Strike Force Heroes 3 Unblocked Games 66

[Claribel Szwaja]

Incivilityblocks are ineffective, counterproductive, and should not happen. Anyone bringing a "s/he's being mean to me!" thread to ANI should be blocked for escalating amounts of time. Should people be uncivil? No. Should we block people to keep them from acting like assholes? No. WP:NPA covers everything that needs be covered in this regard. UnitAnode 23:29, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In my experience civility blocks are indeed effective. Sometimes they need to become indefinite to be effective, but more often than not if there is equal enforcement the user will start acting civil. There are always some people who uncivil and "refuse to change", and for them I would suggest that Wikipedia may not be compatible with them. Chillum (Need help? Ask me) 00:52, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me, but I am finding it impossible to understand why we need a special, extremely defined blocking process for incivility blocks when we don't have anything close to this rigid a system for much more obvious blocking situations. Nobody has demonstrated that incivility is more harmful than, say, tendentious editing, 3RR, or violating copyright, all of which directly affect the content of the project and are far less subjective; it makes little sense to have a rigid system based on the most poorly thought out and poorly articulated policy in the project. Indeed, some of the activity related to the development of this policy is crossing into incivility in my opinion, and I'm a darn sight more tolerant than most editors.

I am not seeing any rationale for having a separate, rigid blocking system for subjective blocks in the absence of a structured blocking system for more objectively determined blocking situations. Risker (talk) 09:25, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Then for the 10,001st time, it is time to discuss a threashold - define the crime. Now that you have introduced "disruptive" that too needs to be defined before it can be legislated against, as has been seen here, some people have differing views on what constitutes disruption. You are putting carts before horses and and the whole lot will career off the precipice if you don't do things properly. Giano 09:51, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tbsdy, nonsense. A block of 30 minutes to an hour is a cool-down block, even if you want to call it something fancy and exotic. Show evidence that this works in an adult online population before you propose to try it here; all previous experiments along those lines in this setting have done nothing but aggravated situations. And you still have not justified why there needs to be a special rigid blocking system for a subjective block when there is no such system for objective blocks. Risker (talk) 10:30, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In my experience short blocks do in fact help with new users who are perhaps testing the limits. They are less effective for long term users. Chillum (Need help? Ask me) 15:23, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is all a waste of time (probably this message included). If you believe there is a problem with incivility such that there need to be special measures in addition to what already exists, try and get some consensus that this is required in the first place. Discussing the finer details of block lengths etc etc is pointless unless the community agrees that something new is required. Quantpole (talk) 12:10, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

An RFC not so long ago showed that the community was not satisfied with the enforcement of civility and personal attack policies. I am not sure where the RFC is now, but I will look for it later. Yes, there is a need for reform in this area, this need presents itself in endlessly repeating dramas caused by the lack of clarity in this matter. I am very glad efforts are being taken to improve our response and make it more consistent. Chillum (Need help? Ask me) 15:56, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The only way I see that you could game the system would be to stop being uncivil for a few months in an attempt to reset the block duration. I think that if someone wants to avoid blocks by becoming civil then that is a success. Chillum (Need help? Ask me) 22:45, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That said, this proposed policy is rules creep and starkly punitive. If such proposal doesn't appeal to someone who is generally on board with the concept, it does not have a snowball's chance of becoming policy. I don't think proposals like this are a good use of time. If you must work on shaping policy, please start with something modest and more broadly appealing than this. I like must of the language before the "general process" box. Cool Hand Luke

Until there is a very clear and completely unequivocable definition of what constitutes incivility, any resolution gained from this page can grant a free licence and serve as encouragement to certain Admins (I don't think its unreasonable to actually name Chillum and Sandstein as just two of several) who appear to have made it their life's crusade to become guardian angels of their own interpretation of incivility. Their actions merely add to the disruption and distress. Until incivility is defined, there is no point discussing its treatment. Giano 07:58, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The escalation as it is suggested reminds me the three strike rule, when a previously convited man gets life for posession of a pinch of weed. It was already mentioned that blocks are not punishment, but prevention of disruption. It was also mentioned that many people are rude in the heat ot the moment, out of frustration, out of bad habit picked in other chat sites, out of false understanding of free speech (forgetting that wikipedia is not Hyde Park), etc. It was also mentioned that mechanical blocking may be easily gamed to oust good but "temperamentally unstable" people. I may list a number of other reasons for the following proposals.

(R4): While I let it fly for a while, since it seems I hit a sensitive spot, however please notice that the intention of (R4) was in the last sentence: However "nonpersonal profanity" cannot be base of block escalation, so while our attitudes to profanity differ, it seems we agree in terms of the scope of the discussed policy. Please notice the title of this section: "Escalation and descalation". Mukadderat (talk) 21:10, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think most 10 year olds can tell when something is meant to be nasty, I don't think the problem has ever been recognising such comments. Listing a set of phrases will only open up gaming. Chillum (Need help? Ask me) 19:39, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) I thought the solution for this would be quite simple: if someone civilly objects to the use of a given word or phrase, then it is considered offensive in that situation. To give an example, if an established user is exasperated & drops an f-bomb (for those of you who don't understand, that means saying "fuck" gratuitously) for the first time, I doubt any reasonable person find offence. On the other hand, if someone routinely drops f-bombs & continues to be a potty-mouth despite repeated pleas to watch the language, that person deserves sanctions for incivility. This applies to other words such as "queer." (And if we get someone who makes her/himself a nuisance over complaining about other people's choice of words, then I believe that person deserves being sanctioned. The idea here is to write an encyclopedia, not to quibble over behavior which should be more properly ignored.) -- llywrch (talk) 20:13, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If somebody is told that a particular term offended them, and the person kept using it then that would speak volumes as to their intention of using it. "Queer" is a good example as it has multiple meanings. Saying someone has a "queer way of making inline citations" may just mean it is strange, but if the person makes it clear they take offense at the term then it would probably be a good idea not to use it towards that person again because now you know it is offensive. In this case there is a legitimate case as the term does have a derogatory meaning. In other cases someone may say they are offended by something as simple as saying the Earth is older than 6000 years old, in such a case I don't think it is reasonable to accommodate the person.

This isn't the way that the community has leaned in the past but I would support an adjustment of expectations to discourage the use of "salty language" as Chillum puts it, especially in pages intended to have a wide audience like article talk pages and project pages. I think using language consistent with a professional environment (read: post as if you are writing to an audience of 5000 strangers, with whom you would like a long-term positive interation) demonstrates respect for the project and one's collaborators, and would promote a generally more courteous environment. It's difficult to demand people to interact courteously when in other regards they are free to act with a level of discourtesy more associated with a web chatroom than the world's #1 reference publication. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:47, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think we are doing a fine job of finding a solution. We just need to ignore the noise and pay attention to the signal. If you look closely you will find that while there is an abundance of text disparaging this idea, it is mostly from a small group of people(very small) being vocal(very vocal). I suggest we ignore the disruptive influences on this discussion and try to move forward(that means not responding to unproductive comments). We get that some people disagree with this, and if they make up far more volume of text than those presenting ideas and solutions then that is annoying but it does not stop us from carrying on. Chillum (Need help? Ask me) 23:13, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There is a proposal to block over incivility. Currently the policy text as it stands consists of two sections, the first is an abstract as to what the policy is for, and the second section is how to enforce policy blocks. The second proposal is something I put forward, which is an escalating block policy, with an inbuild safeguard that allows for escalation resets through ANI discussion.

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