Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Gender gap task force

Need active peer reviewers

The projects Wikipedia:WikiProject Feminism/Peer review, Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's History/Peer review, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Gender Studies/Peer review really need active peer reviewers, so if some people could click on those articles and add their usernames under the Active Peer reviewers section that would be great. Thanks!

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gender Gap Task Force/Proposed decision

For those who care to read it; probably all of it will pass.

As a farewell, let me just say:

• On a personal level, I have no problem with topic banning me from GGTF for a good while because as things are now even the most subtly disruptive editors will just keep pissing me off. However, on a political level, Arbitrators are sending GGTF members and the world a bad message - angry defenders of GGTF will be dealt with harshly while its most insistent, insidious, snide and harassing critics mostly will get off scott free.defenders of GGTF will be dealt with more harshly while its most insistent, insidious, snide and harassing critics, most (or all?) of whom will get off scott free.
• The "Non-discrimination policy" section still fails to address disruption of Wikiprojects, including of those trying to end systemic bias. Arbitrators are telling bigots to have at them and and if defenders of the project lose their tempers, critics should try and get them blocked or topic banned. In any case, certain GGTF efforts will have to be taken off En.Wikipedia, which really is not a good sign.
• I obviously am very aggravated in general right now after a year and a half of what I consider partisan and/or sexist harassment that cut my actual editing down to nothing. To see these issues magnified at GGTF was incredibly annoying. I do intend to take a nice long wikibreak to work on my own seriously neglected writing, music and video projects. But I still probably will add the occasional factoid into articles of interest. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 21:06, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

First, don't panic. It's rare that all of a proposed decision passes. Wait for the voting to conclude. (And not panicking even then is advised.) Second, it's absolutely not true that the proposal deals with you or Neotarf more harshly than Eric Corbett, the three proposed topic bans are the same, and Eric even has an additional paragraph. Arguably it would be unbalanced in the sense you spend more time here than he does, of course. One proposed consolation - the proposal doesn't suggest anyone be banned from editing any articles (unless there are any articles about the Gender Gap on Wikipedia) as such, and, well, the changes we make to articles is why we are all here in the end. Right? --GRuban (talk) 21:43, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for noting that conceptual flub, now corrected. Believe me on a personal level I am relieved to be topic banned for a while anyway. The one arbitration I was in every thing passed, but haven't paid attention to others, so we shall see if they beef up the "Non-discrimination policy" section . I say no more since editors can follow the link if they desire. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 22:05, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

MRuban is correct that things seem to be getting more complicated there, for better and worse. Perhaps some consciousness raising going on? Slightly more elevated discussions than in previous rounds here... Time will tell... Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 16:13, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm an old time Wikipedian. I've seen it all. :-) --GRuban (talk) 16:24, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

• So Carol is going to be indeffed? If Corbett is too, I guess I can see that, but holy moly if he is not. And I'm not saying I want that. The findings against Carol seem silly, but I never pay attention to ARBCOM stuff. Yes she made comments about Sitush, the guy who wrote the attack BLP on her, one of the most legendary and clever assaults on a fellow editor ever seen. And supporting articles at AFD by at times claiming similar articles on males wouldn't be deleted is no great sin, its an argument that rises or falls on its merits. There is a gender gap, last I heard.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 05:24, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

If I may, that won't be decided until the case is closed. Arbitrators can easily change their votes, before then. GoodDay (talk) 05:27, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Ouch. A site ban is serious. That would be a shame. So sorry, Carol. --GRuban (talk) 15:18, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Carol hasn't been banned, as it requires atleast 7 supports at the close of the case. So far, we've not heard from the 12th active arbitrator, so Carol should remain calm. GoodDay (talk) 04:32, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

This is sort of fascinating how ARBCOM works, if you can get through the red tape. So LFaraone holds Carol's fate in their hands as to an indefinite ban. I do think its odd that two arbcom members who have voted to ban Carol (Beeblebrox and Worm That Turned) have abstained from voting on Eric Corbett. I know the case is not just an Eric v. Carol thing, but it seems strange that a judge can permit himself to abstain from any voting as to one party to a potential bias, but not another opposing party -- that kind of thing surely cannot happen in English or American courts.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 21:02, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Actually, Roger Davies is the 12th active arb for that case, yet to be heard. LFaraone, is inactive :) GoodDay (talk) 01:35, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

I just want to say how much I appreciate the members of this group who have spoken up on my behalf at the talk page for the proposed decision. Since Arbcom have proposed to ban me from anything with gender in it, I should probably look over the BLPs of women that have created and see if I can get some of the tags removed from them. I suppose that would prohibit me from attending any edit-a-thons as well, applying for any grants, or anything associated with GLAM. I'm not sure if that would restrict me from working on my BLPs of male subjects or if I would have to concentrate on something like algae.

The Committee has now added a proposal to place this topic, or perhaps this page, under discretionary sanctions. For the last year I have been a very vocal opponent of discretionary sanctions, but I am now leaning towards recommending such a thing to the Arbitration Committee. One of the huge problems with DS is that it is enforced by the WP:AE, a small, all-male group that has a reputation for harshness against non-admins. They can't tell the trolls apart from the editors who are trying to stop the trolls. I can envision the tiny number of women editors being caught up in this system, especially any who were trying to develop their capacity for leadership, and as a result, have some sanction applied to them that would remove them from the pool of potential admins. You can see what has happened to me. If I were to recommend such a thing to the Committee, I think it might carry some weight, at least with some arbs.

