Grants talk:IdeaLab/Add ignore functionality

What are "messages?"

I think it would help (both you and others) if you clarified what exactly you mean by "messages." Are they messages on your talk page? Notifications relating to things? You should list things which are "messages" for the purposes of this proposal. --Dingsuntil 11:26, 1 июня 2016‎

I elaborated on this on the proposal page in more detail. --Gryllida 23:39, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Questions....

• How would this affect counter vandalism patrollers who leave warnings on user talk pages. Say a user create a Vandalism Only Account and then ignores the user placing the warnings. The user then leaves a notice that a discussion is taking place at ANI (administrators noticeboard-incidents) (or whatever the local equivalent is on that project). They no longer receive the ANI notice and this are unable to participate in the discussion. I can see this causing problems with the {{uw-vandalism}} template and other UW templates.

Do you have an idea to overcome this obstacle? Cameron11598 (Converse) 04:55, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

A possible solution would be to have a template similar to {{ping}} which only works on a limited number of pages (such as AN/I) and isn't covered by the block. Of course, this is gameable by opening a frivolous AN/I claim against a user, but that's a dangerous game to play, and a history of bad AN/I reports is likely to have a user identified as problematic... Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 10:25, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

In my opinion this may be solved A) by not using talk page templates.

• Clogged talk pages
• Noise

B) by having more helpers available who are ready to engage newcomers into work on a topical area if they have interest in say maths then they link to a wikiproject.

C) by having more prominent presence of WikiProjects, maybe even give them their own subdomains,

D) by having smaller editing groups, by means of B and C (we have another idea which says contributors could group into families and invite newcomers to join an existing family).

--Gryllida 00:49, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

• I understand the reason of this proposition (a "selective deafness button"), but it seems (for me) to present more disadvantages than advantages for the community. It presents aspects "apparently pleasant" but it seems to play against one of the fundamental principles of " wikis in the wikimedia-family", which may be one of the keys of the success of Wikipedia : total transparency of all f written interactions (and iIt would make seome fixes more difficult ?)
  No one is obliged to feed a troll, or read a message (but we have to learn that, by doing). I seems pleasant for the individual, but a problem for the community because the abuse is easy. It is very important to read some messages which the tone is a bit unpleasant if they also contain a truth good to hear. Without reading those messages, you would not be able to encourage the speaker to speak more kindly or in a more neutral way (in the interest of all). A button "I do not want to hear you !" is perheaps a new form of encouragement of a true "dialogue of the deaf" ("dialogues de sourds" in french). I hope that the project would reduce the number of unpleasant messages, bad or dishonest. But do not hesitate to deepen your idea. (sorry if my english is not very goog, it's not my native language)--Lamiot (talk) 11:43, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

• I do not think that you are correct. You say: "It is very important to read some messages which the tone is a bit unpleasant if they also contain a truth good to hear." This puts the burden on the reader - but the burden in civilized communication is foremost on the writer: She or he must try to formulate in such a way that the intended audience is most likely to listen to (read) the text.
• This has been a cornerstone of communication since eons, for reasons like: (a) There is anyway no way you can force anyone to listen to anything - so the only way to make it more probable to get listened to is to communicate as politely and forthcoming as possible - "simply" for efficiency reasons. (b) It is a positive part of all cultures to be polite. There is no reason for any of us to second-guess this. (c) There is no support for the hypothesis that "total transparency of all written interactions" is a key to the success of Wikipedia. The Wiki idea simply started out with this idea when wikis were thought to be small-scale platforms - but there is no reason to force everyone who wants to contribute to share that belief. But even if you do, "total transparency" is not the same as "total forced consumption of every utterance in the vicinity of the topic I'm interested to contribute to." "Transparancy" means exactly "I can look through all if I want to" - so an "ignore" button does not in the least reduce transparency. --Haraldmmueller (talk) 17:33, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
• A part of this is that continuing to read annoying messages is an emotional load. --Gryllida 00:49, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Observation

