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April-May 2008

Da Costa's syndrome

This is, in the grand scheme of things, a minor case, but it may illustrate some of the damage:

We have identified a single-purpose account, run by an identifiable individual who "just happens" to have a non-mainstream take on a particular set of symptoms. His real article, called The posture theory, was deleted as non-notable through AfD. A few days later, he decided to hang his idea on the peg of "Da Costa's syndrome" (a vague 19th century syndrome, generally considered a psychosomatic anxiety disorder). It's overall an unimportant article for Misplaced Pages, so we can't justify investing several editors' time and energy into turning it into a little gem of an article and discrediting his personal views. Considering the basic priorities, the goal for this article is to have it not actually be actively wrong while we deal with more important articles, like Meningitis or Mental health.

The SPA editor is no more frustrated with the NPOV-oriented editors than we are with him. He's (finally) mostly given up on getting his name and his website (with his expensive self-published book for sale) in the article. He comes by every week or two and adds bona fide medical publications on the subject -- but always and only those articles which support his particular views. Of course, the condition is entirely superseded, so most of the refs are from before most editors were born.

No editor has ever supported his view. Five editors have directly told him that using Misplaced Pages to promote his personal ideas is not accepted. We've been at this for more than six months, and he's undeterred in his overall goal.

But what sort of support do we get from the broader community? We get responses that add up to "Y'all play nice, now." "It's a content dispute: you should 'work for a consensus'." "You could just keep removing the stuff he adds; it's not like your time and energy is worth anything." "Surely nobody would deliberately add original research, because adding original research (*gasp*) violates Misplaced Pages's policy."

Yes, of course all of this violates a variety of policies, guidelines, and cultural conventions -- notably WP:CONSENSUS, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, WP:COI, WP:RS, WP:TRUTH and WP:COPYVIO, in this case. But my existing attitude readjustment tools apparently don't reach as far as Australia, and the editor remains unscathed.

It's back at WP:COI/N for a second go-round. I expect no practical improvement: he's not particularly rude, so why bother blocking him? Unless I'm willing to undertake a concerted campaign to drive away the editor by convincing him that Misplaced Pages is controlled by a particularly rude version of the Wicked Witch of the West, then I'll probably still be removing the same cruft and leaving the same explanations and warnings on talk pages at the end of the year.

And that, BTW, is the only effective solution currently in place: When I am no longer willing to put up with this self-promoting nonsense, I can team up with other disgusted editors to be so mean and rude to the SPA that he leaves in disgust. It's not just the good editors who can be driven away by bad behavior. Unfortunately, every time someone resorts to that approach, Misplaced Pages's reputation is damaged.

We need another solution. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:25, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Conclusion - addressing POV problems

GTB: I don't think that's right. I think that most POV pushers really believe what they claim to believe.

F: Yeah. So what?

Good question; see below.

Haemo: What matters is the effect on the encyclopedia, and that's the same either way: the encyclopedia is compromised, corrupted, made to look ridiculous, or even all three at once.

F: Correct.

Well, what matters is their effect on the encyclopedia, which is negative either way, and also how we go about stopping them, which might differ in the two cases. I'm pushing in the direction of identifying and studying specific strategies in a more scientific way that we have, hitherto. I may be wrong, and if so, we'll find out, but I suspect that there will be better strategies than identifying "bad guys" and topic-banning them. I'm open to testing both kinds, any kind of strategy. Maybe not any kind...

GTB: Regardless of one's opinion on that question, there are going to be different strategies.

F:Well different strategies have to be tried. Because we cannot continue under the present strategies which are ineffectual and based on a complete lack of knowledge of this venemous situation that the vast majority of Wikipedians are blind to and unaware of.--Filll (talk) 04:40, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'm pretty much in agreement there.

Is part of the misunderstanding... does it seem to you that I'm suggesting professionalism as a the solution to neutrality problems? I'm not, and I haven't been. I was brought into this whole discussion because I saw people saying that "the community is obsessed with civility" and that what we need is more people "willing to call a spade a spade". I disagree with those claims.

I disagree that the solution is to downplay civility and assumption of good faith, and I said so at that RfC, and I'll continue to say so until I'm shown wrong. That can happen, and I'll facilitate my being proven wrong, if that's where things go.

The fact that I oppose incivility and accusations of bad faith doesn't mean I'm think promotion of "CIVIL" and "AGF" is the solution. It's just that we shouldn't begin our search for a solution by hobbling ourselves and handing ammunition to POV pushers. That's foolish, even though it's a completely understandable reaction to frustration. The high level of frustration is an indication that we need serious solutions. The beginning of a serious solution, however, is to commit to approaching it as serious professionals. Am I wrong? -GTBacchus 22:55, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

GTBacchus: 'I was brought into this whole discussion because I saw people saying that "the community is obsessed with civility" and that what we need is more people "willing to call a spade a spade"'

No one in this discussion, either on the talk page or on the main page, has used the expressions quoted above, so I'm not sure how it is that you were "brought into this whole discussion" because people were saying these things. Perhaps you have this discussion mixed up with another one. Your post is the only place in this discussion where those expressions occur.

The discussion that formed the main content of these pages was helpful, informative, and positive, IMO, and I'm cautiously encouraged by the recommendations coming out of it, as well as by Jimbo's endorsement. At least there's an acknowledgement that someone is paying attention and is supportive of finding a real solution to a real problem. The post-discussion that started with section 25 has added nothing useful to the discussion, IMO, and I regret my part in it. I was exasperated by a failure to move beyond an obsession with the word "civil" toward some actual suggestions of solutions to the real problems that beset us, but I shouldn't have let my exasperation get the better of me. I apologize to the editors who have done such a good job of articulating and exploring the problem here. Thank you.Woonpton (talk) 12:25, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Woonpton, thanks for your comments. When I said I was brought into "this whole discussion", I'm definitely referring to a larger scope than this page. The comments that brought me to this issue were made at an RfC a couple of months ago, where editors who are active on this page said precisely the things that I quoted. If I've seemed obsessed with talking about civility versus incivility, it's because I have been handed the argument, repeatedly, that incivility is somehow necessary or a good idea, or that our civility policy should be scrapped or at least downplayed. If you never said that, then my comments along those lines have not been directed at you, and I apologize if it seemed that they were. I'm not always the best at articulating precisely what I want to say. -GTBacchus 14:14, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