Alternatively, you may want to consider closing the Gender Gap project as being much too risky to participate in. This would protect the small number of individuals who are willing to risk editing in gender topics, so that the number of such edits will continue to rise. I can see some value of the group as a notice board, but unfortunately the notices are so buried in walls of arguments that it is often impossible to read them

Finally, there are some lists of resources, and probably some lists of redlinked articles that are at risk of being lost if some of us are topic banned. They should be transferred somewhere where they can be curated and referenced, perhaps to Meta, which already has a tightly reviewed list of resources. I know I have done a little copyediting to such a list, and it is still in very rough form, but it should not be lost. Carol has probably done the most work on such lists and knows what is in them. If she is to be prevented from working on this, the time to tap her expertise on this matter is now, before the case is closed. The arbitration committee usually works slowly, rarely meets its own deadlines, and tries to keep things open as long as possible in the interest of fairness, but in this case the committee has repeatedly been pushed to meet its schedule, whether for protecting a page, or closing a section -- and so far has been responding to these requests. Carol needs to ignore the trolls, something she is not very good at doing, and now concentrate on the tasks she is good at, and that will continue to benefit those who do not wish to see women shut out of the Project for years to come. —Neotarf (talk) 11:26, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Actualy, Neotarf, even though some people here wouldn't like to have you showing up at editathon events and giving the GLAM women ideas about how women are treated here, thankfully, GLAM institutions have their own rules on who they welcome, and are not under Arbcom's jurisdiction. --Djembayz (talk) 13:24, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

My understanding though Djembayz, is that these events usually involve making actual edits to English Wikipedia, which would in fact be under the jurisdiction of the ArbCom. I think it more important than ever, now that nominations for Committee elections has now opened, for this task force to develop a standard list of gender-related questions to ask the arb candidates, for example, what kinds of gender-specific language is allowed in their own workplace and whether it has any bearing on Wikipedia. —Neotarf (talk) 13:39, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

As someone who does a lot of stuff with grants and is on the GAC: regardless of arbcom's decisions, you will be more than welcome to apply for grants. Each GAC member (and WMF staff) will evaluate your proposal and your ability to carry it out, but in my book you've demonstrated a committment to gendergap issues (an area I particularly want to fund,) and a capacity to do meaningful work. If you receive a siteban from ENWP, you may need to make any grant proposals not ENWP-specific since we don't tend to give out grants that violate the rules of particular projects, but the WMF grants program is outside of the jurisdiction of ENWP's arbcom, and a siteban here wouldn't preclude you from applying for grants by any means. Kevin Gorman (talk) 07:17, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

I strongly agree about the need to develop questions for ArbCom candidates. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 14:38, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

SlimVirgin, feel free to draft something. It would be nice to add asking about harassment/wikihounding and gender-related slurs and "battleground alliances" issues as described here. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 19:53, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Maybe also consider including a question about saving people from Salem type hollering gangups.OrangesRyellow (talk) 05:14, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

The place to have that conversation might be on some of the current arbs' talk pages--now. —Neotarf (talk) 13:30, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Gloria Steinem article nominated as a Good article

The nomination is under the category Social sciences and society, and the subcategory Culture, sociology and psychology. Please review if you can, and if you do please let me know on my talk page. Thanks! Maranjosie (talk) 16:11, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I reviewed it; it passed. Lk7t3Yu (talk) 18:51, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Grant proposal for HR staffer

There is a grant proposal at Meta for a staffer who would deal with community human resources concerns. This is long overdue, especially since the Foundation has no such staff person. I am pinging Tony as well, since he is a member of this group and well experienced in evaluating grants. This might also be a good time to look for someone to act as a liaison with the Gender group, since Arbcom is currently considering whether to ban me from gendered topics. —Neotarf (talk) 12:09, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Very much needed. For example, the Twitter reporting tool for harassment, profiled in Forbes and Engadget can't be implemented here, because there is nobody to report to. --Djembayz (talk) 13:46, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Educational Partnerships

The Wiki Education Foundation has article on their blog titled "Help us close Wikipedia’s gender gap". This information via Eryk Salvaggio on the Wikimedia Gendergap mailing list. —Neotarf (talk) 14:07, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Endometrial cancer for Today's Featured Article

I've set-up Endometrial cancer as a blurb for the Today's Featured Article requests process.

You can see it at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Endometrial cancer.

However, as I myself have nominated a bunch of other articles lately, I won't actually transclude it at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests.

If anyone else wishes to do so, they can follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests, and then a discussion will start as to the article's consideration for the Main Page.

Thank you,

— Cirt (talk) 01:50, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Gendergap-L

I'd like to encourage people who are discouraged from starting meaningful conversations here to sign up for Gendergap-L. I don't have the ability to remove discussants whose behavior is clearly disruptive and whose goals are at odds with the mission of the GGTF from participation here, but I can and will remove any such discussants from Gendergap-l. Although the atmosphere of GG-l hasn't always been great in the past, we kick people off a lot more readily than we used to. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:46, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Kevin; I woudl imagine wherever you are there is heavy censorship and people being removed and kicked. You really are a very foolish boy. Giano (talk) 21:49, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Giano, do you really have nothing better to do than apparently edit stalk me constantly? I'm frankly impressed you found a post of mine on a board I doubt you were following within three minutes of me making it. Kevin Gorman (talk) 21:57, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

You are mistaken, this has been on my very extensive watchlist for a while now. As for stalking, you are truly ridiculous and perhaps just a touch paranoid. Would I accuse you of stalking Eric Corbett? No, certainly mot, even though you do seem to pop up with a tirade of venom everywhere his name is mentioned. You need to calm down Kevin - you were made to look a fool once because of your overreactions, don't make the same mistake again. Giano (talk) 22:06, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

You need to calm down Kevin - you were made to look a fool once because of your overreactions, don't make the same mistake again. What do you want to achieve by delving upon one incident again and again .... ? Is the objective to make it difficult / joyless for Kevin to contribute ?OrangesRyellow (talk) 02:22, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

... says a person who is among those who has been dragging up one incident again and again? This is getting nowhere, folks, so I suggest we drop it. - Sitush (talk) 09:20, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Don't be intimitated off GGTF by anyone, folks. No matter what your views are. GoodDay (talk) 22:00, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

There was quite a bit of discussion on the list in June 2014 about moderating it more closely since some men were overwhelming the list with their opinions and repeatedly negative comments. I remember a lot of support and no significant objection. Here it looks like we will have discretionary sanctions which should be used to end such off topic or discouraging rants and personal attacks. GGTF Discretionary Sanctions reads regarding GGTF: sanctions should be imposed if an editor severely or persistently disrupts the discussion. Let us pray. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 22:13, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions should do the job :) GoodDay (talk) 22:16, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't think there is a single project on en-WP that is moderated. As for discretionary sanctions, please don't think of them as some sort of magic bullet equivalent of moderation. Unless there is some rider attached by ArbCom, they're just a quick way to enforce admin remedies in situations that usually are in breach of our normal editing practices, basically saving some work at ANI. Thus, for example, they will not cause the stifling of appropriate criticism nor limit who can contribute here provided that those contributions fall within our norms. - Sitush (talk) 09:28, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Clarifying: Discretionary sanctions will cover wrong behaviour from both camps, of course. GoodDay (talk) 12:13, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