Riding your ass to get you to come into compliance with a guideline or policy that you have effectively ignored for days/weeks/months/years(?!?) on end is not me being annoying, its me trying to help you correct an error before you jacknife, overturn, crash, and burn. Is it unfriendly? Maybe. Is it necessary? Absolutely. And when I block you ass for having not gotten any of the messages since you chose to ignore them, whose going to get yelled at? You guessed it: me. Given this scenario, how would your ignore button help the rest of us when dealing with you in an attempted constructive manner? TomStar81 (talk) 05:47, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

So you defend harassing to be necessary to "come into compliance with a guideline"? A really gruesome presumption, I have to say. Alone the part "Riding your ass ... is not me being annoying" is a contradiction in terms. And, the argument is flawed: Today, if someone "rides my ass", I will either be out of the game immediately - and then that other one can edit around the whole block and back for enforcing that guideline that seems so vital to the survival of the world -, or I will start "riding back" - then we will have an edit war. With the ignore button, I will ignore your remark and do exactly the same. And you can do exactly the same things as today: "Give up", "contribute" to the edit war, cry "foul" to admins, etc. So there is no difference in the result for those involved. But the suggestion hugely improves well-feeling for others who do not want to read people even using phrases like "riding your ass," let alone defending such a behaviour. --Haraldmmueller (talk) 17:16, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

On every Wiki project there are users that just don't get how that individual project works. You get users that think the policies are the same across all the wikipedia languages. That simply is not true EN is very different from RU or IN. We often encounter users who refuse to listen to other editors, not because that editor is being rude but because its a case of "I Don't Like It. So I'm going to do what I want". I'm not thinking this proposal is very constructive at this point. One of the big ideals behind Wikipedia (at least at EN) is building a consensus. A user could just "ignore" whoever wasn't agreeing with them and then claim they didn't see the talk page discussion and assumed everyone was onboard with the changes. Another issue I see is ARB Com Discretionary Sanctions, right now we depend on editors notifying each other of Discretionary Sanction on topics. Actions can not be taken on a user unless they have been notified of the Discretionary Sanctions. Whats to stop a user from ignoring the user who places the DS warning and then claiming they didn't get it. Respectfully, this feature you are proposing has too much potential for abuse. This is going to make Administrators, and Stewards more headaches than they currently deal with. The AN/I thing I mentioned above still hasn't really been addressed. Should the Community then assume notification was received and ignored. Or should the Community Assume that Notification was made but not received? Cameron11598 (Converse) 18:13, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Respectfully, this is, as I read it, a "lawyer's" response. To me, your text sounds like written by someone who sees us (the writers) not as humans who need a nice environment to create good texts (good = informative, correct, understandable, etc.), but as objects of s process machinery that includes things like "consensus", "sactions", "claims" to be proven or refuted. Just one example: You say "A user could ... then claim they didn't see the talk page and assume ...": Well, I can and do this right now also. I have not sworn here to some abstract, constitutional or whatever rules - rather, I am working here in a community that gives itself common-sense rules in the full understanding that they are to applied with common sense - see e.g. the rule that it is ok to ignore rules if it makes sense. There's no way you can formalize that ... and no need for people who are polite, even when discussing their disagreements. I am quite sure that the only reason why "the administrators" (whoever that is) will have more to do with this feature added is that more will then be written, because more people will feel better by getting more control over their (and only their own) environment. But that would be horribly good, wouldn't it? --Haraldmmueller (talk) 18:47, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Lots of such interactions are confrontational. If they are, usage of an ignore button is well-warranted. (If I'm annoying enough and I continue to ignore policy reminders, the bottom line is the "you can block me" thought; the way I put that part is that blocked users are supposed to be unable to ignore.) --Gryllida 00:50, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Similar ideas

• Grants talk:IdeaLab/Block function

Comments from TParis

(Note: This was originally placed on the idea page. While disagreements with proposals in IdeaLab are fine, they are best suited on the talk page so that idea creators and others can discuss those at length rather than occupying space on the proposal page itself. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:46, 3 June 2016 (UTC))

While you're at it, delete en:WP:CONSENSUS and rewrite en:Wikipedia:About to say "Wikipedia is written collaboratively by a bunch of users ignoring each other..."--TParis (talk) 17:59, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

"Thanks" for this nice example of non-constructive language trying to throw garbage at (a) the initiator of this idea; (b) all those who support it; (c) all those who read it and are interested in it, but then see that the discussion is polluted by derogatory phrases like "...bunch of..." and "...ignoring each other...", While this may not be genuine harassing, it nicely shows that some people use language that definitely alienates many more people than it will attract to contribute: And as long as I cannot suppress such comments, I (and many more) feel much less inclined to return here than if I could select what I want to read, ponder, comment on, support or criticize.

