Wikipedia talk:Advice for hotheads

Origin

This is based on a post originally at WT:There is no justice, as well as other musings and conversations over the years, general observation, and my own personal Wikipedian growth from a Usenet-style debater to a curmudgeonly and skeptical but collaborative discusser and consensus-builder.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:06, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Humorous but not only

A hothead's advice for hotheads is to get lost from Wikipedia. Should we add something like that? In the "Humor" section, perhaps? Frankly, there is a grain of truth in this advice, because hotheads are likely to make unhelpful, impulsive edits, and many will be blocked or end up being frustrated. Debresser (talk) 16:00, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

@Debresser: Well, the whole point is that this essay is a hothead's advice for hotheads. I didn't need to get lost from WP, I just needed to figure out how to communicate with people more even-handedly and stop treating everything as a struggle/contest. Takes time, and many other editors who have such a temperament need to work on that or, yes, they will be blocked or otherwise sanctioned and end up quitting in frustration. I have tried to make the point clearly that if they don't shape up, sanctions are likely. Does it need to be spelled out more?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:02, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

No, that is clear. But I think the article should also make clear that walking away from Wikipedia is a real option, and not necessarily a bad one. Debresser (talk) 04:50, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

@Debresser:  Done, using those exact words, and making it the closing statement.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:58, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Nice. Debresser (talk) 10:40, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Some commentary refactored over from user talk

Thanks for the essay. I hope it will be widely recognized and used. I think it could be improved by removing all the labels it uses to identify it's audience: "hothead", "argumentative", "cantankerous", etc. Offending an audience that's likely already defensive may turn them away. --Ronz (talk) 16:48, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

@Ronz: Hmm. The entire point of those "labels" is that they're intended as self-identifiers. "You know you're at the right page if this resonates with you." Perhaps the humor is too subtle. I'll try tweaking it a bit.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:09, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Done with the tweaks. While I do concede that the entire thing could be rewritten and renamed as generalized advice, with no such terms, I think the intended main audience would never read it, and it would be redundant in scope with various other civility/behavior essays. The whole point of this one is to basically trick hotheaded editors (like the author of the piece, who has really been working on personal change in this regard!) into reading and absorbing it. I thought about including some kind of "from one hothead to another" statement in it, but I don't want it to be a one-author piece indefinitely. Others (who aren't hotheads) may have good advice to add. As a secondary effect, the slightly provocative title may entice editors who don't think of themselves as hotheads, but who nevertheless engage in hothead behaviors, to read it and think "oh, I guess I have been doing that too ...".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:31, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Perceptive essay

I think there is a lot of useful advice here. As an academic, the last section You_cannot_argue_Wikipedia_into_capitulation especially resonated with me.

New editors learn quickly that Wikipedia is not about fairness or "righting great wrongs" with respect to content. But fewer realize that Wikipedia is also not about fairness or "righting great wrongs" with respect to editor disputes. That lack of interest in fairness at the dispute level can cause a great deal of resentment in editors who have the expectation that it should be there. Cluing folks in early about how WP the institution actually works could help set realistic expectations and reduce admin or arbcom hate. --Mark viking (talk) 10:01, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

@Mark viking: I agree. We don't really (somehow, after all these years) have great and obvious "crash course" materials. New editors just kind of wade in without any guidance (or warning!), and get WP:BITEy unpleasant surprises. I'm not really sure what to do about this institutional problem. It's common to many operationally and subculturally similar systems, e.g. GitHub. This whole enterprise was an outgrowth of the free software and open content movements, which are heavily populated by "figure it out, or get lost" thinking, and the "hackers write code" mindset of the early hacker scene (hacker in the sense of 'consummate, adaptive programmer', not 'system cracker'). Then our userbase was swelled by SlashDot people, cut from the same cloth. The general tone-and-expectation Zeitgeist of the place has never really shifted, and this also has much to do with our systemic biases, the feeling of many female editors that they're not terribly welcome here, and various other community issues. Even WMF is run like a software company with a userbase (and most of its officers and boardmembers come from that world), rather than like a nonprofit with a constituency. Having helped some other tech-oriented nonprofits like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the CryptoRights Foundation through similar transitions, I've offered to help with this, but they never even responded. [shrug] "Cain't help them what don't wanna be helped" as grandpa used to say.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:13, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for this essay, used it

