nyuuzyou/wikis huggingface dataset:
Biodegradability

Biodegradability refers to a material being able to break down into naturally-occurring compounds in a reasonable time scale. Our group has not strictly defined biodegradability, but we have discussed different definitions, and the degree to which we consider certain definitions or uses of the term to be honest or deceptive.
Biodegradability is important mainly for products like packaging, which are often made of plastics. It is less important for products like ceramics or glass, which are chemically inert and function similarly to natural clays, rocks, or glass particles in the environment after they are discarded.
==The importance of biodegradability==
Biodegradability is an important factor in our philosophy of product design, impacting sustainability as well as other values we consider an important part of a healthy state for society. Biodegradability facilitates composting, a practice which can promote sustainability in multiple ways, such as by turning what would be waste into a valuable resource.
Having disposable products and packaging be biodegradable also helps to reduce the impact of littering, which can have positive impacts on communities in which litter is a problem.
Much trash enters the ocean, and other wild ecosystems, where it can pose various problems for wildlife, the environment, and humans (such as bioaccumulation of PCB's in fish that humans eat). Biodegradability helps prevent these problems as well.
=="Biodegradable" label in marketing==
We consider it dishonest or deceptive to label a product as "biodegradable" if it is not fully biodegradable under normal environmental conditions, such as if the product is littered on the ground, or enters the ocean.
So, for example, we would consider it dishonest to market the following as biodegradable:
* a tea bag sealed with a small amount of non-biodegradable sealant
* a plastic that physically breaks down into small particles which persist in the environment for a long time without being broken down into naturally-occurring substances
* any product that can be broken down only under specific conditions that may not exist somewhere in nature where the product could end up, but where other organic materials would break down, for example, a product that would not break down in a lake, in the ocean, or in the soil. It would not be an issue if the product does not break down under conditions (like away from water and sunlight, or in extreme cold) where other organic matter would not break down.
Category:Sustainability
Censorship

Censorship is the attempted suppression or control of information or communication, such as speech, writing, video, or other information. Censorship can be carried out by the government or by private organizations or individuals in positions of power.
Censorship is usually carried out when an organization or individual believes that certain information or ideas are dangerous or harmful.
Implicit in the rules of communication and process of communication used by Why This Way is the idea that certain ideas or communications can be harmful, but we take a different approach to dealing with this information: encapsulating it rather than outright censoring it. Our rules and process of communication specify that people can freely discuss and state ideas, using the use-mention distinction, so long as they are described as an idea, rather than presented as a truth.
==Censorship and consent==
Censorship is related to our core beliefs on consent. Censoring, whether done by the government or by any other powerful organization, removes or controls information against the desires of the people authoring or sharing that information. We thus see that censorship is a complex issue and can be viewed as something unhealthy. Like other forms of coercion, censorship often elicits a backlash; it can be ineffective at controlling information, and it can cause energy and effort to be wasted in the struggle to subvert the control of information.
We believe that a more fruitful way of combating or overcoming dangerous or harmful ideas is to teach people how to identify whether or not ideas are truthful or untruthful, healthy or unhealthy, and encourage them to share and promote more truthful and healthy ideas, and ignore and filter out unhealthy ideas of their own initiative.
Category:Communication
Category:Social Institutions
Compromise

A compromise is a means of conflict resolution in which both parties agree on some outcome that is not exactly what either party wants. A compromise is not an ideal outcome, as neither party is truly happy with the outcome. Although the word "compromise" sometimes has a positive connotation, the word can also be used negatively, such as "compromising your values". 
In Why This Way, we see compromise as a fall-back option in conflict resolution, less desirable than solutions in which every party comes out fully happy with the outcome. Our rules of communication and process of communication are designed to prevent unnecessary conflict, and ensure that people can more easily reach outcomes, like consensus where everyone is happy, and, in the cases where a compromise is reached, that the compromise is as desirable as possible to all parties.
==Voting as compromise==
In a group of people, voting to resolve a disagreement about how to approach a situation may be a form of compromise. In situations where no one in the group has a strong preference, and all people would be happy with any outcome presented, voting can be a good way to come to a decision. But if some members in the group are not comfortable with all of the options presented for voting on, then voting is a form of compromise, and may not be the best way to come to a decision.
==References==
* Leigh Thompson, "Social perception in negotiation", Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Volume 47, Issue 1, October 1990, Pages 98–123.
Category:Miscellaneous
Conflict Escalation

