Just to clarify a few points: I support the concept of having a global friendly spaces policy. I'm ambivalent and reluctant when it comes to the particular proposal that we're discussing here. And I think that we should keep in mind that any policy's usefulness for social change will be much higher if it has community consensus.
Two emails that I'm revisiting in my thought process are from Frances. I agree that personal attacks can be demoralizing and uncivil, and they do happen in our communities on occasion. I'm unclear about how to word a policy that spells out how to AGF and prohibit the kind of incivility in Oliver's example. Would it make sense, I wonder, to copy some of English Wikipedia's highly developed policies into technical spaces like WP:NPA? This gets us back into the rules creep and policy fragmentation problems. Maybe that's an acceptible opportunity cost. I think there might be greater support for a specific NPA proposal than for a broader proposal. I could see myself voting in favor of appling English Wikipedia's WP:NPA to technical spaces. I think that this would address a specific issue, and could be a net positive. If there are other specific kinds of problems that are ongoing in technical spaces and which would be improved by legislating policy, I would like to hear about them. In my personal travels in technical spaces, my experience is that the vast majority of people are civil most of the time. I think a general statement of principles about civility could be fine. I'm curious to hear if more legislation for technical spaces is needed than that. Personally, I think that a global policy might work better. Pine _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
