Ultima Codex talk:No personal attacks

Zero tolerance on bad behavior

Well, not zero tolerance, since that would mean undoing and banning at the slightest infraction. My concern is with the private, low-key admonishments that this article recommends. If there is an infraction, I think that everyone should see that this behavior is unacceptable.

If I may be indulged this rant: I find that Wikipedia has these various sub-cultures, in each where a set of regular editors skulk about a set of articles and their talk pages. They put a lot of professional effort into maintaining these articles, and therefore they carry a sense of entitlement, they don't suffer fools gladly, they act like they own the place (ah, 'Net-based territorialism—pah-thetic!) and quite indifferently, put those they feel are below them in their place. Their swagger really brings down the tone of the place.

Maybe one day this attitude will be an anathema on Wikipedia, but I want it to be an anathema here now. Part of this means that if someone witnesses bad behavior, then the very same page should have the response to it. If someone talks trash on a talk page, and the response to it is quietly placed on the offender's user page, then all most people will see is the misconduct, which will thereby encourage its repetition. Each unanswered incident doesn't make Ultima look good, it doesn't make the Codex look good, and I hate to think the way it makes us look. AngusM 19:01, June 7, 2010 (UTC)

I feel that keeping the response on the offender's talk page and archiving or deleting the offense covers your concern. Keeps any flame wars contained to the offender's talk page but with the removal people will no longer be seeing the misconduct. Leaving misconduct in situ with any corresponding flame wars seems like it would cause more of the repetition that you are worried about. -- Fenyx4 12:24, June 21, 2010 (UTC)

Flame wars are another matter. I'd be in favour of symmetric deletion of those. My concern is with the lower level flaming, over which no one is moved to go as far as deletion. In any 'Net-based forum, sometimes a user gets a little bit too uppity, a little bit too rude, or a little bit too sarcastic. But because he doesn't go nuts about it, there's no immunity response. This behavior, IMO, winds up being more damaging than flame wars, because it receives approval by default. Now, if we were to delete every little bit of attitude, that would certainly eliminate this problem. AngusM 20:08, June 21, 2010 (UTC)