User:Andrewa/thread mode warnings

Hi. This page is a personal notice. It's not protected, in the spirit of Wikis, but this particular page is intended to represent my views on a particularly sensitive subject. Any change however trivial risks misrepresenting them in ways you may not have thought of, and with some years of study of formal logic and semantics behind me I'm probably a bit more sensitive to being misquoted than most. I respond promptly to all suggestions made on my talk page, and the one unauthorised change made to this page so far despite this request (see the page history if you like) was no great problem, but the principle is important IMO. If you want to use this material and find it necessary to modify it in any way, just copy it. Is that so hard? Andrewa 01:39, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In thread mode discussions, User:Anthony DiPierro includes in his signature a warning that seems to mean that he may modify his comments in the thread after people have replied to them and without further warning.

This once concerned me far more than it does now. I have only noticed one other user adopt this practice, and this other user has since been banned for unrelated reasons.

My current response is to try to make my replies self-contained, so it doesn't matter whether Anthony changes his comments or not. But this makes them a bit awkward and wordy, so the main function of this warning is now to explain why I do it.

Perhaps the earlier versions of this page helped, I will never know as read access logs are not available to me (and I don't want them). In any case, I now still leave a warning when I reply to Anthony in thread mode, but I think it's time to tone it down a lot. If you want to see the previous warnings, see this page's history.

My analysis of this technique of Anthony's hasn't changed. There are three possibilities in a thread mode dialogue:

(1) Both parties obey the rules.

(2) One party obeys the rules and the other doesn't.

(3) Neither party obeys the rules.

We've had a few experiments at (3) both in my Wikipedia talk pages and at MeatballWiki and other older wikis and the results were an unproductive shambles. (And Meatball is a far better place to discuss such things.) (1) is the normal mode that everyone except Anthony uses. That leaves (2).

The main problem with (2) is simply that it gives an advantage to the person who breaks the rules. This doesn't seem a good idea at all to me. The other problem is that it inconveniences others, which is the same thing really. Once three or more people are involved in a discussion it gets even more complicated, but the same general principle applies: Those who don't obey the rules have an advantage in the debate, while those who do are making the debate possible.

On his own warning page, Anthony replied to some of my former objections. In each case he has simply avoided the issues. Specifically (text from Anthony's warning page in italics, including where he was quoting someone else - in most cases me):

• This policy makes it difficult to reply.
  • Actually this policy doesn't change your ability to reply at all.
    • This I think demonstrates a lot. I think we need to accept that, if someone says it's making it difficult for them, then it is. Anthony is trying to impose his thinking. This doesn't work.
• But you might make me look stupid.
  • This is an argument that is made when a reply makes an objection and I then respond to that objection. If you'd like, I can remove your objection when I reply to it. But I assume that people don't like me changing their comments. So feel free to remove your objection yourself, after it is no longer valid. Why waste readers' time looking at something phrased poorly, followed by a request for clarification, followed by the clarification? Why not just have the reader read the clarified statement from the beginning?
    • This isn't what I said, so perhaps Anthony is quoting someone else here. I said it made the reply look stupid, not the person. But again the issues are not addressed. I have heard no objections to refactoring thread mode conversations at an appropriate time, to get all the benefits that are described in the rhetorical questions above, in fact I encourage it and so does Wikipedia. My objection is simply to edits that change only one half of a dialogue. These leave it looking either like a dialogue, which is misleading because it no longer is, or like some strange half-dialogue, which is again misleading because it wasn't the other contributor's intention. I think Anthony should both refrain from doing this and modify his warning to make it clear that he will. If he did these two things, the problems for me would all be solved.
• How do you reply to a comment that might change any time, and that certainly will change if you make any effective criticism of it?
  • Depends if your purpose is to win an argument or to convince others of your point. If your only purpose is to win an argument, I'd suggest a debate team, not Wikipedia. If your purpose is to actually convince others of your point of view, then having someone change his comment in response to your criticism seems evidence that you have succeeded. Just respond the same way you would otherwise.
    • I think this is the pot calling the kettle black. There's no evidence that Anthony's warning is any benefit to Wikipedia.

Comments welcome on my talk page. Andrewa 01:39, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)