User:AP295
-Most of my submissions on meta are comments in RfCs. A couple of suggestions (or perhaps a proposed addendum to site policy) for those who make RfCs or any request open to public comment.
1) RfCs are not RfACs (Requests for Assenting Comments).
2) If you reply to someone, they are entitled to reply back.
A sequence of such events is called a discussion. No kidding, you say? One might be surprised by how often one is cajoled, strongly advised, or forced to drop a discussion before it reaches its logical conclusion. A broad array of semantic stop-signs are at the disposal of the editor whose argument is not holding up under scrutiny. So stop beating a dead horse and bludgeoning the process. Just drop it, desist and mind your own business. Catch once, let it go and walk your dog. And remember, silence is golden.
Disturbing and Orwellian, no? I do chuckle a bit (or groan) when one of these quasi-policy essays is completely on-the-nose. For instance, w:WP:Desist begins "WP:Desist can be cited whenever there is a dispute on Wikipedia and you want to put an end to it." Reading through Wikipedia's essays on civility, one can see an aphorism for every occasion. There's even an essay entitled w:Wikipedia:Encourage full discussions, though I've never seen anyone cite it myself. Many of these essays can seem very reasonable at first glance, and a few even are. Yet in aggregate, one wonders why the encyclopedia that anyone can edit has such a profusion of semiofficial essays (or perhaps, rhetorical devices) for shutting down conversations.
In one of his letters, Christopher Hitchens remarked "In place of honest disputation we are offered platitudes about “healing.” The idea of “unity” is granted huge privileges over any notion of “division” or, worse, “divisiveness.” I cringe every time I hear denunciations of “the politics of division”—as if politics was not division by definition. Semi-educated people join cults whose whole purpose is to dull the pain of thought, or take medications that claim to abolish anxiety. Oriental religions, with their emphasis on Nirvana and fatalism, are repackaged for Westerners as therapy, and platitudes or tautologies masquerade as wisdom." He was speaking in a general sense, yet his observation applies here as well.
Consider, for example, w:Wikipedia:Divisiveness, which includes a short quote from Jimbo Whales: "Remember what we are doing here. We are building a free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet. We are trying to do it in an atmosphere of fun, love, and respect for others. We try to be kind to others, thoughtful in our actions, and professional in our approach to our responsibilities.", itself reminding me of another Hitchens letter; "Distrust any speaker who talks confidently about “we,” or speaks in the name of “us.” Distrust yourself if you hear these tones creeping into your own style. ", and later at the end " P.S. A note on language. Be even more suspicious than I was just telling you to be, of all those who employ the term “we” or “us” without your permission. This is another form of surreptitious conscription, designed to suggest that “we” are all agreed on “our” interests and identity. " Yet expressing suspicion can itself get one in trouble here, per w:WP:AGF, which, in very polite and seemingly reasonable terms, demands credulity from the editor. To be fair to Mr. Whales, the quote is out of its (somewhat amusing) context, but certainly the author of the essay uses it in the sense Hitchens cautions about. Interesting, though, how some editors seem to enjoy such broad lenience and patience while others are sharply sanctioned at the drop of a hat.
In The Prevention of Literature, Orwell wrote "The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism. The issue truth-versus-untruth is as far as possible kept in the background. " In this case, "discipline" has been rebranded and repackaged as "civility". Dispute is presumed to lead to uncivil behavior if allowed to continue long enough and thus treated as inherently "disruptive". This is the pretense that's usually applied when it's convenient to shut down a conversation. There are two obvious points which together refute this. First, a dispute does not always lead to incivility. Second, and perhaps more importantly, so what if it does? Sometimes that's unavoidable, and sometimes the dispute is still worthwhile.
-A practical and simple policy to mitigate abusive blocks, along with a few relevant observations. I wrote following with the intention to start an RfC, which I'll probably do at some point.:
When a sysop or admin blocks someone, they should cite both (a) specific policy and (b) substantive diff(s) or permalink(s), either with on the recipient's talk page or (ideally) in the block log entry. It takes only a moment to include this information. Without it, an observer or uninvolved party cannot straightforwardly assess the fairness of a block or whether a block complies with policy. Likewise, the recipient of a block cannot make a convincing argument in their own defense, as the blocking admin/sysop hasn't made a concrete, falsifiable statement in the first place (apart from some variation on "you are blocked", usually followed by a glib comment). Its absence also precludes (or at least complicates) the public investigation of potential biases or other patterns in the aggregate, since one cannot easily associate each block with the contribution(s) it resulted from. This is the minimum amount of information needed for public accountability and at the very least should be provided with blocks issued to autoconfirmed users. Wikimedia projects promote the impression that they are open public participation. The UCoC uses ideographs like <inclusive>, <diverse> and <accessible>. The enforcement guidelines emphasize <transparency> and fairness. This seems quite at odds with how blocks are presently handled. What I am proposing here would make it plainly obvious if a block was issued unfairly or against policy.
