Wikipedia talk:Pearl-clutching

Essay draft feedback request

I've drafted two essays, Responding to incivility and Pearl-clutching, which are my first attempts at Wikipedia essays. Hoping some editors can take a look and offer some feedback! Thanks! ––FormalDude talk 07:39, 9 October 2021 (UTC) (please use {{reply to|FormalDude}} on reply)

@FormalDude:: I have deliberately not looked at any of your other edits, just these two essays. I'm afraid I only have time to review one just now. If you want, ping me and I'll review the second. If you dislike getting criticism without giving it, I'd welcome your comments on Wikipedia:Encourage the newcomers, and essay I substantially rewrote. No obligation, it's fine if you don't want to make any! I'm willing to review the second essay regardless. Unless, of course, you hate my review and don't want another .

On pearl-clutching:

• I think you are saying that pearl-clutchers are lying about whether they are actually offended. If so, an accusation of pearl-clutching is an accusation of bad faith, by definition. People do sometimes fake offense, or engage in other bad-faith actions, and it's reasonable to write essays about it. Unfortunately, calling people bad-faith actors makes discussions more likely to get even worse, whether it is true or not. This is why we have an assume-good-faith policy; statistically, it improves outcomes. So I think saying that someone is pearl-clutching in a specific instance would be against this AGF policy; if I've understood correctly, could the essay mention that?
  • You're kind of confusing me here, to be honest. I do not think calling bad-faith actors "bad-faith actors" is a bad thing, and specifically in the instance of calling a pearl-clutcher a "pearl-clutcher", I do not think it leads to the discussion being more likely to get even worse. That said, it could be clearer what counts as pearl-clutching and what doesn't. ––FormalDude talk 04:47, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

• You probably can't make your essay as short or focussed as some essays on smaller topics, but tightening the focus as much as you can usually improves essays. For instance, someone who "lies about what sources say" is in bad faith, but this seems a separate issue from the more specific "lying about whether you are offended" of pearl-clutching. Threats (unless connected to accusations of incivility), and using racial privilege against a racialized opponent, also seem separate issues; if they are connected, could you explain how?
  • I'm not sure what your last point about racial privilege is referring to in the essay, is that about the Karen bit? For your first point, this is just including as it is something that pearl-clutchers are often guilty of and therefore any easy way to identify them. For your second point, threats, someone who tries to intimidate others through threatening to report them is likely a pearl-clutcher. I can see how that could be more clear though, so I'll add an example sentence and some elaboration. ––FormalDude talk 04:47, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

• By wiktionary:antagonist, do you mean someone who deliberately stirs up conflict? Or someone with low social skills who stirs up conflict without intending to? I usually only hear it in the sense of "opponent", so this threw me for a moment; I had to look up the other sense. This may be a dialect difference.
  • I mean someone who antagonizes others, so, basically yes. ––FormalDude talk 04:47, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

• WP:Civility says "Stated simply, editors should always treat each other with consideration and respect. They should focus on improving the encyclopedia while maintaining a pleasant editing environment by behaving politely, calmly and reasonably, even during heated debates." Someone can also be civil, but dishonest, and thus not in good faith (if, say, they are trolling). Someone can also be unintentionally uncivil, if they are trying to be respectful and considerate but aren't coming off that way to other editors, thus creating conflict and an unpleasant editing environment. Someone can't be unintentionally in bad faith, by definition. Could you elaborate on "civility can be defined quite simply: If you're doing something in good faith, you're being civil"? WP:Civility has a lot of specific advice on how to be civil. I find it difficult to learn to act in a way that defuses conflict instead of making it more likely; sincerity is not enough for me.
  • I think civility and good faith are intertwined. If someone is being dishonest, but acting civil, they are ultimately committing an uncivil act, since it was in bad faith. In my opinion, etiquette is not a substitute for good faith. Acting civil does not necessarily make you civil. ––FormalDude talk 05:16, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

• The new Meta:Universal Code of Conduct might be useful material to reference. It's solidly against "the actual meaning of what is said is immaterial". But it also acknowledges that words can be very important to people. I've noticed that most logomachies are unconscious; people think they are arguing about morals or whatever, but really they just disagree on the definition of a word. In those cases, inventing two new terms may resolve the conflict. But if people know they are arguing about the meaning of a word, this doesn't work.
  • I've referenced Meta:Universal Code of Conduct. ––FormalDude talk 08:22, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

