[WikiEN-l] Re: Personal attacks and low EQs

Sat Jul 2 16:35:51 UTC 2005

Nathan,

I'm a bit puzzled by your angered reaction. You're making it sound like 
I was expressing some sort of grudge against you. I assure you I don't. 
Please calm down a bit.

> Strange then that 99% of the people on the talk page for "no personal
> attacks"

99% of the people on that page are hardly representative of 99% of the 
population of the Earth, especially seeing as the remaining 1% is much 
more likely to be on Wikipedia in the first place.

> Also, there is no Wikipedia policy against hurting peoples' feelings.

People usually prefer to work in an environment in which they are not 
exposed to things that hurt their feelings. It is normally considered an 
unwritten rule of society to avoid hurting other people's feelings (this 
is called "civility"). It is also normally considered an unwritten rule 
to avoid personal attacks -- but since we have had contributors in the 
past who apparently didn't know this, we have created the page 
[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]].

> The policy is against personal attacks only, whether or not it hurts
> someone's feelings is entirely irrelevent.

Not really -- the policy was set up precisely *because* personal attacks 
hurt people's feelings and therefore make Wikipedia a less enjoyable 
experience.

> Now following your premise, we can *never* criticize another
> Wikipedian again without using totally politically correct,
> walking-on-eggshells language.

That is correct; that would be the ideal situation. A dispute on 
Wikipedia should ideally always centre around content issues, and never 
a Wikipedian's person. Unfortunately, not all Wikipedians can always 
control their temper enough...

> You couldn't accuse someone of being a troll

Indeed I would prefer if people not do this, even when they are right. 
Trolls, too, are people with feelings that can be hurt, and I don't 
think anybody would want to be called a troll. (I'm restricting myself 
to people who have been on the Internet enough to know what a "troll" is 
in the Internet sense.) Nevertheless, many people often feel justified 
in using this personal attack against people on the mailing list, 
especially when most other participants on the mailing list agree with 
them. This does not mean that it is the right thing to do.

>>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.
> 
> Your accusation of me being abusive

There was no accusation of you being abusive. You're reading too much 
into it.

> and having a low EQ hurts my feelings.

I apologise if it does. I guess it was naïve of me to assume that you 
would find this revelation as useful as I did.

> Ooops, I guess that puts you in that 1% too!

Here you are making the assumption that I would have placed myself in 
the 99%. However, I never did. You are also making the assumption that I 
think the 1% are necessarily bad people, just because they have a low 
EQ. I never said this either. (In fact, personally, I find people with a 
low SQ much worse ;-) but fortunately, they're rare on Wikipedia!)

> Now this is a very good
> example of hypocrisy, he just got done saying that "personal attacks"
> (as in applying a label to someone's behavior) is wrong, then just
> proceeded to do it himself right now!

Whether something is a "personal attack" is often a subjective thing -- 
some people might not object to being called a hypocrite, while others 
do. Similarly, some people may or may not object to having their low EQ 
pointed out to them. I didn't expect that you would consider it a 
personal attack, as I would not have thought that you would consider a 
low EQ a bad thing.

Unfortunately, there is no deterministic algorithm that universally 
classifies any statement as either a "personal attack" or not. For 
someone with such a strong tendency towards systematisation rather than 
empathisation, such an algorithm would be very useful, almost essential. 
But alas, it doesn't exist. Given that Wikipedians tend to be human 
beings with feelings, it is nevertheless necessary to get a feel for it 
if you want to interact with them in a civil and pleasant way...

>>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.
> 
> Wow, you just attacked me by saying I don't have a life, where does
> the hypocrisy end?

I didn't say you don't have a life. You're reading into it again. The 
term "real life" is usually used to refer to social interaction with 
other people outside the Internet and computers. I'm sure you have a 
life, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's primarily an online/Internet life.

>>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".
> 
> Well you don't seem to have an intuitive ability to do it either,
> since you just engaged in several "personal attacks" against me.  You
> even proceded to call the many people on the "no personal attacks"
> talk page low EQ having, abusive people for wanting a definition.

I don't think many people here will disagree that the average EQ is 
quite a bit lower on Wikipedia than in the general population (nor do I 
think many people will consider that a bad thing). It is no surprise 
that the average EQ on [[Wikipedia talk:No personal attacks]] is even 
lower. The average SQ is probably correspondingly higher, hence why 
people are seeking clarification (in the form of a deterministic 
algorithm) of what constitutes a "personal attack".

Also, since you're such a fan of logic, surely you will understand that 
just because I said that most of the abusive people on the mailing list 
seem to have a low EQ, it doesn't follow that everyone with a low EQ 
must automatically be abusive. So no, I didn't call anyone "abusive" 
except for those people that are abusive.

> Apparently, Timwi is one of the great enlightened ones who knows
> better than those obviously inferior people on the talk page who agree
> with me that it's not clear what constitutes a personal attack.

It is pretty obvious that most people know better than you what 
constitutes a personal attack, but I didn't say that I was one of them. 
In fact, in my previous posting I actually agreed with you that it's not 
clear what constitutes a personal attack -- except to people with a high 
enough EQ that they have an intuitive feel for it.

> In any case, if you're relying on "intuition" it means that you're
> probably not relying on logic, which is a very, VERY bad thing when
> you're talking about a policy.  If a policy can't be based on logic,
> then it shouldn't exist.

Yes, this is the stereotypical systematiser's thinking. Rules and 
policies must be based on precise, defined axioms. They must be logical, 
structured, deterministic, predictable, and algorithmic. I normally tend 
to agree with that. Unfortunately humans aren't logical, much less 
predictable and algorithmic. Especially whether a true statement is seen 
as offensive/an insult/a "personal attack" is incredibly unpredictable. 
I understand that in your mind this makes the policy quite unfair: how 
can you follow a rule that is unpredictable? Well, you see, even the 
empathisers make mistakes: they sometimes accidentally insult each 
other. But their empathisation skills (usually) make them aware of it 
after the fact, and they tell them that they should apologise, even if 
their original statement was true, to alleviate the other person's hurt 
feelings. And then the other person's empathisation skills will tell 
them that the first person is really sorry and didn't mean to hurt their 
feelings. Then they can be friends again. And both have learnt a lesson! 
The next time the same person won't make the same mistake again because 
now they know that the relevant statement can be taken as an insult.

> That said, it IS possible to define it if you are an objective
> thinker with a high IQ.

Only if the thing you are trying to define is something purely 
objective, which unfortunately the issue of personal attacks isn't.

> I also love your assumption that personal attacks should be defined in
> terms of how hurt people's feelings are rather than how
> counter-productive they are to Wikipedia.

The two things are strongly correlated.

Timwi