@Carol: we've removed, I want to say five people since then? Unfortunately I've had some physical health issues since then that caused me to miss a lot of mod stuff, but that should have ended and there's definitely no way some of the comments on this page would stand on gendergap. Hopefully DS will work here, but unfortunately sanctions working requires an uninvolved admin to patrol the page, and I have the unfortunate feeling that that might be hard to find. Kevin Gorman (talk) 22:31, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Editors also can ask for Arbitration enforcement and several admins familiar with the process are there. I don't know how many admins there are, but hopefully there are a number who, though they may have views, are not "involved" pro or con vs. any specific editor. We'll think positive thoughts. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 00:13, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Well DS makes me very wary of returning to this project. I hope it will be all to the good, but it remains to be seen. It is certain that the Arb case blew a 6-week hole in progress with the GGTF for me. Others may have found the time to be productive. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:25, 25 November 2014 (UTC).

@Rich Farmbrough: Rich, I agree that this has not been good for GGTF, and I think we need to get it back on track. I've been waiting until the case ended, but there's no sign of that, so we should try to move on regardless. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 17:17, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Does anyone object to me signing up to Gendergap-l? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:00, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Anthony, please do, you'd be very welcome. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:27, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Carol

For what it's worth, Carol posted a strongly phrased rant on the proposed decision talk page and Jimbo Wales's talk page. She was blocked for a week, banned from the GGTF, and possibly most important, two arbitrators, including the influential and usually reasonable Newyorkbrad, changed their decision towards her proposed site ban, so it now has a supermajority. Poor Carol. --GRuban (talk) 16:45, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Her block has been reduced to 3-days. GoodDay (talk) 16:52, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I can see where Newyorkbrad has withdrawn his motion to close the Arbcom case while the wording is worked out but I don't see any change of his decision. Can you provide a diff? --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 02:03, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

You can see my change of vote on the remedy itself. The diff in question had a number of implications that are concerning, not all of which may be obvious at first reading. (Any further discussion should preferably take place on the arbitration talkpage.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:05, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) [1] Two others followed. Did I mention influential? [2][3] --GRuban (talk) 03:10, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I see it now & will comment on the arb talkpage. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 03:43, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

I believe Carol has ban banned from the Arbitration by a clerk, not the GGTF.Two kinds of pork^Makin'_Bacon 04:52, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

FREE
THE GGTF THREE

. This has gone way too far. Bad things are gonna happen if the outcome of an arbitration endorsed by Jimbo to root out disruption of a project trying to combat the Gender Gap on wikipedia ends up banning only a key supporter of the GGTF that was trying to stop the disruption.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 05:38, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Carol sealed her own fate with the exceptionally unwise rant linked to above. I wish Carol well, and wish her peace in her real world life. But her relentless politicizing and conspiracy theorizing here on Wikipedia has resulted in our elected representatives concluding, correctly, that she is a net negative for this encyclopedia building project. I agree. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:17, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Combatants come here and question the reason for the project's very existence. It leads to Arbcom. Carol and NeoTarf banned. Eric adds to his lengthy list of slaps on the wrist. This Arbcom case, given the way it appears it will end, should go down as one of the most notorious examples of just how broken Wikipedia really is. It will be deserve to be raised at every speaking engagement and interview Jimmy Wales does in the same breath as 'Does Wikipedia have a gender problem?'. AnonNep (talk) 04:16, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

This is a sad outcome indeed. Kaldari (talk) 10:33, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

She certainly can be outspoken, but an eye roll and a 12 month ban are certainly two different things. Reading these comments and considering the mention of "Salvio" in particular, I'm reminded of old times ([4], around the "suitcase" part). If there is one thing that seems to be settled law on Wikipedia, it's that if the use of epithets or suggestion of bias is punishable, then complaining about them is much more so. I haven't been a member of GGTF, but if I had, I'd be questioning whether it was appropriate to continue it, or whether it should be disbanded and reorganized strictly offsite, following the model of accepted precedents. Wnt (talk) 17:47, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

And if we're restrained in discussing gender bias we're restrained in tackling any role it may play in the gender gap issue. It reduces the task force to 'play nice girls and don't create a fuss'. AnonNep (talk) 19:18, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I think there's a difference in "playing nice" and saying things that are inappropriate, heated, and/or controversial in nature. There's hundreds of ways to say a phrase - it just has to be said correctly in order to be effective. Dusti^{*Let's talk!*} 19:20, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I'd agree on how its said. But I was responding more to Wnt's if a 'suggestion of bias is punishable, then complaining about them is much more so'. AnonNep (talk) 19:38, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I was unpleasantly surprised to read their decision; it seems to me that they don't uphold any general right to use epithets or be provocative, yet they find a way to let Corbett off the hook, yet they don't do this for Carol. It's like freedom and evenhandedness are not considerations. I understand Wikipedia has a WP:NPA rule, but resorting to the strongest punishment they can give in a knee-jerk reaction to one angry comment would seem excessive already, and it doesn't take into account the underlying situation, namely that there is a gender gap and women do feel mistreated. They ruled on her as if she had been ranting that some Jewish editors were in an Elders of Zion conspiracy, rather than reacting angrily to sexism that many here believe is real. As I was saying back in 2010, I think that ArbCom should be more lenient in cases where people have been provoked. Really, I would say their most important power is not the ability to swing the banhammer around, but the ability to draw a line in the midst of unclear policies and tell those who have been arguing to stick by it going forward. Wnt (talk) 21:50, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

About the only thing I can think to add is that it should be noted that the restriction applies only to the English wikipedia. There are a lot of other WMF entities where the restriction doesn't apply, and I have personally thought for some time that maybe one of the way to draw more female editors of all political orientations might be to create a slightly more active presence in some of the other entities where there might be a chance of more focused collaboration. I could certainly see a Wikibooks work or two dealing with, for instance, feminist theory, or others on cooking or housekeeping or women's sports or any number of other topics which might appeal primarily or more significantly to some women and might, in a slightly more actively collaborative environment, do a better job of drawing and keeping editors there, and maybe provide some springboard for activity here. Just an idea, anyway. John Carter (talk) 22:05, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Wnt, ArbCom has a long history of failing to recognize harassment and the effect it has on the target. It would have taken many hours of work to reproduce the diffs showing the way people were swarming around Carol, and how she was becoming increasingly stressed by it. Even if someone had pieced it together, the committee might not have read it, or might not have fully appreciated what it feels like to be at the centre of it. The lesson is to keep diffs when this starts happening, and don't respond. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:16, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

