I don’t really think it will help, but even in your version of the student teacher interaction, it is still obviously negative.
1)Of minor but obvious importance, it is very confrontational and not beneficial. It in no way helps the student, it in no way helps the teacher, it doesn’t help any bystanders that hear about it. All it does is add a moment of satisfaction at telling off the teacher, and continues burning bridges (which the student obviously doesn’t care about, but isn’t good utilitarian thinking for a student, nor taking into account the feelings of the teacher for more universalist types.). (Telling off a person who is acting badly can be virtuous though.)
2)Crucially, the student knew exactly what they were doing by writing the science fiction for a class where the teacher was obviously telling them not to write science fiction. They picked this fight intentionally. (This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it needs to be justified too.)
The student could have also given a defense of sci-fi in class when the teacher kept saying negative things about it, that would have been more on point without being the one to actually escalate. (It would not necessarily have gone any better, of course.)
3)There is no internal difference for the student between the teacher mocking it for being science fiction, and making good points about typical failure modes of science fiction and then the student’s writing that said student didn’t want to hear, so there is no principled way to determine whether it really is this circumstance. The student can only see these things from the inside. It would be much more obvious if the student had previously asked the teacher their exact reasons for being so anti-sci-fi. (This is not an expected solution though since it runs counter to most people’s natures.)
Definitely not defending the teacher in this setup, of course. Taking the hypothetical as objective, it is an extremely unvirtuous way for a teacher to act. I don’t have a strong objection to telling off the teacher here, which this definitely is, but setting up things for it to go this way is clearly a bad thing, and the student did that at least semi-intentionally.
The defense of sci-fi being put this way makes it much less likely to be heard. Telling the other students why sci-fi is good has a much better chance of working. If everyone is persuaded about the incorrectness of the teacher’s bigotry against the genre, that pretty effectively neuters the effect of the teacher’s view without the negative side effects.
The Wikipedia example is harder to know how to interact with because I have little experience with being an editor of any kind, and only occasionally use Wikipedia more than for a moment, but it is well known that Wikipedia has some despotic editors too, that rule by fiat and keep pages wrong. It makes perfect sense for the people that when people want to fix something clearly wrong with a page, that they will be very frustrated when not allowed to do it. Many people will be wrong when thinking so, but so will many of the people assuming they don’t have a point just because it looks similar to a previous rejected point.
Better than SOL for Wikipedia would probably be to come up with a reasonable policy for the level of evidence required to change a particular controversial part of the page, along with a list of reasons why it is the way it is (this should also include self-reference on the level of evidence required to change the policy for when to change the policy on changing the part). This should be based on the current level of evidence that established it the way it is now (including both the evidence for and against). Also an explanation of what kinds of argument are given what kinds of weight, and an explanation of that (though this can be more general) would be good.
This is much more difficult in the short term than just stopping, but I don’t really see this as much different than what the policy should be even on parts where there is no disagreement on completely non-controversial pages. This should lead to higher quality pages. A reasonable policy on when things deserve a response would also be a good thing. (These all can obviously be abused too.)
Off-topic trolling can of course just be removed, but on topic trolling should just be treated by the strength of its (non)arguments. People are notoriously bad (because of normal human motivations) at telling the difference between good and bad versions of on topic engagement in places where there is intended to be mass use. Your job as an editor is to neutrally use good evidence, not just that which you agree with. (I expect based on our exchanges that you find this frustrating, but probably do a reasonable job.)
Does engaging in your exact examples really help bridge the gap between our positions or really increase comprehension? I think it is clear how things could be done better than SOL, by never letting it get to that point, by being thorough, and/or by simply side stepping it, and making the arguments to the other people.
(Side note: By this point in our many exchanges, I do think I’ve fairly effectively determined why I had an initial reaction that it was obviously wrong to endorse the technique, and I believe my reasons are clearly correct. There are simply better approaches, and even just being okay with bare stopping is still better in most circumstances.)
I agree with you that the student/teacher example can be interpreted as an unwise and unsympathetic decision on the part of the student. My view is that the student could have felt stifled for a year by his creative writing teacher. After taking a risk to show what sort of writing he’s really passionate about, the teacher dressed him down in an unnecessarily cruel way. The student could cultivate an ability to react dispassionately to such destructive criticism and simply walk away.
