Wikipedia:Blocking policy/Personal attacks/Archive

This is a proposed addition to Wikipedia:Blocking policy. It is a revision to an older, failed policy that can be found at Wikipedia:Blocking policy/Personal attacks (old).

Format

At the moment this proposal is open for discussion. After a period of time, the discussion will be moved to a talk page and voting options will materialize.

Introduction

Although Wikipedia:No personal attacks is a good policy, it meets its limit in the form of enforcement. Currently, it can only be enforced by the arbitration committee, and thus long-standing and excessively vicious edit wars are often allowed to fester for longer than they should, or pages need to be chronically protected far more than they should. This policy is an attempt to give the personal attacks policy some teeth without dramatically increasing the powers of sysops. Long-term blocks for personal attacks must still be made by the arbitration committee or by Jimbo. However, this policy allows short term blocks to enforce cool-down periods and to forcibly dissuade users from taking potshots at each other that they might otherwise get away with due to the difficulty and time involved in an arbitration request.

This policy was proposed and rejected about four months ago, however I believe the climate is right to submit a revised version of it. Personal attacks continue to be a problem, and the burden required in gathering a body of evidence and submitting it to the arbcom is still too high. It should not require a lot of work for someone to protect themselves from abuse. That it so often does is a grave failing in the project.

Proposal

Personal attacks are not allowed on Wikipedia. At their discretion sysops may use temporary 24-hour blocks to enforce a “cooling down” period for users who repeatedly make personal attacks. This may not be done without a warning being given to the user prior to the block. If a reasonable amount of time (around a week) has passed without incident since a user was warned, sysops should warn again rather than simply blocking. This should in no way be taken as a license by anyone to make one personal attack a week.

Although blocks may be reapplied if personal attacks continue, repeated violations should be referred to the Arbitration committee. This power is given in the same vein as the power to protect pages and to block for 3RR violations. That is to say, it does not exist to provide sysops with punitive powers, but rather to provide sysops with necessary tools to carry out the task of breaking up disputes and making it so sane people can edit without having to deal with crazed crackmonkeys who demand that their POV and only their POV be represented and that anyone who disagrees be sued for being a Nazi. This is to say, sysops are to use this empowerment to resolve and cool down disputes - not to inflame them.

Sysops blocking under this policy may not block users for making personal attacks in the course of disputes that the sysop is involved in, and especially not for personal attacks made against them, unless the personal attacks also constitute clear and unambiguous vandalism (i.e. replacing their userpage with “U SUCK!!1!1!!”). Even in this case, it is preferable to get another administrator to apply the block.

Discussion

Wikipedia:Three revert rule enforcement has caused a flood of legalistic bullshit. Certain people spend far more time arguing over what constitutes a revert, who reverted how many times, and who deserves to be blocked, than they do in productive discussion of the content. It's only to be expected: if one can get someone blocked, one doesn't need to work for a compromise and has a better chance of forcing one's POV into the article. I contend that this policy will do the same, and the remedy will be worse than the problem. —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 18:51, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think for the most part personal attacks are better defined than reverts. The biggest problem with the 3RR, as has been frequently pointed out, is that it is too often treated as a floor rather than a ceiling - people feel it is their god-given right to make three reverts. Also, I think prior to the implementation of that policy there needed to be a clarification on what a revert was. I don't see any such problems in the personal attacks policy, honestly. Snowspinner 20:29, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

Is "all your edits suck big time" a personal attack? Is what I did here a personal attack? Are the comments about ips here personal attacks?Geni 20:45, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Probably not, no, certainly not. But I see your point, and I'm going to try to take a pass at the policy to address it. Snowspinner 02:27, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

Some personal attacks are obvious to all, some are not. The obvious ones can be blocked. The borderline ones require judgement. If a sysop decides something is a personal attack, and others disagree, they can always unblock him, just as they currently can for 3RR blocks, or even vandalism blocks. As for the 3RR enforcement, from what I've seen it has strongly contributed to the minimizing of revert wars, and bringing people to the Talk: pages. Is it perfect? No. But it's better than before; I recall one user, still editing by the way, who reverted a page 14 times in one day, against the efforts of several other editors, with no reprecussions. That kind of nonsense has stopped. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:29, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Of course people shouldn't engage in personal attacks. But I can't see any reason why I should let such things bother me. I'm reminded of the saying: Sticks and stones may brake my bones but pixilated images on my computer screen will never hurt me (or something like that).

Of course people shouldn't engage in personal attacks. But people should and shouldn't do all sorts of things. They should be polite, they shouldn't be rude, they should be kind and not mean, they should be loving and caring not hateful and full of spite. But you can't legislate love. Or at least you shouldn't try to.

Of course people shouldn't engage in personal attacks. But the solution to objectionable speech is more speech. If someone makes a personal attack then the community should make it known through lots of unobjectionable speech, that such objectionable speech isn't considered proper behavior and will cause considerable loss of respect and regard for anyone who engages in it.

Of course people shouldn't engage in personal attacks. But, rather than "cooling down" things, a temporary ban is more likely to inflame them. And I can see a temporary ban being more often used merely as a vehicle for revenge, rather than for any noble purpose.