This is a really valid point. There have been and actively are still right now several cases presented to ArbCom which deal with dubious behavior of a really long long-term nature, and which are as result sometimes extremely hard to document or get what are considered "adequate" rulings on unless they all happen to be on the archived talk pages of a few selected articles. Unfortunately, gathering such behavior for presentation to ArbCom or whomever is a really involved and time-consuming process, and rather difficult according to policy to maintain material on here. There are several threads over at, um, another web site which deal specifically with such matters, and I suppose it might also be possible to create in hopefully private cloud-space some collaborative collections of links regarding particularly problematic editors. There might be problems with the latter according to policy somehow, maybe, but it certainly would be possible for some people to use other web sites or other public means to perhaps not create "hit lists" on people, but to build collaborative record of systemic behavioral problems. John Carter (talk) 22:26, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

All the baiting and harassment which caused CMDC to lash out was done on the case pages itself. Where is the need for diffs ? When a user is being harassed and baited continuously, it is upon the admins and arbs to take concrete action ( i.e. blocks and bans ) to stop it. If the harassment and baiting continues with impunity, the target of harassment will do a crash n burn by lashing out due to the pressure cooker-with-lid effect,.Ignoring baiting and harassment is no use because the mud would stick if it stands unopposed, and the target would do crash n burn by getting defamed and demonized which would lead to mass hysteria and mob lynching at ANI, Even if the target tries to argue with the baiters, the discussion would quickly snowball to overwhelming proportions, ( the target is being baited by a group ) and the target would do crash n burn by getting declared tendentious for arguing so much. The only chance for survival of the target is if admins and arbs take concrete action on harassers and baiters, but they seem to find it difficult to do it when the baiters and harassers are well established users, and even more difficult when they are a group of well established users. To sum it up, I see NO chance a user could survive when baited and harassed by a group of well established users.OrangesRyellow (talk) 14:05, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi Oranges, it had been happening on this page for months before the RfAr was filed, so by the time the case opened Carol was already very distressed. I agree about the danger of ignoring it. But the fact is that people can judge more easily when someone is being harassed if the target doesn't respond. As soon as you start responding, you (a) feed the problem, and (b) it means there's a mass of diffs for people to sift through after the fact, so that both parties can end up looking as bad as each other. Geogre summed up the situation well years ago. See User:Geogre/Comic. But I agree with you that the solution lies in admins being able (and willing) to spot it early on. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:18, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

You make fair assessment. The part about people being able to judge easily when baiting is ignored is mostly true, but becomes irrelevant when the group of people who do the judging at ANI are mostly the same group of people who did the baiting and harassing.OrangesRyellow (talk) 20:08, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

That's true, but where the diffs are clear (all coming from the baiters, with no response), uninvolved people are much more likely to comment when it goes to a board, simply because it's easy to see who's in the wrong. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:26, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Correct. But then, uninvolved people are also likely to look the other way when they see that the group of baiters and harassers are unscrupulous, and that anyone spoiling their game would likely earn their ire. This has greater relevance than it appears at first glance because upright, uninvolved guys are not part of any group which can be relied on to cover their backs, ( being part of a gang etc. is terribly unwikipedian for true, upright wikipedians ) while the group of baiters and harassers are already there as a group, and are obviously unscrupulous. Most people, even upright people have this thing called "survival instinct". Rather than criticizing anyone, I am trying to point out what I think is a serious flow in the system itself, a flaw / weakness which is being exploited, and needs to be recognized and repaired, a flaw which the system cannot repair by itself. I know there are a lot of admirable people who love Wikipedia dearly and who have done a great many things here, but it does not mean the system is without weaknesses or self-sufficient. I think dealing with a group of unscrupulous well established users is something the system is ill equipped to deal with.OrangesRyellow (talk) 20:58, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

break

I hope you'll allow some positive thinking here from a non-member. While the arbcom decision certainly looks like a setback, I actually think that it is a major victory, something like Martin Luther King being sent to Birmingham Jail. It has now been shown that an editor can blatantly throw around gender slurs, disrupt this project, and generally harass women editors and Wikipedia can't do anything about it. In other words, it's been shown that the current system is outrageously broken and that it is time to fix it. So what is your plan to fix it? and how are you going to proceed from here?

While I believe that all under-represented classes of editors should be encouraged and protected by appropriate institutional arrangements, the gender gap has not been my focus on Wikipedia. I suggest that others come up with their own plans and set their own courses of action. But I will suggest the following as a starting point for discussion.

• 1st - there is an arb-com election going on now. Use it. Vote "oppose" to every candidate that you don't personally know to be dedicated to equal editing rights for all. This will then turn into a no confidence vote for the entire arbcom. If no candidate has more "supports" than "opposes" I doubt that Jimbo will appoint any of them. Your point will be made and you might even get a chance to vote in your own candidates.

• 2nd - I would start a petition to the Board of Trustees to renew the commitment that they've already made to diversity on Wikipedia. I wouldn't try to reargue the details of the current case, just state that the current system is obviously broken and ask what they are going to do to fix it. Pick about 3 fairly general demands, e.g.
  • All gender slurs, racial or religious slurs, or slurs against any under-represented class must be stopped via a block, if only a one day block, with progressively stricter sanctions
  • Civility will be enforced using common sense - as if it were one of of the 5 Pillars of Wikipedia- or else the WMF employees will be appointed to enforce it.
  • The board will review the progress of reducing the gender gap every 6 months, and consider a package of further measures if progress is not according to plan. Editors from this project should post several dozen ideas on how to close the gap on a separate page - it shouldn't be hard to do.

