Sensitive Off Topic

This site is devoted to programmers discussing their experience of programming. Our broad view of programming experience includes all experience that enhances reasoning about the behavior of computers and expressions that influence the same. As the first ever wiki, we also host many visitors who are not programmers, and tolerate their occasional post. However, we are under no obligation to provide a platform for people who are only spoiling for an argument. This has been our policy for our entire existence. -- WardCunningham

There are clearly "hot button" issues that are OffTopic. Wiki community has generally been there, done that. However, this community has changed quite a lot and the lessons of the past are forgotten. This is largely attributable to ourselves, because we were relieved when it happened that way, and not willing to record the account of what happened and what were the motivations. Rather than repeat the history, I'd say we should first try to fix the second problem: let's analyze what happened, what the motivations were and whether the same reasoning still applies.

The most notorious incident was the massive migration of OffTopic pages on religion (Christianity and other religious/philosophical topics) to WhyClublet. The little-recorded history is left on WhyHistory, SiteOfChristianPages, WikiEmigration, http://clublet.com/c/c/why?WhyClubletInitialPages.

I do not seem to find Ward's memorable resume of the motivation for preferring such a move; maybe it was on WikiWikiSystemNotice and got overwritten; maybe somebody with a better memory can help me. But it was something along the lines that such topics are likely to generate more heat than light (and in my opinion only major ignoramuses assume that they can do better), and in a community composed mostly of software engineers and related profession, we have to recognize the lack of qualification to debate these hot topics with even a remote hope of getting something significant out of it. In other words, the probability of such topics generating more light and less heat in the context of this wiki community is really very small, and that argumentation of Ward was further proved empirically by the significant failures of such wikis, including WhyClublet, SociologyWiki, and AndStuffWiki. From the spin-offs, MeatballWiki is a notable (if partial) success. Please note that its topics are not exactly hot button issues. -- CostinCozianu

[Perhaps Costin was half-remembering what Ward wrote in SisterSites - "The structure comes from his determined use of a particular style of rhetoric in order that MoreLightThanHeat radiate from his site." - about TheReformSociety.]

Why doesn't Costin simply edit a page that irritates him to convey its message inoffensively? He seems to prefer to spoil it just to create a reason for deleting it.

Scott chose to close his AndStuffWiki - it wasn't particularly active, but it certainly shouldn't be classified as "a significant failure".

It was not a total failure, and it had enough value for its members to survive for three years. However, it was a failure, as its closure was not what Scott was hoping for, and its failure is "significant" especially in the context of this discussion we are having here.

ScottMoonen stated, with regard to his wiki, "I'm not angry, upset, or displeased with anyone." He gave various personal reasons for closing it; he certainly didn't say he was hoping it would continue. The only reference to a kind of failure he mentioned in his list of reasons for the closure was that there has been contention (frank but friendly) between Christians over the content of the gospel, which had no place in an evangelical context.

There were other significant reasons as well, but certainly it cannot be classified as a successful project. We all departed on friendly terms when it ended, and we acknowledge the value it provided to us, with due thanks to Scott, however I'll bet that most if not all previous contributors will acknowledge and assume the failure. Scott's decision to close was an implicit recognition of that, he was very elegant and polite not to state that explicitly.

Let me try to summarize the pro and contra arguments, the way I see them. Hopefully I won't misrepresent the opposite position too much, but if I missed or misrepresented anything please jump in and correct me sooner rather than later. -- CostinCozianu

Well, at least for one argument that shall be immediately recognized as a legitimate one, some members of wiki community feel that wiki is their virtual home. And they also feel that they are knowledgeable enough, considerate enough, sensitive enough to be able to discuss such issues in a "mature" way without offending anybody or without generating heat. Most of them also do not feel bound by the previous failures of a community they were not part of at the time WikiEmigration happened, and from that community most notable figures (including those involved in the controversies) are no longer active members of wiki, or their presence here is minimal.

The above argument (expressed as such by DonaldNoyes for example) is even more legitimate when we need to consider whether MoveItElsewhere is the appropriate remedy for the drawbacks of SensitiveOffTopic pages. Well, folks would say, it poses an unnecessary difficulty for people willing to discuss such topics. After all, being an active member of more than one online community is an unnecessary burden for most normal software engineers. Therefore, from any particular member of wiki community point of view, it is quite legitimate to ask:

[generic member speaking here, dramatization, not actual events, any resemblance ... and all the right disclosures] "If I contribute to Wiki, and I have lots of valuable things to contribute, and most of them are appreciated as such even explicitly, than I make a choice to select wiki out of other on-line communities, it is therefore only natural that wiki community should not pose unnecessary burdens on me when I try to discuss subjects that are of interest to me, including SensitiveOffTopic subjects. It is at least discourteous for people to accept and implicitly benefit from my OnTopic contributions, but refuse me the pleasure to discuss other things that interest me just as much."