• It would be nice to have a section on things that look like pearl-clutching but aren't, and how to resolve them amicably. For instance, people with better social skills sometimes assume that people with poor social skills are being offensive on purpose (a form of assuming bad faith). Then they get offended by the percieved ill-will, rather than what was said. This comes off as pearl-clutching, but it is genuine (if ill-founded) offense. If they knew it was accidental, they would be sympathetic, not offended. Looking at it from the other end, it would be nice to have a section on expressing real frustration and offense without coming off as pearl-clutching.
  • I'm not so sure about these ideas. The example you used doesn't seem like it would come off to me as pearl-clutching. As the essay states, pearl-clutching is pretty easily identifiable, so I don't know that we need a section for things that look lie it but aren't. I also am not sure it's needed to have a section on expressing real frustration and offense without coming off as pearl-clutching, as it is not a difficult thing to do. I have added a How to respond section that may address some of your concerns here. ––FormalDude talk 08:22, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

• The essay is also likely to be used by people who are genuinely being offensive, intentionally or otherwise. So it should discuss how to distinguish pearl-clutching from genuine offense. There are circumstances in which most people would genuinely be offended. It should mention things that make genuine offense more likely, like getting distracted from discussion the content into personal accusations against other editors, or deliberately mocking someone (usually seen as offensive, unless the mocker is on very good terms with the mocked person). It might also mention specific civil rephrases of comon offensive phrases. For instance, saying that someone is lying is an accusation of bad faith, by definition. It is also really likely to cause conflict, because many English-speaking cultures take it as a nasty accusation; it is banned in most Westminster-style parliaments. "I think you may be mistaken" is the classic civil rephrase of that sentiment. It makes it easier for the other party to back down gracefully. It additionally makes the speaker look a lot better on those inevitable occasions on which they were mistaken. Some content-centered rephrases of that sentiment would also be useful.
  • @HLHJ: I've added What pearl-clutching is not as a new section. As for mentioning specific civil rephrases of common offensive phrases, I don't think that is really needed, but I'm not opposed to it. Please feel free to add it if you'd like. ––FormalDude talk 05:08, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

• The lede image shows a religious figure fainting (in the narrative context of her son being tortured to death, so one assumes the artist intended to show genuine pain). I'd suggest something more neutral, say a pearl-decorated clutch purse. Mentioning topics people often have strong feelings about is likely to genuinely offend some readers. Offended people will commonly take a dislike to the author and try to disagree with everything the author says. This is illogical, but people are illogical. Sex, religion and politics are the classic issues that cause intense disagreements. Discussions that tactfully avoid them (where possible) are more likely to be friendly and productive discussions. And this discussion is not intrinsically about religion; the image is a trivial part of the essay.
  • I've updated the image to something hopefully more neutral. ––FormalDude talk 07:35, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

That's all for now, hope it's helpful. HLHJ (talk) 04:14, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@HLHJ: Sorry for the delayed response, for some reason I did not receive your ping. Thank you very much for the feedback, I've started reviewing and responding. I'd be more than happy to provide some feedback for your essay as well. Looking forward to working with you! ––FormalDude talk 04:47, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

@HLHJ: I'd love to hear if you have any additional comments based on my responses–if you have time.

By the way, your essay is much more polished than mine (it looks great), so I might not have as much feedback as you were able to give, but I will do my best! Also, if you do have time to review my other essay, that would be greatly appreciated. ––FormalDude talk 04:13, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, @FormalDude:, I'd started replying to you, but I got into analysing some of my underlying assumptions. I'm still working on it, but I have to think over a few things, and then express them comprehensibly, before my response will be polished enough to post. Wikipedia can be a bit distracting, too! It'll probably take a day or two, depending on off-wiki events. Apologies for the delay. HLHJ (talk) 03:22, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

• 
  As our information/ability to classify gets worse, we will get more false positives or more false negatives, or some of both.
• 
  By moving the threshold, we can classify all doubtful cases as positive (meaning no false negatives, but lots of false positives) or the reverse. For "disease", read "bad faith"

I'll start by trying to clarify the confusing bit; I think I sort of skipped my background ideas. They're a bit interconnected, so I'm afraid I may not have done a good job of summarizing to the relevant stuff; ignore as appropriate.

