Wikipedia talk:Esperanza/Code of Conduct

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Lol. — Mar. 26, '06 [23:28] <freakofnur_xture|talk>

Contents 1 Possible issues to address 2 Initial comments 3 Support but question 4 Do's and Don'ts 5 "making them feel uncomfortable" 6 Rule 5 - elections 7 from thewolfstar 8 Agree, but one question. 9 I totally oppose having a Code of Conduct 10 A comment about the Code of Conduct issue (posted on the Esperanza talk page as well)

[edit] Possible issues to address

• Member actions in the IRC channel
• Member civility towards others
• Member actions and attitudes regarding controversial topics

Some preliminary ideas I came up with. Feel free to add to them above. Jfingers88 00:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the input, it is definitely appreciated! Once the draft is finished (somewhere this or next week), we will put it here to discuss and get some input on it from the community. Any comments now, or then, are more than welcome! --JoanneB 14:59, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Initial comments

Most of these are pretty commonsense. There are a few points I'm wondering about, though:

• "Therefore, no one can and should be branded": which meaning of "brand" is being used here? The page it links to never mentions the word; from the context, though, I assume this means labeling people?
• "If you've not got anything nice to say, say nothing at all": rather too broad. We don't want to get into a position where joining Esperanza acts as a free pass from legitimate criticism of one's actions.
• "not making them feel uncomfortable": ditto. Who gets to define "uncomfortable"?
• "don't repeatedly mention your own RFA, someone else's RFA or any other election": I assume this refers only to actual campaigning, and not to legitimate discussion?

Clarification on these points would be most appreciated :-) Kirill Lokshin 21:11, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

• • Branding = labeling, as you correctly deduced. :)
  • Legitimate criticism is something nice to say - I believe that sentence is meant to discourage personal attacks.
  • I believe that is a requirement to not bite newbies. That said, it is very ambiguous, and could be reworded.
  • Of course, but "Vote for Titoxd!" pressures or similar should not be allowed. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 23:41, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I am quite fond of the current wording. Anything that can make this project more friendly and devoid of stress is most welcome. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 16:53, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Support but question

I think this is a good idea but in practice how are any of the codes different from how every wikipedian is expected to act? Are members of Esperanza held to a higher level of enforcement? If I break a code of conduct, how is my membership to a voluntary organization within a volunteer project affected? There seems to be no penalty for breaking the codes nor benefit for following them. --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 21:35, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree, that all Wikipedians should be expected to act this way, and in a perfect world, this code would not be necessary :-) But since Esperanza is an organisation within Wikipedia that strives to make Wikipedia a better and less stressful place, we thought it would be a good idea to stress the importance of these concepts and for our members to do acknowledge them explicitly. There is indeed no any penalty or reward system in place, we will discuss if there will be one. But if members grossly violate the code, they will be removed from the membershiplist (as was already the case because of the charter). --JoanneB 22:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Do's and Don'ts

First of all, great job with the Code.

I was wondering if we could change some of the "don't" statements to "do" statements. I'd rather be told what to do rather than what not to do; this goes with the spirit of "assume good faith".

Keep up the great work. (^'-')^ Covington 07:18, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I've tried to do that to some of them in the beginning, but at one point I ran out of ideas how to do that to the ones that were left. Feel free to help out! --JoanneB 08:32, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "making them feel uncomfortable"

I added a "deliberately" to the bit about "making (users) feel uncomfortable". Legitimate actions, even those made reasonably and in good faith, are bound to make some users feel uncomfortable some of the time. Not doing it deliberately is the sense of the code, so I put this in to make it more explicit. Feel free to revert and discuss as appropriate. ConDem^Talk 22:50, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Which doesn't really address my concern. Blocking someone, for example, would probably make them "feel uncomfortable", and perhaps deliberatly so; but I hope nobody is suggesting that admin members of Esperanza are not to block anyone. Kirill Lokshin 22:52, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

But the point of blocking people is not to make them feel uncomfortable. Perhaps "act in a way designed to make others feel uncomfortable"? ConDem^Talk 01:07, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've changed it to "act in a way in order to make any user feel unconfortable". This way the intent to make someone uncomfortable is spelled out. Comments? ConDem^Talk 10:05, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rule 5 - elections

Rule 5's wording is a bit ambiguous. "Don't campaign for or against any candidate for a position in an election: on Wikipedia or in the IRC channel." Does that refer to Wikipedia elections or all elections? How about campaigning for or against a Wikipedia policy or guideline? And should the rule apply to media outside Wikipedia or IRC? Could one, for example, campaign on a website or in a a newspaper article? -- noosphere 03:59, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Does this rule mean that you can't notify other uses of a vote that is taking place? I consider this a common curteousy in many instances, for exampe: if the vote has taken place before, especially in another medium which gets less disinterested viewers. If people are interpreting the rule to mean this, I don't think I can endorse this code of conduct. I think that it should be explicitly permitted to inform someone of a vote that is taking place as long as you do not ask them to vote a particular way. savidan^{(talk) (e@)} 00:28, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] from thewolfstar

A suggestion.. if I may be so bold. Can we add another two rules to the list of rules? these might be:

be fair
Listen to both or all sides of a dispute or disagreement with equal attention and compassion and treat all parties without prejudice.

be responsible
If we make a claim make sure it is well reasearched and documented. Again no pre-formed opinions or biases of any kind.

