Topic on Wikidata talk:Behavior norms

So it sounds like there's a desire to get more concrete. Some people have brought up (mostly negative) examples from other wikis. I guess we can start collecting in this thread some examples of behaviors we would like to reject on Wikidata.

Please list behaviors you think should be unacceptable on Wikidata. Also, please comment on others' suggestions; if you just agree it should be considered unacceptable on Wikidata, please do express it by posting "+1" in a comment. This would really help gauge community opinion on the various behaviors mentioned.

Please describe the behaviors briefly and generally. The particular anecdote or experience that leads you to suggest this should be unacceptable is not necessary to make the suggestion; if it gets questioned, or people ask for an example, you could share at some greater length. But let's keep it brief and clear to help everyone participate.

Why do you believe that it's not valuable to be concrete?

Well, let us first agree what is the scope of this discussion. There are types of behavior which I hope everybody finds unacceptable, such as personal attacks, POV pushing, removal of reliably sourced relevant data, edit-warring, or vandalism, but these are already covered by existing policies.

What do do with edit-warring resulting from some external conflict (wikipedia editors/anon users changing values for wikidata infoboxes, for example)?

Why consider Wikipedia editors different in a conflict with others?

The situation is entirely different from a conflict happening in Wikidata. The conflict is happening in Wikipedia, they are changing the Wikidata values just to be reflected in the Wikipedia Infobox. What do you do? Will you block them, protect the page? (and risk freezing the Wikidata Infobox in some vandalized state)?

Whatever they do at Wikipedia is for them to resolve. When they troll, when they bring their conflict to Wikidata they do deserve everything we can throw at them. PS there is no such thing as a Wikidata infobox.

Gerard: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikidata_Infobox

Infoboxes that gather their values from Wikidata are also generally known as "Wikidata Infoboxes" in Wikipedia.

it only shows that there is somewhere an infobox by that name. It is not a Wikidata infobox.

I was referring to those infoboxes (generally known as "wikidata infoboxes") in my comment above. In any case, there must be some procedure to follow when that happens (kind of a proxy edit-war)

I suppose Darwin means that properties and/or items here are used in other project's infoboxes - most likely Wikipedia.

Yes, exactly.

There are 280+ Wikipedias so giving each and every one a special status is a bit off. Wikidata is not exclusively used by them either.. Everybody has to behave including Wikipedians

I don't think "edit-warring" is well covered by the current policy. We lack a policy about how to go about resolving the conflicts and that specifies exactly when "edit-warring" begins.

Wiki-Hounding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Harassment#Wikihounding

I would +1 this, and any type of behavior that falls under harassment (let's define this together) and makes people feel personally uncomfortable.

+1

+1

+1

+1

Blunt reverts of good-faith edits by experienced community members, without giving a decent explanation.

+1 and more generally all the "no-answer/silent" attitude which is not really compatible with a collaborative projects and only escalate conflicts.

That said, could you give details of what you expect as a « decent explanation »? I revert *a lot* of edits who are probably not intended as malicious; most of the time, I just use the Edit summary and often, the reason is kind of obvious (to me, but how can I know if it's clear to the person I revert?) so I just left a 1-3 words explanation (like "Self-referencing", "Wrong language" for label/description).

+1 (and it should be possible to give some explanation in the summary when we are removing some value or property which can be controversial)

There are no summaries in most of the case, so that this is not possible. Going to a user talk page for every revert is an overkill.

DarwIn, Ymblanter: that is why I revert a lot. I prefer a revert (which is a bit rough but allows to leave a summary) than just a simple removal. Plus, with revert, at the very least you have a notification. Should we encourage this approach or not?

I hate those revert notifications, they are like a red warning that a conflict is coming, and cause anguish only by looking at them. Frankly, I would prefer to not be notified at all, and finding out what happened on my own sometime in the future... Specially when it's not controversial.

I understand but you can personally choose to ignore some messages (including but not limited to notification), meanwhile, there is no solution (that I know of) to aknowledge the situation if no message is left. The choice has to be done on the receiving end, no?

My position is that it's always better to commmicate too much than too little (given - obviously - that the amount of messages is reasonable and not spamming, which can be an other painfull problem, probably worth opening an other section on this page to deal with).

Yes, I can ignore them, but I'm too curious for that xD I concur that it's better to explain things in a reversion than not explaining them at all. I would prefer, however, if it was possible to do that using the summary, like in Commons and Wikipedia

Maybe I'm missing something but if you are reverting, it is already possible to leave a summary (in fact, it's one of the only case where summary is available on Wikdiata). No?