Paul August ☎ 19:06, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

To see an example of how this policy will likely be used see the following exchange excerpted from Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/George A. Borgman

…

Delete. Article does not establish notability. Gamaliel 19:13, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

KEEP. Why is this article up for deletion? George A. Borgman is a "notable in his field."… Dwain 20:56, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

…

… Delete. --BM 16:29, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

…

You shouldn't be putting guesses into the Wikipedia, unless they are the guesses of someone reasonably likely to "guess" correctly, and whose guesses are at least documented. You, on the other hand, are just a login-name, and nobody knows whether your guesses are correct; indeed in this case, you are walking away from it the first time someone relies on it. How much of the rest of the "information" that you put into this article is reliable? --BM 12:27, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Saying over 200 is an estimate which is in fact correct I could have said of one hundred over 150 over 200 all these are correct. Now I know for a fact that these are correct as I e-mailed the operator of the Mississippi Rag. She said that Borgman had written over 200 reviews just for her paper alone and that didn't include his column or articles. She even said that he is preparing a book of late for publication. Since most people who contribute don't give any sources what-so-ever this is a well sourced article now too. Stop being so stupid BM! Dwain 17:21, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:No personal attacks. Gamaliel 18:15, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I told him not to be stupid, I didn't say he was stupid. There is a difference, in case you didn't realize that. Dwain 19:54, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)
Rationalize it however you want, but do not do it again. Consider this an official administrative warning. Gamaliel 20:44, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wow, I'm scared. Dwain 20:50, Jan 30, 2005 (UTC)
Please take note of this as well. Gamaliel 21:06, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Come on everybody, lighten up ;-) Gamaliel: Do you really think you are making the situation better by making threats? Or by backhandedly accusing Dwain of being "a dick"? A polite and gentle request to Dwain, and to BM as well I might add, to tone down their language is the most that was needed here. Paul August ☎ 20:21, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Paul August ☎ 21:07, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

I really love this part: "... without having to deal with crazed crackmonkeys" :) I'm 100% behind this policy change. I think it is both well-thought-out and way overdue. As an ArbCom member I especially like that fact that repeat offenders are sent to us, rather than the immediate imposition of long term bans by admins. This is a very necessary check on admin power while at the same time giving them the authority to break-up nasty brawls. The only thing I would add to the proposed policy is that personal attacks can be removed by anybody (ala Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks). But, IMO, that would best be left as a separate matter since I don't want to scuttle this effort. --mav

I point out to several objectors that this isn't for slips of the tongue. Note key words in the policy - repeated personal attacks are necessary for even a warning to be issued, which then has to be ignored in order to actually get to a ban. The personal attacks policy needs to be violated serially and fairly grotesquely for this policy to kick in, to the point where any error that exists in the personal attacks policy (Which I don't think is nearly as high as blankfaze does) is going to be filtered out by the copious checks and balances on this policy. Snowspinner 14:15, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Repeated how many times? 2? 3? 23? How serially? How grotesquely? I'm not really interested in answers to these questions, but they're an example of the arguments that are going to arise should the proposal become policy. And of course POV warriors are going to take advantage of this: they'll wikilawyer their weaselly black hearts out if it means they can get an opponent blocked from editing their pet articles. (See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive4#OneGuy for an example: compare the amount of time and energy spent bickering over reverts there with the amount of time and energy discussing the article that was at the core of the dispute, and one of my reasons for opposing this policy should become clear.) —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 15:28, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I would like to see something like this implemented, because I really do see a lot of nasty personal attacks that are not only disruptive, but fuel edit wars, generally breed discontent, and are just plain mean. That said, I'm pretty sure I'll be opposing this proposal. The personal attacks policy does not clearly enough define what a personal attack is. And I'm not sure that it even can. I think this because I have on numerous occasions made comments that I in all sincerity did not believe to be personal attacks but where construed as other as just that.

Take for instance:

User1: "That was the worst/dumbest/most ridiculous edit/revert/vote I've ever seen."

I think that whether or not User1's comment constitutes a personal attack is debatable, especially given that the comment is directed toward the edit/revert/vote and not the user. I think different users would have different opinions on whether or not it is indeed a personal attack.

Or even:

User2: "Reverting again; stop deleting my edits."
User3: "Reverting; Don't be a jerk; Stop trolling."

Is "Don't be a jerk" a personal attack? Is accusing someone of trolling a personal attack? Again, it depends on who you ask.

I think that "What is a personal attack?" just might be too subjective a question to standardise a policy around. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 22:20, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Concur with Blankfaze. Also note that WP:RPA was never accepted as policy. Radiant _* 15:34, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

Dealing with frivolous complaints: a proposal

Here's an idea, which is not entirely serious: What if frivolous complaints were penalized? Say, if no sysop took action on a complaint of personal attacks within a given time limit (say 24 hours), or if another sysop judged the block to be unwarranted, the complainer would then receive a 24-hour block, to be increased with each succeeding frivolous complaint. (As long as we're relying on sysop judgement as the sole criterion for what constitutes a personal attack.) That would make POV warriors think twice before trying to use trumped-up complaints of personal attacks to get their way in editing disputes. —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 15:50, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's both a very good idea and a very terrible one. :) Snowspinner 16:11, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)