Thanks for considering these additions. Maggiethewolfstar 23:10, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Agree, but one question.

Why the ban on posting logs of the IRC channel? ~Chris {t|c|e} 21:50, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what the official reasons are, but I support the idea because from what I see, they seem to often be used as a way to cause contention and acrimony. IRC is supposed to be informal and fun, and I don't think posting logs from it or drawing conclusions from it is a good idea, so I support the ban, I'm glad to see it. ++Lar: t/c 00:26, 8 May 2006 (UTC) (from the DTW airport)

(note, this is simply a restatement of the policy at m:IRC channels, "The default for all channels is no public logging; unless a channel explicitly states that public logging is permitted, you may not post logs. Violaters will be subject to a ban from all Wikimedia channels and deletion of the logs.")

Should an exception be written in for the Adv Council meetings, or is it just understood? Jfingers88 19:55, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I totally oppose having a Code of Conduct

I don't think we should have a Code of Conduct at all. My voting to put this back up for discusssion again was in the hopes people would speak up, instead they took their toys and went home. This saddens me, but as I have said over and over, if you aren't willing to communicate, you can't expect anything will change. So I'm communicating here. I think that Wikipedia has community standards of behavior that are well established by consensus and that no further rules should be placed upon that by Esperanza. If a person's behaviour is offensive enough for a block by the community, then that is all that is needed. If not, then we need not be the judge and jury. People need act maturely enough to police their own actions, Esperanza is not their babysitter. If their actions are bad enough, the community will take care of it. If they aren't, then we don't need to interfere. We are not here to settle disputes between users. It says that right on the front page under General Philosophy. Yes, we are humans, we will make mistakes, we will behave badly. No one can stop that, and trying to force perfect behavior is useless and futile. Sure its appealing to think we can wave a magic wand/COC and everyone will behave. However, that isn't reality and we have more important things to do than to police squabbles about who was incivil. Wikipedia as a whole is set up to take care of that, it is not our job to judge, only to love and give hope.

This COC while good intentioned, is the beginning of what will be an Esperanza judge and jury in my opinion. It is a dangerous road to go down, and we shouldn't do it.pschemp | talk 13:01, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to the idea of saying what it means to be an Esperanzan or how it's generally agreed that folk should act... but I (after some considerable thought) think it best that enforcement of any CoC be left out. I could see saying that certain editors are disqualified from membership, but make it be criteria that are objective and that are decided upon by others. ++Lar: t/c 19:19, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A comment about the Code of Conduct issue (posted on the Esperanza talk page as well)

I've given this a lot of thought over the last view days, especially in the light of people leaving. Since I was the one who proposed the Code of Conduct in the first place, I feel the need to explain myself a bit here. A while ago, there some signals from different corners of the community that they were seeing Esperanza members having a 'green e' in their sigs while signing a personal attack. Around the same time, some other worrisome incidents occurred, involving Esperanza members harrrassing others, on IRC and WP. Both these things struck me as ironic, seeing what Esperanza is supposed to be. That's why I proposed the principle of a Code of Conduct, a sign to the community that 'this is what we stand for', and a proposal for the way we could operationalise our mission. As things have progressed, and reading Pschemp's comments above, I'm not sure if that's the way it is interpreted right now. It has never been about policing the community, never to play judge and jury and run around after Esperanzians who 'misbehave' anywhere, but to emphasise our identity as a community. And yes, there can be disagreement about the way the Code of Conduct links to the charter ('is this what we want to stand for?'), but that's exactly why it was put up for discussion weeks ago. I am sad that people left because of the recent events, and I hope that it will not be the beginning of a new trend, people leaving because they're not happy with what Esperanza is these days. I know people feel that way, I have the same feelings myself, and I'm now curious and wondering what we can do about this. All feedback is appreciated. My personal focus in the time ahead will be supporting and strengthening the programs we have that are closest to our charter, to get back to the aim of Esperanza as closely as we can. --JoanneB 14:19, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

(Posted at Wikipedia talk:Esperanza also) The most important thing is that members of Esperanza carry on the Esperanza spirit. If a user is participating in things contrary to our feelings, someone should be able to say "Hey, remember you're part of Esperanza. By its ideals, what should you be doing in this situation?"

One suggestion I have, that is perhaps less drastic then the Code of Conduct is to add something to the Membership Requirements stating that members will uphold the values of Esperanza (or to just uphold the mission of Esperanza, which is the section above). By doing that, I think we'd be communicating to members that they are expected to act Esperanzial in all their actions. Of course, if there was any support for it, that would require a modification of the charter, which takes process. -- Natalya 15:13, 8 May 2006 (UTC)