Wikipedia talk:Civility

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The initial Wikipedia:Civility essay was largely authored by Anthere and others at m:Incivility (history, Jan-Feb. 2004). It was copied here and put into substantive form ("Civility") by Stevertigo (Feb. 2004), who earlier raised the issue on wikien-l.[1] & [2] (Oct. 4, 2003). In codified form, it was thereafter referenced as a statement of principle and soon after considered "policy." Long before the creation of the formal policy, Jimbo Wales wrote his statement of principles, wherein certain points echo the idea of civility. Larry Sanger raised the issue of "making [WP] more civil," [3], [4] & [5] (Nov. 2002) after reading The Cunctator's essay "How to destroy Wikipedia" (Mar. 2002). Jimbo Wales picked up on Sanger's point [6] [7], and thereafter Ed Poor and others kept it alive, until the need for a formal policy came about in late 2003. Also, note a poll on editors' thoughts on the policy at the time in 2009.

This page was nominated for deletion on 10 December 2006. The result of the discussion was speedy keep.

This page was nominated for deletion on 2 February 2013. The result of the discussion was withdrawn.

I am sure this issue has been raised several times and I'd like someone to point me to the relevant guideline, discussion or ArbCom decision.

Short of harassment (WP:OWH), does WP:CIVIL apply also to off-wiki behaviour? Apparently it doesn't, if I'm not mistaken: Wikipedia's civility expectations apply to all editors during all interactions on Wikipedia and so they apply in any other discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians only when they take place on Wikipedia.

A couple of hypothetical examples to clarify the issue:

A) Twitting or posting on a social media something like "Those morons at Wikipedia deleted my article! I'm sure someone is paying them" (without naming editors) - violates WP:AGF - is this sanctionable?

B) "User:Whatever is most blatant rightwing/leftwing POV-pusher I have ever encountered" on a blog or social media (without doxxing) - can this off-wiki personal attacks be sanctioned as such, or can it only be considered an "aggravating factor" in the case of an on-Wiki dispute?

If anyone could link a discussion where this issue came up, I'd be grateful. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 09:14, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would be against this, as (for a start) how do you prove who they are here? Slatersteven (talk) 09:37, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Let's assume this is not controversial, so as to focus on the principle rather than on the practicalities of its enforcement. We know for a fact that User:Somene posted on twitter that User:Gitz6666 is an idiot (this never happened: it's purely hypothetical). I understand that in principle this is none of the admins' business, right? The sentence Wikipedia's civility expectations apply to all editors during all interactions on Wikipedia, including discussions at user and article talk pages, in edit summaries, and in any other discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians can be interpreted in two ways, if I'm not wrong:

1) "Wikipedia's civility expectations apply to all editors during all interactions on Wikipedia (including discussions at user and article talk pages, in edit summaries, and in any other discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians)" > a contrario, they don't apply to interactions outside WP.

2) "Wikipedia's civility expectations apply to all editors during all interactions on Wikipedia (including discussions at user and article talk pages), in edit summaries, and in any other discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians" > they apply to "discussion with or about fellow Wikipedians" taking place outside WP.

I believe that 2 is wrong. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 09:35, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's a huge long discussion at WP:VPP about how editors handle certain types of religious content. (No, please, don't add to it. Really. But pinging the most active participants: @Bon courage, Warrenmck, Horse Eye's Back, SamuelRiv, jps, Hydrangeans, Firefangledfeathers, Loki)

I've run across a talk page comment in which an editor declared "Religion is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking", and when I pushed back against this inappropriate comment, he doubled down, saying that his belief is "a very good one. The moral very high ground in fact. Also it's not bigotry".

I'm wondering if it might help, in a long-term kind of way, to mention anti-religious comments in this policy as something the community does not need more of. There's a list of "direct rudeness" that begins this way:

