User talk:Alanyst/Atmosphere of suspicion

''This is a draft of an essay originally intended as a response at Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/C68-FM-SV/Workshop. It might appear there when finished, or remain here for further refinement and input.''

If I had to distill this case and the not yet accepted Intelligent Design RfAR case into three words, they would be atmosphere of suspicion. An atmosphere of suspicion seems to arise this way:
 * 1) Genuine problems with harassment, POV pushing, or other forms of abuse start things off, and those who find themselves or the topics they care about being attacked quickly react with uncivil or aggressive responses.
 * 2) In return, some bad-faith users escalate the conflict, while other editors in good faith criticize the first group for the manner or substance of their response.
 * 3) The community begins to polarize around the two groups as accusations and arguments multiply.
 * 4) Attention-seekers and deceptive individuals on both sides inflame the situation.
 * 5) A lingo develops around the dispute, and terms like "sockpuppet", "BADSITES", "MOAR DRAMAZ", "troll", "drama queen", "cabal", etc. take the place of dialogue, and become simple emotional buttons for the combatants to push.  Each side appreciates and encourages the sarcastic and humorous zingers that come from their camp, and cry foul at those that are launched from their opponents' camp.  Peacemakers and moderates are ignored or even accused of having an undisclosed bias for one side or another.
 * 6) At some point both sides regard the other as willfully blind to the legitimate points they have repeatedly raised, and cannot see how anyone who fails to accept them can possibly be acting in good faith.  People begin to watch each other's edits to catch them in a mistake, and leap to oppose adminship for those who aren't on the correct side of the dispute.
 * 7) Newcomers to the dispute encounter surprising hostility and divisiveness, and if they leap into things unaware of the minefield of linguistic and emotional triggers that has been laid, a disputant may rapidly conclude that the user is a sockpuppet or other willfully disruptive influence.
 * 8) Blocks are issued and undone, and things spiral out of control.

If what I describe is accurate, the evidence for this case and the ID case can be read in this light and the phases I describe can readily be identified. And perhaps the factors that lead from one step to the next can be more easily detected and addressed.

alanyst /talk/ 06:52, 3 June 2008 (UTC)