Commons talk:Civility
The problem is not policy, but Commons community
editThe community where double standards are entrenched and reading lies is an everyday experience. Where “better to disregard Incnis Mrsi’s message above”-style conduct is tolerated, and even encouraged in some quarters. It’s pointless to propose walls of text as a tool to improve atmosphere on this site. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:33, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
- Oh I don't know. A proper definition of personal attacks, harassment, legal threats, etc, might educate a few admins when they find themselves blocked. -- Colin (talk) 21:52, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
- It is up to people holding themselves to high standards to formulate definitions. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 05:37, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
Needs related policy/guideline
editThe Wikipedia policy links to three other policies that are vital to define certain aspects of incivility that are serious and often misunderstood.
I believe we need versions of those on Commons as the community do not appear to have a good understanding of them. For example, we have seen an admin cite the creation of a well-founded DR as "harassment" or one user expressing a negative opinion of an admin's abilities as a "personal attack", or a reasonable disagreement on the safe use of flash photography in a jungle being labelled as "libellous". -- Colin (talk) 21:52, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
Expansion/focus on Commons
editCommons policy needs to consider
- External users (photographers, agencies, companies, subjects) who may have registered an account here merely to communicate a complaint. We need to deal with them with professionalism and respect, rather than the hostility for breaching polices or not understanding how deletion works. We don't handle the "angry customer" situation well at all.
- The international, multi-lingual and multi-cultural aspects to the project. A significant (majority?) of the users here do not have English as a first language, yet English remains the most popular language for communication, but not exclusively.
- We aren't a collaborative editing project building encyclopaedic articles, but a repository of educational media files. Those files and their categories and descriptions have different conflict points.
- Copyright issues are taken much more seriously on Commons than on any other media site, which requires rapid education of newbies. This particularly upsets people who find their work deleted when they thought in good faith they were helping Wikipedia.
- Licences are perpetual, unlike other media sites which allow people to change sharing options. This particularly upsets people who regret their donation after they appreciate the consequences.
- Media on Commons, excepting historical public domain archives, really are owned by somebody, and nearly all media has just one creator/author. Sometimes this is forgotten and false claims are made assuming the media is now owned by the community.
- "just because we can, doesn't mean we should" Some users on Commons take a robotic approach to rules or lack of them, failing to show respect, empathy, compassion, forgiveness and professionalism.
- Commons is a relatively small community and so cannot form the same kind of formal dispute processes (e.g. Arbcom, third opinion forums, wiki projects).
I tried to write a draft about civility on Commons. I would like to know your opinions. I want to know if I am in the right direction and if I should put more time into it or not. Thanks 4nn1l2 (talk) 19:10, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
4nn1l2, I've read your user draft. We can also consider the current text at Commons:Civility to be Jeff G.'s draft and a start of a port from the Wikipedia policy. A google discovered User:Fæ/Civility which is a very old attempt to also port from Wikipedia. There are lots of ways we could approach forming a policy here. One idea is we let our imagination go at each creating a draft and then "pick and mix" the results. Or we try to list on this talk page the things we want to get across to other users, and then collaborate in how to express them in policy words. Or a mix of both.
There are related policies on Wikipedia that perhaps concentrate on three specific aspects of incivility that are typically strong enough to warrant sanctions: Personal attacks, Harassment, and Legal threats. I have started a port of the first two to Commons, but not yet done the third:
We saw the other day at least two admins who didn't understand COM:OUTING which emphasised to me the importance of porting some established Wiki behavioural guidelines. One outcome from this activity might not actually be an official policy (may be too hard) but perhaps some guidance documents that the community find useful to refer to. The parent Civility policy is the most general and perhaps the hardest to make policy because in practice it has proved very difficult to block someone merely for being uncivil. I can think of one person, a photographer at FPC, who was routinely uncivil to most who opposed his nominations, and it took perhaps a year or more of complaints before he was indef blocked, and then we discovered his past socking too. On Wikipedia, I'm a bit out-of-touch, but believe there is an extensive Arbcom process to go through before established users get blocked. There is much in any civility policy that is just good advice or community agreed best behaviour or worst behaviour. So maybe, rather than tackling the parent policy, it would be easier to tackle one of the sub-policies above, that can be more quickly improved?
I have sometimes wondered about creating Commons:Commons is not Wikipedia. Your draft touches on some aspects that make Commons different to e.g en:wp. Perhaps those could be described better in a different essay such as this, and then referred-to in policy.
Different folk on Commons can also bring their different experiences and goals. I agree with your draft that issues with newbie users and in particular copyright or deletion are a source of conflict. But I disagree with lecturing newbies in a policy document that they need to ask nicely and keep calm. don't think Civility or any policy is of much help to a newbie. Nobody, when faced with one of their images being wrongly hosted on Commons (so they believe) is going to react well to being pointed at a civility policy and being told to calm down. Possibly a better approach for newbies is an essay that helps them achieve their goal (like Commons:Guidance for paid editors). I think Commons Civility policy should help established users deal with an "angry customer" situation with professionalism, respect, kindness, etc, and to overlook perceived uncivil comments made in anger or stress, but to aim to resolve the problem. You and I might know the newbies are "clueless" or "misinformed" but I don't think it is helpful to use those words in a policy document.
One example, where you say "Images uploaded to Commons can no longer be deleted by the uploader's request" that isn't true. There is very little we are actually required to do as a community of volunteers. WMF are required to take down images in certain legal situations. We do our best to delete copyright violations, but aren't compelled to find them all. As for choosing to host or retain images, that is always a decision for the community. We don't have to host anything just because it has a free licence. The lesson in life "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" is very much one Commons gets wrong at times. One thing we often get wrong, and which is very uncivil, is that we often think and say we own the images that are free. We really don't and this makes us quite different to Wikipedia, where the collective editors own the articles jointly as a community. I think part of Commons Civility is respecting those individuals who own and created the works we host, and who generously licence their works for us to share. -- Colin (talk) 21:45, 10 June 2019 (UTC)