Wikipedia:How to disagree brilliantly

There are multi-varied approaches to disagreeing brilliantly on Wikipedia. Even if being a Brilliantly Disagreeing Wikipedian isn’t really your life’s work, the notion may yet have a certain allure. Even in the thick of a disagreement with one of those elusively invisible other editors, the sensation of turning through cyberpace, gazing into a lighted portal, can still make you feel as graceful as if you were a whirling dervish—which is its own kind of brilliance. Alternatively, you may feel as confounded as any insect with two or more of its limbs jammed between the Z and X keys on your own keyboard.

The way to becoming a Brilliantly Disagreeing Wikipedian has as much to do with how we think about the whole nature and pattern of disagreement—and how we adapt according to any new understanding—as with comprehending our present habits and temperament, and seeing past the controversy in any given discussion. In the quest to become a savant of cyberspace—or, alternatively, a user who is simply effective and benign—some of what is below may at least prove helpful, if not brilliant.

What follows is an in-depth discussion of the topic. If you're in a hurry and are trying to make sense of a conflict, and find a way of de-escalating it quickly, there are concise essays and official policies on the topics of dispute resolution, establishing a truce, harmonious editing and consensus. For sheer pith hardly anything beats the essay no angry mastodons.

Beware the fishy-eyed specimens
"I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these characters spend their time explaining themselves, and happily recognizing that they hold the same opinions. Good God, how important they consider it to think the same things all together. It's enough to see their expressions when one of those fishy-eyed men who look as if they are turned in upon themselves and with whom no agreement is possible passes among them."

"—Jean-Paul Sartre; La Nausée/Nausea, 1938; translated by Lloyd Alexander"

It's hard to find a novel where the simple fear of disagreeing is evoked as mordantly as in Jean Paul Sartre’s acute observation of existential folly in Nausea. As far as bogeyman depictions of the fear of disagreeing or being disagreed with go, the spectre of "fishy-eyed" men is a hard one to beat. Nevertheless, disagreement is often widely, if unconsciously, perceived as a social infelicity—if not an outright personal or interpersonal disturbance. At the very least, the notion of being contradicted, or of being shown to be mistaken because of someone else’s apparently superior knowledge or practical or moral reasoning, is one about which many people feel ambivalent, to put it mildly. At worst, disagreeing with somebody is construed as the act of degrading that person; to be disagreed with is to be, similarly, somehow degraded. Yet, for all of that, "the fishy-eyed man," or woman, is a tough specimen to steer clear of. Bodily invisibility aside, an online forum such as a Wikipedia talkpage on an even mildly controversial topic is a fairly dependable place to have a "fishy-eyed" encounter, sooner or later.

It's nothing personal


"It's nothing personal, I just don't like you."

"—lyrics from a song by Tom Lehrer"

To some, personal dislike is the cornerstone of a disagreement, not just something that's incidental to it. The issue under discussion even becomes a metaphor for our particular likes and dislikes. It's easy to notice just how quickly a disagreement becomes "personal"; all the more so if we have an investment in the subject at hand that is emotional. The onset of trepidation and aggravation in a disagreement leads us quickly to suspect the good faith of the person we're disagreeing with; the same emotionality can impact negatively upon our own good faith, rendering us elusive or combative, or both. To be in the back foot in a disagreement is seen often as a reason for resentment and/or self-doubt; it is easy on such occasions to cast ourselves in the role of victim. The pleasure of being "right", on the other hand, becomes one of those mundane satisfactions in life, like the enjoyment of a takeaway meal. The problem is that someone else has had to suffer to be "wrong" in order for us to enjoy that mundane satisfaction.

It's just emotion that's taken me over
All in all, the fact of becoming easily disturbed in a disagreement may be a sign of resistance to greater social clarity. Because disagreement can often be complex in and of itself, adding too much emotionality can complicate the disagreement in ways that occlude whatever is genuinely interesting and productive in a discussion. It isn't that our emotions are negative in and of themselves; it's simply that the more needlessly emotional we become, the more that candid good will is diminished—and the more we put up a barrier to clearly appraising our own arguments, as well as the arguments of the other person. Expressing ourselves precisely soon takes second place to resisting the person we're disagreeing with. Add to that an elemental distrust of a belief system of somebody else's that is at odds with our own—and a tendency to sneer at that same belief system—then sniping, flaming or casual ill-will will often creep into the disagreement.

The resulting stress of confrontation and sense of grievance and the appearance of arrogance or self-righteousness are enough to show that we're on the wrong course. There is a need to find a way of disagreeing differently, if not, indeed, brilliantly.

Brilliance has no ego
It's probably true to say that brilliance has no ego, and nothing, in and of itself, to do with ego either. A child who plays Chopin at five years old derives brilliance from proclivities that, while mysterious, having to do with ego at all. The moral brilliance of Mohandas Gandhi arose not because of ego but in spite of it—or through the conscious act of overcoming ego itself.