People have a tendency to underestimate the friendliness of others, even with face-to-face contact. This is probably because, environments of evolution, the social cost of trusting someone hostile is high (get stabbed in the back), while the cost of undertrusting someone friendly is lower (especially if this is just an initial assessment of a new acquaintance; getting to know someone better should improve accuracy). So if in doubt, we distrust. Since we now live in a safer environment, even offline, our cut-off between false-positive and false-negative is in a suboptimal place (too close to "A" in the diagram).

Online, we also have more cases of doubt. In a text-only communications medium, non-verbal social cues are mostly absent (facial expression, gesture, tone of voice, spatial positioning, etc.). The information density of text is lower than that of face-to-face interaction. We are also more likely to have brief passing interactions online, so we have less opportunity to correct first impressions. Where it's harder to gauge friendliness accurately, we still err on the side of caution by assuming hostility, but we err more, and falsely assume hostility more (on the graph, the worse ROC curves lie to the right of the better ones). And not just on Wikipedia; xkcd's take, 2008.

We can compensate for the low bandwidth by being extra-explicit and unambiguous about our emotional attitudes (example of me failing at this, this very week). To make this emotional disambiguation faster and easier, we seem to be developing non-verbal text-only communications cues, like emoticons, emoji, novel punctuation, all caps for shouting, alternating caps for a sarcastic or joking tone, Template:Humor disclosure templates and so on, along with acronyms for reactive tokens that replace visible reactions. And these techniques work, if imperfectly; experimentally, they reduce misunderstandings and thus conflict. Unfortunately, if the person reading a statement has already got a strong impression of hostility, being extra-explicit risks coming off as exaggerated and insincere, since it would be unnatural in face-to-face conversation.

Hostile insincerity is basically bad faith. So humans have a cognitive bias towards assuming bad faith; they are far more likely to mistake good faith for bad than vice-versa. Worse, since we answer perceved hostility with genuine hostility, there is an exacerbating feedback loop. When people mutually, wrongly assume bad faith, it escalates. This unfortunate dynamic causes a large proportion of the drama on Wikipedia. There's also a second-order exacerbating feedback loop; encountering more hostility and bad faith makes editors (rationally) expect more of it in the future, but expecting it makes them more likely to perceive it, and act in a hostile way, and cause reciprocal hostility. Inversely, those who expect good faith are more likely to see and promote it.

On Wikipedia, on average, falsely assuming bad faith causes more damage than falsely assuming good faith. Trusting the untrustworthy face-to-face can, in a worst-case scenario, get you literally stabbed in the back (okay, chest, to avoid mixing metaphors). Online, the risks are lower. A while ago I had to deal with a new editor who was quite possibly a troll, but because everyone interacting with them was assuming good faith, this editor was forced to behave in a manner that could be mistaken for good faith. This seriously limited the damage they could do. Result; the editor wasted our time, but also caused some dramatic improvements in the content of the encyclopedia. And at least they went away with the impression that Wikipedia editors are picky about facts, but nice to a fault. Maybe someday they will be mature enough to come back and actually contribute.

So:

• we overestimate hostility (adaptively for historic offline environments, but excessively for our environments)
• we overestimate it more where there are more doubtful cases (e.g. in brief interactions in low-bandwidth text-only channels)
• mistrusting friendly fellow editors on Wikipedia does more damage than trusting hostile ones (we have other ways to stymie hostile intentions)

So now our cut-off between false-positive and false-negative is in a very suboptimal place. The WP:AGF guideline is an attempt to shift it, a sort of regulatory version of Hanlon's razor. It isn't perfect; statistically, it will cause errors, but prevent more errors than it causes.

The presumption of good faith is like the presumption of innocence; it would be absurd to assume that no-one is ever in bad faith on Wikipedia. People are banned for egregious acts of bad faith, like running COI-paid-editing-sockrings. But the AGF principle is that an editor must either present any evidence for bad faith to the appropriate forum, and let it make the judgement, or act under the assumption of good faith (even if the assumption is a bit forced, and the person assuming it is not really sure that it is good faith).