1. rudeness, insults, name-calling, gross profanity or indecent suggestions
2. personal attacks, including racial, ethnic, sexual, disability-related, gender-related and religious slurs, and derogatory references to groups such as social classes or nationalities

and while I believe this falls into the "insults" category (but not necessarily into "personal attacks", as that is generally interpreted as requiring a comment to be directed at an individual, or "religious slurs", because they're individually polite words), I doubt whether someone who believes himself to be expressing "righteous disapproval" of "evil" would be able to see his actions in that mirror. Consequently, I'm wondering whether it would be appropriate to expand this policy. However, I don't want to see genuine content discussions derailed ("My religion says it's turtles all the way down, and it's a violation of WP:CIVIL to say that the Earth moves through space due to inertia and gravitational attraction"). What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:18, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hard needle to thread. I'm not sure I would describe the comment you saw as inappropriate, but I understand why someone might. Part of the problem I have with our civility policy is that it doesn't really account for differences of opinions as to what is civil and what is not. A better outcome when someone says something like this would be to have a difficult discussion where there was a meeting of minds so that each person could actually come to an understanding of the other's position. Even if opinions did not change about whether and how one's comments might be civil or uncivil; right or wrong, there should at least be an acknowledgement than in a pluralistic environment like Wikipedia you have to work with others who do not share your perspective.

As such, I would not really be thrilled with an expansion of this policy in that direction. But, then again, I never liked this policy in the first place so I'm probably not the right community member to consult on this matter.

jps (talk) 00:15, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that coming to a mutual understanding is the goal. (It'd be a fine goal for social media, which seems to be catastrophically bad at it.) I think a more relevant goal would be: if someone tells you you're saying bigoted things, you should probably post some words that could be interpreted as an apology, even if they're something as ambivalent as "didn't mean to offend anyone", or at least change the subject.

I remember seeing a case at ANI a long time ago. A (presumably white) editor posted something like "Boy, you sure screwed up there" or "You've been a busy little boy today". A (self-identified) Black man told him not to address him as a "boy", because Boy#Race is a thing. The first editor acted like the feelings of the person he was speaking to, not to mention the uninvolved people reading the comments, didn't matter. Except, you know, they do. He could have just said "Sorry, didn't know" and stopped repeating the offensive content. Or just stopped repeating it. It's not that hard to stop poking people's sore spots when they've told you to stop it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:36, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

if someone tells you you're saying bigoted things, you should probably post some words that could be interpreted as an apology, even if they're something as ambivalent as "didn't mean to offend anyone", or at least change the subject. I actually think mandating an apology whenever someone tells you that you are being bigoted would be an improvement over the current civility policy of just "be civil, but we're not going to be clear what that means -- you just have to navigate the community yourself." This is somewhat different than your original suggestion, of course. jps (talk) 02:06, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds ambitious.

It reminds me of m:So you've made a mistake and it's public..., which is IMO excellent and which you might be interested in reading, if you haven't seen it before. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:09, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that would be stretching civility to mean "don't say anything that might offend anyone" which is not possible and not desirable. This is not yet Wokepedia. Johnuniq (talk) 00:24, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be honest, if saying bigotry is bad makes this "Wokepedia" then I will happily be part of it. Who even uses woke unironically anymore? PackMecEng (talk) 15:40, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ambivalent about the central question, but wouldn't WP:NOTAFORUM cover the comment at the top? And if someone too frequently posts citation-free rants about religion on a talk page, I presume they can be dealt with via WP:DE, et al. Putting that aside, wouldn't "religion is the domain of confused, old an illogical thinking", which is very clearly directed at a religion rather than any specific editors, be the same as strongly criticizing absolutely any subject that someone has made part of their core identity, whether religion, politics, or fandom? I know people who take it very personally when Taylor Swift or Donald Trump or Lord of the Rings are insulted, for example. As long as we're talking about the thing itself and not a specific believer/supporter/fan, it seems like we're in the realm of WP:NOTAFORUM and WP:DE rather than WP:CIVILITY... although I'm sure there are some obvious gray areas. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I also think NOTAFORUM would apply, since it's really off topic.

I don't think this is equivalent to the Swifties. I think this could well be equivalent to saying that Trump supporters are stupid. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:21, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm wondering whether it would be appropriate to expand this policy.: Perhaps we could use language inspired by the Inclusivity principle of the Wikimedia Movement Charter, which I think addresses why the type of language mentioned in OP is inappropriate for the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community: The Wikimedia projects are developed in many languages, reflecting many regions and cultures. All activities are based on mutual respect for the diversity of the participants of the Wikimedia Movement. This respect is enforced through measures to support safety and inclusion. The quoted editor's insistence that saying Religion is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking is The moral very high ground in fact is rather plainly contrary to the principle of mutual respect for the diversity of the participants of the Wikimedia Movement. Wikimedia and Wikipedia are international projects, and our movement charter sets an expectation of respect for the plurality of cultural backgrounds that exist throughout the world. We should no sooner tolerate behavior like the quote in the OP than we should tolerate it if the same had been said of other manifestations of experience and/or culture. That's to say that lots of other formulations along these lines would be just as wrong and we should have just as little tolerance for them (which is to say, we shouldn't tolerate such intolerance); for examples:

• Religion The Middle East is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking (that's orientalism)
• Religion is Women are the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking (that's misogyny)
• Religion is The elderly are the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking (that's ageism)
• Religion The working class is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking (that's class discrimination)

I don't think expressing sentiments like these—whether about religion generally, specific religions, or forms of identity or culture other than religion—in vague terms makes it okay. It still inhibits the creation of a respectful, collegial editing environment. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 01:30, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your comparison to other subjects highlights the difference that struck me, too. When he says this about religion, we accept it. If he said the same thing about (e.g.,) "Jews" or "gay people" or "Black people", we'd be in insta-block territory. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes... but what if he had said "My grandfather on his death bed was in the domain of the confused, old and illogical thinking". There is a legitimate question as to whether the claim at issue is actually true or not. The problem with the other examples is that they are demonstrably false generalizations. Is the identification of religion writ large as the domain of confused, old, and illogical thinking an incorrect generalization? It depends entirely on what you define a religion to be. For certain definitions, it is absolutely incorrect. But for others (for example, those definitions which define a religion to be those ideas which are a part of confused, old, and illogical thinking), then it is not really so much bigoted as it is a truism? jps (talk) 02:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

An individual grandfather is not 'the elderly', which is an entire category of people. And if It depends entirely on what you define a religion to be, I'm not sure how that'd be anything more than word games. I'd hardly think it all that justified if someone were say on Wikipedia 'Jews are stingy' and then defend themselves by explaining that when they say 'Jews' they personally define that to only mean people who supposedly really are penny-pinching. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 02:27, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because there are legitimate definitions of religion which deal with the hard-to-demonstrate aspects of the idea. After all, "religion" as a category is a difficult-to-define construct when we get right down to it, and it is even vaguely Eurocentric. A comparison to the category of Jews just doesn't work as far as I'm concerned because there is no argument about whether and how antisemitic stereotypes are definitional for Jews except in utterly bigoted contexts. I suppose you might argue that studies of comparative religion or philosophy of religion are utterly bigoted contexts, but I don't think that is a normal tack. jps (talk) 02:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are many legitimate definitions of religion, and it is hard to define and rooted in Eurocentrism. But I'm hard pressed to consider the example ('confused' and 'old') as being like any of the academically legitimate definitions. Bruce Lincoln says that religion is the desire to speak of things eternal and transcendent; Robert Orsi says religion is what human beings do, for, and against the gods; Clifford Geertz says religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, persuasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in people; Talal Asad says religion is everything the modern state can afford to let go; one could go on. These are legitimate definitions. By comparison, 'the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking', meanwhile, is an expression of bigotry. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 03:16, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm hard pressed to consider the example ('confused' and 'old') as being like any of the academically legitimate definitions "Old" is a somewhat common way for certain academics to offer a clear demarcation between the popular distinctions between "cults" and "legitimate religions" with a nod to the irony that the truth-value of the claims are similar. Similarly, "confused" is just a synonym for descriptions provided by those who argue, in some academic contexts as the majority position, that religious belief is fundamentally irrational. You found four excellent scholars who provide functional definitinons of "religion" in terms of its social construction, but there is a strong academic tradition that goes back as far as the philosophes of the Enlightenment which defines religions in terms of the implausible and persistent claims people who follow them make. jps (talk) 11:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

True but not really relevant. Using age as a distinction between traditional vs newer religious groups doesn't involve calling the traditional beliefs "old thinking". "Confused thinking" is not a synonym for saying that religious belief is fundamentally irrational; it is disparaging language that scholars avoid. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:52, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. The idea that religious thinking is a kind of "old thinking" is not even particularly controversial given that most religions are based on ideas of fairly old provenance. The only issue is that it is not a universal. For my part, describing thinking as "irrational" and describing thinking as "confused" are basically synonymous. I see no strong taboos in the literature in identifying religious thinking in similar sorts of disparaging ways:

• "older beliefs and ways of thinking, often based on religious traditions"
• Believers are less open-minded and more likely to believe in fake news and conspiracy theories.