Some extra remarks:
Obviously it would only take an extra moment to add this information, but for the sake of argument let's say a project is so short-handed that they cannot apply this rule for every user. From a cursory look at the wikipedia block log (as an example), it seems that roughly half of all blocks are issued to ip users. IPs do not seem to receive long blocks in the first place and so limiting this policy just to those blocks issued to registered users would be natural. Still too much work? Apply it only for confirmed/autoconfirmed, or in the worst case extendedconfirmed users, who naturally represent a small fraction of the block log (and probably deserve at least that much courtesy for the effort they've put in). So there's little reason not to implement at least one of these variations.
Sometimes instead of (b) the blocking sysop/admin gives a nonspecific description of where the alleged violation occurred, even though it would take only an extra few seconds to paste a link. This is favorable to abuse for the reasons I've already explained. Additionally, sysops/admins often cite essays instead of official policy. These ad hoc conventions have no practical advantage but seem quite favorable to abuse. If a user has not plausibly broken any official rule or policy then they should not be blocked. If official policy is inadequate then it should be changed. It is deceptive to call one set of rules "official policy" while enforcing another set of rules categorized and labeled as "essays": "Essays are the opinion or advice of an editor or group of editors for which widespread consensus has not been established. They do not speak for the entire community and may be created and written without approval."[1].
Why would any project state that it "has no firm rules" yet actually have pages upon pages of rules? Rules can be broad and rules can be adjusted or changed, but when rules are 'soft', vague or needlessly overwrought, it is usually a sign that they were written by people who do not intend to respect those rules themselves. The entirety of UCoC section two (along with a number of 'essays' and a sizable chunk of official wikipedia policy) could just as well be replaced with the sentence "observe common decency and show respect to other users". The exposition in w:WP:NOTBURO and w:WP:5P5 does not constitute a serious argument against having a fair, concise and consistently enforced set of rules, the value of which is self-evident. Consider this specious portion of w:WP:NOTBURO, "Although some rules may be enforced, the written rules themselves do not set accepted practice. Rather, they document already-existing community consensus regarding what should be accepted and what should be rejected." It seems to excuse any expedient departure from official policy (e.g. an abusive block), suggesting that such an event should be interpreted as failure of the community to document accepted practice rather than a failure on part of specific members to observe the current rules. This wouldn't per se be unfair if the official rules were actually changed to reflect how admins, sysops, and other "whitelisted users" behave. For example, if some essay represents de facto policy and is enforced as if it were official policy then let it be called official policy. "Whitelisted users" is a phrase I found in wiktionary's blocking policy [2]: "It is rare, but occasionally there will be a seasoned contributor, even an administrator, who is causing trouble; such cases must be handled with diplomacy. It is not acceptable to block a whitelisted user or an administrator unless they already know they will be blocked for their actions." A bit on-the-nose, no? How is any other user (aside from those on the "whitelist") supposed to know they'll be blocked for something that doesn't violate a reasonable interpretation of official policy? How should they divine which of the many contradictory essays or unwritten rules "reflects practice"?
Incidental comments: Wikipedia's appeal policy [3] gives one the superficial impression that when users are blocked unfairly, the mistake will be rectified immediately, "If there is agreement that you may have been blocked unfairly, you may be directly unblocked ". The sysop/admin who issued the block obviously isn't going to agree, otherwise they wouldn't have issued the block. The rest of the sentence further qualifies this already-weak assurance, "but this is very rare unless there genuinely were no prospective grounds for the block. Usually the blocking admin's judgement is respected if there is any question of doubt". Why wouldn't it simply read "If you've been blocked unfairly, you'll be unblocked"? Is that not reasonable? Again one gets the sense that these rules are written without any intent to enforce them fairly and consistently. Rules for thee and not for me. I could talk about the profusion of thought-terminating essays, which in my experience are typically cited well before a dispute reaches its conclusion. (see my metawiki userpage) There's also AGF, which outright demands credulity from the user. Since it can only be enforced insofar that a user says what they assume, it could be restated (more-or-less equivalently) as "do not question the motives of others". Yet despite these things, I believe that implementing this simple proposal would go a long way toward curtailing abuse, simply by way of making it plain to see. I intend this as policy proposal and a critique of current policy, not a critique of any particular admin or sysop.
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