Incidentally, moving text to the discussion page is obviously a poor man's way of an ignore feature in order to not scare off people already on the article (or, here idea) page. One more indication to add that ignore button ... --Haraldmmueller (talk) 18:56, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for demonstrating exactly why this idea won't work. I appreciate your demonstration.--TParis (talk) 19:02, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Can we, for a moment, leave away the undertones in our texts - because I do not understand the argument in your last comment, but would like to. Could you explain it to me - might be that I'm just a little slow right now. I promise I will return to more or less one-sided arguing afterwards ;-) --Haraldmmueller (talk) 19:27, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely, you said my comment was garbage. If there was an ignore button, you'd likely have ignored me. That would've contributed to 1) Destroying collaboration, 2) Giving you a false sense of consensus, 3) caused you to miss obvious failures of this idea. For example, one of the ideas is to ignore administrators. Does that include ignoring administrative blocks? And if so, what prevents a user from "ignoring" every administrator and thereby immunizing themselves from a block? You might laugh at the idea of an editor ignoring 1,500 administrators, but I could easily write a chrome script to do it automatically. That could be distributed on sites like reddit and then vandals could run rampant. Also, another idea in this proposal is to ignore editor contributions in the article history. 1) What impact does that have on our attribution requirement in our content license? And 2) How are you going to ignore the line in the history while seeing the change in the article? The edit is still visible.--TParis (talk) 19:40, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, I would have ignored you - your premise is right. I do not see that your conclusions are right:

1) Unless you understand every communication, even by people who disagree about the (meta-)aspects of communication [which I would have done with you], as "collaboration", there is no collaboration to begin with that would have been "destroyed." Right now, I (and probably and hopefully) many others, ignore texts that disturb them by looking quickly at the poster's name and then more or less "actively" do not read them. And yes, sometimes I get curious whether such people's mode of communciation has changed for the better (in my subjective view), and then I read part of a newer one of their answers ... that's what an "unignore" button is for. But routinely, I avoid pages where such people added more than 3 or 4 comments, even if these pages are at my core interest.

2) Hmm - I do not see what "consensus" means with people who are impolite with me. With people I ignore, I do not have a "false sense of consensus", but more a "true sense of non-consensus". The problem is of course that I (and the other person) miss possibilities to reach consensus. But for that, it is simply necessary that people become more polite. "But what is polite enough [to keep up a discussion to reach consensus]?", you might ask. Well, this is a problem that no human ever has solved - so this is no argument.

3) Actually, I do not and cannot read evenmindedly texts that I feel to be attacking: So I (and, by extension, people who react to the "politeness undertones" in texts) will miss any message in them anyway. It was quite hard for me to ask you at all, and ask you politely after your - to me cynically sounding - answer "I appreciate your demonstration": Only for the sake of this discussion I forced myself to do this. Usually, I would not have tried to understand whether there was a genuine argument behind this remark, or just an attempt to "win the discussion". So, also for 3), I would not have missed anything.

4) "Immunizing": Being an editor in the WP os nothing but a huge undertaking in "immunizing" oneself: The numbers of "disabled" people there - regarding language, specific knowledge, communication - is so huge that one has to divert a considerable amount of one's pondering about what on reads and writes to such unhappy areas. Controlling this depending on what I do is crucial, and the more so for sensible people.

