Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:58, 6 February 2004

Misplaced Pages contributors come from many different countries and cultures, and have widely different views. Treating others with respect is key to collaborating effectively in building an encyclopedia.

This page offers some principles of "Wikiquette", or guidelines on how to work with others on Misplaced Pages. You can read about more basic conventions at Misplaced Pages:Policies and guidelines.

Principles of Misplaced Pages etiquette

• Assume the best about people whenever possible. Misplaced Pages has worked remarkably well so far based on a policy of nearly complete freedom to edit. Most people come here to collaborate and write good articles.
• Avoid reverting and deleting.
  • Amend, edit, discuss.
• Be polite.
  • People can't see you or know for sure your mood. Irony isn't always obvious, and blunt, raw text can easily appear rude.
• Sign and date your posts.
• Work towards agreement.
• Don't ignore questions.
  • If another disagrees with your edit, provide good reasons why you think it's appropriate.
• Concede a point, when you have no response to it; or admit when you disagree based on intuition or taste.
  • Don't make people debate positions you don't really hold.
• Be prepared to apologize.
  • In animated discussions, we often say things we later wish we hadn't. Say so.
• Give praise when due. Everybody likes to feel appreciated, especially in an environment that often requires compromise.
• Remove or summarize resolved disputes that you initiated.
• Help mediate disagreements between others.
• If polite discussion fails, take a break if you're arguing or recommend a break if you're mediating.
  • Come back after a week or two. If no one is mediating, and you think mediation is needed, enlist someone.

See also: civility, Staying cool when the editing gets hot.

How to avoid abuse of Talk pages

Most people take pride in their work and in their point of view. Egos can easily get hurt in editing, but Talk pages are not a place for striking back. They're a good place to comfort or undo damage to egos, but most of all they're for forging agreements that are best for the articles they're attached to.

Here are a few things to bear in mind:

• Misplaced Pages articles are supposed to represent all views (more at NPOV). The Talk pages are not a place to debate which views are right or wrong or better. If you want to do that, there are venues such as Usenet, public weblogs and other wikis.
• If someone disagrees with you, this does not necessarily mean that (1) the person hates you, (2) the person thinks you're stupid, (3) the person is stupid, (4) the person is evil, etc. When people post opinions without practical implications for the article, it's best to just leave them be.
• Misplaced Pages invites you to be bold. Before initiating discussion, ask yourself: Is this really necessary to discuss? Could I provide a summary with my edit and wait for others to quibble if they like?
• You can always take a discussion to e-mail or to your user page if it's not essential to the article.

A few more tips on polite discussion:

• Always make clear what point you are addressing, especially in replies
  • Quoting a post is O.K., but stating how you interpreted it is better. Before proceeding to say that someone is wrong, concede you might have misinterpreted him or her.
• Don't label or give names to people or their edits.
  • Terms like "racist," "sexist" or even "poorly written" make people defensive. This makes it hard to discuss articles productively.

Talk FAQ

Guidelines for Talk!? This is a Wiki. We're free to write whatever we please here, right?

That's not quite right. Misplaced Pages doesn't belong to you individually, but to Wikipedians as a whole. Misplaced Pages policies have been developed collectively to foster a specific goal: The production of a free and neutral encyclopedia. You are welcome to discuss policies and help them evolve, but if you do not share our goal, we suggest you find another project or start your own elsewhere.

A little partisan controversy never hurt anybody. Why try to stop people from doing what comes naturally?

Good point, maybe we are blowing things out of proportion a little. Even if Misplaced Pages would continue to grow and thrive with the controversy, some of us think it would be better off without it. It seems we have wasted hundreds of hours, altogether, engaged in pointless debates that we could have avoided with tact, maturity, and attention to the task at hand. Instead, we could have been further along than we are now, perhaps with more participants as well. If we can start a good anti-partisan-bickering habit now, while managing to avoid groupthink, then future Wikipedians will thank us for it in the years ahead.

Why stop a partisan debate when it's very likely to come back around to the article?

Sometimes that does happen, and so much the better. But rather than coming around, partisan debates tend to just harden positions and inhibit cooperation. Why not get right to the topic and skip the diversion?

If controversy gets people excited and involved in Misplaced Pages, why not encourage it?

Partisan controversies do attract some people to Misplaced Pages, perhaps -- but they turn a lot of other people off and they are beside the point of writing an encyclopedia. Misplaced Pages is exciting enough without partisan disputes.

Debate vs. research

Arguing as a means of improving an article is a pale shadow of an equal amount of time engaged in research. It may attract people to the project, but it seems logical that these would be people interested in arguing, which leads down a dark path we ought not tread.

One habit that would be good for folks to get into is to actively seek to summarize discussions, especially those which have elaborated all views on the subject. This doesn't (necessarily) mean replacing the entire discussion with what you think. It simply means trying to recast the entire discussion as, e.g., a set of bullet points, removing any points that have been taken back or proven incorrect. If you can restrain yourself to do this in an unbiased fashion (which admittedly is hard), it can result in text that is almost good enough for the main article.