Tortuous justifications for incivility

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Re: Tortuous justifications for incivility

Post by CrowsNest » Sun Nov 04, 2018 12:49 am

A Wikipedia Administrator is trying to reverse another now retired Adminitrator's decision to add this to one of their special templates......https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =821116326
Users are required to follow proper decorum during discussions and edits. Users may be sanctioned (including blocks) if they make any edits which are judged by an administrator to be uncivil, personal attacks, or assumptions of bad faith.
Their reasons are very informative regarding Wikipedia's broken culture. A selected review......

* "It is redundant with our current civility policy."

Lots of things on these discretionary sanctions are redundant to existing policy. Why? Because Discretionary Sanctions only became a thing because Wikipedia Administrators were not blocking people when they violated a policy under normal conditions. For some reason, as well as the backing of basic policy, in areas of controversy they also feel they need these silly templates, as essentially permission slips to allow them to do what they should be doing normally anyway.

* "Administrators can already block uncivil users for personal attacks, etc."

It's cute how everything else in the civility policy is reduced to a pathetic "etc." This reflects the current culture, where Administrators pretty much don't care about any part of the civility policy except the section on personal attacks. It has essentially become synonymous with the policy. The purpose of this civility restriction being in the American Politics Discretionary Sanctions of course, was to empower an Administrator to block a user for making a single edit that was incivil, but not necessarily a personal attack, in the highly charged atmosphere of these politics disputes. They cannot currently do this under normal conditions, because the policy doesn't allow for it.

* "The template is for sanctions, not reminders. If we want to make it a template for reminders I can think of better policies to remind users about (NPOV for instance)"

It is a sanction. It puts a requirement on a properly notified user to follow proper decorum, and allows them to be blocked for a single uncivil edit. This is not the same as a simple reminder that the civility policy exists. And who cares what he thinks is more fitting, it's a simple matter of fact that the civility policy is equal to the neutrality policy. If he doesn't agree that should be the case, then he needs to resign.

* "It's not clear what constitutes a violation of "proper decorum during discussions and edits"."

And here we arrive at a familiar problem. Not every Administrator can agree on what is proper decorum, so it somehow becomes the only policy on Wikipedia where Administrators are not allowed to use their own personal judgement, even in a situation where they are specifically allowed to use their personal judgement (this is the whole point of Discretionary Sanctions), only deferring to consensus if their judgement is challenged. Needless to say, this aversion to unilateral action does not happen, and indeed is never even considered, for "better" policies like NPOV, even though that too can be highly disputed between individual Administrators.

This small but significant attack on the notion of civility is naturally already on course for landslide suport, because Wikipedians simply don't want there to be any requirement o obligation on them to be civil At all. Essentially, this move will give them carte blanche to be rude to anyone they seem deserves it, in the arena of American Politics articles. You don't need to be a genius to realise who is the intended target in that arena.

For an idea of who regularly gets insulted by Wikipedia Administrators, just peruse the contributions of the first two Administrators who thought this proposal was a brilliant idea - Drmies and Bishonen. A right pair of scumbags, those two. Try reporting them to a noticeboard for a pattern of incivility, you will be amazed at how vicious the response will be.

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Re: Tortuous justifications for incivility

Post by CrowsNest » Sat Nov 10, 2018 12:27 am

Can you repeatedly say fuck off to other people on Wikipedia or not?

Unsurprisingly, the answer is DON'T MAKE US BEHAVE LIKE NORMAL HUMANS.

Honestly. These people are a joke......
This discussion has been open for long enough that there is a coherent outcome. .....If you think that this discussion has done nothing to change the status quo... well, you might be right......Keep in mind that many of us have different extents to which we tolerate profanity as part of civil discussion......Respectfully, Mz7 (talk) 06:27, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Respectfully, eh?

I sense some disrespect from this chap. One of those cases of how you can tell people to fuck off without saying the specific words, a possibility that the toxic troglodytes of Wikipedia were using to dodge the question of what to do when people actually say fuck off. I can kill a person with my bare hands, but that still means that killing them with a gun is illegal. So is killing them with your hands btw. Just an example of what happens in societies that are functional.

He asks us to keep in mind that they all have different expectations. I would ask him to keep in mind the study that found that in reality, most of the toxicity on Wikipedia comes from a tiny minority of users, 9% to be precise, and they are experienced editors who have got into the habit of repeat offending because pussies like this think it is all just part of the cultural mix of that shithole. This isn't cultural differences in action. This is a community held hostage.

Pointed asking though, because that study came out five years ago. To this day, I don't think I've ever seen it cited in a Wikipedia debate on civility. They just hold forth with what they would call original research, if it were proposed content for the "Criticism of Wikipedia" article. "Toxic" doesn't feature in that article once, of course.