Conflict escalation is a process in which conflicts, either between individuals or groups, grow in severity.
Escalation can often proceed through stages where the conflict is initially only verbal, or legal, and can later progress into physical violence.
Our rules of communication are designed to facilitate ways of communicating that are less likely to escalate conflict, by curbing typical ways in which verbal conflicts escalate, such as exaggeration, negative characterization of the other party's intentions, or applying negative labels to people or groups. Following these rules does not guarantee that one will not escalate conflict by speaking or writing, but 
==Subjectivity of assessment of severity==
Different people can have different ideas of the relative severity of different types of aggression. If both sides in a conflict have different scales of severity that govern their reactions, it is possible for one or both sides to act in such a way that they believe that they are de-escalating the conflict, but the other party sees the act as escalation. This can lead conflicts escalating even when both parties are trying to de-escalate.
Because of the subjectivity of assessment of severity, the best or most failsafe approach to preventing conflict escalation, when involved in a conflict, is to set your own response to aggression as low as possible.
==Escalation as self-preservation==
Sometimes, momentary escalation of a conflict can play the role of protecting a person, especially if it gets the attention of outsiders. For example, if a person is repeatedly overstepping a person's boundaries, like touching them in unwanted ways, and is not stopping in response to respectfully asking them to stop, yelling loudly at the person could get them to stop, either by leading them to stop of their own initiative, or leading other people nearby to get involved.
category:communication
Creating Wiki Pages

This page addresses the question of when to include or create a page on the wiki for a particular topic. For guidelines on writing content or editing existing pages, see Wiki Writing Guidelines. 
This page aims to fill an analagous role to Wikipedia's Notability Guideline. However, our standards for this wiki are very different. In general, since this wiki is an expression of the consensus and personal beliefs of the participants in Why This Way, the standards for creating pages on this wiki do not include any reference to external sources.
It is a good idea to create a page on the wiki when:
* The page is about a topic relevant either to our core beliefs and practices, or to other topics that already exist on the wiki.
* You have discussed the topic with other participants in Why This Way, either during a meeting, or in casual conversation.
It is a good idea, but not mandatory, to talk to other participants before creating the page.
If you want to create a page on a topic that is not directly relevant to anything existing on the wiki, think about how to tie it in, and consider creating more directly relevant pages first. If you want to create a page on a topic that has not been discussed in Why This Way, consider bringing that topic up at a meeting, or casually with other participants.
==Categorizing the page==
Add the page to at least one category (how to apply a category). If you're not sure which of the categories to use, add it to miscellaneous. Do not use the category Core Beliefs and Practices unless it has been decided at a meeting; the Core Beliefs and Practices category has special importance and is used to designate pages and pages with sections that are considered part of the group's core beliefs and practices, and that require consensus at a meeting and an 8-day waiting period to be edited. All the other categories can be added freely as part of general wiki editing by any participant.
Category:Wiki Guidelines
Culture

Culture is important to Why This Way in many respects. Culture is hard to define, but the way the word "culture" is often used encompasses everything about human civilization or about groups of people which cannot be explained solely in terms of biology or other innate factors.
==Our belief that all cultures have value==
One of our core beliefs is that all cultures have value. These cultures include everything from large-scale cultures (like the culture of a whole country) to small cultures, like the subculture of a small group. Like our belief that all people are valuable, this belief does not imply that everything about every culture is good, only that there is some inherent value in any culture.
Some examples of the value we see in cultures include:
* Food culture and traditions, including both various techniques of cooking or prepared dishes, and practices of growing or cultivating food.
* Language, including both languages in and of themselves, and dialects or other localized uses of language specific to a subculture.
* Creative arts, including art, music, theater, written works, artistry evident in physical goods, and other sorts of creative works.
==The culture of Why This Way==
Why This Way can be seen as having a culture or subculture of its own. Many of our beliefs and practices have cultural implications, and the act of identifying certain ways of communicating or acting as healthy or unhealthy can be seen as a way of us deliberately shaping our own culture as well as seeking to influence the culture of the society in which we are a part.
The core beliefs and practices of Why This Way, especially our views on respectful communication spelled out in the rules of communication are directly related to culture. Some of the more specific aspects of Why This Way most directly related to culture, or with large potential impacts on culture, include our views on:
* Architecture
* Community
* Food
* Landscaping and Gardening
* Sexuality
* Trends
* Weddings
Category:Miscellaneous
Cutting

