Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy/Personal attacks

message: Re "implicit" attacks.... can an attack be both personal and impersonal as in the example... seems contradictory? Pcb21| Pete 11:02, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Misc.

message: In the Remedies part of WP:NPA, which is official policy, it is provided that you may remove such attacks. A reference is given to WP:RPA. This effectively promotes WP:RPA to policy status. I noticed this because it's being used with that status by a user today to justify removal of mildly attackish comments from other users' talk pages. How should we square the two? Best to remove the remedy from WP:NPA I think, given its disputed nature? -Splash 17:37, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: A point from [[WP:NPA]]

message: I disagree with this addition... "Accusing an editor of being a sockpuppet, meatpuppet, or vandal is not usually a personal attack". I think that accusing any established editor of being any of the above clearly is an attack, unless there is strong evidence to the contrary. I've done several vandal reverts in concert with other editors (e.g. User:Vandal blanks out the RFC page, then within a minute he is warned by one editor, reverted by a second, and blocked by the third) - and afterwards such vandals tend to throw around spurious claims of sockpuppetry. Radiant_>|< 18:16, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
:I was trying to avoid the VfD situation of tagging a new user's vote (even without specifying puppetry) and then the wikilawyer new users saying "block the evil editor for he called me a puppet, and I would never do such a thing!". Equally, the various  messages certainly imply an accusation of vandalry and I wouldn't want to feel that I was blockable for using them. Unless, of course, I were acting in bad-faith: which is why I included the sentence following the one you mention. Then, the kind of thing you point out above remains blockable as a bad-faith version of the accusation. -Splash 18:22, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Exception? 

message: Regarding calling "implicit comments ("The despots here…")" a personal attack:
I see this as highly problematic and subject to interpretation. An editor might complain about the "cabal of editors" or that wikipedia "is a cabal", and allowing implicit comments to be interpreted as a personal attack could almost be used to say "thou shalt not criticize wikipedia". I'd much rather see a simple, direct, objective definition of a personal attack, a simple direct blocking policy for violating NPA, and then say somethign like admins are given discretion or some such thing. Then this doesn't become a blank check to block someone just because they were griping on a talk page somewhere about behaviour in general. Non-specific comments always have some grain of truth anyway. If every editor was perfect, we wouldn't need policy and admins and blocks. So, given all the editors on wikipedia, there is at least one editor that qualifies as a despot. FuelWagon 17:03, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The other thing is that I sometimes use "implicit comments" as a way to not escalate a situation but still comment on what's going on. "Some editors are pov-pushing" is a way to put people on notice without making a direct accusation. The problem with direct accusations is that it puts puts people on the defensive, and sometimes does nothing but escalate the problem. FuelWagon 18:45, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess it comes down to a choice: allow for subjective interpretation and catch this one case (and posibly make the whole process more problematic) or prohibit subjective interpretation and catch this one case with an RFC. I'd rather the the system encourage individual integrity for admins and let some editors get picked up with an RFC. FuelWagon 20:36, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: implicit comments

message: This policy is pointless. Admins should be doing it anyway. --causa sui talk 15:21, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Instruction creep 

message: I deleted this: "In particular, to avoid potential abuse, an admin should never block for a personal attack if he is an involved party, or the target of the attack - just like admins should never block for revert warring if they are an involved party in the edit war."
There's no reason an admin shouldn't block if s/he's the target of a personal attack. It's often the case that admins block trolls and vandals and then have their talk pages attacked with personal abuse. We should be able to extend the block for this, or block again as appropriate. These sections about "involvement" seek to change the whole way admins relate to people we block, and the policy risks not being approved because of them. What's important is that we shouldn't be involved editorially with users we block, but so long as that's not the case, involvement can be a positive thing i.e. can mean simply that the admin has experience of dealing with that editor. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:23, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
::::I strongly disagree with that section, as it would change the whole way admins deal with editors. It's important that a blocking admin have knowledge of a pattern of prior behavior. As I said above, we want admins to become "involved" in this way. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:10, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
:::::If it would "change the whole way admins deal with editors", then it might indicate just how much this sort of restriction is needed. Guilt should not be determined based on past convictions. If admins are using a "knowledge of a pattern of behaviour" to convict an editor, then that's like convicting someone of robbing a bank because he was in the neighborhood during a recent robbery and he had been convicted of three bank robberies before. Either the editor broke "No personal attacks" or they did not. If they did, get an uninvolved admin to make the block. There are hundreds of admins. It isn't like we'll run out. The very thing I would want to avoid is an admin who takes it upon themselves to accumulate a "knowledge of a pattern of behaviour", become super-sensitive to an editor launching personal attacks to the point where the admin blocks the editor for something that wasn't a clear personal attack. That sort of thing will generate an accusation of admin abuse, and it might be deserved, meaning that arbcom or someone will have to spend time and energy investigating every charge of admin abuse that gets generated out of this policy. If the editor made a second personal attack, the clearest and most objective thing to do would be to get a second admin to do the second block. and so on. That way, rather than charge a single admin with admin abuse, the editor will have to show that two or three editors abused their powers, and that's going to be a hard sell.
::::::Well, I do think that it is important to know an editors history in order to determine whether certain things are good or bad faith in that context (though that doesn't really work for personal attacks). But I'm starting to think we should get rid of all this definition and other stuff like that. Not say that an admin can or can't be the target. If we put it iinto practice, I tend to think that good practices will evolve, and those that try to game the vagueness will be called out o it. Let's avoid instruction creep. Dmcdevit·t 21:40, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
:There's no need to get other admins involved for a personal attack on an admin. If someone (as they recently did) writes "burn your ass, you c***" to me, because I protected a page, I want to be able to block him and not have to call for help, which would be a waste of my and the other admin's time. And if he returns with another personal attack, whether against me or someone else, I want to be able to block him again without involving others. If you want this proposal to become policy, there's no point in risking sabotaging it with clauses that increase the hoops admins have to jump through to get simple things done. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:26, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
Since several definitions have been proposed, I listed them all on the article page as possibilities. It seems to fit the different proposals, as in super super simple proposal, super simeple proposal, and simple proposal.  FuelWagon 22:09, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Explanation of my edit 