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Re: Tortuous justifications for incivility

Post by CrowsNest » Fri Nov 16, 2018 3:13 am

Props to DrKay for this......
No, it is not acceptable, and I apologize for and withdraw it. DrKay (talk) 21:41, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
You won't be surprised to learn that he offered this off of his own back to the whole readership of AN/I, prior to which the Wikipedians were all set to excuse/overlook it.

I'm literally quoting it here because this is how rare it is to see this sort of thing on Wikipedia, it makes you sit up and take notice. Which is Fucked. Up.

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Re: Tortuous justifications for incivility

Post by CrowsNest » Sun Dec 16, 2018 1:56 am

Jeez.
Finally, I have to say that I've never seen a comment such as the complaints above about "un-civility and repeated use of profanity", or "inappropriate language" have any good effect — so much so that I tend to read them as provocations rather than genuine attempts to improve the tone of the discussion. Everybody, please just model the kind of style you'd like to see, instead of admonishing others, as long as they're not attacking people with their use of swear-words, which SchroCat was not. Styles differ in this respect, not least geographically. Bishonen | talk 04:12, 13 December 2018 (UTC).
Is there a country in the world that is exclusively populated by bullshitters and toddlers now?

I'm off - your comments now (and my responses to them) are fuck all to do with the improvement of the article, and more to do with some soapboxing nonsense about idiotboxes and the process and procedure behind them - life really is too short to have to talk about them yet again. - SchroCat (talk) 09:13, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Example removed - there is already one above, and we all know what the fucking things look like - and trying to have yet ANOTHER IB discussion, despite the warnings at the top of the page is just plain disruptive) - SchroCat (talk) 09:13, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

And don’t tell me not to swear. Fuckety, fuckety fuck. There is nothing uncivil in using profanity, so cut out the requests on that front too. - SchroCat (talk) 00:29, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
WP:CIVIL obviously covers profanity, both by saying you can be blocked even for single utterances of gross profanity, and for just general rudeness.

But hey, this is queen Bishonen. She can literally say and do what she likes. If she has to say these things to protect one of her little footsoldiers who is digging his heels in and willingly talking out of his rectum, she will. Whose gonna stop her? You? Fuck off. You're gonna sit down there and take it like a little bitch. That's what you signed up for, Wikipedians.

As for her plea that people should just model the style they want to see, that's some Grade-A bullshit. SchroCat doesn't want to be sworn at, he warns people about civility all the time. And he wouldn't be doing that just as a way to get people to go away, because that is wrong and against policy. Bishonen would block him if she ever saw him do that.

Arguably the noted problematic issue here was his use of the term "idiotbox". She wants no part of that, naturally. No easy way out there, since this is clearly not an issue of style or geography. You're either the kind of inflammatory prick who says it, or you are not.

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Re: Tortuous justifications for incivility

Post by CrowsNest » Fri Dec 28, 2018 11:27 am

Not a clue. Not. One. Clue.
Only under the most strained interpretation can Wikipedia, a volunteer project, be characterized as a "workplace", for (as I said at the discussion linked above) at least three reasons:

-there's no contractual relationship between the "worker" and the "employer";

-none of the legal rights, obligations, and restrictions that apply in the workplace apply to Wikipedia;

-and (most impotantly) no one's livelihood depends on editing.

I strongly, strongly object to the workplace characterization, because the next step is talk of "workplace bullying" and other irrelevance. EEng 00:48, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
There is of course a contractual relationship between editors and the WMF, and it most certainly includes an undertaking not to bully other users. It is literally a legal contract. But who the hell even needs there to be a contract in place that tells you not to bully people, before they choose not to bully people?

There are plenty of the legal rights, obligations and restrictions that apply in a workplace that apply in Wikipedia. They have a code of conduct, a disciplinary system, and an ability to lock you out of the building for not following it. Has this guy never actually been in a workplace before? It's a possibility. The Wikipedia equivalent of an employee handbook literally says "Respect your fellow Wikipedians, even when you disagree. Apply Wikipedia etiquette, and don't engage in personal attacks." It is not an advisory, it is a requirement, theoretically enforceable, and there is no mention of context of justification, these are the inventions of the Wikipedians who reject the analogy to a workplace. Rather than a strained interpretation, Wikipedia is far closer to being like a workplace than some kind of anarchist collective. They literally disavow any idea that Wikipedia is an experiment in democracy or social engineering, they are absolutely wedded to the idea their rules and obligations governing user interaction only exist for the same reasons they exist in a workplace - productivity. That they are the right thing to do, is less of a concern than what might happen to their bottom line if they adopted a different approach.

The last point implies this douche thinks it's OK to bully people as long as they are free to walk away. Sick.

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Re: Tortuous justifications for incivility

Post by Graaf Statler » Fri Dec 28, 2018 12:12 pm

And what to think of the Terms of Use (code of conduct) where you agree with, and what I have broken according WMF? They even took my license to edit WMF products a life time! How legal and contractual do you want to have it?