Well, those are my ideas; I hope to see some better ones, but they should be as easy to implement as voting and petitioning and you need some action now. Don't let one little setback scare you off. Let them know you're here to stay.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:36, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

That is just utter nonsense. First, the case has fixed the issue. Second, if someone is going to petition the Trustees it should be to provide a mechanism to stop clueless commentary which disrupts content building. Johnuniq (talk) 06:09, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Johnny U - You know that I've appreciated your cool head and your general support through the years, but I think we must disagree on what the issue is. To me it is whether editors can defy civility rules - by repeatedly calling a woman editor a "cunt" in this case - and harass women editors by stalking them on-Wiki. If you think that that issue has been fixed by the arbcom decision, I have to disagree. The key to this issue is that the vast majority of people in the world know that Corbett's actions (as described above - perhaps you disagree with my description?) are terribly wrong. I believe that a large majority of Wikipedia editors know that his actions are wrong, and that they make for a biased encyclopedia - helping to exclude the majority of the population from contributing to the encyclopedia. If folks want to fix the problem, I suggest that they let the powers-that-be know about their majority status.

Respectfully yours

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 12:27, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Except nobody in that case called a women a cunt, let alone repeatedly. This kind of non-factual hyperbole is not going to help anyone close the gender gap. And "helping to exclude the majority of the population from contributing to the encyclopedia", again, are you serious? 99% of the editors here will never have any contact with the parties of that case. You're picking single trees out of the forest and that will accomplish nothing. Capeo (talk) 14:28, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

I think the publicity surrounding the dispute means that many editors had contact. To be clear, I don't recall seeing anything that would have demanded a harsher penalty for Corbett; I can see a case for doing less - but I would have liked to see ArbCom adopt principles that are consistent with that. And ... I never pictured Carol as being up for sanctions in the first place. While throwing around bans can sometimes quell a dispute (though not always, because often they come back...) I think that when (as is so common on Wikipedia) the main focus of the dispute is people throwing policy at each other and demanding enforcement, it can be more effective simply to say no, the admins won't step in to stop the argument unless line X, Y, or Z is crossed, so quit asking and talk about the issues you really care about. My notion of an ideal outcome in the case would have been for everyone to be able to continue their discussion, perhaps warned of a few things that might lead to trouble. Wnt (talk) 15:28, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

To be clear, by contact I meant actually editing the same articles but I understand your point. I also concur with your second point. ArbCom didn't need to step in at that moment as most of the conflict had already died down. Though I believe that most of the outcomes would have actually taken place in the next six months or so anyway just by community decree. But honestly that's neither here nor there and rehashing it certainly isn't going to make this place more inviting for woman editors. Honestly, I'm not sure what would. Pretty much every idea I've seen put forward would require editors to declare personal information that goes against the principle of anonymity. Beyond that, you know there would be a tiny fraction of people who would simply lie.Capeo (talk) 15:39, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, a lot of it is one foot in front of the other. For example, I noticed someone at the arbitration pointed out that the phrase "task force" has a strictly military connotation to the British. I see that no other project in WP:WikiProject Countering systematic bias has "task force" in its name, but simply has the descriptive term for its area of expertise. So why not move the name to WP:WikiProject Countering systematic bias/Gender gap? (the second word lowercase follows the precedent of WP:WikiProject Countering systematic bias/Global perspective) Oh sure, it's a tiny thing, but I think that fixing gender bias on Wikipedia will have to involve paying attention to a lot of tiny things one after another. Wnt (talk) 15:52, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Another good point. Along those same lines, and I mean this as no offense to the many avowed feminists that contribute here, a lot of the discussion here is couched in terms of feminist studies and using feminist study jargon, which honestly, I think turns a lot of women away from the project. I'm quite sure the vast majority of women don't consider themselves feminists even though they would agree with many of the principles put forth. I'm a man and I agree with most of the principles put forth and, having some experience with feminism, am familiar with a most of the terminology. For those who aren't though I could see them finding it to be insular instead of welcoming. It may be helpful to keep discussion of principles and goals as general and inclusive as possible.Capeo (talk) 16:07, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

In general I'd agree as there's nothing worse (or more unproductive) than discussions that get so bogged down in jargon that only a few can follow and contribute. But under 'Scope' of the Project (tab at top of page) it states:

"The aim of the task force is to address all the ways in which the gender gap affects the position of women on Wikipedia, and their absence from it, as article subjects, editors, and readers. Issues include editor interaction, the way policies and guidelines are written, our dispute-resolution processes, the way admins are elected, notability guidelines, which articles are created and deleted, and how articles are sourced."

The task force scope is to 'address all the ways' not to be 'all the ways'. This is a task force, a research, organising and action group, not the 'Welcome Ladies Tea Room'. This is for discussions of who/what/where/why/how so, yes, you are going to encounter feminist thinking. A proposal for a political/ideology free womens' space on en.wiki could well be worth considering but that, based on the scope, was not what the GGTF set out to be. AnonNep (talk) 16:58, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually, that scope has been questioned here of late. There seemed to be uncertainty regarding what it is and also what perhaps it should be. IIRC, there was some attempt to discuss this but it got lost in the general noise. Getting agreement regarding purpose certainly would be the most obvious starting point. - Sitush (talk) 17:14, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

A discussion worth having but, ultimately, I expect there will always be a broader 'address all the ways' who/what/where/why/how project, so the question is less of what should this task force be, than what other initiatives can spin off from here (a political/ideology free womens' space on en.wiki, for example). Otherwise, if this task force is co-opted into that initiative then the task force is likely to return, in its own right, once again. AnonNep (talk) 17:29, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Of course I'm not saying there shouldn't input from feminist thinkers. I'm just saying you're likely to arrive at proposals more beneficial to all women if more women of different walks of life and different ideologies were able to share their experiences here. Anecdotal but I have seen quite a few of the most prolific women editors lose interest in participating here due to it feeling more like wikiproject feminism or similar sentiments. Given the subject matter it's only natural that feminist voices would be prominent and that completely makes sense but the project, I would think, is seeking a broader reach than that. As for a Welcome Ladies Tea Room, I certainly wasn't saying that either, but I would expect that the project would be more successful if you could get more female participants to express what effects their where and why they do or don't edit. Now how you broaden that inclusivity I honestly don't know. I just think anything that would increase involvement should be given some thought.Capeo (talk) 17:48, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Ultimately, I think, gender disparity among editors will have to be a WMF project of some sort - something to gauge the opinion of the broader editorship and to propose/organise/fund actions based on their findings. There's a limit to what can be expected of the GGTF, as a user level project, particularly in the current environment. But, should we continue? In light of there being little else, yes, of course. AnonNep (talk) 17:57, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I think you're right in regards to the limits of a user project. I would think only the WMF would have the information gathering apparatus required to make informed proposals such as large scale polls. But so long as they shared that info there would be something for the project to work with.Capeo (talk) 18:26, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

