Wikipedia:Be a man
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This proposal has failed to attain consensus within the Wikipedia community. A failed proposal is one for which a consensus to accept is not present after a reasonable amount of time, and seems unlikely to form, regardless of continuing discussion. |
Be a man. This is a proposed guideline for dealing with consensus-judged events and article additions that do not go your desired way. Named for common usage of the term without any implied sexism.
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[edit] Fundamentals
Be a man means respecting when the wishes of the community do not always fit in exactly with your plans. Gracious defeat is something that is highly valued by society at large, and useful to you on the wiki. If you acquiesce to decisions made by others, they well be more apt to help you make a case in some other area, or recognize that you play well with others when looking at possible future Requests for Admin or Bureaucrat status. It's also just a nice thing to do.
- Don't threaten to leave in a huff if your Request for Adminship failed or an article you made was deleted.
- Don't use sockpuppets or anon proxies to constantly revert an article to a version you approve of if consensus is to introduce other changes.
- Don't stalk a user to purposefully vote against them or their posistions in future community decisions.
- Don't attack people in response to a vote against your position.
- Don't call multiple votes on an item in a short period of time to "wear down the opposition".
- Don't belittle a position simply because you do not agree with it.
- Don't make sock puppets in order to get into arugments with to make the other side look bad.
- Do respect consensus decisions and work to enforce them.
- Do listen to personal constructive criticism and attempt to grow from it.
- Do recognize valid objections and work to correct articles that display these.
[edit] Why is it a good thing?
All too often people interpret criticism as a personal attack, or in their zeal assume that only their position could possibly be correct and don't understand how anyone can hold a different opinion. Be a man encapsulates a set of guidelines that promotes civil discourse and vote debates that are more then ad hominem sniping back and forth. It actively encourages growth of the encyclopedia.
[edit] Remedies
So someone has reminded you to be a man. Since there is nothing in this policy that would retract a vote or opinion, the only reason they have done this is that your actions are not adding anything to the discourse. Either your course of action is unlikely to convince someone who doesn't already agree with you, and needs to be modified, or you are over-reacting to a decision in such a way as to be destructive to the community at large. Take a step back. Go for a walk. When you come back to the wiki, suck it up and Be a man.