message: So, I view the idea of having an objectively defined rule for "involved" along with an objectively defined "cool down" period to be similar to the way a warrant works. A cop thinks someone broke the law. Before they can break down that person's door, they need a warrant. The point of the objective "invovled" policy is like a warrant. It makes sure that policy enforcment remains neutral. Yes, a warrant is an extra step and isn't needed when police are acting in good faith. Yes, a criminal could game the system and avoid punishment on a technicality if the police don't follow the warrant. but a warrant is a separation of power that has several intended consequences. First it keeps the honest cops honest. It will impede dishonest cops and possibly uncover them. It builds community trust in the law enforcement system. and it avoids the troubles that a single bad cop can generate in a whole population. Do you think wikipedia is served in the long run if good editors stay away because wikipedia is surrounded by charges of being a cabal? That policy enforcement is arbitrary? that admins go unchecked? I don't. I think that the damage done by a few bad admins creating the sense of arbitrary justice and an 'old boys' network to protect themselves is far worse than what would happen if good admins had to wait a week before they could block an editor again. That's what we're talkign about. Either give admins full discretion to decide if they're neutrally enforcing policy, have a few bad instances taint all of wikipedia, or impose a minor restriction that admins wait a week after they block an editor, have some editors game that system but watch charges of "cabal" evaporate from the community at large. This really isn't that restrictive of a policy. one week before on the page that contained the attack, and one week after. Are you saying that wikipedia would dissolve into chaos if this were implemented? Or is it a matter of admins who already have the power not wanting to give it up? FuelWagon 17:10, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Warrant

message: If this is what gets an admin warning now, implimenting this policy will serve only to make things worse. I am thus, opposed.
:Uh, Ed Poor has an interesting definition of what violates "No Personal Attacks". Remarks about an editor's behaviour on wikipedia should not be considered a violation of NPA. However, if Ed thinks said remarks will hurt another editor's feelings, then he may consider it an attack. So, I would say Ed is administering a very loose interpretation of what constitutes a personal attack. One of my reasons for supporting the requirement that admins distance themselves for a while after they do warn/block is to get multiple admins involved so that one admin's loose interpretation doesn't become a sequence of undeserved blocks against an editor. FuelWagon 13:18, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Policy in action: 

message: * Wikipedia:Personal attack intervention noticeboard
Created all the following above, it required no changes to policy.  Make it clear (on the talk page i.e. through peer pressure) that an admin who is involved (however that is interpreted) is expected to place a username here as opposed to dealing with the individual themselves. brenneman(t)(c) 06:53, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Given the somewhat cliqueish nature of the wiki admin community, it's very important that any sanctioning admin not be involved with any disputes with the other parties. Otherwsie a sense of piling on may occur Klonimus 09:42, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A recent case on WP:ANI shows a possible course of events.  User RingFoo is making attacks left and right. Admin BigCheese trys to talk to him about how it's not acceptable, and cops a spray of his own.  Now BigCheese is involved, and thus would be wiser to not do the block himself, but to use WP:PAIN.  I'd oppose anything that explicitly said they couldn't do the block, by the way, peer pressure should be enough. - brenneman(t)(c) 11:40, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changes that don't require changes (to policy) 

message: What's the status of this proposal? When is it going to be voted on?
I'd strongly support it, especially since it codifies existing practice. -- nyenyec ☎ 18:29, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Next step?