Etc.

jps (talk) 18:39, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In past discussions, you have often emphasized how much a source or author has been cited as one potential measure of approximating the pertinence or influence. While the two articles you've linked aren't on their face irrelevant, being academically published in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, close consideration makes me prioritize them less compared to the definitions offered by the religious studies scholars I quoted.

Elsevier shows a total of 25 citations between the two articles you linked, and Google Scholar shows 35 citations and 25 citations respectively. This isn't nothing, and for some topics could be meaningful and sufficient. But for a topic as big and as studied as religion, those citation counts, comparatively, don't suggest that the descriptions of religion offered there are as influential or legitimate as definitions of religion as the aforementioned non-disparaging examples quoted above. To use two examples:

• I quoted Talal Asad's Formations of the Secular, which has over 10,000 hits for citations on Google Scholar
• I quoted Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures, which has over 100,000 hits for citations on Google Scholar.

The publications with less casual and less disparaging definitions seem to carry more influence in academic scholarship. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 00:15, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations! You have successfully demonstrated the fallacy of the excluded middle. jps (talk) 00:58, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When the difference in influence is on the level of orders of magnitude, it looks more like the cherry picking fallacy on your part. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 01:09, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do you know what different contexts are? jps (talk) 01:43, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think you are on some level right about differences in targets, though I have also seen similarly dismissive and derisive sentiments expressed without much community pushback and no administrative censure about transgender people and topics, or, in the words of others*, "nutty academics [...] with all their postmodernist queer theory" and "ideologues" with whom supposedly "[n]o dissent is brooked". From some points of view it's an unintuitive Venn diagram, though not an unprecedented one.

*I can provide the links to these quotations on request but did not do so in the original post since this thread is not about specific individual editors' behavior but rather about whether the civility policy can be expanded to clarify a community consensus against expressing bigotry.

Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 02:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Deciding whether to bring someone into a conversation as a "bad example" is such a tricky thing. You need concrete examples, or some editors won't believe that the comments actually happened. (I once had a wiki-friend – a woman I really like and whose editing was superb – say that she couldn't quite believe that oversight-worthy sexual harassment ever happened, because whenever someone mentioned an example, the oversight volunteers had always cleaned it up before she got there.) But when someone's comment is accidental, or being used as merely one example, then I think it's kind of mean to rub their faces in it, especially if they're less experienced than you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:03, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Religion" isn't analogous to "The Middle East" or "Jews". If we're going in that direction, it's analogous to "earth" or "people". If we got more specific and said e.g. "Christianity is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking" I'd be more sympathetic to the comparison. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am sure some people interpret "religion" with metonymy, though, as in "religious people are...." jps (talk) 02:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you're right. If you hear a statement about a stereotype, like "Mental illness is the domain of delusions and violence", one tends to read this as a claim about how people with mental health conditions interact with others, and not about what happens to them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But it's a key skill in intellectual endeavours of all sorts to be able to dissociate statements about concepts, ideas and things from statements about people (especially about oneself). Ultimately Wikipedia editing is an activity based in the propagation of knowledge whereas in some aspects religion lies in the realm of antiknowledge (rather, there is 'faith'). Thus there is always going to be a tension between (say) an encyclopedia that insists on asserting the Earth is not 6,000 years old and a fundamentalist Christian who might feel attacked by that knowledge. It in no way means Wikipedia should extend special treatment to any concept merely because of some religious association. But this doesn't mean either that Wikipedia or Wikipedians should be banging on about these tensions in a tedious Dawkinsesque manner. Bon courage (talk) 06:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Phrenology is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. Human sacrifice is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. Geocentrism is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. Viatlism is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. Lamarckism is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking. It's shocking how when you change key terms in a statement it can become reasonable or unreasonable. Unless religions are possessed of personhood I don't see why they must be treated with civility. The real problem is that going on non sequitur rants about one's feelings on things aren't important to Wikipedia, but that's already covered by NOTFORUM and the like. XeCyranium (talk) 02:22, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sort of of two minds here, because two things are simultaneously true:

1. A lot of articles on obscure religious topics make WP:EXTRAORDINARY claims that are not supported by secular sources, this is bad, and we should be much more vigorous in trying to fix it.