As someone mentioned above, there is an immense amount here, and it might not be possible given assorted constraints to respond to it. I guess I am still waiting to see more concrete examples with real substance. Pretend I am from Missouri. In the meantime, I will keep making what I perceive as potential solutions to attempt and placing them out there for consideration in various venues.--Filll (talk) 00:15, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Concrete examples of what? So far, I've been trying to ask a few questions, and defending myself against claims that I'm in favor of all manner of nonsense. -GTBacchus 07:54, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I ask for the same thing from GTBacchus that I ask from everyone; namely, concrete examples of novel approaches to these issues, and concrete examples of their success or failure in field trials. I have found over the last few months that many who make grand pronouncements about this area are quite vague about the details of their purported novel approaches, or have developed their novel approaches based on uninformed intuition and hunches, or have never tested their novel approaches in practice, or when I have observed their vaunted novel approaches in action, they have not performed anywhere near what was advertised. This is not to say that novel approaches do not exist; I made several suggestions of novel approaches to the mainspace version of this page, and I have made several more at the User: Raymond arritt Expert Withdrawal pages. I have listed a few I have seen operate successfully in my draft here. I have observed several admins and editors here who have shown me novel approaches to this issue; in particular I was quite impressed by User:Silence but I have also been impressed by User:KillerChihuahua on occasion. So I know that new approaches exist, because I have seen it. I just think that it is to our advantage to compile the largest possible number of them and to test them in actual field conditions to gain experience with them. --Filll (talk) 15:22, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Then we're in complete agreement. The best suggestion I can make is to create some kind of central discussion area for comparison of different strategies. I'd like to see groups of Wikipedians mindfully select and apply specific strategies, and keep notes on what works and what doesn't. What I know now is that I've got my ideas, and other people have got theirs, and that arguing between the two takes us around in circles.

I think the central page should be called something like "Dispute Resolution work group", as opposed to "Expert Withdrawal" or "Civil POV pushing", which are focused on some of the right questions, but which carry weird baggage.

I don't know whether your second paragraph above ("I have found...") applies to me, since I haven't proposed any novel approaches, "vaunted" or otherwise. I've disagreed with the idea of scrapping civility, or that "the community is too obsessed with civility" (which turned out to be code for "the community is too permissive of wikilawyering"), and I've suggested that any successful approach should involve professional behavior,. I have got some approaches in mind that I'm looking forward to testing on articles such as Homeopathy and Chiropractic, and I'll be in a position to do that when I've laid some more ground work. However, any idea that my arguments for professionalism consist of suggesting a "novel approach" is sorely mistaken. -GTBacchus 17:27, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Jimbo's endorsement?

Jimbo endorsed this? How? Where?--Filll (talk) 03:12, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Further up this page - Because my opinions are often given more weight than they deserve, I am reluctant to say very much. But I will say this: I am generally supportive of conservative movements in this direction.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 04:56, 3 May 2008 (UTC) Raul654 (talk) 03:14, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

This has been archived, btw, but can be seen at /Archive 1#The way forward: The homeopathy case. I will say though that Jimbo was clearly not "fully endorsing" something, but simply saying that he was generally supportive of a direction. Let's not read more into it than that. --Elonka 16:10, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

This page just blew my mind

Raul654 and JzG are complaining that there are too many crazy, pedantic idiots on wikipedia, who use passive, systemic rudeness to win arguments, and it is harming the quality of this excellent web site. Is that what's going on here?

Can someone summarise this page for me, and explain what is the goal of this? What am I missing? I'm so confused. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tyoip (talk • contribs) 20:00, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

No, the problem is that we have too many POV pushers who are sufficiently civil to avoid being sanctioned or blocked for incivility. The dispute resolution process is geared almost entirely toward dealing with incivility, and falls down whean dealing with people who remain civil even while editing in a highly biased way. Raul654 (talk) 21:40, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Somewhat off-topic because it doesn't necessarily concern POV pushing, but what is the dispute resolution process for content? I read through WP:DR and it only seems to apply to reasonable editors. Reason with them (step 1), ask for help in reasoning with them etc. (steps 2-11), and finally at the end of all of that if they are still being unreasonable take it to arbitration (final step). Since ArbCom doesn't rule on content, is there actually a content dispute resolution process? --Nealparr 23:11, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Sort of, but it fails in many ways. For example, no one is forced to take part in mediation, which sort of handles content disputes. Also, several cases that I know of never received proper attention from the mediation organizations although assistance had been requirested. Also, there is no method for forcing people to behave reasonably in content dispute resolution procedures.

Also, when should these methods be applied? Where is the line? Suppose someone refuses to abide by WP:NOR or WP:NPOV, or quotes the wrong definition of WP:NPOV. Even if 10 or 20 or 50 other editors tell them they are wrong, they still politely maintain they are correct. Even if 100 other editors disagree with them, they still just ignore that and claim they are correct and everyone else is wrong. Suppose they quote the wrong definition of NPOV 10 times and are corrected. And still advance the wrong interpretation. Should someone do something after 10 times? What about after 50 times? What about after 500 times? What if the stonewalling lasts a week? Should one act? What if it lasts a month? What if it lasts a year? What if lasts 3 years? At what point does one act? And what does one do?

There is an immense body of editors at Misplaced Pages and Misplaced Pages Review that claim that as long as the person never typed $#@% during a discussion, then they should be allowed to continue without restriction on Misplaced Pages. Even if this unproductive editor never produced a single positive edit in 5 years, they should still be allowed to continue unhampered. Even if controlling and answering the disruption of this one editor drains the energies of 3 other editors away from productive work, nothing should be done to them. Even if they waste the efforts of 5 other editors or 10 other editors, they claim that since this unproductive editor never said $#@%, they should not have anything done to them. And if anyone suggests anything else, people scream that Misplaced Pages is too mean and too harsh and too draconian and Misplaced Pages has to be more lenient to let anyone do whatever they want and all rules are bad and all policies are bad and all references and citations and sources are bad.

That is the question that has to be examined. And that is the purpose of this page. If you want to get a little taste of what we are discussing, some of the exercises listed at User:Filll/AGF Challenge might be of interest to you.--Filll (talk) 23:41, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I know it doesn't really work, but I've yet to see a single place that describes how it would work if editors non-disruptively refuse to give up their position. To me, that's more disturbing. The entire dispute resolution process for content disputes has no end, at all, written anywhere in the policies. This isn't even about POV pushing, just content disputes in general, which is why it's off-topic but sort of also spot-on. If two neutral editors hard-headedly and civily disagree on grammar, for example, there is no end to the process of disagreeing. It just keeps going on until someone eventually burns out. That's per policy, which is the scary part. It's no wonder the burn-out rate on Misplaced Pages is so high. Btw, I already did the AGF questionaire. You may not recall, but I left some suggestions on improving one of the questions on your talk page : ) --Nealparr 00:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok...I'm confused by the repeated phrase "superficially civil". I think it's important to define the scope of this rule very narrowly. If you limit it to POV pushers, you will solve a particular problem that has been written about endlessly and so far nothing has been done, while limiting the ambiguity that allows POV pushing to persist.