On the other hand, it seems like a valuable skill to me to reject stifling and to vocally stand up for oneself in such situations. After all, it’s not just the literary criticism that’s a factor in this situation, but also the power dynamic in the student/teacher relationship, which the teacher seems to be abusing. While it’s hard to predict the results for this particular student, his teacher, and the other students who this teacher will teach in the future, the student’s reaction to me would probably read as a benefit to himself and others, as well as pleasantly admirable irrespective of utility (I am not a perfect utility maximizer), if I observed it in real life.
I can therefore appreciate your contrasting viewpoint, but can’t agree that it is “obviously” negative. I think it is probably positive, but does have a chance of a negative result. While I’ve outlined some rules of thumb that would generalize across situations, I do think that the particularities of each case matter a lot, and we’ll never have enough detail from a hypothetical example to resolve it conclusively (and what would be the point of trying?).
Better than SOL for Wikipedia would probably be to come up with a reasonable policy for the level of evidence required to change a particular controversial part of the page, along with a list of reasons why it is the way it is (this should also include self-reference on the level of evidence required to change the policy for when to change the policy on changing the part). This should be based on the current level of evidence that established it the way it is now (including both the evidence for and against). Also an explanation of what kinds of argument are given what kinds of weight, and an explanation of that (though this can be more general) would be good.
… This should lead to higher quality pages. A reasonable policy on when things deserve a response would also be a good thing. (These all can obviously be abused too.)
I agree that it might be possible to design complex systems to structure the way argument and evidence get synthesized into Wikipedia changes. SOL, to me, is a tool to use when such structured systems do not exist, and will not for the foreseeable future.
This is much more difficult in the short term than just stopping, but I don’t really see this as much different than what the policy should be even on parts where there is no disagreement on completely non-controversial pages.
I didn’t really follow this sentence, could you say it a different way?
Your job as an editor is to neutrally use good evidence, not just that which you agree with. (I expect based on our exchanges that you find this frustrating, but probably do a reasonable job.)
This is an uncalled-for dig in the context of a pretty deep and friendly discussion. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t repeat this sort of move in the future, or I will terminate my side of the conversation.
I think it is clear how things could be done better than SOL, by never letting it get to that point, by being thorough, and/or by simply side stepping it, and making the arguments to the other people.
Remember that half the purpose of SOL is to avoid being on the receiving end of verbal abuse in the context of a hostile environment. The hostile environment is assumed, so “never letting it get to that point” is kind of a dodge. Being thorough and side stepping may decrease the attack surface, and that is beneficial. However, none of these fully address the problem of verbal abuse online, and it’s not hard to find examples of very thorough arguments addressed to the audience resulting in verbal abuse in the comments anyway. Hence, I don’t see these as full solutions for the problem SOL is meant to address.
By contrast, “bare stopping” does not accomplish the other half of the purpose of SOL, which is to convey information to the audience.
So to me, none of your proposed solutions fully solve the problem that SOL does. They are not “better approaches” to the problem SOL is meant to solve, any more than a screwdriver is a “better approach” to nailing than a hammer. They are useful in related circumstances, they do similar things, and yet you cannot use them interchangeably.
I reject your claim that what I said about needing to neutrally use good evidence as an editor was a dig, since it was simply an explanation saying what the duties of an editor are (and I very clearly stated that I believed you were likely to do it well, unless you’re somehow objecting to me calling it frustrating, which is just obvious?), because it was necessary when talking about what the policy should be. This failure of communication is exactly what I was talking about with people being unable to tell good vs. bad engagement on a topic. You assumed I was making a dig when I was doing nothing of the sort. (It is, of course, possible someone else would say exactly that as a dig.) My arguments should be evaluated on their own merits, not on whether or not someone guesses they are made for good or bad reasons.
Your duties as an editor do, in fact, determine what you should be doing, for the most obvious of reasons. The neutral use of good evidence is vital to the official reasons for Wikipedia’s very existence. (It is very explicit that there should be neutrality, though that is often not true in practice since everyone involved is human.)
I’ll expand the sentence you said you wanted rephrased into an equivalent paragraph: I am advocating a difficult policy on how to deal with changing Wikipedia pages explicitly based on levels of evidence on controversial parts. It would be much easier to use the SOL approach than to do this. The levels of evidence policy, however is not significantly different than what I believe should be the policy on every page, not just on controversial ones. It does not simply seem like a burden (though it clearly is one), but a way to improve Wikipedia. (It is also very much in keeping with the intended spirit of Wikipedia).
