Grants:IdeaLab/Simplify ways to expose overly-subjective arguments violating WP:NPOV and WP:CIVIL, using "POV-.." and "UW-.." templates designed for discussion pages.
Project idea[edit]
What is the problem you're trying to solve?[edit]
Harassment, in its most nonconstructive forms, is just a plain violation of neutrality and civility, as they are defined in Wikipedia 5 Pillars. This should be treated in a way, similar and consistent throughout all Wikimedia projects: by exposing subjective and uncivilized content, bringing it to public/administrators attention and resolving it in a dispute.
What is your solution?[edit]
In article pages, subjective content and abusive editors are usually marked by wiki-templates like {{POV-statement}} or {{uw-vandalism1}} to {{uw-vandalism4im}}. Marking such garbage content allows to improve quality of articles just by bringing attention to content pollution and polluters.
To keep high standards of discussions on discussion pages, nonconstructive discussions should be marked in a similar way -- as a information garbage, wasting time, storage and money donated to the project. It is not so much about people's hurt feelings -- this is too vague and subjective matter. It is more about the overall project quality, which is more objective: if it takes more time and effort to filter out useless arguments, insults and trolling to find a grain of truth, this is bad for everyone.
Editors producing excessive amounts of such nonconstructive content should be warned and disciplined in the same way as they'd vandalize main articles or pollute them with subjective content.
Proposed changes:
- Add wiki-templates designed to mark nonconstructive discussion arguments and warn editors systematically producing them, for example: {{nonconstructive}} (the basic template), {{name-calling}}, {{hate-speech}}, {{threat}}, {{impersonation}} etc.
- The editing tool on a discussion pages should provide a "flag" button, clearly visible to novice editors, and allowing to insert such templates.
- If the editor has added any of flagging templates on a discussion page and commits the edit, s|he must be warned that making false claims about nonconstructive behavior is prohibited and may be considered as nonconstructive too, with all consequences that follow.
- If any editor's contribution was marked with such template, the disputed content should have a visible note (examlpe: "You are all idiots here![nonconstructive]"). This should allows other participants to notice unwelcome content. Probably, some tools can be added to collapse/hide such content out of plain view.
- After editor's contribution was marked with such template, a notification message should be added on his|her user page, with explanations: why nonconstructive discussions is very close to wiki-vandalism, how exactly it hurts the whole project; how to discuss issues in a constructive manner; what penalties might occur if too many offenses are reported; how to report and dispute false claims etc.
- After a certain amount of flags put on an editor's contributions, a warning notice should be sent to wiki administrators, bringing their attention to the repetitive pattern. It is up to them to decide if those claims are substantiated, and either warn/discipline the offending editor, or remove false claims and warn/discipline their authors.
- Likewise, after a certain amount of flags created by the same editor, a notice should be sent to wiki administrators, to investigate whether those claims have a basis and to warn/discipline abusers, preventing people "playing the victim".
Project goals[edit]
Get involved[edit]
Participants[edit]
Endorsements[edit]
- This is great - it is exactly what we need to track nonconstructive comments across a site. Although the proposal is broader than just harassment, exposing a pattern of nonconstructive comments by a single user may lead to the realisation that said user is, when all the evidence is taken into account, engaging in harassment. Greenrd (talk) 11:18, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
- An attempt to implement a karma-system with templates. Should be implemented properly, but it might work. — Jeblad 10:53, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Expand your idea[edit]
Would a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation help make your idea happen? You can expand this idea into a grant proposal.