In sum, I think that you believe that people try to understand what you want to say without you helping them by being polite and non-rude: But, in my long experience in this world, this is simply not so. Of course, all this said me being me ... --Haraldmmueller (talk) 19:59, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

I think your answer demonstrates why the ignore button would be a bad idea. TParis' comment was not harassment, nor was it particularly rude. It did present an idea that you disagreed with, and as you suggested above, you would have ignored him based on how he presented it. We shouldn't be in the business of hiding all ideas and perspectives that we disagree with - this is an open, collaborative project. Let's keep it that way. Ajraddatz (talk) 20:08, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Ajr. Your comment edit conflicted with a comment from me that would have been rude and condescending and probably would've undermined my point. Yours presents my feelings much better.--TParis (talk) 20:13, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Hey, always glad to help :-) Ajraddatz (talk) 20:15, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it was not harassment (I think I said that) - but it was rude (I wouldn't want to discuss how "particularly rude" differs from "rude"). I think that your comment is the same wishful thinking (meant non-offending!) as others: You seem to imply that not having an ignore button makes people not ignore texts that they simply do not want to read. But they do: They just do not contribute in areas where such people leave their comments - or even do not contribute to WP at all. So, the question is "would an ignore button get more people to collaborate" - with the assumption (my assumption) that on the whole. many more people will interact and contribute in civilized and polite ways than will be lost due to the effects you describe. --Haraldmmueller (talk) 20:16, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

You've also kind of proven my point now too. If you were a new editor who wasn't familiar with the policies at particular project and TParis who is an admin at EN for example told you to stop creating categories that have already been deleted or he would block you, you wouldn't have gotten the warning because you ignored TParis. TParis is correct Consensus is the backbone of the wikipedia community and this kind of destroys consensus or at least muddles it. Cameron11598 (Converse) 06:31, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I think we all agree now that we disagree radically about a central concept: Namely how "consensus" is linked to "being human." In your (TParis, Cameron11598, Ajraddatz) view, it is possible and even sensible to assume that people can be forced to read, or if they do not do this, be judged by their non-reading of (some of you say "necessarily", but you might also think of "accidentally") rude or abusive messages. My stance, on the other hand is, that "no one can be expected to do the impossible" (old Roman law rule), namely at the same time read something which emotionally upsets them, but then react only to the rational part. Therefore, the premise you have might be theoretically possible, but in the real world, it simply does not hold: Communication and, therefore, as a subset of communication, reaching of consensus does not happen in such cases. The result can be seen everywhere in WP; is, as we all know, even part of the public view of WP: "More and more people leave WP because of unacceptable behaviour of a few"; and is the reason we try to find ideas fighting this problem here at all.

My stance is that "consensus" can, more or less be definition, never be a forced concept, so any rude message (on a subjective level - but there is no other way how people judge emotionally) will not lead to consensus. So the question is only: How will someone who gets messages that appall her or him react?: By leaving the interaction where this happens (that area of WP; or WP as a whole); or can he shape the interaction seomwhat? Right now, the only possibility, which is chosen by many, is the first. And therefore, right now, we are in the danger of ending up as a "bunch of users ignoring each other," as TParis stated in his inital comment - exactly because the current WP ecosystem favors people who are thick-skinned and do not care for what others say that are not of the "right opinion". The other possibility is that "caring people", people who want to listen to others are invited again - exactly so that we can have more contributions, but also reach consensus at more places. But for this, it is tantamount that such people have at least some possibilities of shapting emotionally too stressful interactions. The "ignore functionality" is one such suggestion.

But if you three are so opposed to it, but follow my general argument that we need to change WP a little to invite people who want to shape their interaction (other than just leaving again in a hurry), maybe you can come up with some other idea that keeps your concept of "consensus". --Haraldmmueller (talk) 08:40, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

I think you're continuing to demonstrate that this ignore button will assist users in railroading their personal views and goals ahead of project goals and they'll ignore anyone who disagrees with them. The goals of the project are a neutral, verifiable, encyclopedia and our way of achieving that is with consensus. That's the project's goal. If you want to participate there, the project goal needs to come before your own goals. I can agree that an "ignore" button would be acceptable to prevent folks from coming to your talk page, or even creating a 'notification' but it wouldn't work in project or talk space. If it existed in user space, though, then we could encourage a 'just walk away' culture for users that feel harassed. They would leave the discussion that they feel attacked on and the ignore button would prevent the affected user from notifying or otherwise drawing the harassed user back. Would you agree that this is a reasonable compromise?--TParis (talk) 18:39, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

