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NPA question
Would, " I don't mean this in an insulting way, but do you happen to have a spectrum disorder?" be seen as acceptable, in a user_talk: page reply, during a dispute between two editors.
I would see this as absolutely unacceptable here, but I'm aware that we have no clear rules on such and that our practice for "acceptable language" has certainly slipped of late. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:04, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
- I wish people would just include the link for the location of the dispute. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:33, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
- Nonetheless I agree its a personal attack, and its carefully crafted to give it a shallow appearance of harmlessness. See also WP:GAMING NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:36, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
- Interesting that this discussion here (rather than on my talk page) and that Andy Dingley did not bother to notify me. I'm sure there are better ways I could have phrased it, but I thought that my preface made it clear that the question was serious and not meant to be an insult or insinuation. In my interactions with Geo Swan, he has seemed to have difficulty interpreting things that I and others have written. I assumed he just had poor reading comprehension. It occurred to me today that perhaps this may be due to other factors. There are many editors here who have spectrum disorders. I do not think any less of them (or any more of them) because of that, but it does make me be more careful of how I write. I will remove that part of my comment to Geo Swan. 22:24, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
- And the horror behind the disguised personal attack is Olympia Nelson at AfD here. That article illustrates the worst aspects of Misplaced Pages where "but it was in the media!" is substituted for common sense. The subject was photographed naked when six years old and wrote an article at bustle.com at age sixteen (article does not appear to be currently available), with a follow-up on TV. That's it! Johnuniq (talk) 22:29, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
- It was not a "disguised" personal attack. On the contrary, after days of dealing with Geo Swan it finally occurred to me that maybe he genuinely was not able to understand what I was saying because of how I was saying it and not because he was being deliberately difficult. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 22:59, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
- OK, you did not intend it as any kind of attack, and for you it was a genuine question. However please understand that such a line of questioning intrudes too far into personal attributes. Suppose that users X and Y are in a dispute and Y comes to believe that X cannot understand what Y is saying. That's where the inquiry should stop. Assuming X cannot understand (this really is hypothetical as I have not looked at the discussion in question other than to see its location), the reason for the problem is irrelevant. Perhaps X can understand and is just trolling. Perhaps X lacks intellect. Perhaps X's grasp of English is very limited. All of that conjecture is not Misplaced Pages's problem as the only thing that matters is whether X can or cannot understand a discussion involving them. Even that does not matter if the problem is only at one location or only one time. Johnuniq (talk) 00:23, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
- See WP:AllegingIncompetence.... genuine concerns of this sort can be discussed with other eds but it never really helps to bring it up with someone in a conflict NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 02:17, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
- I agree that this kind of question should be considered as personal attack and should not be used in Misplaced Pages discussions. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:45, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
- It was not a "disguised" personal attack. On the contrary, after days of dealing with Geo Swan it finally occurred to me that maybe he genuinely was not able to understand what I was saying because of how I was saying it and not because he was being deliberately difficult. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 22:59, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
- And the horror behind the disguised personal attack is Olympia Nelson at AfD here. That article illustrates the worst aspects of Misplaced Pages where "but it was in the media!" is substituted for common sense. The subject was photographed naked when six years old and wrote an article at bustle.com at age sixteen (article does not appear to be currently available), with a follow-up on TV. That's it! Johnuniq (talk) 22:29, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
- Interesting that this discussion here (rather than on my talk page) and that Andy Dingley did not bother to notify me. I'm sure there are better ways I could have phrased it, but I thought that my preface made it clear that the question was serious and not meant to be an insult or insinuation. In my interactions with Geo Swan, he has seemed to have difficulty interpreting things that I and others have written. I assumed he just had poor reading comprehension. It occurred to me today that perhaps this may be due to other factors. There are many editors here who have spectrum disorders. I do not think any less of them (or any more of them) because of that, but it does make me be more careful of how I write. I will remove that part of my comment to Geo Swan. 22:24, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
NPA question over mental disorders
To add up to the previus section, I would like to ask if comments such as "you suffer from obsession " or "it turns you are bipolar" or similar, should be considered as personal attacks or not. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:54, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
- It all depends. Of course we would prefer that everyone was beautifully behaved and there was no need to refer to obsessions or other disruption, so the simplistic answer is that these examples would be attacks. You knew that. However, life follows a rocky road from time to time and there is always the possibility that calling a spade a spade would be best. Johnuniq (talk) 08:14, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
- Johnuniq I believe that experssions that have to do with mental disorders are somehow undrestimated and not wel described in the policy. For instance, other expressions like calling a fat person "fat" seem not ot be used as often on Misplaced Pages talk pages. In contrary, mentioning the gender of a female person in a discussion seems to be overused based on researches. For example "Listen, woman" may be considered as personal attack even thought the person in question may actually be a woman or even defne themselves as female. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:50, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
- There is no reason to think that the size of a person affects their editing so mentioning fatness never arises. Some editors think there are different male/female approaches particularly with regard to some topics. However, I have never observed anyone say "Listen, woman" on Misplaced Pages (or in real life, for that matter). What I have seen is obsessed editors who cannot leave a topic alone despite pushback. Several such people can currently be seen at Talk:Sarah Jane Brown, and other cases arise periodically. Sometimes the issue reaches Arbitration. Obsessive editors can be a problem, although it is rarely desirable to mention that term. Instead, standard procedure is to refer to the editing and describe what are perceived to be problems with that. If you have a proposal to change the policy, please state it. Johnuniq (talk) 09:39, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