But you're not really talking about civility. You're not talking about the people who randomly delete useful information for hours everyday. You're not talking about the obnoxious, antisocial people who post on policy pages. You're not suggesting we enforce actual civility, are you? Who will be left to make the rules, when everyone on the Arbitration Committee is banned? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tyoip (talk • contribs) 00:10, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

That last sentence is a huge non-sequitor and makes no sense. Raul654 (talk) 04:40, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

That's why it's a waste of time to argue with Davkal. :) Sorry, sorry... "Tyoip". MastCell  04:57, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Blocking tendentious fringe editors

I have to agree that I think it would be pretty much impossible for a truly outside admin to discern fringe pov pushing without help. If you aren't familiar with the nitty gritty of the sources/controversies in a subject, when you visit the talkpage it just looks like arguing. And it's not apparent from an argument that it's the 99th time that argument has happened, due to WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, or how many people are staying away or have left simply because it's the 99th argument, or that it isn't a content dispute per se but a fringe deal. Maybe it would be simpler to designate "tendentious fringe pov pushing" as a blockable offense, with a staged series of warnings, like for vandalism. Editors at the article could make the case on AN or AN/I, by citing the common features with diffs: source mining, trying to use unreliable fringe sources, trying to reconfigure WP:WEIGHT by source-mining and using fringe sources, re-arguing the same points over and over. The onus could be on the complaining editor/editors to provide a source demonstrating that the view is fringe. TFPP is a serious thing, which does harm the encyclopedia, both by creating a poisonous editing environment, and by skewing articles. I personally think it does more damage than NPA/people who get momentarily mad and call someone else an a**hole--tendentious fringe pov pushing is more insidiously and pervasively harmful. Extensive dispute resolution shouldn't be necessary for every instance of TFPP--they look like content disputes, but they're essentially not; they're about disruption (and trying to give a pet bias a high Google rank). And requiring extensive dispute resolution that can only be ended with an Arbcom ruling is a barrier so high that a lot of people just leave, instead. Right now, you can go to AN/I with a diff that shows "he called me a whore" and so and so will be blocked; but if you go to AN/I with diffs that show he's a TFPP, it's a "content dispute," and pity the admin who wades into it. I think TFPP should be codifed/described via a "duck test" standard, so people can make informative complaints, for which there can be escalating warnings that don't require extensive dispute resolution or an intervening admin becoming an expert on the subject/involved in the "dispute". Wikpedia is not a free speech exercise, we are not experiencing a shortage of fringe povs, and no matter how many were warned/blocked, someone new will always come along to bring up the fringe pov again. If there's anything fringe worth including someone is sure to make the case for it. There's nothing to lose really (except skewed articles and alientated productive editors). A series of four warnings seems reasonable--they get feedback and chances to stop. (I've never actually seen a TFPP get feedback except from "the other side" of a dispute, which they ignore out of hand...) -PetraSchelm (talk) 20:13, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea, if it can be boiled down to something workable. I have suggested similar things a few times.

• 3RR is pretty straightforward. You go to AN/I with your 4 or 5 diffs, and you show you have applied a warning and that the behavior continued after. No muss, no fuss, easy to do... and a quick sanction for a few hours or a few days. Gets your attention.

• CIVIL is quite straightforward. A diff with some profanity directed at someone else, and you get a nice quick clean block for a short period.

• NPA is of a similar nature. A warning, and then a block. Easy as pie with a couple of diffs.

• violating other principles of WP having to do with content (NPOV, NOR, RS, V, CON, DE, TE, etc) are almost impossible to deal with, because we have created very high barriers:

• • need for an uninvolved admin
  • need many many diffs in an RfC or Arbcomm proceeding
  • preparing for an RfC or Arbcomm proceeding is frustrating and wasteful and exhausting
  • long drawn out mediations are rarely of value
  • content RfCs draw almost no attention so are almost worthless

If there could be an easy guideline, or set of checkboxes on a standard form, and simple warning system, with some guarantee of a short sanction if some threshold was clearly crossed, it could help to change the culture. For example, one of the most common complaints on controversial articles is that if there is negative or critical material about the subject matter (conspiracy theory, alien abduction, alternative medicine, ghosts, reincarnation, polywater, cold fusion, zero point energy, time cube, other pseudoscience, etc), then it is claimed that this violates NPOV because anything negative is not "neutral". And an editor, who is often a SPA, can repeat over and over that having negative material in an article violates neutrality and/or NPOV. And they can have 10 editors and admins explain this to them, and then use WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT to ignore it and continue to maintain that any negative material in an article violates neutrality and/or NPOV. This can go on for days, or weeks, or months, or years. This argument can go on for hundreds of kilobytes if not megabytes. This sort of dialogue will drive away productive editors from the article. This sort of dialogue will discourage experts from the outside from joining Misplaced Pages.

But if the SPA makes this claim 10 times, 50 times, or 500 times, we currently are essentially powerless to do a thing. If we attempt to do something, there will many who claim it is unfair or it is censorship or we are not sufficiently lenient or we are beating up on someone unfairly. But why is such a thing permitted, and even encouraged by a large contingent at Misplaced Pages?

I believe that it is the lack of experience in controversial areas, for the most part. Some of course just want to create havoc on Misplaced Pages. But if an editor personally has never dealt with this sort of thing, and the longest "talk page argument" they have ever had is maybe 40 posts, how can they even appreciate one that lasts for 1000 posts? If they have never dealt with serious wikilawyering, how can they even understand what it is like to deal with someone who wants to misinterpret WP policy and use it as a weapon against others?

That is why I have worked on the AGF Challenge, which is just a start. We need almost an Eliza-like program on IRC for admins to train on (that sometimes is a machine, and sometimes a human, arguing tendentiously). The completed record could be then be evaluated and graded and suggestions made. There is nothing like trying to get someone to obey those content policies when they are dead set against them in a controversial area. And they argue and argue and argue the same intentionally misunderstood bit of policy and misinterpret sources for hundreds of kilobytes and many days. After you have had a few experiences like that, then you start to understand a bit. From my observations of these sorts of discussions about "unblocking SPA X" or "unbanning troll Y" on AN, the vast majority of people weighing in have little to no experience in controversial areas and long arguments of this sort.--Filll (talk) 21:23, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I was thinking along similar lines.

The key is to define clearly what the problematic behaviour is. If it can be described and defined objectively enough that in most cases, everyone, even the POV-pusher, can recognize whether the behaviour fits the definition or not, then it can be easily controlled with warnings and blocks.

Here's a possible remedy:

• Choose a subset of the editor's edits: this could be
  • All their edits.
  • All their edits to a particular page.
  • Specific material being edit-warred over, e.g. "all your edits that change 'states' to 'asserts without proof that'"
  • All edits that add material about theory Y to an article
  • All edits that make the article more sympathetic to theory Y or less sympathetic to theory X or both
  • Or any other clearly definable subset of their edits.
• Point out that all or almost all of the edits in this subset have been reverted (by more than one different editor at times), and request therefore that from now on, the editor get consensus on the talk page before editing for any edits in that subset.
• If the editor continues that type of edit without getting consensus on the talk page first and their edits continue to be reverted, then escalate to a warning from an admin that further such edits will be considered disruptive and may result in blocks.

