User talk:GreenC/The Instinct to Punish

Belittling labels
@GreenC, overall I really appreciate this essay, and I think that this group effect is an important phenomenon. Right now, I'm looking at this sentence:

Punishers can sometimes act individually, such as calling a criminal on Wikipedia belittling labels, like "murderer" or "fraudster", instead of more neutral terms.

I doubt that "belittling" is the right word. Perhaps "disparaging" is intended?

Also, I wonder if you could give examples of "more neutral terms". Would you write '...labels, like "murderer", instead of more neutral terms, like "person who murdered"'? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:00, 16 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Sure I can change it to disparaging is better. I'll leave specific Wikipedia advice to WP:Crime labels essay. -- Green  C  22:07, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Without some idea of what you mean by "more neutral labels", I think that editors may read that and say "What's more neutral than to Call a spade a spade? WP:EUPHEMISMS and other ways of covering up the truth are not neutral". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:12, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * See Crime labels. It addresses those arguments eg. WP:BUTITSTHETRUTH -- Green  C  01:18, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Some feedback
Nice essay topic. My one piece of feedback is that the main point of the essay should be stated up front, instead of the final paragraph. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:05, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah it should have a nutshell. The nutshell could say like "Don't punch down. It's not a good look, and we know why you're doing it even if you don't, as explained below" Or something.


 * By "punch down" I mean: We are one of the most read websites in the world. That makes us quite powerful. We are a the primary component of the "public face" of most of our biographies. Our biographies are often the first google result for a name, or if not, in the top few anyway. Our subjects are just hapless individuals who can't do anything about how we choose to present them. It's absolutely bullying to say anything bad about them than we must do to avoid misleading the reader. It's ghoulish and frankly evil. It's asshole behavior. People should try to avoid being assholes.


 * Yeah sure I get the "The info is sourced. If it is not prohibited by one of our rules, we are therefore allowed to include it, period, end of argument. We do not censor and we do not make moral judgements, we are WP:AMORAL and cannot feel shame." But that's not true. H L Mencken said "To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment." You can't leave the moral world ever, even for one second, even by sitting down at a keyboard. You can't say "When I edit Wikipedia I am bound to put its rules foremost, above all other considerations". Well first of all that's terrible. At work, if the policy is dump toxic chemicals in the creek, would these people do it because its policy and that automatically makes it OK? Some would I guess. You're not going to reach them. Hopefully some wouldn't. Second of all, it's not even true. Punching down and putting the screws on some poor mook makes one feel powerful, because one is powerful at that moment. You're making this subjects public face for the whole world! You've got the whole weight and fame and glamor of the Wikipedia pulling in millions of readers to see your little turd! You're affecting this person's life, and she's fancier than you, 'cause she has an article and you don't. Very powerful. People like to feel powerful. This is a basic deep emotion that is maybe tied to the need to have control of one's environment and thus feel safe (I suppose).


 * Lol I do get ranty. I doubt if any of this is useful as it's about a power need rather than a groupthink need, and I don't have any data to back it up. But I did get to let off some steam! Herostratus (talk) 06:23, 10 February 2024 (UTC)