2. Many editors that deal with WP:FRINGE topics have a sort of hyperskeptical attitude that tends to lead to WP:NPOV problems when writing about religion or religious belief. (Would I call this "anti-religious bigotry"? Absolutely not, I don't think that exists. But it definitely can lead to tone issues when writing about religion.) Loki (talk) 03:21, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that in accusing @Lycurgus: of anti-religious bigotry you've crossed over the civility line yourself. Looking at the context on Talk:Celibacy its hard to see your side here. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 03:51, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Probably this revolves around the distinction between ideas and people. In general it's ok to be dismissive of certain religion-associated ideas (miracles, supernatural beings, fake history, etc.) there is no need to extend that to being dismissive about people who might have faith in those ideas. It's fallacious to argue that "religion" should have some kind of protected characteristic in the same way as a certain group of people (women, Jews ...) because "religion" is a big umbrella term not a group of people. Bon courage (talk) 05:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think theres more to it than that... People who are genuinely religious are largely incapable of NPOV when it comes to religious topics, we've seen that demonstrated time and time again... The problems largely seem to arise from people not making it clear that they're addressing a NPOV issue and not the reasons behind it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hard to have religion without people, to the extent that we take scholars to be right that religions are socially constructed by people. (Likewise, one's hard pressed to have atheism or humanism without people, those being socially constructed as well, so I'd just as soon say it's inappropriate to say something like 'atheism is a philosophy of unhappiness', a claim that happened at the atheism talk page not so long ago. I don't think 'vagueposting bigotry is bad' is going to be special and specific to religion, though it's the example highlighted in the OP and in this thread). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:22, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And it would be fine to argue, or rather profess a belief, that atheism or humanism or anything is illogical or irrational or whatever. Bigotry in this sense clearly refers to ideas towards people, not ideas about ideas that other people have ideas about. XeCyranium (talk) 02:27, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the context on Talk:Celibacy its hard to see your side here: What I see looking at that thread is WhatamIdoing offering respectful clarification, and looking at this thread I notice WhatamIdoing deciding to make the discussion about a general idea rather than a specific editor, unlike your approach of personalizing the matter and unnecessarily turning up the temperature. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 06:39, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They provided direct quotes from a specific editor alongside an attack on that editor, I didn't personalize anything beyond what was already there. The only one making this more personal is you, who has decided to attack me personally instead of addressing the point raised. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:34, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

NO, as we should be able to talk about ideas freely, it is only people we should not be able to insult. Slatersteven (talk) 11:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is a super fine line and pretty subjective. PackMecEng (talk) 15:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not really, if you think about it. A person is not an idea. That some people identify with ideas is unfortunate, but not something Wikipedia can fix. Bon courage (talk) 15:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Pack on this. Editors should neither be writing "Gays are evil" nor writing "Homosexuality is evil". I want to see nothing even remotely like that, because it is homophobic bigotry. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed not, there are some very bad ideas it is unacceptable to espouse. I really cannot see why anybody should be espousing any (non-Wikipedia-related) ideas anyway - this is WP:NOTAFORUM. (Ironically it's a view in several religions that gays/homosexuality is evil, which brings us full circle.) Bon courage (talk) 15:50, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So what you're saying is that you believe it's acceptable to espouse anti-religious sentiment, but you believe it's not acceptable to espouse anti-gay sentiment.

I don't think it is acceptable to espouse either of these viewpoints on wiki. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's exactly true and a big reason why analogies do not work here.

Take the following three statements:

• Homosexuality is evil.
• Nazism is evil.
• Christianity is evil.

One of those three statements is definitely bigotry. One of those three statements is definitely not bigotry. The form of the sentence is not helpful for identifying bigotry; only the content of the sentence is useful, and that involves subjective decisions about, frankly, how plausible you think "Christianity is evil" is. Loki (talk) 16:17, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Insofar as the category of Christianity is capacious and includes Latin American liberation theology practitioners resisting colonialism, denominations that affirm LGBTQ+ rights, anti-racist activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, etc., I'm pretty comfortable considering the phrase 'Christianity is evil' to be the kind of bigotry I expect to encounter in, say, particularly virulent takes by Ayn Rand, not a neutral expression appropriate to see on Wikipedia.