Basically, the problem is that people say "stop doing that!" and the POV-pusher says "stop doing what?" The more clearly we can define what needs to be stopped, the more easily we can ask (or force) people to stop. It's not necessary for every POV-pusher to understand why they're being blocked (though ideally, all would), but it's reasonable to explain why they're being blocked clearly enough that almost any person would understand; this also increases the chance that they will change their behaviour for the better rather than being blocked.

The description of the undesirable behaviour should be such that if the person stops doing that, then they really do become significantly easier to get along with. In other words, we need to work on putting our finger on exactly what the problematic behaviour is. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 01:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me though that unless there is an objective definition of what constitutes a "POV-pusher", any discussion couched in such terms is bound to fail. --John (talk) 05:17, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's the thing--there's a difference between a garden variety pov pusher (which everyone sometimes is) and a fringe pov pusher (and between content disputes, which can be fruitful...and endless argumentation from a fringe pov pusher trying to change the weight of opinion on a subject via Misplaced Pages, which is not fruitful). I think three things that would be crucial to a definition are 1) proof that the view being pushed is fringe 2) proof that the same argument is being had more than 2x 3) violations of undue weight (and RS)...? -PetraSchelm (talk) 05:29, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't see anything here though that improves on our existing WP:NPOV policy. We need to be careful and judicious in our application of the policy as regards "fringe" theories. Sure, we don't want our encyclopedia to be a laughing stock by over-emphasizing minority beliefs. But we should be careful too. As a science graduate and science educator, I've been around long enough to be cognizant that in science as on here, consensus can change. Pre-1970 or so, global warming and continental drift, pre-1990 or so, ball lightning, would all have very much been considered fringe beliefs, yet now they are accepted by a broad consensus. Nobody currently editing here can accurately foretell what people in 10 or 20 years will think about cold fusion or parapsychology, just as nobody in 1980 could have foretold that in 2008 we would all be here editing an online encyclopedia from our homes. We need to be especially careful on certain topics to present a genuinely balanced view that reflects the contemporary scientific consensus, sure. But we also need to avoid being or even looking like either the Spanish Inquisition or red-baiters in the process. --John (talk) 06:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

You're going off-track/talking about something completely different: that the consensus changes doesn't make the consensus on a topic different now, and Misplaced Pages can only reflect what the consensus is now. (That's the problem, in some respects--there are people who would like to use Misplaced Pages as a means to reconfigure consensus to suit themselves. This especially seems to be the case not for people representing views on the vanguard, which will someday be accepted, but people pushing views that have a snowball's chance in hell of ever being mainstream, like pedophile rights to have sex with children, aids denialism, onion juice therapy, electronic voice phenomenon...) -PetraSchelm (talk) 07:02, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree that I'm talking about something different, I think this realization is key. Of course we can only reflect the consensus now; but we need to be careful about branding people we don't agree with as POV-warriors or the like. As I said, as nobody can accurately predict the future, we cannot know with total certainty which views will or won't be accepted in a few years. Science is not religious dogma, and therefore does not contain orthodoxy or heresy. Misplaced Pages should bear this in mind. --John (talk) 15:11, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

<undent>John, while you clearly have a lot of editing experience overall, you definitely have very limited experience editing controversial articles and in particular articles where these FRINGE concerns are paramount, such as articles which have to address pseudoscience and science. So I am afraid I think this is the origin of some of your lack of understanding here. I might also point out that while all scientific understanding is temporary by definition (see demarcation problem.) However, that does not mean we should discard all articles on science since we are sure that the current understanding reflected in almost every single science article on Misplaced Pages will be superceded in the future. In fact, we could even state, not too inaccurately, that all our science articles on Misplaced Pages are wrong. That does not mean we should remove all science articles, however.

In addition, of course as I am sure everyone here knows, Misplaced Pages is not a crystal ball. So although some of these ideas might come back at some point, we should not treat them as though they are current viable theories. Because that is inaccurate. And for every discredited theory like plate tectonics that is revived, there are literally thousands, or tens of thousands of discredited theories that are never revived, like caloric or phlogisten. --Filll (talk) 19:32, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Your observations on my editing experience are inaccurate; I have been a substantial contributor to Apollo Moon Landing hoax conspiracy theories, for what it is worth. I agree that it is unlikely that caloric or phlogiston will be recreated any time soon, and I am glad that you appreciate the provisional nature of all scientific knowledge. It may be helpful to focus, not on discredited 18th century theories, but the main environmental challenge the world currently faces, which is global warming. As you are no doubt aware, there are still those who would wish to discredit the anthropogenic theory of rising temperatures, for whatever reasons. This is a discussion towards a better way to avoid the unproductive conflict which ensues when editors disagree about the nature of a scientific consensus. I would propose that any such solution will recognize that scientific consensus can change. In the case of global warming for example, the scientific consensus has only become really clear in the last few years. If we were working on this project in, say, 1988, there would be a reasonable case for debunking GW as fringe science as it was not yet almost universally accepted by the scientific community at that time. Now, in 2008, these same arguments would more likely be deployed against the GW skeptics. The nature of the problem has not changed in the interim, but the nature of our understanding of it has.

There was an interesting article in New Scientist recently which explored the philosophical underpinnings of this debate (link here; subscribers only). It suggests that the long-standing idea of Popperian falsifiability may need to be re-examined in the light of theories like dark energy and the multiverse flagrantly failing to conform to it, yet being considered as useful or even essential to explain observations by many scientists. As the article states, "During the 20th century, Newton's theory of gravity was repeatedly "falsified" by observations: for example, by predicting only half the observed bending of light by the sun's gravitational field. Yet scientists are not about to ditch Newton any time soon, as his laws work perfectly well in everyday situations." However unsatisfactory some people here may find it, science is not immune to such relativity; what is pseudoscience today may be accepted fact tomorrow, and vice versa. Any policy which hopes to improve our coverage of science and pseudoscience will need to recognize at its core that these terms are not fixed in stone, and that one person's NPOV is another person's tendentious trash. Such is the nature of scientific debate. A solution which merely tries to make it easier to ban or block those who strive to alter articles in a particular direction will end up in the same trashcan as WP:BADSITES did. It's a complex problem, and a solution which fails to recognize that complexity is doomed to failure. --John (talk) 20:02, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with much of this. However I might note that (1) Falsifiability has long been discredited in the philosophy of science as a useful concept. For a few decades really. You might find it interesting to look into it. (2) Scientific consensus changes of course, as we both noted, and scientific consensus is only ever provisional. However, the role of Misplaced Pages is to reflect the consensus after it develops, not to anticipate it or be on the leading edge of any change of scientific consensus.--Filll (talk) 21:06, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Of course you're right about falsifiability. I wonder how many of our editors here, and how many of the proponents of initiatives like this one and WP:SPOV are aware of this though. I agree too that we need to take a conservative position on such issues. A simplistic, black-and-white approach that talks in terms of "POV-pushers" will not answer though, it seems to me. Here's a salient quote from the same NS article which I found very thought-provoking and addresses this exact issue.