- Johnuniq I don't have a concrete answer to this. I noticed the discussion above and I mainly added my comments on it. I think the first line of the policy "Abusive, defamatory, or derogatory phrases based on race, sex, sexual orientation, age, religious or political beliefs, disabilities, ethnicity, nationality, etc." describes the problem under the term "disability". My question is: Should we add: "physical or medical" in parentheses? -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:49, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
- The more of these little qualifiers are added to a statement, the less clear the message becomes and the less likely people are to read it. They also tend to encourage a "legalistic" argumentative attitude, where fine points of the words overshadow the main idea. The main idea here is that editors should discuss editing the page rather than try to humiliate each other. All disabilities are physical or mental, so listing those doesn't help. It obscures the main idea a little bit and makes us look silly. Maybe it even makes us appear obsessed with disabilities. If you'd like to persuade people to discuss constructively rather than try to humiliate, there are probably many more-effective ways than tweaking the wording of a policy. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 14:37, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
- Johnuniq I don't have a concrete answer to this. I noticed the discussion above and I mainly added my comments on it. I think the first line of the policy "Abusive, defamatory, or derogatory phrases based on race, sex, sexual orientation, age, religious or political beliefs, disabilities, ethnicity, nationality, etc." describes the problem under the term "disability". My question is: Should we add: "physical or medical" in parentheses? -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:49, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
- There is no reason to think that the size of a person affects their editing so mentioning fatness never arises. Some editors think there are different male/female approaches particularly with regard to some topics. However, I have never observed anyone say "Listen, woman" on Misplaced Pages (or in real life, for that matter). What I have seen is obsessed editors who cannot leave a topic alone despite pushback. Several such people can currently be seen at Talk:Sarah Jane Brown, and other cases arise periodically. Sometimes the issue reaches Arbitration. Obsessive editors can be a problem, although it is rarely desirable to mention that term. Instead, standard procedure is to refer to the editing and describe what are perceived to be problems with that. If you have a proposal to change the policy, please state it. Johnuniq (talk) 09:39, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
- Johnuniq I believe that experssions that have to do with mental disorders are somehow undrestimated and not wel described in the policy. For instance, other expressions like calling a fat person "fat" seem not ot be used as often on Misplaced Pages talk pages. In contrary, mentioning the gender of a female person in a discussion seems to be overused based on researches. For example "Listen, woman" may be considered as personal attack even thought the person in question may actually be a woman or even defne themselves as female. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:50, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
My edit was just reverted. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:31, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
Searching of the word "obsession" in user talk I found more than 4,000 uses of the word including expressions such as " please, keep your fanaticism or obsession with your idol(s) to an acceptable level.", "Your obsession with it has crossed the line from annoyance", "Your obsession with Westervelt won't correct your business failure", "why did you have to hit Misplaced Pages with your obsession" and many others. This shows that easily medical terms can be used to insult or perform attacks to editors. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:36, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
- @Magioladitis: As iridescent pointed out to you in the ARCA request that prompted you to come here, "obsession" is not inherently a medical term. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:09, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
- As Iridescent also pointed out in ARCA request that prompted you to come here, the fact that you had to manually pipe
]both there and here demonstrates that you know that "obsession" and "obsessive–compulsive disorder" are two different things and are intentionally fabricating evidence of a non-existent personal attack to try to deflect attention from your own disruption. (If you genuinely don't know what "obsession" means, the OED definition isAn idea, image, or influence which continually fills or troubles the mind; a compulsive interest or preoccupation; the fact or state of being troubled or preoccupied in this way
; I don't think anyone who's ever had any dealings with you would dispute that "a compulsive interest or preoccupation" is an accurate and neutral description of your fixation with running scripts and bots.) ‑ Iridescent 14:53, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
- As Iridescent also pointed out in ARCA request that prompted you to come here, the fact that you had to manually pipe
- Nikkimaria, Iridescent Hey. I am not relating my question here with the other discusion. I said that the use of this word may be interupted as personal attack. I believe that the use of these words sometimes is unintentional but they still may pose a problem the same way a gynecologist's question to a female person "do you and your boyfriend use protection?" is sexiest but no many people realise it. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:24, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
- As for my revert: Policies too ground in specifics result in wikilawyering. There is no need to clarify what types of diabilities, it prohibits against all of them. If you start breaking down and listing types of disability, you will at some point have an editor go 'That isnt one of the disabilities listed'. So no, it needs no clarification. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:06, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
- This discussion is a non-starter. We shouldn't unnecessarily medicalize ordinary English words such as "obsession". And Magioladitis - you'd be well advised to stop doing stuff like this and your attempt on AN to have all instances of "cunt" and "pussy" rev-del'd from Misplaced Pages, and concentrate on helpful editing of articles. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:17, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
- Just a remark: In the Greek Misplaced Pages version el:Εμμονή (Obsession) redirects to el:Ιδεοψυχαναγκαστική διαταραχή (OCD). It's interesting in English the word seems to be used in a sligtly different way. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:26, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
- Both the English Misplaced Pages and the Greek Misplaced Pages are not dictionaries. You could not reasonable assess how the word is used based upon a redirect on an encyclopedia. We have very few articles on Misplaced Pages that merely define a word because of WP:NOT#DICTIONARY. I am not fluent in Greek, but based upon the translation, there obviously appears to be a comparable word to obsession in Greek that does not mean Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: wikt:el:εμμονή. Regardless, I fail to see the relevance to this discussion. Mkdw 23:09, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
- Mkdw. True. Thre is no relevance.My examples were bad and the point was missed. I just wondered if we should add explicitelly the words "physical and mental" next to disabulities because sometimes we tend to forget the last one. Anyway. I am covered by BenKovitz's reply. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:39, 18 February 2018 (UTC)