User:NE Ent/Notes on civility

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

This page in a nutshell: The problem is everyone agrees that we should be civil, but no one agrees what that means.

I edited Wikipedia sporadically for a couple years until one (fateful) day I saw a notice above my watchlist saying volunteers were needed at "Wikiquette alerts." Not knowing what that was I followed the link and made my first comment in December 2008.

Background

At some point shortly thereafter I became aware of a prominent editor. I observed with some frequency that he acted in a manner that, in my own personal opinion, was incivil, inappropriate, and inconsistent with the ideals expressed at WP:CIVILITY. Through observation over time I also noted the following. These are my own unsubstantiated WP:OR opinions.

His user and talk page articulate strongly worded opinions regarding Wikipedia.
His contributions indicate a long tenure at Wikipedia and frequent editing.
His comments on various boards express a fairly consistent and coherent model of what is appropriate behavior.
Said model is different from mine.
His contributions are generally consistent with his model.
From my perspective, he was rarely blocked, and often unblocked before the expiration of the original block.

The logical conclusions I reached was:

The Wikipedia's community understanding of what acceptable behavior is was different than mine.
The probability that my going to his talk page and suggesting changes to his interaction model would be successful were essentially zero.

Accordingly I decided not to worry about him, and attempt to assist in situations where my contributions would benefit Wikipedia.

After some amount of time, perhaps a year or so, I noted with some frequency there would be discussions regarding the editor, or other like him, at ANI or similar venues, with lots of comments both for and against taking steps to attempt to change his pattern of contributions. In those situations, generally the end result was a weak consensus that intervention was not appropriate.

Status

To date, I have reached the conclusion that my earlier conclusion "The Wikipedia's community understanding of what acceptable behavior is was different than mine" was a good first approximation, but incorrect: The problem is everyone agrees that we should be civil, but no one agrees what that means.

Accordingly, in the current context, it is inappropriate to state an editor is not acting in accordance with the Civility pillar of Wikipedia when that concept is so poorly and chaotically defined. To use an American colloquialism, Don't blame the player, blame the game. In other words, if there is an issue with an editor's long term editing pattern, the problem is with Wikipedia -- with us -- not with him.

In the current context, in my opinion, any editor who repeatedly complains about specific editors or admins supporting them or the like is just as disruptive to Wikipedia as any post they may make.

The problem is Wikipedia is unprincipled: there are far more editors willing to jump in an ANI or talk page kerfuffle to talk about a specific incident than discuss underlying principles on the WP:Civility talk page and actually come to a consensus. It's choosing drama over hard work. It's saying, 'This is Wikipedia, we don't need firm guidance, we're all about situational judgments and IAR' and all that despite the chronic evidence that this is not the case.

IAR is a great idea for editing the encyclopedia, but it's fallen short as an administration technique. IAR is but one of five pillars, civility and consensus should be equally important.

In my ~seven years of observing the situation it appears to me to be essentially constant. Some of the names change but it's the same old tune. The question I'd like to ask the Wikipedia community is:

Are you tired yet? 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' Until this community stops worrying about the spat du jour and is willing to establish a clear set of principles of civil behavior expecting any change is insanity. NE Ent

Background

Status

See also