If I went with my gut feeling instead of my intellectual judgement, I'd be certain that walking on a glass floor is unsafe. And I'd be wrong. Fortunately my gut feeling adjusts to experience: when I keep walking on the floor, and nothing bad happens, I start to emotionally trust the floor. If I'm intellectually aware of my gut feelings, I can deliberately shape them, and be wrong less often.

Giving someone the benefit of the doubt, when not emotionally convinced that there is doubt, can feel dishonest. I have to act trustingly when I don't feel trust. But if, intellectually, I think my emotional conviction is probably inaccurate, it seems more honest to go with my best judgement than to irrationally cling to my gut feeling. Sometimes gut feelings are a trustworthy guide to reality, but sometimes they aren't and should be overriden. And intellectually, from observation and experience (personal and scientific), I think this is one of these cases. And I've gradually learned to trust more, reducing my internal conflict. This also makes my life easier; when I don't feel trust, acting trustingly towards humans is more difficult and complicated than acting trustingly towards glass floors.

So presenting evidence that bad-faith actors are bad-faith actors to an appropriate forum is a good thing (the people who hunt COI-paid-editing rings have my gratitude). But calling bad-faith actors "bad-faith actors" (without a previous formal ruling to that effect) runs counter to WP:AGF.

Implying that someone is a bad-faith actor (other than by neutrally presenting factual evidence) is just slightly less direct. Saying they are pearl-clutchers implies bad faith. Saying they are lying also implies bad faith (if using "lying" in the hostile-deception sense, not the friendly-undeceptive-literal-untruth sense of some German-influenced American dialects that call a fiction writer a "good liar" as a compliment). So readers of your essay, like readers of WP:AGF, probably need to be warned that referencing this essay, and its idea, can in itself be an accusation of bad faith in the wrong context. No algorithm is going to be a perfect classifier (in the sense of the diagram above), flawlessly separating the pearl-clutchers from the sincerely offended. The social cost of making a mistake can be high: an enemy who sees your every act as motivated by bad faith. I have at least one of those on Wikipedia, maybe 1.5, and I'm fairly sure I could have avoided at least half of that conflict if I'd been better at civility. I've probably been saved from a couple more by the maturity and civility of people I've been unintentionally uncivil to. But I can't rationally expect everyone to succeed fully in forgiving; feelings of hostility and distrust tend to linger. Sorry, I've basically written an essay, haven't I? End essay.

The "racial privilege" comment was indeed in reference to the "Karen" bulletpoint. From the clarification you added, I think you mean a more general privileged attitude, thinking that one is entitled to be treated better than others, in violation of WP:Equality. Threatening new editors with inaccurate portrayals of Wikipedia's rather complex rules is easy and excessively common.

The threat example you added is nearly perfectly convergent with WP:THREATEN (in an essay that also list a lot of arguments from false privilege and false entitlement). Not that this is bad, it's nice when essays converge on a consensus view! When I thought about it, I was surprised by how hard it is to think of ralisitc threats that don't involve an element of pearl-clutching.

Etiquette is not a substitute for good faith, but neither is good faith a substitute for etiquette. Defining etiquette as "rules for not giving a false impression of bad faith" would be a bit overnarrow, but not totally inaccurate. "Rules to avoid unintentional offense" might be closer. I think of "civility" as broader than "etiquette", less rules-based, and more about attitudes and habits that aid courtesy, and the principles that underly the more culture-specific etiquette.

Is the tone fallacy ("You did not state that argument in a good manner, therefore your argument is wrong") the context of "use etiquette as an argument" and "invoke a civility policy/essay"? Either would be appropriate in a meta-discussion about how to have a more effective discussion, but even an implicit "...therefore your argument is wrong" in such discussions is frustrating and logically unjustifiable. As an example, the person who protested the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing with a sign saying "Would We Have Allowed Nazi Germany to Host the Olympics?" was not making a very well-informed argument, and pointing that out was legitimate public discourse (actually, it was an excellent discussion point). But the actual question up for debate was "Should we let the PRC host the Olympics?", and "History fail!" does not address that question. The new "How to respond" section is solid on how to not giving any scope for baiting into side issues. This also ties into "Ignores the actual sentiment of statements made by others and focuses on the tone and phrasing instead."