I've added a link to this essay to Wikipedia:Encourage the newcomers. Actually, I added a small paragraph, though it still isn't well-integrated. It hadn't occurred to me to the frustrations of dealing with new editors would be a good topic to include, but of course it is. Excessive patience is also a personality flaw, not least because you tend to assume everyone else has it, too. HLHJ (talk) 01:56, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

@HLHJ: Indeed. I find people frequently getting frustrated with me over my attempts to save iffy articles, support to unblocking people, advocacy of short-term blocks and time-limited topic-bans instead of indefs, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:14, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Wheeee!

Looks like it was written to help me. Such good advice. Thanks. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 02:10, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

@Aditya Kabir: [bow] Glad to have been of service. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:15, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Title change?

@SMcCandlish: and any other watchers: I really like this essay, esp. the section on capitulation, but I don't like the title "hothead", because it's a value judgment and can be taken as an insult, esp. by said hothead. I'd like to recommend this essay to an editor, but I'm not, because I'm afraid by recommending the editor read it, the editor will think I'm saying they are a hothead, and I don't think that's an accurate description of that editor. So, that made me think of possibly changing the title and the reference to "hothead". I can't think of a great title to propose, but the best I can come up with is "Advice for the repeatedly sanctioned", which is who I think this advice is most useful for. Thoughts? Levivich ^harass/_hound 19:25, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

@Levivich: Well, the essay itself already goes into this, right at the start. Much of the point of it is to trigger self-reflection among those (myself, main author, included) who recognize in themselves a hot-headed tendency. That said, my brain would not asplode if it were RMed to something else. Essay authors thought WP:DICK and WP:DIVA and the longer titles they corresponded to were just fine, as well; nevertheless, the community decided to moderate their tone a bit. Even WP:Don't feed the trolls got renamed, for similar reasons. I think RMing this is something I've always suspected might become inevitable. However, I have referred many people to this page (gently), and I cannot recall as single case in which it was not taken well. No one's ever said they felt attacked by it. My usual approach is along the lines "some of the advice at WP:HOTHEADS might be applicable to this situation", or something else like that – something not personally labelling.

Anyway, this essay isn't specifically intended for "the repeatedly sanctioned" (and it's often been recommended by me to people who have not yet been sanctioned at all but seem headed in that direction). Maybe "WP:Advice for avoiding sanctions?" That sounds almost like it encourages WP:GAMING. "WP:Staying out of trouble on Wikipedia"? I dunno. I'll note that an RM does not have to actually propose a name: {{subst:Rm|?|reason=Rationale for the proposed move here}} will work. The RM discussion itself can have people proposing names, and the result being the most popular of those propositions.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:12, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

PS: See also #Some commentary refactored over from user talk, above.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:16, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: "some of the advice at WP:HOTHEADS might be applicable to this situation" is some fine wordsmithing and actually resolves my immediate problem—thanks! I did see the discussion above and it's not lost on me that I'm the only person apparently to bring this up in four years. I guess let's just leave this here and if someone else sees it and thinks it's worth pursuing we can take it up again. If no one else cares then it's probably not worth the time. I'm afraid that just launching an RM|? will not likely result in a better title being chosen than the current, you know what I mean? :-) BTW essays like this is why I voted for you for arb. Well done! Levivich ^harass/_hound 20:49, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm glad you like it and find it useful. PS: If the instance you're dealing with pertains mostly to a single section of this page, some of them have their own shortcuts, like WP:CAPITULATE.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:59, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

PS: There were fewer shortcuts than I thought, so I added a couple.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:15, 6 December 2020 (UTC)