I do agree that telling off a person acting badly in the sci-fi example can be a good thing, (and would note that the satisfaction it engenders is a positive under a utilitarianism), and I’m perfectly willing to accept that you want it to be that way as a reason for supporting it -we’ll simply disagree that it somehow makes up for all of the obvious negative effects. You don’t seem to have engaged at all with the idea that intentionally making it get to that point was a clearly bad thing under most moral systems (which was the main point I made). Your assumption that things have to go to the very end is what seems like a ‘dodge’ to me.
To make something clear, how we get to a specific situation matters. When one side has intentionally provoked a conflict, they don’t get to act the same way they could reasonably act when they didn’t; this is true even if the side that engaged in it is morally correct to do so. It matters that the student chose this conflict. The teacher acts very badly, but is merely continuing things. When you choose conflict rather than cooperation in a shared endeavor, you have a stronger moral duty to use means that are clearly good to the extent possible. The student had better means available.
I made multiple points on alternatives to bare stopping which I endorse, all of which are clearly related to the further purposes you claim SOL has. In the sci-fi example, I advocated making an actual defense of sci-fi earlier in the string of events, preferably a calm and well-reasoned one, rather than intentionally violating expectations on an assignment to pick a fight. Then, when they’ve said their piece, they can stop. The ball is then in the teacher’s court, and they can choose how they will react. The student can then stop if there is no point in dialogue with the teacher, without having lost, nor having implemented a bad policy, or they can continue if it is worthwhile to do so.
In the Wikipedia case, making a real policy on how, when, and why engagement will happen is the correct approach. This is much more in keeping with the ideals of a community made encyclopedia than simply ignoring people whose viewpoints pattern-match ones that have been annoying before, and provides a good reason for why failure to respond is not an good proxy for losing. (Care must be taken so that it is not a despotic policy.)
Online harassment is a guaranteed thing. SOL gives more attention to the simple troll than it deserves as compared to simply ignoring it. More dedicated trolls can simply stalk you across the site, and SOL would encourage them, so unless you enjoy being trolled, it doesn’t seem worth using. You can continue to talk to other participants in the discussion while ignoring them, if you are still interested in the rest of the discussion.
The only place explicitly stopping that way has a use case is when you have a duty to be involved with all genuine participants in the conversation (this duty can be self-imposed), and need to explain why you think someone isn’t, but that is definitely a niche case.
Alternately, you can simply restrict the size and emotional tenor of your responses, and let the conversation die naturally in many cases. This doesn’t work if others are feeding the troll, but most trolls rely on the reactions of the people they are trolling directly.
If there is a whole pack of trolls, simply avoiding them seems clearly best (unless it rises to the level where you can and should remove them.).
I don’t really think it will help, but even in your version of the student teacher interaction, it is still obviously negative.
1)Of minor but obvious importance, it is very confrontational and not beneficial. It in no way helps the student, it in no way helps the teacher, it doesn’t help any bystanders that hear about it. All it does is add a moment of satisfaction at telling off the teacher, and continues burning bridges (which the student obviously doesn’t care about, but isn’t good utilitarian thinking for a student, nor taking into account the feelings of the teacher for more universalist types.). (Telling off a person who is acting badly can be virtuous though.)
2)Crucially, the student knew exactly what they were doing by writing the science fiction for a class where the teacher was obviously telling them not to write science fiction. They picked this fight intentionally. (This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it needs to be justified too.)
The student could have also given a defense of sci-fi in class when the teacher kept saying negative things about it, that would have been more on point without being the one to actually escalate. (It would not necessarily have gone any better, of course.)
3)There is no internal difference for the student between the teacher mocking it for being science fiction, and making good points about typical failure modes of science fiction and then the student’s writing that said student didn’t want to hear, so there is no principled way to determine whether it really is this circumstance. The student can only see these things from the inside. It would be much more obvious if the student had previously asked the teacher their exact reasons for being so anti-sci-fi. (This is not an expected solution though since it runs counter to most people’s natures.)
Definitely not defending the teacher in this setup, of course. Taking the hypothetical as objective, it is an extremely unvirtuous way for a teacher to act. I don’t have a strong objection to telling off the teacher here, which this definitely is, but setting up things for it to go this way is clearly a bad thing, and the student did that at least semi-intentionally.