This page is about cutting, a form of self-harm or self-injury, in which a person intentionally cuts their own skin with a sharp object, when not intended as a suicide attempt.
We have talked about cutting and self-injury in Why This Way, and we believe it can be a form of addiction that shares many things in common with other addictions. Cutting may fill the role of a coping mechanism in some people's lives.
==Negative stigmas associated with cutting==
It is common for people who self-injure to experience feelings of guilt or shame in association with what they do. In accordance with our practices about not trying to make people feel guilt or shame, we do not want to contribute to messages in society that depict cutting or self-injury as something shameful.
We have discussed the negative stigmas on cutting in relationship to smoking, a behavior which seems more widely socially acceptable in the U.S. Smoking is also an addiction and it can play a similar role of a coping mechanism for stress and other problems in a person's life, but, unlike cutting, it more directly imposes on people, through second-hand smoke, and it often poses more serious and immediate health risks than a person who is carefully cutting themselves using a sterilized blade, and attending to their wound carefully.
This observation seems to suggest that the negative stigmas on cutting in society are exaggerated compared to the actual impacts of the behavior, and may be based more on inferences about a person's psychological state from the fact that they self-injure, than on the direct impacts of the behavior itself.
Category:Mental Health
Deserving

In Why This Way, making statements about deserving is prohibited in our rules of communication, because these statements are similar to "should"-statements. Saying "he deserves x" is like saying "he should be getting x." 
As with should statements, although we have agreed to avoid making statements about deserving in meetings, we don't agree that these statements are always harmful. A statement like "people deserve to be treated with respect" may be harmless.
==Problems with the idea of deserving==
The idea of deserving can be problematic for many of the same reasons "should"-statements can be. Many of the uses of the words "deserve" or "deserving" conflict with our values in certain ways: 
* Saying people deserve to feel bad, or deserve to be punished, or to have bad things happen to them, goes against our beliefs about punishment and guilt and shame. We don't believe in inflicting unnecessary and unwanted pain on anyone, and we do not believe in acting with the intention of making a person feel guilt or shame.
* If someone thinks or believes that they deserve something that they're not getting, it can cause frustration and contribute to a mindset that is not constructive for achieving positive results. These deserve statements can be related to depression or a sense of entitlement, and they can reflect a person focusing on what they don't have rather than what they do have. These beliefs can also be related to a person thinking that they need something that they may want but could be content without. 
* Saying that some people deserve things that other people don't deserve can get into the idea of comparing people's value or judging their moral status, which can become problematic and can conflict with our beliefs. Often when "deserve" is used in a comparative context, it implies that the people who deserve more, or better things, are the people who have done the most work, or lived up to the highest moral standard. The idea that people who have not lived up to the same standard deserve less, or worse lives, or less happiness, is related to the idea of punishing people for the purpose of causing pain.
* People don't always agree on what people deserve. This is related to our reason for avoiding framing our beliefs in terms of universal rights and instead presenting our beliefs in terms of states of being that we agree to be healthy or unhealthy.
Sometimes people respond to the negative aspects of "deserving" by saying that people don't deserve anything. Making statements about people not deserving things can also have negative connotations. 
* Saying "I don't deserve to be treated with respect" can be interpreted "I deserve to be treated poorly." This can be a negative mentality about someone's self-worth. 
* If something good happens to someone, and the person says "I don't deserve this," it can be associated with the person feeling guilty for having a positive experience.
Category:Communication
Editing the Core Beliefs and Practices

