreed, its a fine line and subjective for what is acceptable and appropriate to attack or not. Which the community at large defines over time. We cannot use a simple open ended rule anymore. PackMecEng (talk) 16:48, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Jews are a race, not just an idea, and none of the others are just ideas they are actually biological, not one has Christian DNA, and no one is biologically Muslim. Slatersteven (talk) 15:56, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Indeed not, there are some very bad ideas it is unacceptable to espouse. I really cannot see why anybody should be espousing any (non-Misplaced Pages-related) ideas anyway - this is WP:NOTAFORUM. (Ironically it's a view in several religions that gays/homosexuality is evil, which brings us full circle.) Bon courage (talk) 15:50, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I'm with Pack on this. Editors should neither be writing "Gays are evil" nor writing "Homosexuality is evil". I want to see nothing even remotely like that, because it is homophobic bigotry. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Not really, if you think about it. A person is not an idea. That some people identify with ideas is unfortunate, but not something Misplaced Pages can fix. Bon courage (talk) 15:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- That is a super fine line and pretty subjective. PackMecEng (talk) 15:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The conversational rulebook with regards to this varies with location, politics and time. Of course everybody considers their current version of it to be the "correct" one. IMO it's a bad and impossible idea to try to write the "correct" rulebook regarding this for Misplaced Pages. For neutral venues, the unwritten rule is that if ~95% agree, it's OK to treat it as fact, and so saying "Nazism is evil" is OK. But lots of people try to pretend that their 50% view is a 95% view.
Regarding the OP and civility, IMO wp:civility is about how to treat editors that one is conversing with. If the comment was somehow referring to someone in the conversation, I would consider any choosing of value-laden disparaging terms to be contrary to wp:civility. If not, not. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:55, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I would expand upon your idea to say: Civility is about more than just how you treat the editors you are conversing with. It is also about the effects you have on people who might 'overhear' that conversation. We don't let two straight men talk about how glad they are not to be gay, even if they think it's a fine way to treat each other, because we know that a gay editor might see the conversation and feel marginalized by the community's tolerance of this display of intolerance. The same is true for comments about race, sex, gender, and many other things. I think it should be equally true for religion (or lack thereof; I believe that comments against atheism or agnosticism hurt our community in an exactly equal fashion). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:21, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- There are people who are uncivil in very subtle ways, but Misplaced Pages is ill-equipped to handle it because there is no venue for helping to moderate personal disputes between two different users. The assumption of this policy seems to be that everyone should just learn to get along by themselves until the PvP is so intolerable that you go off to complain to the authorities at the dramaboards. jps (talk) 13:13, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- The one making what appear to be specious assertions of religious bigotry is not in a position to tell anyone else how to be civil... Making accusations of intolerance which aren't supported by the context and evidence is a civility issue, WP:ASPERSIONS etc. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:24, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- Whatamidoing But this is a policy and going by your standard, it would be a violation of Misplaced Pages policy to write anything that offends any (not-in-the-conversation) person based on whatever set of behavior rules that they wish to apply. North8000 (talk) 18:48, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
- I think what Whatamidoing is saying is that there is sometimes editors who say things to impose superiority of views or jab at another editors views, when we should be focusing on what sources actually say. Usually sources are more nuanced and not as insulting as editors here sometimes are. I have seen people say things like "sky daddy" or "stupid believers" and other internationally provoking terms, which of course shows their rotten mindset since even nonreligious editors defend religious content because it is encyclopedic and vice versa. Ramos1990 (talk) 20:51, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
- You really can't be on Misplaced Pages talk:Civility saying " which of course shows their rotten mindset" Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:53, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
- North, I don't think so. First, I think we should differentiate between "upset" and "offend". Being told that (e.g.) "Scaryitis is uniformly fatal in babies" is upsetting (if you happen to know a family whose baby has this), but it's not offensive.
- Second, we need to distinguish between a comment that repeats a group stereotype ("blondes are dumb") and a comment about an individual behaviors ("that televangelist is a scammer"). Editors who post something like "religious believers are so stupid they believe a sky daddy exists" are posting offensive stereotypes about groups. This should not be permitted. Editors should, however, be able to post a comment about an individual, based on their personal behavior. Commenting on personal behavior would include statements such as:
- "User:EveEditor, please stop post insulting remarks about groups of people based on religious stereotypes per WP:CIVIL."