Things that are unjust and evil include racism, misogyny, queerphobia, antisemitism, Nazism, Islamophobia, colonialism, etc., and these are all both narrower (because they aren't universal to) and wider (because they also exist elsewhere) than categories like 'religion', or 'Islam', or 'Christianity', etc. Calling out specific patterns of injustices or specific cases of injustice with certain persons or institutions is different from expressing intolerance about entire people categories. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One is an intrinsic characteristic a person cannot control, one isn't. XeCyranium (talk) 02:29, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The idea that your religion is voluntary and changeable is very Christian. Some other religions and cultures believe that religion is also an intrinsic characteristic that a person cannot control. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:39, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some believe that but I think Akbar the Great made it clear those beliefs were mistaken. Some people believe sexuality is a choice too, luckily there's a word for those people: "wrong". XeCyranium (talk) 20:48, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A young man bragged to me once that, on a trip to southeast Asia, his traveling companion had been recognized as the reincarnation of some famous Buddhist priest. If that were true, how was his friend supposed to choose any of that? Can he say "Nope, I don't choose to have already been reincarnated"? Or "You aren't allowed to believe that about me"?

Some people believe they are very smart when they are not. Some people believe they are not smart when they are. Their beliefs do not change their intrinsic characteristics. You might believe you aren't smart, but you still are, and your belief does not change that fact.

Someone who believes in reincarnation would say the same about people who don't: you might not believe you are reincarnated, but you still are, and your belief does not change that. (Or, naturally, the other way around: if reincarnation is not real, then you aren't reincarnated, even if you believe it, and your belief does not change that fact.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:51, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The whole tourists as reincarnated priests thing is a common scam. Examining it as a sincere religious belief seems to be missing the point entirely. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:54, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that was my first thought, but I kept my mouth shut, because it seemed to be a deeply significant experience to him. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:52, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ethnic religions like Judaism make this dichotomy not so clear-cut. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 02:40, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how; secular and atheist Jews are still Jewish while not believing in the Jewish religion, to varying degrees, it's not some kind of ethnic obligation. XeCyranium (talk) 20:53, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But in accordance with above it would be perfectly fine to say Jews, gays, trans, or whatever are okay to attack and that is simply not true. As a community we decide what is acceptable. Remember, attacking ideas or groups like that also stifles the free exchange of ideas. PackMecEng (talk) 15:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Jews are a race, not just an idea, and none of the others are just ideas they are actually biological, not one has Christian DNA, and no one is biologically Muslim. Slatersteven (talk) 15:56, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Being a Jew is not a race. But if we want to go that route, we show Nazis the door all the time and rightly so. PackMecEng (talk) 16:07, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh boy... So this is going back to basics but Jews are in large part an ethnoreligious group and the vast majority of modern Jews beleive that they are part of an ethnoreligious group... The vast majority of modern Jews are not Nazis. You've jumped the shark so hard its not even funny. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:37, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes jews are not Nazis, I'm not sure what you are arguing. I think you missed the point if that is your takeaway. PackMecEng (talk) 17:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The point is that the majority of modern Jews would agree with the idea that "Jews are an ethnic as well as religious community" Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, I wouldn't say that there is Jewish DNA either, since the notion that race or ethnicity are genetically determined is pseudoscience. What is true is that Judaism is ethnoreligious to an extent beyond that of many other 'world religion'-esque categories. 'Secular Jew' has more legs and history than 'secular Christian', and even to the extent that the latter isn't nonexistent, it's not as readily conceived of in ethnic terms as the former. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:53, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Jews, gays, and trans people are not okay to attack, but fascists are (arguably it's obligatory to attack them, in fact). Sorry, but there is no content-neutral rule to be found here: you cannot just say "it would be bigoted to say this about gay people" because the important part of that phrase is "about gay people". Loki (talk) 16:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, its a fine line and subjective for what is acceptable and appropriate to attack or not. Which the community at large defines over time. We cannot use a simple open ended rule anymore. PackMecEng (talk) 16:48, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The conversational rulebook with regards to this varies with location, politics and time. Of course everybody considers their current version of it to be the "correct" one. IMO it's a bad and impossible idea to try to write the "correct" rulebook regarding this for Wikipedia. For neutral venues, the unwritten rule is that if ~95% agree, it's OK to treat it as fact, and so saying "Nazism is evil" is OK. But lots of people try to pretend that their 50% view is a 95% view.