"Take the mysterious force said to be driving the ever-faster expansion of the universe. Theorists are exploring the idea that this "dark energy" may have varied over the course of cosmic history, rather than stayed constant. Such ideas might keep theorists in work but they also make for a more complex model of the universe, says Andrew Liddle at the UK's University of Sussex in Brighton. "The question is whether the observational data support a simple or a complex model."

He and his colleagues have applied Bayesian methods to assess the plausibility of the intriguing idea of varying dark energy and found that the standard model with constant dark energy remains a far better bet. That could change, but the smart money is on variable dark energy being a dead end.

Talk about "best bets" and "smart money" might not sound very scientific, but it's much closer to how real-life research priorities are decided. With Bayesian methods, that process is captured in rigorous, quantitative detail - the black and white of falsification being replaced with the shades of grey of the real world. "I think it's absolutely the way to go," says Liddle."

--John (talk) 21:11, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I nominate John to mediate the debate at the State Terrorism article for at least three weeks, and to put in time as a regular commenter at the Fringe Theories Noticeboard for a month. (And I mean this in all good faith and seriousness.) -PetraSchelm (talk) 21:41, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate your comment, and take it in good faith. Sometimes, sadly, simpler isn't the same as better. This seems to be one of these occasions. --John (talk) 21:43, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

<undent>John, I will admit you have some very casual experience at a mildly controversial article, Apollo Moon Landing hoax conspiracy theories, where you have 29 edits on the talk page. However, I and others who deal with controversial articles like intelligent design and different subjects in alternative medicine rack up 10 or 20 times as many edits on each talk page. And Apollo Moon Landing hoax conspiracy theories has a burst of activity around the summer of 2006, but for the most part has been pretty static. You have also a couple of dozen edits on pages about US government terrorism and the 911 conspiracy, but again that is not really that great an involvement. And it is not quite the same as working on creationism or evolution or electronic voice phenomenon and compiling 600 talk page edits dealing with FRINGE advocates.

Also reading your little snippet from New Scientist strikes me as not particularly supportive of your position. It just describes a garden variety hypothesis test; ho hum. What might be more germane is to discuss the question of whether string theory or its current incarnation as M-brane theory is really science or not, given that there is no data associated with it or supporting it. The reasons it is of interest are far far more esoteric and closer to mathematics than physics, or other kinds of science. But so what? This does not mean we should give any priority to pseudoscience here, over mainstream current scientific understanding. Sorry.--Filll (talk) 22:03, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry too, as I thought you had "got it" about the problems with these articles. You may well find that you don't need to make as many unproductive edits to talk pages if you can help craft a decent compromise position on how Misplaced Pages approaches the science-pseudoscience interface. The key part of the second quote is the idea that "shades of gray" are an inherent part of the scientific method. So, with respect, asking whether string theory or parapsychology is "science" or "pseudoscience" is missing the point, for our purposes at least. It is like debating whether someone is a terrorist or a freedom fighter; you will often find contradictory sources which say different things, and you will find editors here who will passionately defend one source and its position over another source and its one. Rather than try to nail down definitively who is "right" on these occasions, it is often more productive to say something along the lines of "source X calls him a terrorist, but source Y calls him a freedom fighter". As long as undue weight is avoided (no easy thing I realize), we then have a well-balanced article which accurately reflects what credible sources in the real world say. I think we need to seek a similar approach here; really just a special case of WP:NPOV. --John (talk) 22:49, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

John, I am sure you are a wonderful editor and contributor to Misplaced Pages with almost 30,000 mainspace edits. With all due respect, even the wording of your response tells me you have essentially zero experience in this area, and zero experience in the kind of editing that is relevant for this talk page and the corresponding mainspace page on civil POV pushing. You frankly appear not to have ever encountered anything like what we are discussing.

The very wording of your statement:

you don't need to make as many unproductive edits to talk pages if you can help craft a decent compromise position

indicates to me that you believe that compromise positions are actually possible in some circumstances on these science/pseudoscience articles. You appear not to have the depth of experience with 30 or so talk page edits to a mildly controversial article or two to understand this.

It is very typical for people to appear at these controversial articles and to refuse to ever compromise and to wikilawyer for hours and days and weeks and months and even years. Discussions go on for 100 or 200 or 500 or 1000 edits or longer, with editors refusing to abide by NPOV, or NOR, or RS, etc. I have made a partial list of the kinds of repetitive arguments one can encounter, which you can find here. And even if you dismiss one of these arguments once, your adversaries will repeat the same argument again, two, three, five, 10, or 50 times, as though you had never made it. Then one of these disruptive editors will leave and be replaced by two others, and you will have to go through it all again. And again. And they will show up at the policy pages to change policy to favor their viewpoints. And you will deal with a steady parade of sockpuppets and meat puppets, some of which are paid to disrupt the page by public relations firms. And so on.

I suspect your exposure to this world is minimal at best. But it is reality in many corners of Misplaced Pages. And our tools are really not adequate to deal with it. So that is what these pages are about. If you want a little more exposure to this in a sanitized environment, take a look at the exercises at User:Filll/AGF Challenge. More will be added later.--Filll (talk) 00:23, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the invitation; I had actually already seen your interesting challenge and mean to complete it in the next days. I agree that the existing strategies for dismissing POV-pushing are often inadequate to do the job. I assure you that I find it as frustrating as you do; the majority of my experience of work like this has been on Ireland-related articles, and I can think of at least three editors who I strongly feel would only benefit the project if they were banned or restricted from contributing to certain areas. However, this is not a job interview, and I do not require to convince you of my experience, credentials or even good faith in order to have a well-developed opinion on these matters. You may find it will be more productive to focus less on your perception of my lack of experience in "this world", and focus more on the merits of my arguments. If this current exercise is purely focussed on banning editors with certain POVs from editing, I can say with absolute confidence that it will not succeed and will merely contribute further to the lynch-mob mentality that certain of our editors have. If, on the other hand, we are to make genuine progress, I still contend that we should refrain from acting as though falsifiability was still the touchstone of scientific credibility that it was in the 1970s or so. Science is not in a special area, bounded on one side by ignorance and superstition; instead it exists as part of human society and human knowledge, and is thus not very much different for our purposes from history or politics. If we can recognize this, we can perhaps begin to make progress. If we are instead to cleave to a doctrine that the world is black and white, it will be to the detriment of our project and perhaps our patience. I have certainly avoided certain areas of the project up until now because of the fraught atmosphere that surrounds them; perhaps now I will be more inclined to join in editing them, as PetraSchelm suggests above. --John (talk) 00:47, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I could write a lot more, but the best thing you could do is to follow PetraSchelm's suggestion to start with.--Filll (talk) 00:55, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with John that it's best not to use the phrase "POV-pusher". Well, I use the phrase on this talk page, but if you look at my post carefully you'll see that the phrase doesn't appear within the description of the remedy, and personally I wouldn't use the phrase on an article talk page. No one is going to admit they're a "POV-pusher", so the phrase is useless to communicate with them. They may admit to more objective things such as that 9 of their last 10 edits have been reverted by people citing policy.