- "User:PaulPushy, Misplaced Pages is not the place to post your proofs that your religion is correct."
- In short, I think Ramos is correct: It is wrong and a violation of this policy to post insults about large groups of people (e.g., "stupid believers"), and it is still okay and acceptable under this policy to say that specific individual editors have problems (e.g., describing an individual editor's stereotyping as showing a "rotten mindset" ). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:34, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
- You have a rotten mindset, and you are a bigot. It is your opinion that this is a civil way to talk to you, right? Or did I misunderstand what you are saying? If I misunderstood you, regard those remarks as struck.
- To avoid misunderstandings: I would never say this (
You have a rotten mindset, and you are a bigot
) to any other editor here, since I regard it as really uncivil. I am not seriously accusing WhatamIdoing of those things. I am using it here only to make a point. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:34, 27 October 2024 (UTC)- Glad you've been crystal clear that's just hypothetical there Hob. They don't come anymore non-bigoted than WAID. That said, above analyse from Loki et al on why it's challenging to draw clear bright line general rules, and to make useful analogies, seems bang on point. Looking at the specifics may be helpful. The actual sentence that triggered concern here seems to be
Religion is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking but this is a practical term which has uses outside that. I'm sure in a medical context it's made clear.
from Talk:Celibacy. In context, that's clearly not an attempt to insult large groups of people - rather, it's talking about religion in the sense that it can be understood as a set of social institutions , and especially as believe systems aiming to influence how folk think. Such a -ve view on religion is less common these days than 20 years ago, but it's still a respectable minority view, not a fringe one.
- Glad you've been crystal clear that's just hypothetical there Hob. They don't come anymore non-bigoted than WAID. That said, above analyse from Loki et al on why it's challenging to draw clear bright line general rules, and to make useful analogies, seems bang on point. Looking at the specifics may be helpful. The actual sentence that triggered concern here seems to be
- I think what Whatamidoing is saying is that there is sometimes editors who say things to impose superiority of views or jab at another editors views, when we should be focusing on what sources actually say. Usually sources are more nuanced and not as insulting as editors here sometimes are. I have seen people say things like "sky daddy" or "stupid believers" and other internationally provoking terms, which of course shows their rotten mindset since even nonreligious editors defend religious content because it is encyclopedic and vice versa. Ramos1990 (talk) 20:51, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
- So my view is no change needed to the policy - the existing wording against "religious slurs" is sufficient. We can trust admins to distinguish between such slurs & valid POVs that are clearly relvent to article improvement, on a case by case bases. FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:13, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you for the kind words, Feyd, and for the clear example, Hob. I wonder whether we have mistaken civility for friendliness. Hob's example would be an unfriendly thing to say, but if, in the particular context, it builds up the community, I don't think it would necessarily be uncivil. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- That is an extremely weird idea of civility. I cannot see how being unfriendly "builds community", except by bullying away those one wants to exclude from it for arbitrary reasons. The reasoning also smacks a bit of "the ends justify the means": be friendly unless you want to achieve a specific goal. I will unwatch this page now. This is not a community I want to be part of. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:27, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- @ Hob, it will be a shame if you don't return as at bottom we're probably all of like mind on this one. If someone literally said
You have a rotten mindset, and you are a bigot
to an obviously non bigoted editor then even the more lenient among us would probably agree it warrants an insta block. I think WAID's point was more that even your hypothetical example could come across as a little unfriendly - though not at all uncivil, and also providing valuable clarity that had seemed helpful in guiding us towards a resolution of this thread. - @ WAID - yes I think you're exactly right on the distinction between friendliness & civility. IMO more friendliness is desirable in that it would encourage more collaboration & might be especially good for diversity. Unlike with civility though, no attempt should ever be made to enforce friendliness. For many, it doesnt feel natural or authentic to be especially friendly online, esp. with those who have ideological differences. Going back to the exchange on Talk:Celibacy that triggered all this, the editor's doubling down when you raised the bigotry concern was arguably unfriendly but not uncivil. For folk with certain life experiences or have been exposed to too much one sided analyses, it can indeed seem the moral high ground to criticise religion. Huh, even celebrated encyclopaedist Diderot was anti-religious, so much so that he's often cited (incorrectly I think) as having said
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the guts of the last priest
. All this isn't to say anti-theists have a blank cheque to be critical of religion, as in many contexts doing so is divisive & gratuitous. But on the TP of an article where it's clearly relevant, like Celibacy, it's ok. Just my opinion. If nothing else this thread has shown how fiendishly difficult it can be to draw bright lines, as theres so many valid conflicting perspectives in play. Which I guess is why trusting to admin discretion on a case by case bases may be the best we can hope for? FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:45, 28 October 2024 (UTC)- I think Hob's example is good because it could be civil or uncivil, depending on the context. Demanding sanctions against someone at ANI because they have a rotten mindset is probably just an instance of name-calling. Approaching someone to say "Hey, I think you need to take a break from that noticeboard. You're always ranting about it, and, to be blunt, it looks like you have developed a rotten mindset about the editors discussed there. Maybe get back to the kind of editing you actually enjoy for a while? If you're worried nobody will step up if you don't handle things, I'm willing to put some hours into it for the next month" might be startling to the recipient, but it's probably civil. A joke with a friend, along the lines of getting his mind out of the gutter, is harmless friendly banter. Same words, three contexts, three responses.