These are the procedures for editing the core beliefs and practices. For guidelines about editing the rest of the wiki, see Wiki Writing Guidelines.
The core beliefs and practices are any section with the core section template or any page with the core page template. These parts of the wiki may only be edited after the edit is agreed on at a meeting. 
==Changing errors, wiki formatting, and broken rules==
Correcting errors, changing wiki formatting, and modifying the beliefs so as to address ways in which they break the rules of communication are the only types of change that can be made immediately after they are agreed on at a meeting, without the usual 8-day waiting period.
When making an edit to save one of these changes, write in the edit summary that the edit was agreed on by consensus at a meeting, and what type of edit it is (a formatting change or fixing an error or rule). If it is not self-evident why the edit was made, post an explanation of the rationale behind the edit, as discussed at the meeting, on the talk page.
These practices ensure that anyone who is not at the meeting can see that the edit has been carried out consistently with our policies.
==Proposing a change==
For all other edits, an 8-day waiting period is required. After a proposed change is agreed on at a meeting: 
* Post the proposed change in a new section at the top of the discussion page:
:*State which meeting the change was agreed on at.
:*Give the reasoning behind the agreed-upon change. You do not need to summarize the whole discussion, but include key points that you think would be sufficient to communicate why the change improves the core beliefs and practices as a whole.
:*Sign your post - it is always good to sign posts on a discussion page, but it is particularly important in this case so that the date is recorded.
* Add the pending template to the appropriate section on the page, or the pendingpage template to the page if you are adding a new section. 
* Any objections and/or discussion about the proposed change can be posted on the talk page below the proposal.
==Carrying out a proposed change== 
* Before carrying out a proposed change, check to make sure that it has been at least 8 days since the change was proposed, and that there have been no objections, or all objections have been resolved. 
* Write in the edit summary that you are updating a proposed change after the 8-day waiting period. 
* Remove the pending template if there are no more proposed changes in that section. 
Category:Wiki Guidelines
Feelings

Feelings or emotions are an important topic in Why This Way. Our views on emotion are complex; we tend to give feelings importance, but also be cautious about the ways in which we talk about them.
Some of the relevant points from our core beliefs and practices, related to emotion, include:
* Our beliefs specify that in a healthy state, people respond to their emotions in empowering and constructive ways, and people feel like their basic needs are met.
* Our belief that people take responsibility for their actions but not for outcomes beyond their control, implies that people are not responsible for other people's feelings, and are responsible more for their actions and words (which people have more direct control over) than for their feelings (which people have limited control over).
* We have a practice of not trying to make people feel guilt or shame.
* Our practice about not supporting punishment for the purpose of inflicting pain or suffering includes the concept of not punishing people by trying to make them feel bad.
==Emotion and the rules of communication==
Our rules of communication prohibit making a statement about another person's thoughts, intentions, and motivations, and we usually interpret this to also prohibit making a statement about a person's feelings ("she felt uncomfortable"), but to allow making statements about our impressions or reading of a person's feelings ("she seemed uncomfortable to me"). This distinction is important because people can (and frequently do) misread other people's emotions, yet some degree of reading emotions is essential for many types of human interaction.
Feelings also play a key role in the rules of communication for many participants in our group, although we do not specify or claim that this experience is in any way universal or necessary. Most of the rules of communication which were established in our first meeting, came from the observations of the founding participants in the group that we would often feel uncomfortable in response to specific things that people said or did during conversations. Identifying exactly what made us uncomfortable and why, and describing these things in writing, was one of the key factors that led to the rules of communication.
However, feeling and emotion are only two of many factors influencing the rules of communication. Our rules also reflect the influence of logic and science, as many of the rules also relate to common fallacies or errors in logic, and the rules are also shaped by observations from cognitive behavioral therapy about cognitive distortions characteristic of mental disorder. Another way of looking at the rules is that many of them are intended to address patterns of communicating that are pointed to as problematic by the intersection of emotion, logic, and the science of psychology.
Category:Mental Health