I also agree with John that it's not a good idea to try to ban people with certain views. Instead, let's think of banning people with certain behaviour.

I agree with PetraSchelm that a series of four warnings is reasonable. The warnings need to be clearly understandable: that is, they have to be phrased so that it's almost certain that the warnee will know whether certain behaviours fit the definition of what's being warned against or not. The warnings also need to be authoritative: that is, it has to be clear to the warnee that they're not just receiving a request from a single user, but a message from the community that they might be blocked.

Here's a description of the behaviour we're trying to eliminate: taking up peoples' time with futile persistence. Persistence can be good, but one needs to realize when the chances of anything productive coming out of an argument are so small that it's not worth the time of the people participating – or when it will seem so to the other participants with different expectations and value systems. It's fine to continue to hold opinions about subject matter and article content, but it's not fine to keep repeating the arguments when nobody is being convinced. It's fine to have a long argument if it looks as if it might go somewhere, but it's not fine if it's futile. It's fine to post on an article talk page, but it's not fine to post things so long or repetitive that others find them tiresome. Posting on an article talk page is a privilege, and posting irrelevant stuff or personal attacks are not the only ways to get kicked out: posts have to have an element of potential usefulness, or at least of novelty. One has to be sensitive to one's audience or one will get gonged.

There may be ways of interacting with the persisters (if I may use such a term here) such that one doesn't have to have long, futile interactions. There may be ways to do it briefly: (1) "I'm not convinced." (2) "Stop repeating yourself, please." (3) "Stop repeating yourself or you'll be blocked." (4) (block)

See the book "Setting Limits" by R. Mackenzie. It's about disciplining children, but I think some of the ideas can also be modified to be useful for handling persisters on-wiki. He discusses situations where parents get into long interactions with their children, and tells how to act differently so that the interactions become very short and go the way the parents want.

Well, maybe we should be more open to their ideas than that, but still there may be relatively brief ways to do it. We can decide what is the appropriate amount of time to spend listening to their arguments, and then choose a method partway between the above and long argumentation, so as to spend the appropriate amount of time.

If someone wants to make a repetitive argument, a good way to do it IMO is to lay out the argument in a well-organized way once on an article talk page or in user space, and from then on make very brief remarks each with a link to the argument. That way, people who want to ignore the argument can ignore it.

In my proposed remedy in my earlier post above: it's not just whether their edits have been reverted, but whether they've been reverted based on policy. If there's dispute about that, experts can be consulted at some appropriate noticeboard or policy talk page. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 02:16, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Efforts to unblock disruptive editors

One of the defects of Misplaced Pages is that there are a large body of editors who are unfamiliar with disruptive editing and controversial articles, but who are willing nonetheless to lecture those with extensive experience in these areas about how they are wrong. Now this in itself would not necessarily be bad, except the inexperienced editors have the ability and the will to force other editors to deal with disruptive elements, wasting their time. There are no consequences for this.

As a community, we have only limited resources. Is it reasonable to volunteer 100 hours of someone else's volunteer time to deal with a mess you helped create? How about 500 hours? 1000 hours? Currently, there are no clear consequences to this sort of behavior. The enabling of destructive and disruptive editors is almost as negative for the project as the editors creating the disruption, if not more so. One enabler can help introduce 20 disruptive editors onto Misplaced Pages, burning up countless hours of other's time to deal with the ensuing nonsense. And they can do so with impunity. There is nothing to stop them from doing it again and again and again.

However, this gets worse. Many new editors encounter disruptive editors, and leave an article that they have expertise in. Or leave Misplaced Pages altogether, disgusted. Some respond with uncivil comments and are quickly blocked. Although many claim that civility problems create a bad working environment and discourage new editors, there is no evidence of this. Many of the new editors themselves exhibit civility problems when they encounter a tendentious editing environment, with edit warring, obvious trolls and disruptive editors pushing unencyclopedic agendas.

How many productive editors or potentially productive new editors is Misplaced Pages willing to sacrifice to introduce one disruptive editor into Misplaced Pages unfettered? How many hours of other editors time is Misplaced Pages willing to waste to cope with the introduction of one disruptive editor? These are important considerations and it should not be thought that there are not subtantial costs to the project to allowing disruptive editors to have free rein.--Filll (talk | wpc) 15:35, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Filll on the above. I think the key is in recognizing, defining as objectively as possible and naming the undesirable behaviour. That which can be named can be controlled. When people know they will be consistently blocked for certain well-defined behaviours, they will usually avoid those behaviours. A recently unblocked editor should not take up hours of peoples' time before the undesirable behaviour is recognized and the editor re-blocked. Work needs to be done in "setting limits": describing and objectively defining the undesirable behaviours. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 16:10, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that does not happen in practice. Have you changed your position on this since you advocated unblocking some disruptive elements? If so, I think that is a good change. Of course, my information on this might be faulty since I have not investigated it fully. If it is incorrect, I apologize of course.--Filll (talk | wpc) 16:41, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Or, of course, at the time he advocated setting parameters and speedy re-blocks if necessary, and got piled onto later for no reason... --Relata refero (disp.) 20:34, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

For those who have to deal with disruption, it is a different matter than for those who want to only impose disruption and pain on others. And just because it is possible to reblock quickly does not mean it will happen, or that it will be easy. The community is justifiably relucant to let someone who was surpremely disruptive back to do it again. Ever hear of "three strikes" ?--Filll (talk | wpc) 19:09, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Umm, no. Is WP:THREESTRIKES a redlink?

I think you missed the point, which was that nobody paused to pay attention to what Coppertwig might or might not have actually thought at the time before piling on to him in the manner they did. Most disturbing, especially when a large proportion of the same people have been at AN recently complaining that nobody mentors tiresome editors... --Relata refero (disp.) 23:14, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Since you have not heard of "Three strikes" then I think it is quite obvious who has missed the point, isn't it?

Of course I paid attention to what Coppertwig said. I think most of what he has posted is right on target. However, I think that some of past history is a bit at odds with this. And I offered a reason why that might be true.