However, in spite of his moral brilliance, even Gandhi displayed signs of ego, such as his tendency to demand incredibly high standards of people when they had not volunteered for them. Hence, the likelihood of Gandhi's moral brilliance being accompanied by moral ambiguity, according to the psychologist Erik Erikson. Even in his venerable disagreement with the British, Gandhi's ego was not above question.

It pays to remember that no matter how brilliantly we disagree, ego is probably going to play some part or other in the disagreement. Our highly limiting self-sense, and the maze of fears and foibles and habits that occupy it, aren't something that can easily be suppressed or disregarded. Even so, if we can be intelligently aware of our own ego, then the disagreement is bound to be affected positively.

Sometimes the brilliance of people who disagree can seem to accentuate the power that disagreement. It is said that founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and founder of analytical psychology Carl Jung at one time disagreed so implacably that a loud crack was heard in a bookcase in a room in which they were sitting. And sometimes, otherwise brilliant people, can be almost childlike when it comes to disagreement. Although the late American chess master Bobby Fischer was, to put it mildly, a brilliant player, as a human being he was famously disagreeable. So heedless were Fischer's remarks on many subjects—and much of his behaviour—of people's sensitivities, that his capacity to disagree maturely was apparently minimal. Hence, Bobby Fischer might not have been considered a person who was capable of disagreeing brilliantly—unless the debate happened to be taking place on a chess board.

On not disagreeing brilliantly: The case of Galloway vs. Hitchens
In September 2005, high-profile pro-Saddam Hussein British MP George Galloway and renowned journalist and gadfly (and former Trotskyist) Christopher Hitchens appeared on stage at Baruch College in New York City to disagree over the war in Iraq in front of a live audience. It appeared, in this event billed as "the grapple in the big apple", that there was to be no love lost between Hitchens, who supported the war, and Galloway, who opposed it. According to Guardian columnist Gary Younge, Hitchens had apparently vowed before the debate that "[there'd] be no courtesies and no handshakes." Four months earlier, in front of a U.S. Senate Committee, Galloway had called Hitchens a "drink-sodden former Trotskyist popinjay". Hitchens had replied by dubbing Galloway "a real thug."

Now, in front of a capacity audience at Baruch College, Hitchens chided Galloway for his "sinister piffle" and for supporting "thugs and criminals". For his part, Galloway jibed that his opponent was a "hypocrite", adding that Hitchens was "a jester at the court of the Bourbon Bushes". Turning to September 11, Galloway declared "you may believe [the hijacked planes] came out of a clear blue sky but they came out of a swamp of hatred created by us." This elicited from the audience, in Younge's words, "a chorus of boos and single-finger gestures" while Hitchens shot back "You picked the wrong city to say that in, and the wrong month." "Galloway won on points", concluded Younge (while The Observer's Andrew Anthony awarded victory to Hitchens); "sadly, by the end of the night, few could remember what the point was." It seemed that, all in all, it had not been much of a brilliant disagreement; though some may yet have found "brilliance" in the bleakly funny spectacle of two grown men trading ad-lib insults in public.

Brilliance has no ego—not even in a disagreement.

Smiley Face has its place
Wikipedia encourages editors to create a milieu based on harmony. Indeed, many Wikipedians, including Brilliantly Disagreeing ones, work hard to guarantee that everybody is able to enjoy, to the greatest extent possible, just such an environment. In most cases, working to create harmony is simply a brilliantly ordinary thing to do. Inevitably this is something that requires continuous good will, and, invariably, a great deal of patience and self-restraint. Even so, a harmonious environment doesn't necessarily mean a Smiley Face Land overflowing with sweetness and light. While you don't want to be grim, it may be the case sometimes that you just don't feel like putting on your smiley face—and nor should you feel obliged to do so. Usually a smiley face means that, more than having beautiful intentions, you're feeling genuinely happy and transmitting genuine happiness at the same time. There are exceptions: "I smile when I'm angry" croons Leonard Cohen in the first track from his album Ten New Songs. And of course, excepting some editors with unusual psychic abilities, no one on Wikipedia can actually see your face to know whether you're smiling or not. A smiley face may, however, be evident through the kind of language that you use. It may be apparent to others that you're smiling because your words show just how much you're enjoying yourself. Of course, not all enjoyments are praiseworthy in equal measure. Enjoying a good stoush or argument—even if you're being relatively good-natured about it—doesn't necessarily mean that your opponent is deriving the same pleasure, or, for that matter, any pleasure at all. Worse, a smile can be a signal of schadenfreude or the act of deriving pleasure from someone else's suffering—something that isn't even faintly good-natured. Pictures of Saints, good Samaritans, and great social reformers, on the other hand, rarely depict any of these auspicious individuals as smiling. With Brilliantly Disagreeing Wikipedians being naturally next on this list, you may as well dismiss smiley face now for the twee, if, for the most part, harmless, thing that it truly is.