I think it's appropriate to give explanations for the layman, but I would hate to see the discussion "dumbed down" in any systematic way. Especially I would like to avoid any suggestion that men can't learn any relevant aspects of feminist theory; let's remember that (as with all bias) there are two sides to stereotyping, and while one may be less obviously damaging it is no less fundamental to the operation of the whole. Like women, whenever men reject some conclusion drawn from a feminist idea, it should be because they disagree with the theory and have some notion of how feminist progress would better be implemented, rather than seeing feminist theory as a whole as being an alien attack vehicle controlled by women that cannot be understood by rational (i.e. male) thinkers. Wnt (talk) 19:16, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Feminist: Stories from Women's Liberation

If anyone from this group wishes to see this published and wishes to fix the sourcing issues you can see Draft:Feminist: Stories from Women's Liberation. The main issues is Wikipedia being used as a reference at least nine times, I suggested removing the IMDB as well. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 12:03, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for letting us know about it, Haib. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:23, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Checked refs, tidy-up & rephrased. It can still do with some love if anyone has source searching time. AnonNep (talk) 19:04, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Social norms approach

I've started a new thread as the previous one has changed course a little. Smallbones, thank you for the suggestions and the encouragement. Johnuniq, I've been thinking about the UNICEF material we read about, the material about the social norms approach. This is based on the idea of the "majority fallacy," namely that "the majority is silent because it thinks it is a minority, and the minority is vocal because it believes that it represents the majority" (I've copied this from the WP article, which is quoting an academic).

I think this is what has happened to the idea of civility on Wikipedia. It has a bad press: not cool, too American, not what real content contributors care about. I don't think any of those things are true. Just about everyone prefers to take part in a conversation where people are being respectful of each other. The question is: how do we start from that point and achieve a better editing environment? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:09, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

How about a noticeboard where participants can request civil help? Something like a Wikipedia:Request for comments, but less formal, just a place to post a link to the discussion and a note that cooler, uninvolved, heads would be appreciated to bring some sanity. Then if there really are more civil editors than uncivil ones, that will become obvious, and the uncivil ones will have good examples to follow. Something like this:

EditorA: Anyone who thinks this article needs an infobox is a diseased camel!

EditorB: You could see that an infoboxes is obviously needed if you weren't the degenerate spawn of a rabid mongoose and a lame wombat!

EditorC: Hi, I'm here from the Civil Help Request. I see that these three articles - X, Y, and Z - each have infoboxes, which seem very useful, and it looks like this is a similar article. EditorA, can you explain why this article is different?

EditorA: Well, X, Y, and Z are more clear cut: to fill in the infobox's third slot from the top takes a word each in X, Y, and Z, but we'd have to write a paragraph of text in this article.

EditorB: Are you going to listen to this rabid wombat?

EditorC: I don't think EditorA is a rabid wombat, instead she seems to have a point, the third slot issue does seem to be complicated here. EditorB, what would be your proposal to fill in the third slot from the top without writing a paragraph of text?

I've found that namecalling breeds more namecalling, but civil discussion breeds more civil discussion. Not always, of course, but often enough that it's worth trying. What do you think? (Noting that if you disagree, you are, of course, a three legged wildebeest with dental problems.) --GRuban (talk) 19:44, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

I like the idea of the social norms approach simply from the standpoint that it has a testable methodology. It would require a very well designed poll with a large sample size but that may well be doable with WMF aid.Capeo (talk) 19:55, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

This would make sense to me, if it could be implemented. The one very real concern I have is whether such a noticeboard or similar place to regularly post such complaints might not get enough attention to make it really a viable option. Regarding the speciest comments above, well, I've been called worse, even by myself [5]. John Carter (talk) 20:02, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Capeo, do you have any ideas about what would need to be done to organize that? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:06, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't. Not really anyway. You're about a million times more familiar with Wikipedia in general than I'll ever be. If you look at my history you'll see I mostly lurk and just add little tidbits here and there when something catches my fancy. Simply brainstorming such an approach, without taking feasibility into account and just now reading of this methodology from article you linked, I would think it would have to be by email somehow. The usual problem with any internet poll is the fact that the same person can take the poll as many times as they want. Email polls where the respondent sends the poll back to you cuts down on that issue greatly. I can't see how that can be done here though. I would think a bot that mass emails people would be highly frowned upon. You could start a specific mailing list for the poll but that has the disadvantage of only reaching the people who are already invested in the discussion when what you really want is to also include the views of the people who have been silent on the issue. I'm assuming the WMF can mass email editors though correct? If so maybe a proposal can crafted to see if there's any interest in doing so. That also has the benefit of privacy wherein respondents wouldn't be hesitant about revealing information such as their gender where they might be if it were a user conducted poll. From what I've seen the WMF seems pretty approachable. The toughest part after that would be crafting a poll. It's very hard to make a poll that is totally impartial in the data it collects.Capeo (talk) 20:28, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

User:Piotrus has some familiarity with sociology, and I know that he has polled editors here before. He might be able to help get something together. John Carter (talk) 20:34, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you both, this is very helpful. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:39, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

You're quite welcome. I was just thinking about this a little more and reading about the methodology a bit more. I would think the best information gathered would come from not questions related to the gender gap specifically but more along the lines of what dissuades editors from editing the most. Then the metrics that would be valuable would be sex and or gender, amount of edits, etc. It seems the idea of the approach is to find the disconnect in perception within a community. By knowing and comparing the perceptions of these groups you should then be able to deduce the disconnect more specifically and, if the theory is correct, you'd find there isn't that much of one to begin with while pinpointing specific areas to work on that would effect the gender gap positively. In theory anyway. Capeo (talk) 21:01, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Also, maybe, and I say this as a complete and total nonexpert, having the poll contain a few questions relating to broad issues of civility, both of the person being polled, people the person being polled deals with, and their society in general might be relevant. So, maybe, some questions like "On a scale of (whatever), how important to you consider the following subjects in terms of your social interactions: ..." might be useful. But, like I said, I'm not an expert and I know that and anything I say should be taken with a grain of salt.

