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Comment by Aachen | Hacker News Reader

It's a code of conduct which "bans harassment on and off the site, barring behaviors like hate speech, the use of slurs, stereotypes or attacks based on personal characteristics, as well as threats of physical violence and ‘hounding,’ or following someone across different articles to critique their work". It also disallows introducing bias in articles on purpose. Enforcement is something they will figure out as a "next step", and there are no plans to increase the current abuse team.

No source link anywhere or link to more info, and frankly banning harassment and undue bias doesn't sound very new for Wikipedia to me. Not sure what impact this will have on this valuable resource. Perhaps someone should, I don't know, do some journalism here.

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Given what happened to Fram a year and a half ago, I'm not surprised that they're continuing to do this stuff (especially given that it's the same people). Honestly, I think WMF needs a serious examination of the agendas of its leadership and a focus on actually doing good work instead of stuff intended to make them look good.

I personally won't donate a single cent until Sefidari and Maher are replaced with people who can focus on the real priorities.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20317921 for earlier discussion.

I actually monthly donate to Wikipedia, but after some of the things I've seen I think it's better to stop it.

However useful the project often be, it's no longer something I'm willing to support as a charity.

> bans harassment on and off the site

I wonder if "harassment" will be in the eye of the beholder. If you read someone's Tweets and find an opinion that you think is insulting towards the rich or immigrants or men or women, is that grounds to get that person's Wikipedia account deleted?

We don't have to leap to an extreme, paint this in black and white. Some cases may be shades of grey, but 'insulting' is fairly obvious when you see it.

So you're advocating for an "I know it when I see it" standard for assigning guilt to people? If you're familiar with the phrase "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" then you might understand why people could be concerned about selective enforcement of these rules.

Again, trying to put words in others' mouths.

Abusive language, slurs, ad-hominem attacks are not ambiguous. Neither is 'putting words in other's mouths', which is against this (HNs) site's rules. Lets do better.

You said "'insulting' is fairly obvious when you see it" and I asked if you supported the standard of "I know it when I see it".

I'm sorry if I misunderstood you, jumped to conclusions, or phrased my question poorly, but I hope you can forgive me for finding those two approaches very similar.

If you think there is a universal unambiguous system for deciding whether a claim is "insulting" then I'd be happy to learn about it. For example, I can imagine people disagreeing about whether the statement "Country X has a problem with corruption." is insulting to people in country X.

I listed three criterion. Is that not enough?

If those three criteria are the only valid grounds for deeming a statement "insulting", then I agree that the risk of the rules being misused is greatly reduced. Let's hope that the people enforcing them show such restraint.

They are very often ambiguous and different arbitrators of rules will come to different conclusions, and their own political opinions will definitely play a factor in which way they will swing.

If an editor hold political opinions that the arbitrator agrees with, he will suddenly find various things to not be insults, which he would have, were he to politically disagree with the editor.

At some point, in human affairs, judgement requires nuance.

In my experience, it mostly requires nuance for those who want the rules to be arbitrary and who want different men to be treated differently based on whether they be friend of foe.

It is often quite easy to make black and white rules with no ambiguities, but then one would have to accept actually not having dual standards.

Nuance and letting human heart play a factor, is a requirement for the man who espouses dual standards.

Of all the issues Wikipedia admins have to deal with whilst trying to ensure the world's popular and most edited information resource is complete, adequately sourced, not expressing a Wikipedian point of view but also not giving much weight to 'fringe' perspectives and pseudoscience, defining 'what is harassment' is pretty low down the list of complexity and ambiguity...

The Wikipedia foundation seems to think they have plenty of funds to focus on things outside of maintaining Wikipedia. I think that is a sign the organization’s goals don’t really match up with people’s expectations.

It will be when they need a reason to, no doubt.

These rules carry the stench of only being enforced when the powers so will it.

Not as though that would make a difference, hitherto they could surely find a way regardless.

Rule of law has never existed anywhere, especially since those who desire most to be the arbitrators of the law are also the ones who desire most to bend it to their will. The man who desires to be a judge is often indeed quite judgemental.

>It also disallows introducing bias in articles on purpose

How on earth would this be provable or enforceable?

It doesn't have to be. Capricious enforcement of rules is the name of the game.

"stereotyoes" - So one can now dig any dirt on any editor on whatever social media and in private conversations he engaged, present and past, and unless a literal Saint have him banned, with no limitations and no exception?

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Po...

Yes, I saw and upvoted your sibling comment, thanks :). My post is more a critique of the source than actually asking for a link though, as there doesn't seem to be news for those who aren't regular editors (and even then, mostly if you're intending to harass someone).

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