Commons talk:Civility

The problem is not policy, but Commons community

The community where double standards are entrenched and reading lies is an everyday experience. Where “better to disregard Incnis Mrsi’s message above”-style conduct is tolerated, and even encouraged in some quarters. It’s pointless to propose walls of text as a tool to improve atmosphere on this site. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:33, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Oh I don't know. A proper definition of personal attacks, harassment, legal threats, etc, might educate a few admins when they find themselves blocked. -- Colin (talk) 21:52, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
It is up to people holding themselves to high standards to formulate definitions. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 05:37, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

The Wikipedia policy links to three other policies that are vital to define certain aspects of incivility that are serious and often misunderstood.

I believe we need versions of those on Commons as the community do not appear to have a good understanding of them. For example, we have seen an admin cite the creation of a well-founded DR as "harassment" or one user expressing a negative opinion of an admin's abilities as a "personal attack", or a reasonable disagreement on the safe use of flash photography in a jungle being labelled as "libellous". -- Colin (talk) 21:52, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Expansion/focus on Commons

Commons policy needs to consider

  • External users (photographers, agencies, companies, subjects) who may have registered an account here merely to communicate a complaint. We need to deal with them with professionalism and respect, rather than the hostility for breaching polices or not understanding how deletion works. We don't handle the "angry customer" situation well at all.
  • The international, multi-lingual and multi-cultural aspects to the project. A significant (majority?) of the users here do not have English as a first language, yet English remains the most popular language for communication, but not exclusively.
  • We aren't a collaborative editing project building encyclopaedic articles, but a repository of educational media files. Those files and their categories and descriptions have different conflict points.
  • Copyright issues are taken much more seriously on Commons than on any other media site, which requires rapid education of newbies. This particularly upsets people who find their work deleted when they thought in good faith they were helping Wikipedia.
  • Licences are perpetual, unlike other media sites which allow people to change sharing options. This particularly upsets people who regret their donation after they appreciate the consequences.
  • Media on Commons, excepting historical public domain archives, really are owned by somebody, and nearly all media has just one creator/author. Sometimes this is forgotten and false claims are made assuming the media is now owned by the community.
  • "just because we can, doesn't mean we should" Some users on Commons take a robotic approach to rules or lack of them, failing to show respect, empathy, compassion, forgiveness and professionalism.
  • Commons is a relatively small community and so cannot form the same kind of formal dispute processes (e.g. Arbcom, third opinion forums, wiki projects).

-- Colin (talk) 21:52, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

User:4nn1l2/Civility

I tried to write a draft about civility on Commons. I would like to know your opinions. I want to know if I am in the right direction and if I should put more time into it or not. Thanks 4nn1l2 (talk) 19:10, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

4nn1l2, I've read your user draft. We can also consider the current text at Commons:Civility to be Jeff G.'s draft and a start of a port from the Wikipedia policy. A google discovered User:Fæ/Civility which is a very old attempt to also port from Wikipedia. There are lots of ways we could approach forming a policy here. One idea is we let our imagination go at each creating a draft and then "pick and mix" the results. Or we try to list on this talk page the things we want to get across to other users, and then collaborate in how to express them in policy words. Or a mix of both.

There are related policies on Wikipedia that perhaps concentrate on three specific aspects of incivility that are typically strong enough to warrant sanctions: Personal attacks, Harassment, and Legal threats. I have started a port of the first two to Commons, but not yet done the third:

We saw the other day at least two admins who didn't understand COM:OUTING which emphasised to me the importance of porting some established Wiki behavioural guidelines. One outcome from this activity might not actually be an official policy (may be too hard) but perhaps some guidance documents that the community find useful to refer to. The parent Civility policy is the most general and perhaps the hardest to make policy because in practice it has proved very difficult to block someone merely for being uncivil. I can think of one person, a photographer at FPC, who was routinely uncivil to most who opposed his nominations, and it took perhaps a year or more of complaints before he was indef blocked, and then we discovered his past socking too. On Wikipedia, I'm a bit out-of-touch, but believe there is an extensive Arbcom process to go through before established users get blocked. There is much in any civility policy that is just good advice or community agreed best behaviour or worst behaviour. So maybe, rather than tackling the parent policy, it would be easier to tackle one of the sub-policies above, that can be more quickly improved?

I have sometimes wondered about creating Commons:Commons is not Wikipedia. Your draft touches on some aspects that make Commons different to e.g en:wp. Perhaps those could be described better in a different essay such as this, and then referred-to in policy.

