![]() Archives |
---|
|
Subpages
|
Contents
- 1 NPA question over mental disorders
- 2 A somewhat related topic to personal attacks, hate speech (with discussion link below)
- 3 Comparing editors to Nazis, Communists, Terrorists, dictators, or other infamous persons. should not be a "personal attack"
- 4 Adding protection for gender identity
- 5 It's subjective
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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia (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 Wikipedia (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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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
[[Obsessive–compulsive disorder|obsession]]
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 Wikipedia, and concentrate on helpful editing of articles. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:17, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
- Just a remark: In the Greek Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia and the Greek Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 talk 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)
- The bottom line is that you initiated this discussion because someone said at ARCA that you have an "obsession" and you chose to take the worst possible interpretation of that remark and believe they were saying that you have OCD. No reasonable person would make that assumption, just as they would not interpret my saying to my daughter "You're crazy to wear that sweater" to mean that I thought she had a mental disorder. Drop the damn stick, please, and walk away, this is going nowhere and will not result in a change in WP:NPA. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:48, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
- I've made a first draft of a user essay, related to the questions raised here. User:Geo Swan/opinions/Are you NUTS...
comments welcome here or User talk:Geo Swan/opinions/Are you NUTS...
I posted something about the fact that there were no warning templates for hate speech or use of racial epithets at Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace. Thus far, I have received no responses.
If anyone has an opinion on whether or not such behavior should have their own user talk page templates, I would like to hear them. The discussion is here. Mungo Kitsch (talk) 03:25, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
Comparing editors to Nazis, Communists, Terrorists, dictators, or other infamous persons. should not be a "personal attack"
Comparing editors to Nazis, Communists, Terrorists, dictators, or other infamous persons is listed among vastly more serious attacks, such as: doxxing, Death threats, Abusive, defamatory, or derogatory phrases based on race, sex, sexual orientation, age, religious or political beliefs, disabilities, ethnicity, nationality.
It doesn't seem fitting at all that on an open platform you cannot compare and hold an adminstator's decision accountable to people/ideologies that did similar things on a larger scale, i find this rule to be National Socialistic in spirit. ReaIestTruth (talk) 17:10, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
- @ReaIestTruth: . So you're ok being called an anti-administrator Nazi? Toddst1 (talk) 03:31, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
- @ReaIestTruth: Nazis are not welcome on this site and should not be welcomed anywhere else (Nazis can stop being shitheads at any time but non-whites, homosexuals, and many other groups Nazis hate can't or don't need to). For that reason, calling someone a Nazi is unacceptable.
- If someone calls a user a communist, nine times out of ten it is an ad hominem attack meant to imply that their views are not worthwhile on the basis of their political beliefs. Thus it falls under
derogatory phrases based on [...] political beliefs
. That's not even addressing the issue that often when someone calls a user a communist, that user isn't a communist, the attacker is just convinced that anyone left of their favorite right-wing politician is a full-blown Marxist. It's pretty much the same deal for the other attacks you've suggested shouldn't count as attacks. - Now, doesn't Nazism count as a political belief? Doesn't really matter, Nazis can go get fucked with coral -- and that's why you can't go around calling non-Nazis Nazis. Ian.thomson (talk) 03:57, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Adding protection for gender identity
The policy currently prohibits Abusive, defamatory, or derogatory phrases based on race, sex, sexual orientation, age, religious or political beliefs, disabilities, ethnicity, nationality, etc.
but does not explicitly include gender identity. Many anti-discrimination policies now include gender identity, including the Wikimedia Foundation, Walmart, Harvard University, etc., etc., etc. The Canadian Human Rights Act has been amended to include gender identity protection as well. WanderingWanda (they/them) (t/c) 01:24, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
- @WanderingWanda: . So if someone referred to someone who wishes to be referred to as they/them/it as he or she, are you saying that would be a personal attack? Toddst1 (talk) 03:29, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
- Accidental misgendering happens, even between cisgendered individuals. No matter what the alt-right's favorite psychologist thinks, no one is looking to go "that cismale-rapist-pig called me the wrong gender after I deliberately dressed androgynously to fool him! Mwahahaha, now he'll go to jail!" There are, however, some people who view any situation besides their culture's understanding of masculine males and feminine females as sufficient reason to attack someone.
- Regardless, if someone makes it clear that they identify as a particular gender, deliberately identifying them otherwise after it has been brought to one's attention could be a deliberate attack. "But I know their real gender is different" would violate WP:OUTING. This would still be true even if gender worked exactly the way conservative evangelicals wanted it to. Ian.thomson (talk) 04:13, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
- This is pretty much what I was going to write. :) As always, Assume Good Faith (and Use Common Sense) would apply. If Goofus accidentally calls Gallant a girl, that's a mistake, not an attack. But if Goofus repeatedly, maliciously hectors Gallant by calling him a girl, even after being corrected, sure, I'd call that a personal attack.
- Adding "gender identity" would also cover, for example, transphobic slurs.