The defense of sci-fi being put this way makes it much less likely to be heard. Telling the other students why sci-fi is good has a much better chance of working. If everyone is persuaded about the incorrectness of the teacher’s bigotry against the genre, that pretty effectively neuters the effect of the teacher’s view without the negative side effects.
The Wikipedia example is harder to know how to interact with because I have little experience with being an editor of any kind, and only occasionally use Wikipedia more than for a moment, but it is well known that Wikipedia has some despotic editors too, that rule by fiat and keep pages wrong. It makes perfect sense for the people that when people want to fix something clearly wrong with a page, that they will be very frustrated when not allowed to do it. Many people will be wrong when thinking so, but so will many of the people assuming they don’t have a point just because it looks similar to a previous rejected point.
Better than SOL for Wikipedia would probably be to come up with a reasonable policy for the level of evidence required to change a particular controversial part of the page, along with a list of reasons why it is the way it is (this should also include self-reference on the level of evidence required to change the policy for when to change the policy on changing the part). This should be based on the current level of evidence that established it the way it is now (including both the evidence for and against). Also an explanation of what kinds of argument are given what kinds of weight, and an explanation of that (though this can be more general) would be good.
This is much more difficult in the short term than just stopping, but I don’t really see this as much different than what the policy should be even on parts where there is no disagreement on completely non-controversial pages. This should lead to higher quality pages. A reasonable policy on when things deserve a response would also be a good thing. (These all can obviously be abused too.)
Off-topic trolling can of course just be removed, but on topic trolling should just be treated by the strength of its (non)arguments. People are notoriously bad (because of normal human motivations) at telling the difference between good and bad versions of on topic engagement in places where there is intended to be mass use. Your job as an editor is to neutrally use good evidence, not just that which you agree with. (I expect based on our exchanges that you find this frustrating, but probably do a reasonable job.)
Does engaging in your exact examples really help bridge the gap between our positions or really increase comprehension? I think it is clear how things could be done better than SOL, by never letting it get to that point, by being thorough, and/or by simply side stepping it, and making the arguments to the other people.
(Side note: By this point in our many exchanges, I do think I’ve fairly effectively determined why I had an initial reaction that it was obviously wrong to endorse the technique, and I believe my reasons are clearly correct. There are simply better approaches, and even just being okay with bare stopping is still better in most circumstances.)
I agree with you that the student/teacher example can be interpreted as an unwise and unsympathetic decision on the part of the student. My view is that the student could have felt stifled for a year by his creative writing teacher. After taking a risk to show what sort of writing he’s really passionate about, the teacher dressed him down in an unnecessarily cruel way. The student could cultivate an ability to react dispassionately to such destructive criticism and simply walk away.
On the other hand, it seems like a valuable skill to me to reject stifling and to vocally stand up for oneself in such situations. After all, it’s not just the literary criticism that’s a factor in this situation, but also the power dynamic in the student/teacher relationship, which the teacher seems to be abusing. While it’s hard to predict the results for this particular student, his teacher, and the other students who this teacher will teach in the future, the student’s reaction to me would probably read as a benefit to himself and others, as well as pleasantly admirable irrespective of utility (I am not a perfect utility maximizer), if I observed it in real life.
I can therefore appreciate your contrasting viewpoint, but can’t agree that it is “obviously” negative. I think it is probably positive, but does have a chance of a negative result. While I’ve outlined some rules of thumb that would generalize across situations, I do think that the particularities of each case matter a lot, and we’ll never have enough detail from a hypothetical example to resolve it conclusively (and what would be the point of trying?).
I agree that it might be possible to design complex systems to structure the way argument and evidence get synthesized into Wikipedia changes. SOL, to me, is a tool to use when such structured systems do not exist, and will not for the foreseeable future.
I didn’t really follow this sentence, could you say it a different way?
This is an uncalled-for dig in the context of a pretty deep and friendly discussion. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t repeat this sort of move in the future, or I will terminate my side of the conversation.
Remember that half the purpose of SOL is to avoid being on the receiving end of verbal abuse in the context of a hostile environment. The hostile environment is assumed, so “never letting it get to that point” is kind of a dodge. Being thorough and side stepping may decrease the attack surface, and that is beneficial. However, none of these fully address the problem of verbal abuse online, and it’s not hard to find examples of very thorough arguments addressed to the audience resulting in verbal abuse in the comments anyway. Hence, I don’t see these as full solutions for the problem SOL is meant to address.