I'm not quite sure I understand "If it is an egregious enactment of the WP:Civility policy, you can point out their pearl-clutching, as doing so will normally reveal them as the antagonist they are". Does it mean that if I called someone on obvious pearl-clutching, they would probably react in a way that would make it obvious that they are trying to antagonize me? An illustrative example might be useful.

You've generally improved the flow of the text and made it read better. Text polishing is time-consuming but productive; the essay is now clearer.

The new image is great. She's a movie actor, and presumably is not actually in the least shocked by the movie camera she is staring at, plus she is literally clutching pearls in a melodramatic fashion. And there's the stagey movie set behind her. It fits the essay perfectly, much better than my clutch-purse suggestion. HLHJ (talk) 01:33, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@HLHJ: Thank you very much for your thoughtful and well-crafted response.

On If it is an egregious enactment of the WP:Civility policy, you can point out their pearl-clutching, as doing so will normally reveal them as the antagonist they are: it's not about their reaction, it's about pointing out to passers-by why a very heated editor is reacting in that manner. It makes it easier for other editors to see who's acting in good faith.

And this is part of the reason why I don't see calling out bad faith editors as counter to WP:AGF. Obviously we shouldn't spit in their faces, but acknowledging an editors facetiousness or malintent is good. There a ways that it can run counter to AGF, but I do not believe it is inherently polar to AGF. The AGF policy does not suggest you need to AGF when someone is blatantly acting in bad faith, which is the case with pearl-clutching.

You gave a really long response, and I see what you're getting at and where you're coming from. I think there probably should be some clarification as to how invocations of this essay should be done. Calling someone a pearl-clutcher absolutely needs to be carefully so as not to further inflame the conflict.

I really would like you to implement some changes that you think improve the essay. I don't want to inadvertently water down any of your suggestions by mistake. Would you be up for that? ––FormalDude talk 05:23, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@FormalDude:, thank you! I'm glad I managed to be comprehensible somewhere in that length . Most of the above was pretty irrelevant to pearl-clutching, it's more "Why AGF? My previously-unexamined thoughts". I'm not sure quite how I'd go about improving the essay, beyond copyedits and concrit. We have different experiences and thoughts on the topic, and I'd be worried that I'd water you down! It'd take a lot of work, and probably more experience as an editor, for me to understand your views, and the topic, well enough; otheres might be better-suited. Short-term, I have several articles half-drafted just now, and I'd like to finish them off (and now I'm thinking about Chamberlin's multiple hypotheses and specific additions to tone fallacy and...). So for now, I think I wouldn't be up for making substantive contributions. I'm sorry.

By the time I'd be ready to call someone on bad faith, I'd hope it would be fairly obvious to the unbiassed observer (I'd err on the side of caution, since I'd hardly be an unbiassed judge of a disagreement with myself). Of course, this assumes that the unbiassed observer has all the information I do; I agree there are circumstances when it would be helpful to point out information a casual reader would be unlikely to know. I'll have to think about this in future.

I suspect almost all of the bad faith I've encountered was due to someone else doubting my good faith; it's hard not to act on such a suspicion. This is okay if done in the Chamberlinian multiple-hypotheses sense, tuning a response to be useful and suitable for both possibilities, both good and bad faith. But it's really hard intellectual work to suspend judgement and maintain multiple hypotheses on an equal footing. Humility is hard. And once someone starts taking counter-measures to protect against the possibility that an editor is bad-faith, in a manner that causes problems for the editor if they are good-faith, they are covertly, perhaps unconsciously, treating someone as bad-faith while superficially treating them as good-faith, which is in some ways worse than outright saying that they think the editor is not in good faith.