Different folk on Commons can also bring their different experiences and goals. I agree with your draft that issues with newbie users and in particular copyright or deletion are a source of conflict. But I disagree with lecturing newbies in a policy document that they need to ask nicely and keep calm. don't think Civility or any policy is of much help to a newbie. Nobody, when faced with one of their images being wrongly hosted on Commons (so they believe) is going to react well to being pointed at a civility policy and being told to calm down. Possibly a better approach for newbies is an essay that helps them achieve their goal (like Commons:Guidance for paid editors). I think Commons Civility policy should help established users deal with an "angry customer" situation with professionalism, respect, kindness, etc, and to overlook perceived uncivil comments made in anger or stress, but to aim to resolve the problem. You and I might know the newbies are "clueless" or "misinformed" but I don't think it is helpful to use those words in a policy document.

One example, where you say "Images uploaded to Commons can no longer be deleted by the uploader's request" that isn't true. There is very little we are actually required to do as a community of volunteers. WMF are required to take down images in certain legal situations. We do our best to delete copyright violations, but aren't compelled to find them all. As for choosing to host or retain images, that is always a decision for the community. We don't have to host anything just because it has a free licence. The lesson in life "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" is very much one Commons gets wrong at times. One thing we often get wrong, and which is very uncivil, is that we often think and say we own the images that are free. We really don't and this makes us quite different to Wikipedia, where the collective editors own the articles jointly as a community. I think part of Commons Civility is respecting those individuals who own and created the works we host, and who generously licence their works for us to share. -- Colin (talk) 21:45, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Revisions for Commons

  • Introduction: "user and article talk pages" should be revised to "user and project talk pages", since we don't have articles.
  • "Different places, different atmospheres": section should be revised similarly, or possibly just removed.
  • "Avoiding civility": "Be careful with user warning templates" should be removed. Using standardized warning templates is preferred on Commons, as it allows the warning message to be displayed in the user's preferred language.

Any objections? Omphalographer (talk) 20:15, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

I've went ahead and removed "Different places, different atmospheres". --Schlurcher (talk) 22:40, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
As a followup: I've removed a reference in the lead to enwiki's Five Pillars, as that isn't a Wikimedia-wide thing. Omphalographer (talk) 23:21, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Pre-policy debates

it's worth stepping back an evaluating how these guidelines are presently written. As far as I can tell, they all started as copies of the enwiki policies. Wikipedia-specific language was changed, but I don't see any additional specificity for Commons. To some extent "civility is civility" but this is a different project in at least two regards: first and most importantly, Commons is much more diverse than the English Wikipedia. I mean that culturally, but especially linguistically. We primarily communicate in English but unlike a Wikipedia it cannot be taken for granted that everybody speaks English proficiently. A large number of misunderstandings on Commons emerge because of this, and I'd like to see some editing of these policies to explicitly acknowledge this. Second, and less importantly, there are genres of disputes on Commons that are unlike enwiki. Uploads are "owned" in a way that's different from anything on enwiki, discussions like DR can be closed based on correct/incorrect rather than consensus, etc. I'm not certain how these should affect such policies, but it would be a good idea to think about how discussion formats/styles could influence the wording. — Rhododendrites talk |  15:59, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Rhododendrites voiced this concern here and is exactly right with it, and I'd like to split this up into several chunks. I like to think of myself as following the tenets of civility and non-harassment, but the very specific language in this suggested policy makes me hesitate - which words are offensive, and which are just clear language. Should I stop editing in Commons to uphold civility? (I don't think so.) --Enyavar (talk) 11:54, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Misunderstandings (cultural and linguistical)

This is a major concern, and the problem is multiple-fold: Focussing too much on everyone using polite language easily sidetracks from the actual content of a debate. In my example below (Clarify subsection), accusing someone else of inappropriate language muddied the water of an entire debate.
Not correcting inappropriate language of others will on the other hand result in users not to change such bad language - but on the third hand, over-correcting others just because you perceive a specific word as offensive against yourself or your culture in general, will result in general frustration about language policies. The "but oh, you can't write this anymore..." argument has a point, once people think their language is overpoliced.