- This maybe a bit of an etymological fallacy, but civil comes from Civitas: the united citizens. On wiki, we call that 'the community'. It isn't just about individual, one-on-one behavior. Civility is about the collective effects, too. At some level, anything that helps the community is civil, and everything that hurts the community is uncivil. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:07, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- While I agree context matters—if, say, posts at ANI to say ' posted antisemitic slurs in a discussion, and here are the diffs so they clearly have a rotten mindset, and we should indeff', I think we should prioritize sanction against rather than against —I don't think it's usually necessary to use 'unfriendly language' like that, and to the extent it isn't necessary we might as well avoid it. We don't need to try to assess someone's mindset or personality and then describe such in a crass way if describing their behavior and/or a pattern of behavior is sufficient, so we might as well avoid the former and prioritize the latter.That said, to Hob's concern about omething samounting to
exclud
for arbitrary reasons
—there are various ideas and behaviors we want to exclude from Misplaced Pages, but I don't think our reasons our arbitrary. In editor interactions, we want to exclude any bigotry that would violate the Univeral Code of Conduct's ban onusing slurs or stereotypes
or would abridge our obligation under the Code to takeactive responsibility for ensuring that the Wikimedia projects are productive, pleasant and safe spaces
. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:20, 28 October 2024 (UTC)- Even if the UCOC didn't exist, we'd still have a legitimate interest in encouraging a "productive, pleasant, and safe space", because that's what results in editors producing good content instead of (e.g.,) spending all their time at the drama boards or deciding that contributing is no longer worth the hassle.
- Hydrangeans, what you said about to the extent it isn't necessary we might as well avoid it is a good summary of the first half of Postel's law of communication. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:48, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- While I agree context matters—if, say, posts at ANI to say ' posted antisemitic slurs in a discussion, and here are the diffs so they clearly have a rotten mindset, and we should indeff', I think we should prioritize sanction against rather than against —I don't think it's usually necessary to use 'unfriendly language' like that, and to the extent it isn't necessary we might as well avoid it. We don't need to try to assess someone's mindset or personality and then describe such in a crass way if describing their behavior and/or a pattern of behavior is sufficient, so we might as well avoid the former and prioritize the latter.That said, to Hob's concern about omething samounting to
- @ Hob, it will be a shame if you don't return as at bottom we're probably all of like mind on this one. If someone literally said
- That is an extremely weird idea of civility. I cannot see how being unfriendly "builds community", except by bullying away those one wants to exclude from it for arbitrary reasons. The reasoning also smacks a bit of "the ends justify the means": be friendly unless you want to achieve a specific goal. I will unwatch this page now. This is not a community I want to be part of. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:27, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you for the kind words, Feyd, and for the clear example, Hob. I wonder whether we have mistaken civility for friendliness. Hob's example would be an unfriendly thing to say, but if, in the particular context, it builds up the community, I don't think it would necessarily be uncivil. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- So my view is no change needed to the policy - the existing wording against "religious slurs" is sufficient. We can trust admins to distinguish between such slurs & valid POVs that are clearly relvent to article improvement, on a case by case bases. FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:13, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- To put my last post in another shorter way, this is a policy (which editors can be sanctioned for for violating) covering treatment of editors which one is conversing with. As a policy with teeth (and which is often weaponized) , I don't think it would be a good idea to broaden it to include references to all other groups and people in the world. This is a policy about treatment of editors who you are conversing with. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:43, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
| Slightly off topic analysis and discussion thereof |