Ah yes, the conversation did a full circle. We started talking about this because no summaries are allowed in Wikidata except in reversions, and then you said that you preferred reverting than removing because you could then justify your action. But it would be better if we could justify it in any action we may do in Wikidata, not only in reverts, I believe.

+1

+1

Yes indeed, but I'm pragmatical and I'm working with the tool we already have ;)

You can switch them off. This is what I did a year ago.

Probably I should, but it's like a love/hate relation.... But the proper way of explaining the stuff we are doing should be by normally adding a summary, like you said.

+1 on Ymblanter remark. I miss the possibility of adding a personalized summary in the regular actions we do at Wikidata, which often require some additional explanation (and can lead to eventual conflicts, or at least dispensable interactions)

I disagree that we should discourage blunt reverts without explanations. When there's an edit that appears to be a very obvious mistake (typically made by an automated tool), and one can often assume that if the original author were to see it for more than a moment they would agree it should be reverted, it doesn't always make sense to take the time to explain it. If somehow the revert was incorrect (or not immediately understood/agreed upon), the original author can re-revert (with or without edit summary/comment) and a discussion can start. When human involvement is absent for the original edit, I think we can have a workflow of edit -> revert -> re-revert and discuss.

A typical case here is vandalism. I think on enwiki and other wikis, reverts/rollbacks etc can be performed on really bad edits or vandalism edits without any explanation (because it's obvious). Also, this is making me think about the `rollback` userright (Wikidata:User access levels#Rollback), which is typical for this case as a rollback is a revert doesn't have any explanation.

But since not everyone has rollback rights by default, an undo without explanation fits this case.

the weaponization of obvious is by now plain. editors re-reverting a bot can expect to be blocked by the admin bot operator, who programs the bot for their own obvious POV not consensus. admins do not collaborate, explain, nor apologize because they do not have to.

I think the idea is not as much « discourage lack of explanations » but more « encourage to leave explanation », in order to start a dialog more early.

obvious and often can be very subjective (especially in a multilingual context) and by me experience, two reverts leads to escalating edit wars more. The first person reverting has the opportunity to leave a summary and it should be used (except maybe for very very obvious mistakes, but even then I prefer to leave a short summary which doesn't take much time and can save a lot of time by avoiding conflict).

Yes, sometimes it is perfectly acceptable to revert without an explanation, when it's some consensual revert (I do it all the time with good old CommonsDelinker). With obvious mistakes it's the same thing. I guess good sense generally applies to all that. :)

So, do we want to rephrase that in a "positive way"? Such as: "Try always to give an explanation when you do an edit revert, especially if it applies to a very sensitive topic".

That "always" there doesn't look good. :P

Maybe "Try to give an explanation when you do an edit revert, especially if it applies to a very sensitive topic"?

+1 happens already too much on Wikipedias - reverting edits is too easy: not providing one or more arguments is a huge "nono", especially some admins with their "power buttons" think they are always right, knowing all the grammar and political policy rules forgetting we are creating together an amazing encyclopedia based on 5 simple rules of thumb they are supposed to understand better than us "normal editors" (define 'normal'). They forget one of the most important and very easy to apply: assume good faith.

yes, i see a lot of "obvious" reverting without any interaction other than templates on talk elsewhere. and when discussion begins about admin behavior, then radio silence.

that would be something to reject

+1

Overconfidence? I'm not quite sure how to express this, but a handful of cases of large-scale problematic edits/conflicts I've seen that have been tricky to resolve have involved editors who seemed to be certain that their way was right, and everybody else wrong. Most of these people seem to end up banned or otherwise persuaded to leave, but that seems maybe the wrong way to resolve these things. We want to encourage people to listen to others, to work collaboratively rather than idiosyncratically; these editors typically come in with a lot of energy for whatever it is they want to focus on; if that could be redirected to actually helpful purposes that could be a big win for us. But I'm not sure what structure would actually help accomplish that...

I would call it: "consider that you might be partially wrong and partially right". Truth can only materialize when all the views are considered and integrated.

It would be also nice to remind people that we are humans like them, so we all have partial knowledge, and we are subjective individuals. We can try to better ourselves, but they should do that too. Only when both people have removed their biases, then it is easier to find consensus.

That's an ooold old issue... I obviously support integration vs. ban of those editors, but it often requires a lot of time and dedication from the mediators, as well as a community prone to tolerance and reintegration, which often is not the case. No idea how is the community here in Wikidata on that respect. But in my own experience, the main obstacle to this is the time and dedication it requires from a third party in order for it to be accomplished. :\

the main obstacle is a reliance of technical tools to finish conflict, and assert control. inability & disinclination to actually collaborate: why waste time talking when you can drop the block hammer.