However, I do think that there may well be different standards of what is and is not an acceptable of civil interaction in various countries, or at least maybe a few cases where out of common usage certain terms may have lost much of their impact, and it might be worthwhile to somehow found out what they are. The "c" word seems to be one of the points of contention, and I think it is worth noting that the party in question here said in the ArbCom case, I have to assume correctly as I don't remember seeing it directly contradicted, that he personally only ever used it against two individuals, both of whom were to his knowledge males. In addition to trying to sensitize some editors to offensive language, it might also be useful to find ways to try to perhaps desensitize editors to some language they might take more offense to than was necessarily intended by the person who used the term. John Carter (talk) 21:21, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm no expert either but I like the idea of gradations like that. It always seems those types of polls are more informative. One danger with any poll though is being overly broad or, conversely, overly restrictive. On the restrictive side you can simply have not enough answers to pick from. I believe most people never pick "None of the Above" so you can bias a poll that way. On the other side is using wording that's too broad. I'd say the term civility falls under that. For instance, take the a question like, "What has most discouraged you from editing Wikipedia?" One of the answers could be Civility but I think you'd get far more information if you broke the term down into specifics such as swearing, condescension, sexist remarks, etc. I'm just tossing those off the top of my head but you get the idea. Come up with twenty or so of the most commonly heard complaints, including non-civility related things such as user interface and other technical things then have people put them in the order of most problematic to least. Or maybe better yet start with a broader list, in which Civility is one of the answers, and then each answer in that list gets a further, more specific, gradation like above. Now I'm just throwing things against the wall but you get the idea. To get the best data I think you need to be as specific as possible while offering the broadest range of possible answers so you're not steering the respondent to any degree.Capeo (talk) 22:01, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

GRuban, I like the idea of a board, though I suppose I'd worry that it would become another Wikiquette situation – that ended up being problematic, though I don't recall why. But yes, civil discussion breeds more of the same, so it would help a lot in that regard. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:12, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Another idea might be to ask the Foundation to pay for a social-norms theorist to write about the editing environment and what practical steps could be taken to change it. I wonder whether we have such a person as a Wikipedian. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:17, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Can you expand on how your proposal might differ from the Dispute resolution noticeboard, or requesting a third opinion? isaacl (talk) 20:23, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

... or the Wikiquette board that was shut down? If there is one thing that seems certain from umpteen discussions over many years it is that the civility pillar isn't particularly effective/enforceable except in extreme cases. Given recent events, it might be better to focus on other aspects. Rich Farmbrough raised a few here that seemed to have some support. Are those not worth looking at? - Sitush (talk) 20:51, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Do you have a link to where Rich proposed those ideas? John Carter (talk) 20:56, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

The problem with the Wikiquette board was the same one with enforcing the civility policy - people kept saying "I'm not being uncivil, being called a nine-toed baboon is perfectly acceptable in my culture; instead he, over there...". The Civil Help responder wouldn't criticize, just propose civil help. Would serve as an example of what should be done, rather than punishing what shouldn't be done. --GRuban (talk) 21:02, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for the background info. There might be some merit in that approach. - Sitush (talk) 21:10, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

The dispute resolution noticeboard and the request for a third opinion page are the current informal mechanisms I am aware of for requesting some non-confrontational, polite assistance. (There used to be an informal mediation page, but as it had fallen into disuse, it has been marked as inactive.) Would these approaches cover the type of help you are thinking of, or is there another distinct area of aid that you are contemplating? isaacl (talk) 21:28, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

The idea is to gather people interested in helping with civility specifically. The same way that we have a BLP noticeboard, and an RSN noticeboard, though those also overlap. --GRuban (talk) 14:29, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Whereas the BLP and RSN noticeboards interpret Wikipedia's policies regarding their topic areas, if I understand your proposal correctly, the suggestion is to get someone to mediate the problematic discussion while demonstrating civility by example. I think this is basically the same purpose as the dispute resolution noticeboard. I expect a prerequisite for dispute resolution is to do so in a civil manner, and to defuse any inappropriate behaviour. It seems redundant to specifically request that a dispute resolution volunteer participate politely. isaacl (talk) 15:45, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Not quite identical. DRN often addresses perfectly civil disputes; also DRN only addresses disputes that can be boiled down into a specific question. The Civil Help Noticeboard would address civility conflicts, many of which can not be boiled down into a single specific question, but are, well, editors not getting along. Finally, DRN relies on both sides explicitly agreeing to the process. Looking at WP:DRN, maybe half the requests are stymied due to people not agreeing to the process. Civil Help wouldn't require that - the person would just shows up and start setting an example. (In that way it would like RSN and BLPN, which don't require participation from all sides - but, perhaps because of not requiring it, generally get it.) Between all of that, I see it as sufficiently different to be worth separating.

I can see that this might not be ideal, and I'm very willing to try better ideas, but I haven't seen any other proposals. What would you recommend, Isaac? --GRuban (talk) 19:13, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I do like the idea of people trying to defuse acrimonious situations and lead by example. However in my view this means not having specific groups of people to be called in for civility conflicts, since all dispute resolution volunteers should be capable of working in this manner. If a special team has to be called in, then it's implied that more than just setting an example is required. At the moment, all dispute resolution mechanisms short of Arbitration Committee cases require voluntary participation from the involved persons, which as far as I can tell is in line with the expectations of the Wikipedia editing community. You could try making any step in the dispute resolution process mandatory, but unfortunately I'm not optimistic about this gaining acceptance. (For example, I think a committee that could make binding decisions on the validity of policy arguments would be useful, but I understand why there is reluctance among many to delegate editorial control in this way.)