People do not like to deal with nonsense. And anyone with no experience in these situations who says "I will dump 5 tons of horse manure on your front porch for you to clean up. Good luck." and then thinks that you will be grateful does not quite understand the situation. Of course it can be cleaned up. That is not the issue. The issue is, how much time and trouble will you have to devote to solving this mess someone else has created for you? Not that the manure might not be good fertilizer and useful in some circumstances. However....--Filll (talk | wpc) 23:54, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

CIVILity examined

I have often heard it claimed that uncivil behavior is responsible for driving away new editors, and creating an unproductive editing and working environment.

However, I think it would be good to get some data on this. We have some anecdotal evidence that is a bit contrary to these claims:

• Militaries, such as the United States Marine Corps, seem to be quite productive and have not done anything over the centuries to try to squelch incivility in in the interests of a better and more productive working environment. If this contributed to winning wars, surely this would have happened.

• Academia itself is very uncivil. And yet, it seems to do good work. Misplaced Pages tries to emulate academia and uses peer-reviewed academic work as the gold standards in its references. And yet, this has not been the subject of any civility drives and movements.

• The halls of Congress and Big Business are quite uncivil. And yet, there are no massive drives to stomp out incivility.

• New York City, London and Paris are famous for being rude uncivil environments. And yet, these cities function and attract new residents. People do not flee these cities because of incivility for the most part. In fact, New Yorkers who move to other places frequently state they miss the incivility.

I do think civility is important, but not for those reasons. Clearly, being the 7th most popular website on earth and the number one destination for all kinds of information, Misplaced Pages is very visible. And just like Al Jazeera and CNN and the BBC and the New York Times and Google and Yahoo and other high visibility information sources, we are under scrutiny as a result. And just like other high visibility sources, we have to present a certain inoffensive public image. A public relations disaster is just around the corner if we allow uncontrolled incivility and profanity behind the scenes at Misplaced Pages.--Filll (talk | wpc) 15:36, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Surely those examples are based on stereotypes or are not applicable to this environment. The Marines are a military body designed to engage in war. Misplaced Pages is not a WP:BATTLEGROUND. Academia is civil and respectful of peers. Congress is civil and respectful of peers (well, maybe not Cheney, but mostly). Big Business is a competitive environment and again Misplaced Pages is not that in principle. Regional places like New York, again stereotype, but even if not, an equally popular stereotype is that Mom and Pop from Midwest Ohio wouldn't last a night in New York, and Misplaced Pages would like Mom and Pop to feel comfortable editing as well. Even in the literally cut-throat ancient Rome, one of the bedrocks of Ancient Civilization, the idea and guiding principle was civility if not in practice at least in policy. --Nealparr 15:53, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

What – the military doing nothing to squelch incivility? I very much disagree. Surely, for example, someone of lower rank being uncivil to someone of higher rank will often be punished rapidly in the military. In my experience, academia is almost always very civil. In each of those milieus described above, there are forces tending to maintain civility: incivility has a cost in terms of losing friends, experiencing retribution etc., and extreme incivility may result in being kicked out of a room or arrested for disturbing the peace or whatever.

Misplaced Pages has special reasons for maintaining civility. If people passing each other on the street are uncivil to one another, they may gain an advantage such as getting to walk in a straight line while the other person is intimidated into stepping out of the way. While this may constitute a small cost for the intimidated, it really doesn't affect the rest of society much at all. However, when intimidation is used at a Misplaced Pages article, it is not only the person who is intimidated from making a certain edit who experiences the cost, but also all the readers who would have read the edited article. To maintain NPOV, it works best if editors with various POV's edit on a relatively equal basis rather than a few intimidating the rest. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 16:25, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

People in the military, in academia or in a city usually have strong economic reasons for being there; but Wikipedians are editing on a volunteer basis, can very easily and quickly leave (if not Wikipediholic) and probably have many other useful activities competing for their time. Someone leaving Misplaced Pages doesn't have to find another job or another house: they just stop editing. Therefore, if there are no special controls on civility, Misplaced Pages would tend to eventually contain mostly uncivil people, the civil ones having been driven away. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 16:33, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Well this might all be true, but we do not have much evidence, do we? I think we have to move in all these questions away from assertions based on just intuition and other similar gratuitous claims to actual data. And by the way your statement In my experience, academia is almost always very civil is so wrong it is laughable. I guess you had a very different encounter with academia than I have had. And I am sure many professional academics could back me up on this in detail. Maybe you just had a short encounter, at some low level institution? I do not know.--Filll (talk | wpc) 16:42, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Magnificently nasty, that last line. Filll, you outdo yourself regularly.

In the more general case, militaries are remarkably polite, but hardly provide a relevant structure for comparison, given that we are a non-hierarchical website. Academia certainly values politeness and - er - collegiality in certain fields. In the subfield in which I have some (non-short, non-low level) experience, universities in the Northeast and Europe are much more traditional in interpersonal interaction than universities around the Great Lakes, which creates some interesting problems at seminars and when new hires are involved. Incidentally, "collegiality" is now considered an important factor in tenure decisions. --Relata refero (disp.) 20:32, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

We have evidence in studies about other social networks that are easily obtained through Google. MySpace and YouTube, for example, have virutally no moderation and the former is in the news frequently as a place where teens bully each other. The latter... well, pick any popular video and read the comments. It's verifiable that not caring about civility leads to a hostile environment. --Nealparr 20:48, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, in genereal, for the much-studied link between collegiality/civility and productivity:

• Pearson, Christine (2000-11). "Assessing and attacking workplace incivility". Organizational Dynamics. 29 (2): 123–137. doi:10.1016/S0090-2616(00)00019-X. Retrieved 2008-05-24. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Johnson, Pamela R. (2001). "Slings and arrows of rudeness: incivility in the workplace". Journal of Management Development. 20 (8): 705–714. doi:10.1108/EUM0000000005829. Retrieved 2008-05-24. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Andersson, Lynne M. (1999-07). "Tit for Tat? The Spiraling Effect of Incivility in the Workplace". The Academy of Management Review. 24 (3): 452–471. ISSN 0363-7425. Retrieved 2008-05-24. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Tapper, Ted (2002-03-01). "Understanding Collegiality: The Changing Oxbridge Model". Tertiary Education and Management. 8 (1): 47–63. doi:10.1023/A:1017967104176. Retrieved 2008-05-24. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Schraufnagel, Scot (2005). "Testing the implications of incivility in the United States Congress, 1977–2000: The case of judicial confirmation delay". The Journal of Legislative Studies. 11 (2): 216. doi:10.1080/13572330500158623. ISSN 1357-2334. Retrieved 2008-05-24.
• Sarat, A. (1998). "Enactments of Professionalism: A Study of Judges' and Lawyers' Accounts of Ethics and Civility in Litigation". Fordham L. Rev. 67: 809. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• Ripple, R.M. (2001). "Learning Outside the Fire: The Need for Civility Intstruction in Law School". Notre Dame JL Ethics & Pub. Pol'y. 15: 359. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)

