[WikiEN-l] Personal attacks and low EQs

Sat Jul 2 11:23:01 UTC 2005

We could start by banning words like "hypocrite", "moron" and "nazi"
when describing other wikipedians (regardless of how true these could
be as Timwi said). It's the loaded words that make up a majority of
personal attacks.

--Mgm

On 7/2/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> 
> > [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]
> 
> I've taken a look at the page and I quite agree with Nathan that it
> fails to define what a personal attack is.
> 
> 99% of people have an intuitive feel for what constitutes a personal
> attack; they have the empathy to understand that certain remarks can
> hurt another person, even when the objective contents of the statement
> are true (e.g. "you're a hypocrite"). [[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]
> assumes this of the reader.
> 
> Nathan appears to belong to the 1% of people who have a low EQ
> (empathisation quotient) which enables him to comment in an insulting
> way without realising the effect it has on other people, solemnly
> believing that he's "only telling the truth". Most of the abusive
> ranters I see on this list are like that. It is no surprise to me that
> such a person strongly feels that a block for something they cannot
> define is highly unjust, and that they feel they are treated quite
> unfairly given they're telling their version of the truth.
> 
> Wikipedia is one of those online communities that tend to attract these
> kinds of people, so the percentage of them is higher here than in the
> general population. Unfortunately, even, these kinds of people tend to
> be more dedicated editors, since high-EQ people tend to have more of a
> real life.
> 
> I don't know how many Wikipedians have thought about this issue in the
> past, but we will have to come to some sort of agreement on whether to
> (a) require a minimum EQ, thereby outright excluding a certain set of
> people, or (b) actually attempt to define "personal attack".
> 
> Once you start to try defining "personal attack", you'll begin to
> realise how hard it is; then maybe you'll begin to understand how hard
> it must be for someone who doesn't have the intuitive ability to
> classify remarks as "personal attacks".
> 
> Timwi
> 
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