Regarding the OP and civility, IMO wp:civility is about how to treat editors that one is conversing with. If the comment was somehow referring to someone in the conversation, I would consider any choosing of value-laden disparaging terms to be contrary to wp:civility. If not, not. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:55, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would expand upon your idea to say: Civility is about more than just how you treat the editors you are conversing with. It is also about the effects you have on people who might 'overhear' that conversation. We don't let two straight men talk about how glad they are not to be gay, even if they think it's a fine way to treat each other, because we know that a gay editor might see the conversation and feel marginalized by the community's tolerance of this display of intolerance. The same is true for comments about race, sex, gender, and many other things. I think it should be equally true for religion (or lack thereof; I believe that comments against atheism or agnosticism hurt our community in an exactly equal fashion). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:21, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are people who are uncivil in very subtle ways, but Wikipedia is ill-equipped to handle it because there is no venue for helping to moderate personal disputes between two different users. The assumption of this policy seems to be that everyone should just learn to get along by themselves until the PvP is so intolerable that you go off to complain to the authorities at the dramaboards. jps (talk) 13:13, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The one making what appear to be specious assertions of religious bigotry is not in a position to tell anyone else how to be civil... Making accusations of intolerance which aren't supported by the context and evidence is a civility issue, WP:ASPERSIONS etc. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:24, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Whatamidoing But this is a policy and going by your standard, it would be a violation of Wikipedia policy to write anything that offends any (not-in-the-conversation) person based on whatever set of behavior rules that they wish to apply. North8000 (talk) 18:48, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think what Whatamidoing is saying is that there is sometimes editors who say things to impose superiority of views or jab at another editors views, when we should be focusing on what sources actually say. Usually sources are more nuanced and not as insulting as editors here sometimes are. I have seen people say things like "sky daddy" or "stupid believers" and other internationally provoking terms, which of course shows their rotten mindset since even nonreligious editors defend religious content because it is encyclopedic and vice versa. Ramos1990 (talk) 20:51, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You really can't be on Wikipedia talk:Civility saying " which of course shows their rotten mindset" Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:53, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

North, I don't think so. First, I think we should differentiate between "upset" and "offend". Being told that (e.g.) "Scaryitis is uniformly fatal in babies" is upsetting (if you happen to know a family whose baby has this), but it's not offensive.

Second, we need to distinguish between a comment that repeats a group stereotype ("blondes are dumb") and a comment about an individual behaviors ("that televangelist is a scammer"). Editors who post something like "religious believers are so stupid they believe a sky daddy exists" are posting offensive stereotypes about groups. This should not be permitted. Editors should, however, be able to post a comment about an individual, based on their personal behavior. Commenting on personal behavior would include statements such as:

• "User:EveEditor, please stop post insulting remarks about groups of people based on religious stereotypes per WP:CIVIL."
• "User:PaulPushy, Wikipedia is not the place to post your proofs that your religion is correct."

In short, I think Ramos is correct: It is wrong and a violation of this policy to post insults about large groups of people (e.g., "stupid believers"), and it is still okay and acceptable under this policy to say that specific individual editors have problems (e.g., describing an individual editor's stereotyping as showing a "rotten mindset" [including small groups, such as all the editors in a particular discussion, or all the editors supporting a given thing]). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:34, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You have a rotten mindset, and you are a bigot. It is your opinion that this is a civil way to talk to you, right? Or did I misunderstand what you are saying? If I misunderstood you, regard those remarks as struck.

To avoid misunderstandings: I would never say this (You have a rotten mindset, and you are a bigot) to any other editor here, since I regard it as really uncivil. I am not seriously accusing WhatamIdoing of those things. I am using it here only to make a point. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:34, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Glad you've been crystal clear that's just hypothetical there Hob. They don't come anymore non-bigoted than WAID. That said, above analyse from Loki et al on why it's challenging to draw clear bright line general rules, and to make useful analogies, seems bang on point. Looking at the specifics may be helpful. The actual sentence that triggered concern here seems to be Religion is the domain of confused, old and illogical thinking but this is a practical term which has uses outside that. I'm sure in a medical context it's made clear. from Talk:Celibacy. In context, that's clearly not an attempt to insult large groups of people - rather, it's talking about religion in the sense that it can be understood as a set of social institutions , and especially as believe systems aiming to influence how folk think. Such a -ve view on religion is less common these days than 20 years ago, but it's still a respectable minority view, not a fringe one.