So, how does it feel to be pushing a fringe theory :)? --Relata refero (disp.) 21:57, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

You're mean. :) Those are very interesting, and might even be useful on the WP:CIVIL page itself as background. Are you aware of any literature on civility specifically as it applies to online environments? I ask because the behavioral norms and standards online are quite a bit different from at my workplace, anyway. MastCell  23:14, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

This is all great. However, I believe we have to move past "Intuition based management techniques" to "Evidence based management techniques". A lot of the stuff we do on Misplaced Pages is based on intuition, or gut feeling, or some sort of abstract argument that everyone repeats blindly and mindlessly. Two or three editors brainlessly repeating contradictory arguments just get into ridiculous conflicts, with no facts to back any of it up. Each has an intuition about how things are. Many who dish out advice (even on this page) have zero experience in the appropriate area but are glad to make unsubstantiated claim after claim, based on no evidence, no data and information. Frequently, those who know the least are the most aggressive and obnoxious about trying to spread their ignorance. We have to move past this. And these fables about CIVIL are just that; fables. It is particularly amusing to see people claiming that militaries are very civil and polite. Yeah right... tell me another.--Filll (talk | wpc) 19:21, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

One way to move past all of this would be to stop making vague statements like "many who dish out advice" and "those who know the least" and so on. If you think that's a way that to get around NPA, think again.

Can I take it as read that you accept the overwhelming mainstream view is that decreased civility hampers productivity? Because otherwise, we have nothing to go on about your intuition about what's true, and you know where that leads. --Relata refero (disp.) 23:11, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and about the military - it is probably the organisation in which social interaction is most structured and etiquette most respected. I really don't know what you're talking about - perhaps you've watched too many movies with a foul-mouthed drill sergeant? :) --Relata refero (disp.) 23:19, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I have one word for you. Data.--Filll (talk | wpc) 23:49, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Avoiding repetitive arguments

I had been intending to post something within a day or two suggesting the use of FAQs associated with article talk pages, containing the arguments that tend to come up repeatedly on those talk pages, when I coincidentally ran across this draft essay by Filll which describes that very idea among others!

Nealparr above says there is no end to the process of disagreeing. I'm not sure about that. Looking at WP:Consensus#Forum shopping: once something has been decided somehow, the issue shouldn't be re-opened unless there is new information or new arguments. Therefore someone who tries to re-open an issue using an old argument can be told that that's inappropriate. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 02:07, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes I was also thinking about a FAQ or something, and I think I have already seen one at the top of a talkpage somewhere, don't remember where though.

As for telling someone that re-opening an old discussion is inappropriate... Well that would work on most of us (I hope), but not on a civil POV pusher, that's why they are tricky. =)
—Apis (talk) 02:23, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

FAQs can be useful in some cases. That is why I suggested the FAQ at evolution and wrote the first version. It might have been the first on Misplaced Pages, but I do not know. However, anyone who thinks that this will stop a "CIVIL POV pusher" clearly has no experience on a really controversial article, or with a CIVIL POV pusher. A CIVIL POV pusher will engage in WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT and repeat the same argument over and over 50, 100, 500 times, maybe in slightly different words, but essentially the same argument. They will be polite, but trying to drive you over the edge where you make a mistake and then get you sanctioned for violating CIVIL or NPA or whatever. Many will claim that to even disagree with them is a violation of CIVIL!! Not wanting to reopen a closed conversation is about the same. It will never work on a CIVIL POV pusher, who will reopen it dozens if not hundreds of times over days, weeks, months and even years. --Filll (talk | wpc) 19:16, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Therefore someone who tries to re-open an issue using an old argument can be told that that's inappropriate. - yes, that sounds great in theory. Unfortunately, in practice, it doesn't quite work that way. Raul654 (talk) 22:34, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, can you point me to a few examples? Because in my experience, focusing an objection towards a talkpage archive where that same objection has been civilly addressed and answered is quite effective. The mailing list is discussing a possible mediawiki alteration to help this. --Relata refero (disp.) 23:24, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Exactly true. A lot of things sound great in theory, but do not work very well in practice when you are dealing with a dedicated CIVIL POV pusher.

I have been exchanging emails with one that was just banned, and it is amazing the machinations he wants to still go through. He never ever heard any warnings (although he was given warnings for 8 months by dozens of other editors). He misunderstood all the instructions by assorted admins. He misquoted sources, and was caught and claimed he never did it. He argues and argues and argues that his view is not a FRINGE point of view but in fact very very important and even deserves to be treated as the majority point of view even though its prominence among experts is probably way way less than 0.01%. Even among the public (which we typically do not use to establish prominence), his position ranks at 0.5% prominence worldwide, and even in places where it is most popular, it is way less than 10% prominence. But he still argues and argues and argues and argues and argues and argues and cajoles and cajoles and pleads and twists words etc to try to "prove" his point. He even misquotes other editors here on Misplaced Pages, is caught by the editor in question, and claims he never did it. If this editor was not blocked, he would continue for another year, or two, or 5.

And I guarantee, even after suffering through months of misery at the hands of this editor and his associates, there will be several here on Misplaced Pages that will complain and moan about how unfair it is that he was blocked/banned. They will say that Misplaced Pages is far too unforgiving and that he did not mean any harm (although he drove away several other editors and several others were banned or blocked because of his antics). They will go on and on and on and on and on about it. We have several here who are nothing but semi professional whiners who do contribute nothing at all to Misplaced Pages but complaints and whining and recriminations.--Filll (talk | wpc) 23:16, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Sigh. You really need to stop impugning everybody else -see my remark above- and focus on the problem this page purportedly addresses. --Relata refero (disp.) 23:24, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Interesting response. Let's let it stand as a tribute to your incredible insight and perspicacity, and unmatched experience in these matters.--Filll (talk | wpc) 23:48, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I guess I didn't make my suggestion clear, i.e. explaining what would happen after telling the person their behaviour is inappropriate. Once they've been told, there are two possibilities: either they'll stop it, or they won't. I'm imagining an interaction something like this:

• User A: (repeats old argument)
• User B: It's inappropriate for you to bring that up because ... blah, blah, blah, explanation, link.
• User A: (repeats same old argument again)
• User C: You've already been asked not to repeat that argument. That's not just a request: it's a requirement of the community.
• User A: (repeats same old argument again)
• User B: Please stop repeating that argument, or you will be blocked.
• User A: (repeats same old argument again)
• User D: (blocks user A)

In this scenario, user A repeats the argument 4 times and is then blocked after having violated clear warnings. User A doesn't have the opportunity to repeat the argument 50 or 100 times.

I think in most cases, user A would stop repeating the argument, but it doesn't matter whether I'm right about that or not, because either way, user A would not repeat the argument 50 or 100 times before being blocked. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 00:32, 28 May 2008 (UTC)