In a few places I've suggested having professional moderators whose time is dedicated to moderating discussion (here's a link to the last post in one thread; please see the immediately preceding posts for the full context). A lot of disputes could be made better by someone devoted to smoothing them out. But there are structural issues which make the general problem of disputes difficult to resolve. Ultimately, all communities depend on its members to want to get along in order to function effectively, which typically means either the community becomes self-selecting (if you don't think you'll fit in, you leave), or some group will do the selecting. English Wikipedia has been pushing the first option as far as it can. Although it's not hard getting agreement on wanting the vandals to leave, it's a lot trickier with many other conflicts when all sides have good-faith intentions, but are simply proceeding from different assumptions and goals. At some point, for better or worse, it's likely that Wikipedia will have to codify more specific guiding principles in order to resolve this. isaacl (talk) 20:12, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

"the vast majority of people in the world know..."

(Taking the liberty of breaking this section off) --GRuban (talk) 03:47, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

And I have refactored it as the previous wording ("the vast majority of people in the world know that (calling somebody a cunt, or similar actions) are terribly wrong.") contained an assertion that has been refuted. Johnuniq (talk) 04:11, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

While I think some organized fact gathering (i.e. a poll or similar) would work well here, i do think that it's pretty obvious "that the vast majority of people in the world know that (calling somebody a cunt, or similar actions) are terribly wrong." It seems so obvious to me that perhaps I need to break it down so others can see what I'm talking about:

• A small majority of people are women - every woman that I've met would object to being called a cunt.
• All men have close female relatives, e.g. a mother, wife, sisters, or daughters. Most men would object to having these relatives subjected to such insults, especially in a public place like Wikipedia.
• A majority of people - in the world at large and in the US in any case - are religious - every religion that I know of would object to that type of degradation of another human being
• A large number of people just believe in good old-fashioned politeness. This is my personal take on the issue. Politeness doesn't mean that you avoid talking about problems, only that you avoid using derogatory language in talking about problems.
• And, yes there are feminists, both female and male, who take such language as a red flag being waved intentionally in front of a bull.

Actually I think all these people - clearly a huge majority of people in the world - probably think of it in the same basic terms. Using such language is an active declaration of contempt for another person, meant to close off conversation and intimidate others.

Against that there are a few groups that do, for various reasons, consider such language "normal," e.g. teenage boys and to a lesser extent some men in their 20s. We do seem to have some of these groups over-represented on Wikipedia. But to my reading, most male Wikipedians in their 20s are fairly reasonable people. So I conclude that a large majority of Wikipedia editors are against the use of these insults.

As part of the majority, I think we should let all Wikipedians know this.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:59, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Doesn't work. See about halfway down Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Countering_systemic_bias/Gender_gap_task_force/Archive_6#Clarification_from_Sitush_and_follow-on where I tried to back up someone saying that namecalling was, in fact, childish. Eric Corbett did not agree. No one else, not even the original writer, backed me up, so eventually when Sitush told both of us to stop discussing it, it ended. --GRuban (talk) 21:10, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

The problem with your comment ("Namecalling of any sort is childish") is that it could not lead to anything useful in that thread. Moreover, the assertion that X is childish is an assertion that X is a bad thing that only immature people do. In the context of Wikipedia, whether or not that is correct is irrelevant—we only need to establish that X is bad. In the case of Eric the assertion fails because he is mature—flawed perhaps, but not immature. Johnuniq (talk) 02:39, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Not fair to discuss people who aren't present. In general, though, we will always be able to find a reason not to defend civility in any given case. --GRuban (talk) 03:47, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

I was just providing some reasons that your comment may not have had a response. Johnuniq (talk) 04:11, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

• SV raises the million-dollar question; I'll try to think of something useful to say later, but it's difficult. For now I'll respond to comments above. As noted, WP:WQA closed because people felt it was just a venue to rant because it was rare for action to occur—if admin action is wanted, use WP:ANI not WP:WQA was the mantra. Re surveys: All I can find now is this, but in the past there were some cases of people asking editors to do a survey, and there was strong pushback from some who regarded it as spam, and from me who regarded it as a potential security problem. I can't find it, but there was a way to get WMF approval for an "official" survey, and there was talk about running such surveys on a WMF system. I don't think a survey would be helpful as inevitably it would be simplistic ("99% of respondents said they did not want to be called a BADWORD"). The problem at the heart of all civility drives is oversimplification—it's easy to agree that offensive words are bad, but what about also dealing with any underlying issue? There should be an easier way to deal with NOTHERE users who upset people, but blocking the first person who cracks and resorts to offensive language would often give a poor result for the encyclopedia. My favorite example is here—that involved a very good editor who responded to a request for help, then started to advise the complainant about how Wikipedia works. Because the nice person didn't do what was wanted, they became the enemy and the exchanges escalated out of control with a wonderful string of expletives as the helpful person tried to stop the idiot from posting on his talk. I took over the battle, but we lost the good editor (who was fed up, but not blocked). I have not seen any attempt to enforce civility that also tries to deal with civil POV pushers and other disruptive editors. The issues in the recent GGTF case were long-lasting but rare problems that have been handled by Arbcom and it is very unlikely that someone would get far if they tried to emulate the language highlighted in the case. Johnuniq (talk) 03:43, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Regarding Wikiquette assistance, my understanding is that, by design, no administrative actions were intended to come out of discussion. It was supposed to be a place where concerns could be raised with an editor—kind of a less formal request for comment on user conduct. Unfortunately, as with many discussions on Wikipedia, it can only be effective if the involved parties are open to working together, and typically disputes are indications that this is not the case. isaacl (talk) 03:55, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
  • I actually took part in an off-wiki survey Piotrus conducted some time ago of editors whose involvement had decreased lately. I don't know if he has gotten around to publishing the results yet. In a case like this, I would think that the questions would include some to get information on the standards of civility people think they apply to themselves, the standards they like to see others live up to, and some indication somehow of what the standards of civility they encounter in their general off-wiki life are. I wouldn't expect an editor in a supermax prison (assuming we have any, of course) to necessarily expect of himself or others behavior we would expect from someone at an Upper East Side soiree. Including in a survey some specific terms or types of terms to determine which such terms editors find most or least offensive, as well as find out which they encounter most frequently, would I think be very useful in general. John Carter (talk) 19:53, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Gender inequality in the United States

Hello. I'm requesting some insight/comments at the Gender inequality in the United States GAN page, the nominator is inactive and considering the amount of scrutiny the gender gap has on Wikipedia, there is no clear consensus on whether this article should be passed or failed due to lack of content. ☠ Jaguar ☠ 20:40, 2 December 2014 (UTC)