So my view is no change needed to the policy - the existing wording against "religious slurs" is sufficient. We can trust admins to distinguish between such slurs & valid POVs that are clearly relvent to article improvement, on a case by case bases. FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:13, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the kind words, Feyd, and for the clear example, Hob. I wonder whether we have mistaken civility for friendliness. Hob's example would be an unfriendly thing to say, but if, in the particular context, it builds up the community, I don't think it would necessarily be uncivil. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is an extremely weird idea of civility. I cannot see how being unfriendly "builds community", except by bullying away those one wants to exclude from it for arbitrary reasons. The reasoning also smacks a bit of "the ends justify the means": be friendly unless you want to achieve a specific goal. I will unwatch this page now. This is not a community I want to be part of. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:27, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ Hob, it will be a shame if you don't return as at bottom we're probably all of like mind on this one. If someone literally said You have a rotten mindset, and you are a bigot to an obviously non bigoted editor then even the more lenient among us would probably agree it warrants an insta block. I think WAID's point was more that even your hypothetical example could come across as a little unfriendly - though not at all uncivil, and also providing valuable clarity that had seemed helpful in guiding us towards a resolution of this thread.

@ WAID - yes I think you're exactly right on the distinction between friendliness & civility. IMO more friendliness is desirable in that it would encourage more collaboration & might be especially good for diversity. Unlike with civility though, no attempt should ever be made to enforce friendliness. For many, it doesnt feel natural or authentic to be especially friendly online, esp. with those who have ideological differences. Going back to the exchange on Talk:Celibacy that triggered all this, the editor's doubling down when you raised the bigotry concern was arguably unfriendly but not uncivil. For folk with certain life experiences or have been exposed to too much one sided analyses, it can indeed seem the moral high ground to criticise religion. Huh, even celebrated encyclopaedist Diderot was anti-religious, so much so that he's often cited (incorrectly I think) as having said Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the guts of the last priest. All this isn't to say anti-theists have a blank cheque to be critical of religion, as in many contexts doing so is divisive & gratuitous. But on the TP of an article where it's clearly relevant, like Celibacy, it's ok. Just my opinion. If nothing else this thread has shown how fiendishly difficult it can be to draw bright lines, as theres so many valid conflicting perspectives in play. Which I guess is why trusting to admin discretion on a case by case bases may be the best we can hope for? FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:45, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think Hob's example is good because it could be civil or uncivil, depending on the context. Demanding sanctions against someone at ANI because they have a rotten mindset is probably just an instance of name-calling. Approaching someone to say "Hey, I think you need to take a break from that noticeboard. You're always ranting about it, and, to be blunt, it looks like you have developed a rotten mindset about the editors discussed there. Maybe get back to the kind of editing you actually enjoy for a while? If you're worried nobody will step up if you don't handle things, I'm willing to put some hours into it for the next month" might be startling to the recipient, but it's probably civil. A joke with a friend, along the lines of getting his mind out of the gutter, is harmless friendly banter. Same words, three contexts, three responses.

This maybe a bit of an etymological fallacy, but civil comes from Civitas: the united citizens. On wiki, we call that 'the community'. It isn't just about individual, one-on-one behavior. Civility is about the collective effects, too. At some level, anything that helps the community is civil, and everything that hurts the community is uncivil. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:07, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While I agree context matters—if, say, [Editor A] posts at ANI to say '[User B] posted antisemitic slurs in a discussion, and here are the diffs so they clearly have a rotten mindset, and we should indeff', I think we should prioritize sanction against [User B] rather than against [Editor A]—I don't think it's usually necessary to use 'unfriendly language' like that, and to the extent it isn't necessary we might as well avoid it. We don't need to try to assess someone's mindset or personality and then describe such in a crass way if describing their behavior and/or a pattern of behavior is sufficient, so we might as well avoid the former and prioritize the latter.

That said, to Hob's concern about omething samounting to exclud[ing] for arbitrary reasons—there are various ideas and behaviors we want to exclude from Wikipedia, but I don't think our reasons our arbitrary. In editor interactions, we want to exclude any bigotry that would violate the Univeral Code of Conduct's ban on using slurs or stereotypes or would abridge our obligation under the Code to take active responsibility for ensuring that the Wikimedia projects are productive, pleasant and safe spaces. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 19:20, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Even if the UCOC didn't exist, we'd still have a legitimate interest in encouraging a "productive, pleasant, and safe space", because that's what results in editors producing good content instead of (e.g.,) spending all their time at the drama boards or deciding that contributing is no longer worth the hassle.

Hydrangeans, what you said about to the extent it isn't necessary we might as well avoid it is a good summary of the first half of Postel's law of communication. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:48, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To put my last post in another shorter way, this is a policy (which editors can be sanctioned for for violating) covering treatment of editors which one is conversing with. As a policy with teeth (and which is often weaponized) , I don't think it would be a good idea to broaden it to include references to all other groups and people in the world. This is a policy about treatment of editors who you are conversing with. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:43, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]