By contrast, “bare stopping” does not accomplish the other half of the purpose of SOL, which is to convey information to the audience.
So to me, none of your proposed solutions fully solve the problem that SOL does. They are not “better approaches” to the problem SOL is meant to solve, any more than a screwdriver is a “better approach” to nailing than a hammer. They are useful in related circumstances, they do similar things, and yet you cannot use them interchangeably.
I reject your claim that what I said about needing to neutrally use good evidence as an editor was a dig, since it was simply an explanation saying what the duties of an editor are (and I very clearly stated that I believed you were likely to do it well, unless you’re somehow objecting to me calling it frustrating, which is just obvious?), because it was necessary when talking about what the policy should be. This failure of communication is exactly what I was talking about with people being unable to tell good vs. bad engagement on a topic. You assumed I was making a dig when I was doing nothing of the sort. (It is, of course, possible someone else would say exactly that as a dig.) My arguments should be evaluated on their own merits, not on whether or not someone guesses they are made for good or bad reasons.
Your duties as an editor do, in fact, determine what you should be doing, for the most obvious of reasons. The neutral use of good evidence is vital to the official reasons for Wikipedia’s very existence. (It is very explicit that there should be neutrality, though that is often not true in practice since everyone involved is human.)
I’ll expand the sentence you said you wanted rephrased into an equivalent paragraph: I am advocating a difficult policy on how to deal with changing Wikipedia pages explicitly based on levels of evidence on controversial parts. It would be much easier to use the SOL approach than to do this. The levels of evidence policy, however is not significantly different than what I believe should be the policy on every page, not just on controversial ones. It does not simply seem like a burden (though it clearly is one), but a way to improve Wikipedia. (It is also very much in keeping with the intended spirit of Wikipedia).
I do agree that telling off a person acting badly in the sci-fi example can be a good thing, (and would note that the satisfaction it engenders is a positive under a utilitarianism), and I’m perfectly willing to accept that you want it to be that way as a reason for supporting it -we’ll simply disagree that it somehow makes up for all of the obvious negative effects. You don’t seem to have engaged at all with the idea that intentionally making it get to that point was a clearly bad thing under most moral systems (which was the main point I made). Your assumption that things have to go to the very end is what seems like a ‘dodge’ to me.
To make something clear, how we get to a specific situation matters. When one side has intentionally provoked a conflict, they don’t get to act the same way they could reasonably act when they didn’t; this is true even if the side that engaged in it is morally correct to do so. It matters that the student chose this conflict. The teacher acts very badly, but is merely continuing things. When you choose conflict rather than cooperation in a shared endeavor, you have a stronger moral duty to use means that are clearly good to the extent possible. The student had better means available.
I made multiple points on alternatives to bare stopping which I endorse, all of which are clearly related to the further purposes you claim SOL has. In the sci-fi example, I advocated making an actual defense of sci-fi earlier in the string of events, preferably a calm and well-reasoned one, rather than intentionally violating expectations on an assignment to pick a fight. Then, when they’ve said their piece, they can stop. The ball is then in the teacher’s court, and they can choose how they will react. The student can then stop if there is no point in dialogue with the teacher, without having lost, nor having implemented a bad policy, or they can continue if it is worthwhile to do so.
In the Wikipedia case, making a real policy on how, when, and why engagement will happen is the correct approach. This is much more in keeping with the ideals of a community made encyclopedia than simply ignoring people whose viewpoints pattern-match ones that have been annoying before, and provides a good reason for why failure to respond is not an good proxy for losing. (Care must be taken so that it is not a despotic policy.)
Online harassment is a guaranteed thing. SOL gives more attention to the simple troll than it deserves as compared to simply ignoring it. More dedicated trolls can simply stalk you across the site, and SOL would encourage them, so unless you enjoy being trolled, it doesn’t seem worth using. You can continue to talk to other participants in the discussion while ignoring them, if you are still interested in the rest of the discussion.
The only place explicitly stopping that way has a use case is when you have a duty to be involved with all genuine participants in the conversation (this duty can be self-imposed), and need to explain why you think someone isn’t, but that is definitely a niche case.
Alternately, you can simply restrict the size and emotional tenor of your responses, and let the conversation die naturally in many cases. This doesn’t work if others are feeding the troll, but most trolls rely on the reactions of the people they are trolling directly.
If there is a whole pack of trolls, simply avoiding them seems clearly best (unless it rises to the level where you can and should remove them.).