Let me be on record that I do not object to the existence of a page about atheism per se, as long as the content is reasonably well-balanced and the page avoids being offensive to anyone.

Now, I will also be on record that I am a modestly devout Christian; I wish I were a better Christian. I can be friends and I am friends with atheists; this doesn't bother me. From my perspective, even atheists can go to Heaven if God so wills. What bothers me, though, is when I put quite some effort and energy on this wiki, trying to make it better at times, trying to explore new subjects, improves things a bit, failing quite a few more times, etc. This is quite a daunting collective work. And then guys with a personal agenda like "destroying religion" want to join in for the ride, taking advantage of my work and the work of so many others.

The principle of this place is that disinterested persons share their experiences and knowledge about SoftwareEngineering. This takes a lot of effort (a very much non-trivial effort) from everybody who writes and who edits (WikiGnomes). Now let's say the effort of one CostinCozianu is extremely unimportant and we'd be pretty right. Let's say the efforts of many WikiGnomes are also unimportant. But let's imagine, hypothetically speaking, that we could convince, say, DonaldKnuth that he could donate part of his time to publish one article a year on wiki. Of course, Don is too busy and has better things to do than posting on wiki, but let's just imagine. Sure, that would increase the popularity of wiki by an order of magnitude. However, everybody knows that as DonKnuth is a devout Christian, he would not want to contribute to popularizing some bunch of looney atheists going on a spree with half-baked arguments. The community who would welcome a good article on SoftwareEngineering only to put them in QuickChanges next to somebody spoiling for an argument would be effectively stealing. That's the right word for it: theft.

Now we are not in danger of DonaldKnuth posting here, for some obvious reasons. However, would we not at least in principle make this wiki such a quality place that somebody of the quality of DonKnuth could at least consider posting an article here?

Actually, DonaldKnuth might have posted anonymously here - it's impossible to tell (except by asking him). I note, though, that you assume the purpose of AboutAtheism? was to popularize half-baked arguments. I didn't interpret it as such or as a thesis on atheism at all, rather just some viewpoints arising from personal experiences. As such, it doesn't call for the addition of contrary views to "balance" it.

The fact that now we are happy as pigs in the mud, going for the 30,000 pages, the vast majority of which are only clutter making it difficult for newcomers to discover the rare pearl of wisdom, should not limit our goals. If you don't reach for the stars, you'll be back in the mud in no time. This wiki should be an EgoLessWiki? where real passion about programming languages, paradigms, patterns, history of computing gives rise to interesting exchanges in CriticalSpirit, where the point is not to score personal points or points for your favorite PetTheory? of programming (be that even Smalltalk or Lisp, or relational databases), but to shed light on the subject, and these discussions can further be synthesized in DocumentMode. It takes a lot of energy however to do that. It is not sure at all that we can do it, after all. It's not for no reason that Ward launched a quest for CrazyThingsThatMightSaveWiki. If wiki was not in a dire situation with regards to quality, we wouldn't be searching for crazy things. But to dedicate this kind of effort while others just join for the ride and continue to spread pollution, effectively stealing from your work, that isn't right. Theft is a serious problem. RA and the likes keep handwaving about "we", "us", etc., but you do a search on their name, they haven't contributed one yotta to the value of wiki.

Somebody accused me of trying to set a precedent. The precedent was already set by WardCunningham when he kindly asked folks to move religious stuff to WhyClublet and for all contributors to respect a GentlemensAgreement that religious and philosophical subject should be taken elsewhere. That was done in order to avoid even the appearance of impropriety that somebody is going along for the ride, stealing from the work of others to push their own pet agendas. They do it here on wiki, because they get popularity for free, because there's still some value left in this wiki that was built through the efforts of many. Such crap has no place on wiki, and until somebody can put up a coherent argument to the contrary (I had the unpleasantness to read a lot of handwaving around the fundamental problems), I see no reason to quit standing up against abuse. I did not delete only AboutAtheism, I deleted pro-religious stuff as well. There's no place for such pages here. There's no reason for AboutAtheism to be the exception to the rule. -- CostinCozianu

I don't understand that view. Ward wasn't deleting those pages - instead, he promoted their move elsewhere, which is quite different.

AboutAtheism was already moved. After the WhyClublet episode, all the remaining material that was moved was then deleted. If you leave a copy of the junk here, that's called a copy, not a move.