I suggest adding the following points (in some way, not necessarily word for word) to "Identifying incivility":

  • Do not search for implied incivility if the overall attitude of the other user's post seems to be intended constructive.
  • Keep in mind: Commons is a multilingual platform: Many users participate by using machine-translation tools which often lack nuance; or they directly contribute in a foreign language in which they don't fully understand each term.
  • Keep in mind: Commons is a multinational platform: Even using the same native language, certain words and phrases that may seem inoffensive to one group, may look offensive to another group from a different region/country where the same language is spoken.
  • Keep in mind: Commons is a multicultural platform: Some cultures avoid direct conflict and train people in a high level of politeness to avoid losing face. Other cultures teach to be direct to the point and frankly outspoken. Other behavioral differences may exist.
  • Consider the possibility that despite all advice about "Avoiding incivility" being given above, the other user may just be too stressed to edit politely themselves.

Following all these things to keep in mind: Unless it concerns a main point in the argument, it is good advice to just overlook a bit of rudeness, even if repeated. --Enyavar (talk) 11:54, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

"Clarify, and ask for clarification"

Just recently in the pump, there was a sidetracking discussion revolving around one person who used "limp wristed" to mean "weak" with regards to a laissez-faire policy, and another person commented right away about the inappropriate usage of such homophobic slurs. Myself, I would not have perceived this as a slur, because taking the words literally: a limp/weak wrist doesn't deftly move mouses and keyboards against problems, which was the intended meaning, I assume. In this case, this sidetrack was stopped right away, but if the first user had been more defensive of his word choice, more civility would not have been the result.

And that is the point: asking for clarification also needs to be done appropriately. Just picking on a few words that may or may not be offensive, will muddy the waters in a debate, in the worst case leading to a long debate that doesn't touch the actual subject. I've seen enough derailed discussions.

I suggest that this point needs more details, maybe just the advice that if you take offense on some detail, you should not derail a discussion page thread but ask the other user directly in a new paragraph on their talk page, instead of in the original discussion. And if you think that would be a step to far, then better ignore an offensive detail in your answer on the actual subject of the discussion. --Enyavar (talk) 11:54, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

"Be careful with user warning templates"

Our tools automatically create templates on user pages whenever files are going to be deleted. Here on Commons, I make extensive use of the "User uploads" tool to check the uploads of other users, if I see they didn't categorize or source their uploads. These users, if currently active, will then notice me patrolling all their uploads because of all the highlights in their watchlists, while often also getting slapped by several deletion requests with my signature as well. I do have good intentions and try not to be incivil, but some uploaders are not fully understanding "out of scope: personal fiction" to be meaningful terms here on Commons.

Instead, they see themselves unfairly harassed, and the wording of both this policy here and Commons:Harassment would give their complaints substance against "innocent patrollers". I suggest adding a link to that the Harassment policy, and also to clarify over there. --Enyavar (talk) 11:54, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Um... timing.

To make one thing clear: Yes, especially in the current global context, we need these guidelines to become policies, and I have not been notified about anything from the WMF that suggests they are bending the knee to the changes in the US administration.
But yet, official US policies (and WMF sits in the US and is subject to US laws) are currently promoting to be non-inclusive and supremacist to the point that civility guidelines like this one are probably considered to offensively create a hostile DEI environment - hostile of course just for the cabal of literal convicted fraudsters who now runs that country, and their cult.

Oh wait. Does the above constitute a "snide comment" which is discouraged by the suggested policy? Do I have to weigh such words against feathers now? I'd like that to be clarified, as well. --Enyavar (talk) 11:54, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

en:WP:CRYSTAL would definitely be in play here as we don't know what kinds of actions the Second Trump Administration will take in regards to speech on websites, and the First Amendment would definitely limit any attempts to curtail government regulation of speech on Wikimedia projects and/or our right to free association on these projects. As an administrator and as a American, I'm not going to bend my knee to any government including my own. I do think we do probably need changes to account for the multicultural and multilingual nature of Commons. The UCoC should also guide our actions as well. Abzeronow (talk) 01:24, 1 February 2025 (UTC)
This is a non-issue that runs afoul of W:WP:SOAP, which doesn’t literally apply to commons but is nevertheless good advice. The guidelines are about not calling people fartknockers or whatever, not whatever outrageous thing Trump and Co are doing this week that has yet to have any tangible impact on Wikimedia whatsoever. Dronebogus (talk) 03:23, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Fix typo

In the section of "Identifying incivility" under "2. Other uncivil behaviours", there is a typo of wkihounding when it should be wikihounding. Can't edit myself due to abuse filter HyperAnd (talk) 13:20, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

✓ Done: Special:Diff/1027981661. Omphalographer (talk) 16:35, 4 May 2025 (UTC)