One thing I somehow omitted from my lengthy response; the "What pearl-clutching is not" section is good, it really improves the balance and utility of the essay. It skirts the really difficult philosophical question of how to distinguish the truly offensive from the inoffensive, other than subjectively, by social norms subject to systemic bias, but reasonably so; that would be way outside the scope of the essay. Wikipedia:Civility#Removing uncivil comments actually covers things that you also have in the "How to respond" section, too. A "prevention" section, listing measures for pearl-clutch-pre-emption, might also be interesting, though maybe that would fit under "causes". I'm a bit chary of giving actual examples, even on a user talk page, and I'm certainly not suggesting using them in an essay, but here's an example of an editor (later banned for bad faith) interacting in two similar disagreements with two other editors. One calls a spade a spade, in four separate posts; another is unbaitable, in two lengthier posts. The former gives opinions their interlocutor's rhetorical tactics; the second gives opinions only about the article content and which policies are applicable to it. Both ask for and gives information. Statements of offense are only made against the first. The first is clearer to read, and feels more like a spoken narrative; the latter is more "written" in style.

I'm not sure if it would be possible to have a section aimed at pearl-clutchers, attempting to take their perspective enough to cause them to recognize themselves and their familiar self-justifications (maybe "I should object when I'm not really offended, to raise the tone of Wikipedia"? "This editor is so rude that I should object to their words at every opportunity just to teach them civility"? I'm guessing). I've always considered it a mark of a good essay if it makes me reform my own behaviour, or watch it more sharply, giving awareness of my own limitations and weaknesses, not just those of others. Admittedly this is harder when the main point is good faith, but it is possible to drift into dubious or bad faith, especially with respect to specific people (as in my third para). "Think twice before expressing offense or frustration, and do it carefully and consciously, in these ways and not those" might be a good rule to draw from the essay.

I sometimes, despite acting in good faith, nevertheless have problems being — courteous? urbane? hende? Possessed of the social grace to forsee and forfend needless offense and conflict in my social surroundings? I hurt people socially for no good reason, very much against my intent. So it feels like there is something beyond good faith to civility. Your term "True civility" presumably contrasts it with false civility, which I'm guessing is the reverse: the outer forms of civility, stripped of good faith. Wiktionary:civility's first quote (admittedly mid-1700s) also implies a form of superficial civility which masks a lack of respect and consideration, instead of expressing its presence faithfully. English is a bit ambiguous here, probably for intrinsic reasons sinc other languages independently do the same.

A civil POV-pusher (if they don't pearl-clutch) could be in good faith, just really misguided. Otherwise rational people can get unreasonably attached to ideas; there's a saying that old scientific theories die with their last proponent. This may be due to people not following Cromwell's rule.

I once (off-wiki) had a conversation that went something like the first three lines of the "Dishonesty"-section dialogue. But it turned out that person A had just pasted the wrong source in their link, so that we were discussing two different sources. Fortunately we knew and trusted one another, and in the end we turned up several better sources and settled the matter in agreement. HLHJ (talk) 21:20, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

@HLHJ: You've given me a lot to think about. I'm gonna let this sit on the back-burner for a while before I come back to it. Thank you so much for your constructive criticism. ––FormalDude ^talk 03:27, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Gendered language and cultural bias

At the risk of being called a pearl clutcher myself, I can't help but read an essay like this in the context of Wikipedia's staggering gender gap and the recurring charges of an internet boys' club culture that is oblivious to its toxic side and dismissive of legitimate compaints. Consider the language being used here. "Pearl clutcher" is an old stereotype of an over-sensitive, melodramatic woman. The "Karen" is a more modern stock character that is ostensibly a criticism of privilege, but frequently takes on a mysogynistic tinge as well. Consider the casual use of two derogatory female-coded terms in an essay that is ostensibly about a community that is 80% male. Is the intent to blame women for being oversensitive, or shame the men for acting like women? If neither was intended, why use that language?

Why is so much emphasis placed on the presumption that people claiming offence are just tone policing or being manipulative? What about the very real possibility that coded, callous, or careless language actually can hurt people, put them on the defensive, or make them feel unwelcome? The internet has a nasty old macho streak that says "your feelings don't matter" and acting offended means you've lost the argument. A lot of us have bought into it, but none of us are so cool that we don't get worked up about something. I worry this essay is going to be read as a licence to step on people's toes (perhaps in specific ways the community has turned a blind eye to) and then blame them for reacting and mock them as pearl clutchers in classic bully fashion. Duxbag (talk) 05:33, 1 October 2024 (UTC)