Firstly, neither was junk. Secondly, Why initially seemed a suitable home for those pages, but the deletions were not done directly by Ward, and were not seconded until a long time afterwards, due to a message asking for that delay.

Costin's proposal for SensitiveOffTopic, stripping off references to "junk" and such, seems to be the following:

If it's OffTopic, and <some number> of the Wiki community considers it offensive, it should be removed.

The big issue is what gets filled in for <some number>. A single person? 10%? 50%?

If the answer is "a single person", then any subject which is controversial and OffTopic might be subject to exclusion. As it stands, Wiki is inhabited by quite a few cranks who consider any opinion they disagree with to be "offensive" or otherwise illegitimate. OTOH, I agree with others that Wiki shouldn't be a dumping ground for random rants on any subject.

I'm all for 1 person to be able to veto SensitiveOffTopic stuff. So we risk that any subject that is controversial and OffTopic might be excluded. I don't understand what we stand to lose, why are we calling this a risk? Is there any subject currently standing now at some 30000 pages, that is controversial and OffTopic and can be said to be ReallyValuableContent?

[The final sentence in the above paragraph doesn't make sense - it seems to have a series of words omitted. Please correct it.] I was asking for a sample of SensitiveOffTopic that is more than an idiotic or amateurish rant. Since that example does not exist, there is no point to defend SensitiveOffTopic.''

To begin with, OffTopic is tolerated here rather than encouraged. Ward defined this wiki to have a topic, and we should respect that. Most of the OffTopic content on neutral subjects survived as a courtesy to contributors who also want wiki to act as a social place where they can have minor chit chat on movies, novels and other such collaterals. Some of the OffTopic pages were moved to WhyClublet without necessarily being offensive to any particular individual, the main reason was that they were SensitiveOffTopic. That move improved the situation of wiki greatly, although some contributors are dissatisfied with the subsequent fate of WhyClublet. But avoiding SensitiveOffTopic has good reasons: we won't know who is offended even if inadvertently and if we don't discriminate between OffTopic and OnTopic, I can hardly wait for WardsWiki to be invaded by the next preacher on a mission, just as it can be by an atheist on a mission.

So my question from the beginning of this discussion was: what's the positive rationale to allow SensitiveOffTopic? What do we stand to gain? I know one argument for keeping SensitiveOffTopic but then I don't agree with it, so I won't formulate it as it may be weakened by my bias. But I want proponents of tolerance towards SensitiveOffTopic to make a positive argument for their case.

"Tolerance and reasonableness" (both virtues in themselves). PeopleProjectsAndPatterns in SoftwareDevelopment have always been Wiki's focus (or primary focus), not the sole topics permitted. Furthermore:

There was never a massive migration of pages to WhyClublet. Only about forty pages were moved, representing a small fraction of 1% of the database at the time. They were moved because their rapid expansion (generally toward a Christian agenda) was clearly detracting from Wiki's intended focus. Since then, apart from a few home pages and AboutAtheism? (if that counts), hardly any religious discussion pages have existed, and those that do (e.g., ReligiousWar) are rarely edited. So how does this justify accepting anti-religious idiocies? It doesn't, and wasn't intended to, but idiotic ranting can be dealt with by content editing instead of page removal.
In contrast, AboutAtheism? roughly describes the non-theistic views held by most software developers, combined with some criticism of religious indoctrination and unquestioning belief. On the whole, it doesn't set out to destroy religion, nor to change existing mainstream views on the matter. It doesn't promote non-Christianity any more than ChristianCulturalAssumption? does. It doesn't threaten to mushroom into a large group of pages. It contains offensive content. ChicagoDotNet? did not do anything to tone it down, and reverted attempts to balance it. Overall the page is borderline idiotic. In any case the discussion is moot at this point. Those pages will never go anywhere anyways, unless some real person takes responsibility for it. Will you? No, as I don't see this wiki as a place where anything contentious needs to have a named individual take responsibility for it. Nor do I require that a page is "going somewhere" for it to be tolerated. If particular sentences are offensive, it's possible to point that out or tone them down. Deleting the whole page tends to slow down that process. The CardForceTrick? page is arguably off-topic, has a fair mount of unsigned content and isn't "going anywhere", but it's tolerated.

After the intervention below (removed), and related stuff on AnonymousAttack? any further comments are pointless. The case has been proven, and nothing more is to be said. This discussion is closed for the time being. -- CostinCozianu

A more relaxed attitude is more welcoming to newbies. Ward has repeatedly said that anonymous contributions are acceptable.

The fact that anonymous contributions are acceptable does not mean any kind of anonymous "contributions" are acceptable. Anonymous attacks, anonymous insults and anonymous idiocies are most definitely unacceptable.

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