Wiki Politeness Level
Wiki Politeness LevelDoes it matter?
Has it changed over the history of Wiki?
How does it relate to humor, the size of the community and differences of culture?
Is it too high? Are the contributions of those of us who are not the Wiki Elite ignored for fear that deserved criticism might be considered unkind?
I agree it has recently been too high in this sense and too low in most others.
I can't speak for the history of Wiki; I've only been here a few months. What I can comment on are recent events. I recently offered strongly-worded critical comments. Those comments were edited or deleted by others, for reasons I find somewhere between stupid and goofy. But that's the nature of Wiki - we all accept that anyone can edit or delete anything.
What this means is that I am far less likely to participate in this Wiki in the future for anything more than dry, technical, non-controversial topics. That's because I really don't see the sense in bothering to express myself and my views if what I write is going to be diluted or deleted. Why should I put forth the effort?
Put another way, this Wiki is a private community of people who just happen to allow the public to come in, eat their pretzels and scuff their floors. The message I received by others editing and deleting my text is that I am not welcome into this community unless I modify the way I express myself. Since I'm unwilling to do that, I'll simply restrict my participation. Problem solved.
None of this should be read as a statement against anyone here. I intruded into a private party.
Everyone who comes here influences the atmosphere here. The fact that anything you write can be deleted or edited does mean that this is a better place to express fact and insight than dogma and opinion. To be honest, if I thought that my every ill-conceived outburst would be deleted, I'd actually write more. This site has thus far served as a proof that none of us is smarter than all of us, but it could just as easily prove that none of us can get quite so emotionally out of control or produce as much vehemently expressed garbage as all of us. I recently deleted a strongly-worded critical comment. It came back as a well thought out observation. I feel strongly encouraged by that. -- PhilGoodwin
It's an odd conversation where someone can undo my mistakes for me. In some ways I like it and in some I do not.
I'm engaged elseNet in a conversation about what an ******* I am. My advisor is very much into keeping a working group together, and finds the polarizing language that I sometimes use to be inappropriate to that goal. As a programmer as well as showman and *******, I find polarizing ideas to be helpful in teasing out the small details that are important to programming, and perhaps inevitably that preference spills over into other parts of my life.
[Presumably "*******" means "egghead". I can't think of anything else that fits...]
I'm rarely, if ever, criticizing a person, even if I'm criticizing an idea they have put down. And I'm often very much hurt when I find that what I meant as a strong and incisive statement pushing on the idea is taken as an insult by my interlocutor. Some seem to have gone so far as to filter me, which seems risky as, who knows, one day I might actually have a good idea.
My point, and I do have one, is this. When a newbie comes into a community of people who get along rather well and who are used to each other, he often finds that they give each other a lot of leeway in their expression. Ron acts like an *******, and everyone says, Oh, that's just Ron, and deals with his idea without getting upset by his formatting. The group seems open and inviting to the newcomer - seems very accepting of fringe behavior, drawing the good from even the most awkward presentations.
So the newbie lowers his shields, drops his assumed diffidence, and expresses himself as freely as the family members do. Naturally, they immediately recognize him as not smelling like they do and turn on him and eat him. This is often perceived as a negative result by the newbie.
It seems to me that a community that has this kind of openness among its rightly-smelling members needs to recognize that new members will be attracted by the openness, and that they will feel free to act in their natural style, exactly because that seems to be the way of the group. Such a community needs to suppress the natural urge to kill and eat outsiders, because it has in fact enticed them to act in this open fashion.
Unless, of course, the purpose of the community is to attract outsiders, then kill and eat them. -- RonJeffries
Brilliant defence, Ron ... I'm just trying to work out of what!
I've argued in WikiSuccessCanInhibitNewWriters (and in email discussions with CliffordAdams that we deemed were too hot for Wiki) for newcomers to be given more leeway than old hands. EmotionalBurp also makes this point well - I think this was Kent (RefractingEmotions not the burp!). So in all of that I agree with you.
I also believe that in a deeper way, although beautifully informal, Wiki has been an extraordinarily polite place, at least by net standards. Or even better, there's been an extraordinary respect for the individual here. I know you won't be embarrassed if I pin a lot of the blame on you for that ...
I've been concerned that recently we've been slipping to a level where newcomers won't notice much difference between a Wiki discussion and any other kind of Internet brawl. At that point something very special has been lost.
-- RichardDrake
Ron redirected comments of his on CategoryRant to this page, so here I write. If people are struggling with the hard dichotomy between letting rants lie and deleting them, you can always edit them. However, there's a point when PoliticalCorrectness is politically incorrect: when you severely curtail someone's freedom of speech and expression. In that case TheCollective will destroy the individuals, individuality that compose it, damaging itself in return. So, if you're going to edit, make sure you only remove directed flamebait, but not meaning. That being said, this isn't a completely open forum. See PortlandPatternRepository.
It wouldn't hurt to return to the subject of patterns which seemed to give this site structure in an earlier period. I also remind people to read GoodStyle which has remained almost exactly as I wrote it on the founding of wiki some years ago. -- WardCunningham
I think it would help greatly to have a well-defined focus topic (or set thereof). Patterns, Eastern Thinking, Metawiki, XP, even CoBOL. That might help to eliminate a lot of strife between newbies who get the message that this wiki is "open microphone" and the OldTimers who are trying valiantly to keep it on the topic they remember it having. It would also serve as a guideline for refactoring. If there is to be a topic focus, you're the one who should say so (suggest in FrontPage, RecentVisitors, WelcomeVisitors, and StartingPoints). -- JohnRepici
Amen!
See WelcomeToWikiPleaseBePolite, IsYourRudenessNecessary
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