It's all about right arguments; (ab)using powerButtons like blockUser needs thorough explanation(s) why. There are five rules applicable: one or more (or the law) should be violated before "punishing" a fellow editor of good faith.

Yes, it takes time and effort, for sure. And perhaps not so rewarding as watching your edit count go up.

Not rewarding in general. It's not only the time and patience we invest. As there is often a need of a compromise between a number of parties, the moderator risks being seen as the enemy by all of them, and attract bad interactions upon himself. Editcountitis has nothing to do with that, it's obviously much more secure and rewarding to go about your own business and let them eat each other alive in some corner of the project. Been there, seen that, got the T-shirt...

Personally I find extremelly difficult to mediate on wiki, where there are no cues about what the involved people are going through. I think any serious attempt to resolve conflict should involve at least real-time communication.

My experience is that real-time communication involves far more misunderstandings, and such discussions get heated a lot more easily than on-wiki ones. It's easier for people to make themselves understood when they can take however long they want to write up their post.

We had different experiences, then. However I also have observed that people who come to the wiki prefer to stay on wiki, as if they had fear to reveal their face. So we'll have to get used to that.

I couldn't agree more. The most successful mediation I've done was with two well established editors which diverged on the way of writing indigenous words, mostly about Brazilian ethnies. They already had a considerable block log, and were constantly at the admin board, and would remain there fighting for days or weeks till they would be blocked again. I was a friend of both of them on Facebook, and I knew they were not as stubborn as they looked onwiki, so I privately arranged for a truce there, before officializing it onwiki. The wars stopped immediately, and apparently any conflict was afterwards dealt with privately on FB in a much more civilized manner - to the point that eventually one year after the truce they meet each other at a wikimeeting, and became friends, till today (that was in 2010/2011). My own experience is that offwiki interaction is generally more healthy, productive and constructive than onwiki, specially in wikimeetings and offwiki activities. However, I also have direct knowledge of instances where offwiki platforms were used for harassment and even blackmail, so some caution must be used.

What I find is that there is a distinct difference in the item centred approach of Wikipedians and the more collection centred approach of people like myself. When you talk about concepts like so many concepts like "living person", they gain a completely different perspective. My problem with the "Wikipedia" approach is that they deny even the existence and the relevance of this perspective.

This is clear in the way that I work. Edits in my "scholarly work" are about persons, but in the background every change to a person triggers one hundred more edits in a batch job. I truly do not care for any of these persons as a person, they are authors of papers, co-author of others.

It is just one example. My problem with Wikipedians is that they typically are very defensive about their project do not reflect at all how we can benefit each other and consequently I have in return little to no time for the standard Wikipedia arguments and points of view.

Ok, so just like I tried to do with positive behaviours, I'll try to sum up also the negative behaviours.

1. Do NOT engage in personal attacks, harassing, threatening, stalking, outing, doxxing, etc. of other contributors. There is no excuse for this, so don't do it.
2. No vandalisms. Do NOT engage in deliberate attempts to damage or compromise the integrity of Wikidata and/or its data.
3. Do not use bad data and/or sources to deliberately push your point of view or to hurt Wikimedia projects. Remember that Wikidata has the possibility of hosting data acknowledged to be false or wrong, provided that such statement is marked as "deprecated". Failing to mark false/wrong data as such can be considered a vandalism, and treated as such.
4. No narcissism. The fact that you think you are right doesn't make you right. Instead, try to listen to others and to work collaboratively, rather than idiosyncratically.

Of course, you're welcome to comment and suggest, as with the others.

I don't like that the first point groups personal attacks together with those other issues. Harassing, stalking, outing, doxxing, etc are not personal attacks, and personal attacks are not any of those. Both are very problematic, and the risk of conflating them is the risk that personal attacks become tolerated. We should be making the distinction significant, by either not grouping personal attacks with these other behaviours or by explaining what a personal attack is in the immediate context..

Well, « Harassing, stalking, outing, doxxing, » is related to person(s), so it is personnal, and it's a kind of attack ; but I get your idea, it's maybe not a "personal attack" as defined on wikis. Anyway, I find logical to group this item together. Maybe we can rephrase it like this :

• Do NOT engage in personal attacks, harassing, threatening, stalking, outing, doxxing, etc. of other contributors. There is no excuse for this, so don't do it.

+1

Ok, corrected.

@VIGNERON: +1.

What ArthurPSmith mentioned is also important. Maybe I would phrase it like "No narcissism. Just because you think you are right, that doesn't make you right. We want to encourage people to listen to others, to work collaboratively rather than idiosyncratically."

Thank you Micru, I integrated this into the draft.