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Seems to be a great deal of chat on VP & elsewhere on the Skeptic| religion intersection. If I'm reading correctly, those concerned about sceptics are coming mainly from non-believing perspectives- i.e. the Lawrence M. Principe type mainstream faction where members typically show no discernible faith themselves, yet are strong believers in being respectful towards what they see as the more +ve sorts of "Woo". But maybe some saw the slew of news from around the world earlier this month showing apparent religious decline in several countries, e.g. claims that in UK, atheists now outnumber believers for the first time. Maybe there's some kind of chivalrous feeling that believers are some kind of endangered minority, in need of protection? Ironically, it's those on the skeptic side of the mainstream who better understand what's going on. The recent reports are lagging indicators, long term the world is becoming unstoppably more religious & believing. Social media has seen an explosion of supernatural content recently, even sites like Reddit have many believers subs when any trying to argue from a skeptic perspective are instantly perma'd as trolls. I guess theoretically this could change, but tech titans are likely to be quite resistant to tweaking algo's against supernatural content. It's understood to be part of the reason why the decade+ trend of worsening mental health metrics for young people has finally turned for the good (Compare this 2024 CDC report with the 2023 version. A turn around that came just in time to potentially stall global efforts to massively regulate their platforms. But the key long term trend is one that not even the most influential militant atheist can begin to contend with. Our Population decline article is outdated & understates plumeting birth rates . And also wrong in that the global average births per women needed to sustain a population is 2.2 (2.1 is true in global north only). Birth rates are now below replacement rates in every single part of the world except sub Saharan Africa. In several countries, birth rates per woman are now well under 0.9. The situation becomes far more pleasing when you look at more granulated data sets. They show that for secular women and moderate believers, the birth rate is sometimes lower than 0.5, whereas for deeply religious women, birth rate per woman tends to be well above 4! The consensus among social scientists who study these matters is that by far the biggest predictor on whether a child will grow up to be religious in the religiosity of their parents. Trends for religious families to have far more children have been underway for two decades now, have only accelerated in the last 5 years, and have already substantially changed the culture in some parts of the world. In the anglophone world, it may take 2-3 generations before the shift towards religiosity will be sufficient for all our articles to be re-written in a way that's pleasing to believers. But that it's going to happen is all but inevitable. (Sketpics are free to think otherwise, there are certain moonshot tech projects that could break the trend. But from a believer perspective, much as we accept that God allows mainstream science to accomplish amazing things to humanity’s benefit, the types of knowledge being sort by those moonshots (e.g. unlocking the knowledge to allow secularists to become meths ) are exactly the sort of knowledge that God forbids. (Genesis 3:24). What's not inevitable is whether the forthcoming re-invigorated religious culture will be benign. And it's here that skeptics can be of great value. Like Blake said over 200 years back, when the voice of sceptics was near its peak of intellectual power, "the greatest enemy of religion is religion itself." Or as per Seraphim Rose , it is Christ Who works on atheist's souls. "The Antichrist is not to be found in the deniers, but in the small affirmers, whose Christ is only on the lips." (Cf. Revelation 3:15-16). All this recent concern about skeptics is understandable, I used to see them as a problematic faction too for my first 12 or so years on Misplaced Pages (albeit to a much lesser extent as certain other factions.) But they are the only ones with the energy to protect us from harmful fringe on needed scale, such as article manipulation that could aid scammers and other types of folk looking to exploit the vulnerable. So even from an immediate PoV, skeptics should be seen as net +ve. Trying to limit skeptics on Misplaced Pages is at best fighting yesterday's battle today. I see WAID made a comment on one of the VP threads lamenting what the community did to the once mighty ARS. Considering both their anti fringe work & the long term considerations, Skeptics could now be seen as a more valuable faction than even the squad in its hey day, so it may be time for all these skeptic concern threads to stop. FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:13, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
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