Of course it is all legal horse shit, because at least you have to tell to the person where it is about and where and when he or she had broke your Terms of Use, and you have to answer emails in a proper way.
But legal horse shit is still legal stuff.

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Re: Tortuous justifications for incivility

Post by CrowsNest » Fri Dec 28, 2018 12:46 pm

Graaf Statler wrote:And what to think of the Terms of Use (code of conduct) where you agree with, and what I have broken according WMF. They even took my license to edit a life time! How legal do you want to have it!

Of course it is legal horse shit, because at least you have to tell to the person where it is about where and when he broke your Terms of Use and you have to answer emails, but legal horse shit is also legal legal stuff.
That is where there is a difference between the law and workplace rules. There are plenty of workplaces where it is perfectly acceptable to dismiss people with little or no reasoning, and no possibility of appeal. I can't speak to American labour practices, but in Britain it is the law which at least ensures employees, whatever they are accused of, are entitled to a fair hearing, a proper explanation, and the chance to appeal. If these protections don't exist in America, that would explain how they could come to think a SanFranBan is a perfectly acceptable thing to have in your contractual relationship with your workers/users, and would be more, not less proof that they think of themselves as a workplace.

It would be illegal in Britain, but it would still be closer to being thought of as a workplace than anything else. They are clearly applying SanFranBans for reasons of productivity and workplace harmony (in their eyes), and not, for example, to maintain strict loyalty or an ethical code, which, if it were more like a Mafia, would of course merit the maximum allowable punishment if you were for example caught skimming profits.

This is Wikipedia, a workplace where financially enriching yourself is not seen as a very big issue deserving the maximum punishment, as seen in the Salvirdrim case, if you were not affecting their bottom line in the process. People can't even argue that the level of open disrespect for the management shows Wikipedia is not a workplace, because Wikipedia does have a management layer who you are most certainly not allowed to show disrespect to, and if you do, the full force of the employee handbook will be used against you. Up to and including the SFBan.

On Wikipedia, you can openly show contempt for Jimmy, but not Bishonen. She is the real boss, the real CEO. She is the reason the workplace rules do not apply to the court jester, because he is the court jester of her court. James Alexander has no real executive authority over those 'employees', only people who are already marked out by the real 'management' as the outsiders, people like yourself, hence why he has seemingly finally left for a workplace where he has full control, total authority.

In reality, you can think of Wikipedia as a workplace in how it currently puts theory into practice, just one that is set in Medieval times.

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Re: Tortuous justifications for incivility

Post by CrowsNest » Sun Jan 13, 2019 1:33 am

:lol:
Iridescent wrote:it seems you may have been misled by the existence of the official-looking "Community health initiative on English Wikipedia"; this is an small clique at the WMF—not Wikipedia—that exists to push a particular agenda, not any kind of official part of Wikipedia and certainly not a group whose views enjoy a significant degree of support on en-wiki.......Iridescent 13:21, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
This is a Wikipedia Administrator, believe it or not.

Is he an official part of Wikipedia? What is an official part of Wikipedia anyway? What does official even mean, in the context of a bunch of volunteers fucking around on a website, whose owners and their staff are apparently not officially part of whatever this guy is officially being as he conducts his hobby.

He's not an official anything. If he was, he would face consequences for making statements like this, which, despite the brevity, contains much to dispute.

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Re: Tortuous justifications for incivility

Post by CrowsNest » Fri May 31, 2019 4:48 pm

A stark reminder of just how institutionally tolerated "fuck off" has become in the Wikipedia environment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... _Prhartcom

You really do wonder if these people even see the connection between that, and how on the very same snapshot there is a report where an editor is trying to justify someone saying "editor X is a cancer on Wikipedia" in the exact same terms. They are having less success I grant you, but even this gross personal attack was still only greeted with an entirely ineffective "final warning", as if it makes a blind bit of difference to an editor who has already had several such final warnings.

It makes you wonder. In five years time, what would one Wikipedia editor actually have to say to or about another editor, in order to get an immediate indefinite block?

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Re: Tortuous justifications for incivility

Post by Graaf Statler » Fri May 31, 2019 5:24 pm

They think, in there mindset is people will say thank you for the lessons I have learned today, thank you for the beat up.. What, you blocked me, shall i pay for the bulled?

They are a share of shitcans, assholes and fucking lunatics who desperate need to learned a lesson they will never, never forget and I don't mind if few of them disappear in prison for a while because that will be the only clear message they understand.
For instance that fucking Vigtroll, misquoting, he was complete wrong quoting out of confidential material with the only goal to hurt me. Well, I don't mind if they put him in a airplane and put him here on trail, not at all.
Not compassion from my side, because it was the lowest of the lowest and a complete lack of any civility from his site.

Don't play games with the Europeans Vig, don't do that, they will get you!

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