(Existing work) Firefox Extension

Hello! Thanks for writing this up! I've personally found it necessary to keep certain users out of my life as much as possible to be able to continue to function in a sane way. I wrote a Firefox extension to do this - wikihide. It allows you to specify a list of users you do not want to interact with, and it will hide *any* conversations (sections) that has any mention of them on talk pages across wikimedia. While this is probably more forceful than necessary, I've found it has reduced my stress levels significantly and hope other people find it useful too. The source is on github, and I'll be happy to fix bugs / add features that people want. Thanks! YuviPanda (talk) 19:48, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks :-) Maybe you can put this to the grants namespace as opposed to grants talk? It would expose your code to more people so to speak. I don't think many people read the talk page, particularly this far. --Gryllida 00:52, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

A new grants page? Not sure that's useful though - I don't want grants :D (nor am I eligible, being a WMF employee). Feel free to incorporate that into yours though! YuviPanda (talk) 19:06, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

IP addresses

There is a problem with having unregistered editors use the ignore button, an IP address can involve many people including in one case a small country. An ignore button should only be available to people who have an account. WereSpielChequers (talk) 23:13, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Supported. As a general notice, the ignore feature should be an additional option for people to "function in a sane way" (as the implementor of the Firefox plugin calls it) if they feel that "non-interaction" with some user helps them. But there could be some "burdens" when using that feature, like the one suggested here. --Haraldmmueller (talk) 10:11, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

More fine-tuning: "Ignore per page"?

In the discussion above that started with a comment by TParis, my "adversaries" point out that ignoring an admin might lead to the break-down of communication, e.g. when an admin issues some sort of warnings to a user. One improvement might be that one cannot ignore admins - more on that in another section. But another possibility would be ignoring per page. Here is a personal example:

I got a very nasty and ad hominem attack on a page from a user who expressed that by a few simple factual edits, I, as a mere layman, was trying to prove him wrong when this had been his profession for so-and-so long. I only reacted with "Aha.", and later, that user calmed down and writes now more or less polite, if sometimes a little too smart comments elsewhere. I would not like to miss these comments, but I actually do not ever want to see that one long comment again. Yet, that page is somewhat central to a (railway) topic, so I will visit and maybe contribute there in the future. Deleting that comment, and deleting by me, is against WP rules. And others may read it and do as they want. But I would like to not see that - not in the least because I feel that I get (negatively) emotional against that user again, which is simply unnecessary for both of us and WP as a whole.

Therefore, my suggestion is that an "ignore" works only for a single page. This also should appeal to my co-discussionists from above, because it prevents a total break-down of communication: On new pages, a reader is given another possibility to think about how to behave against that user; and the burden is again on her/him to "opt-in" into ignoring that user. --Haraldmmueller (talk) 10:07, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

If this were on enwp, I'd be happy to "hat" the comment for you.--TParis (talk) 06:15, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

"Project administrators should also be ignore-able"

I see this as a matter of degree: Yes, also admins might behave so that I cannot bear to read them. But then (as the original suggester explains), there must be a way that a message can come through: A useful way from old times is to "send a proxy", who might be able to communicate in a way acceptable to the user. But on the other hand, also the suggested ignore button will not shield people from all adverse influence of this world. So, there is no fundamental argument against a rule that "admins cannot be ignored". Most probably, ignoring will still reduce lots of stress and leaving - there many editors, but far fewer admins; and such a rule might be useful to get people like "my discussionists" from the discussion above on-board for this feature. --Haraldmmueller (talk) 10:17, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

We are supposed to have a lot more admins than we have now, I think. --Gryllida 00:53, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

MeatBall:ViewPoint

Cf. MeatBall:ViewPoint. --Nemo 17:04, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Existing chrome extension

there's a chrome extension that does this if anyone is interested trying it out. Jdlrobson (talk) 00:27, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

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