- In the end I predict the tangible effect of this change would be small (any hypothetical transphobic personal attack I can think of is still, well, a personal attack, so is essentially covered by the policy as is.) But it's still good to continue to affirm, as best we can, that Wikipedia is not a place where attacks, discrimination, or harassment are welcome. WanderingWanda (they/them) (t/c) 05:57, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
- It's been one week and no one has objected. Change implemented. WanderingWanda (they/them) (t/c) 21:06, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
- Changed per reasons I gave. Discrimination based on gender identity is not just about transphobia. Female-identified editors on Wikipedia have been attacked simply for identifying as female. By that, I mean because the men's rights/gamergate type of editors know their sex/gender or what they have been told by the women of their sex/gender anyway. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:54, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- In addition to the "gender identity" link being changed from transphobia to gender identity, the "sexual orientation" link was also recently changed from homophobia to sexual orientation (for similar stated reasons.) I have slightly mixed feelings: if the point of the paragraph is to educate people about prejudice, direct links to articles about prejudice might be more conducive to that. But in the end I agree it's probably better to err on the side of being broad and inclusive, so I won't argue against either change. WanderingWanda (they/them) (t/c) 20:50, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- Changed per reasons I gave. Discrimination based on gender identity is not just about transphobia. Female-identified editors on Wikipedia have been attacked simply for identifying as female. By that, I mean because the men's rights/gamergate type of editors know their sex/gender or what they have been told by the women of their sex/gender anyway. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:54, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- I oppose the proposed change per the above concern that it would easily allow abuse to target conservative or religious editors. Flyer22 Reborn's argument sounds like WP:ILIKEIT. Linking to articles about actual harassment seems like a good compromise, but in my opinion it's still WP:COMMONSENSE that homophobia and transphobia against other editors are unacceptable. See WP:CREEP. Finally, my favorite option would be removing the list altogether because there are endless forms of attacks for reasons unrelated to editing Wikipedia. See WP:GAME. wumbolo ^^^ 19:18, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
- Don't slander conservatives and religious people that way. Just being conservative doesn't mean one has to be a bigot, and I'd say that if someone is both religious and a bigot, they've missed the point of religion. There's an overly vocal minority of bigots who like to abuse conservatism and religion to justify their hatred, and the current wording is a problem for them but that's the point.
- While one's gender identity and sexual orientation are irrelevant to editing, not only those bigots but some trolls believe that those elements are sufficient reason to exclude someone's good-faith efforts to improve the site. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:42, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
- You are the one who singled out conservatives and religious people.
even if gender worked exactly the way conservative evangelicals wanted it to.
(emphasis mine) I'm not going to respond to your No true Scotsman defense of religion. wumbolo ^^^ 09:43, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
- You are the one who singled out conservatives and religious people.
- Stating that my argument "sounds like I WP:ILIKEIT" is silliness. For the same reason we don't engage in that type of egg linking in articles, we shouldn't engage in it in our policies and guidelines. You speak of common sense. Well, common sense is to not have "gender identity" pipelinked to transphobia. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 08:52, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
- I pointed to a specific group noted for enforcing rules based on their views on sex, gender, and sexuality, yes; you expanded it to all conservatives and all religious people. Ian.thomson (talk) 05:38, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
- It is not relevant whether religious people or conservatives want to monopolize views on gender (that they do is your opinion). What's relevant is that a large number of people, who are religious or conservative, do not share your view on gender and misgendering. Even if they don't persistently and purposefully misgender someone, they are vulnerable to accusations of personal attacks. WP:GAMING this policy is not allowed, but surely it's difficult to understand someone's motivation in this contentious topic. wumbolo ^^^ 21:28, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
- And yet you were the one who made it about conservatives in general and religious people in general.
- Don't assume that non-transphobes don't know what accidents are. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:21, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
- I was talking about a scenario where an editor would be abused, and said that the editor would be conservative or religious because that's how you described those with unconventional views on gender. This policy would not help anyone (bad-faith transphobes will use other ways of bullying) except encourage non-transphobic editors to be bullies against
conservative evangelicals
, as you put it the 1st time. wumbolo ^^^ 09:01, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
- I was talking about a scenario where an editor would be abused, and said that the editor would be conservative or religious because that's how you described those with unconventional views on gender. This policy would not help anyone (bad-faith transphobes will use other ways of bullying) except encourage non-transphobic editors to be bullies against
- It is not relevant whether religious people or conservatives want to monopolize views on gender (that they do is your opinion). What's relevant is that a large number of people, who are religious or conservative, do not share your view on gender and misgendering. Even if they don't persistently and purposefully misgender someone, they are vulnerable to accusations of personal attacks. WP:GAMING this policy is not allowed, but surely it's difficult to understand someone's motivation in this contentious topic. wumbolo ^^^ 21:28, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
It's subjective
The first line reads "There is no rule that is objective and not open to interpretation on what constitutes a personal attack". This means almost anything can be considered a personal attack. Anyone can be accused of a personal attack for any reason. It's an arbitrary rule applied arbitrarily and inconsistently. That's bad news for everyone. If it were merely a slap on the wrist, it might be OK. But if people in power were to use this an excuse to block or eliminate people from Wikipedia, that would create a chilling effect, discouraging people from speaking freely. Speaking freely is necessary to debate and consensus. That's why there are "Talk" pages. For talking. For discussing. If people feel they can't speak freely, they will censor themselves (and each other). They will hesitate to address problems, because they will be afraid of being punished. Very little would get accomplished.
There's no such thing as a perfect rough draft. If people didn't make mistakes, there would be no need for editing. Mistakes are not some terrible sin that warrant punishment. Far from it. Mistakes are part of the process of learning. Where it gets to be a problem is when people don't learn from their mistakes. Then they make no progress. They go in circles. But even in these situations, they hurt themselves more than others. Wikipedia should encourage people to fail just as it encourages people to be bold. It should encourage people to speak up to solve problems. Otherwise problems don't get solved. It's no wonder Wikipedia has a hard time retaining editors. These are the same kinds of problems that exist in the real world in toxic workplaces where bad people thrive and good people are driven out. In those workplaces, people are not allowed to speak freely because they fear some kind of reprisal or punishment. Such places work against themselves. Maybe there should be revisions to this policy. Maybe this policy ought not to be used as a reason for blocking.
Vmavanti (talk) 15:41, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
- What events inspired you to make this comment? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:58, 18 March 2019 (UTC)