Wikibooks:Reading room/Proposals/2018/July

Rules of rational discussion
Hi, I added a section about rules of rational discussion at the end of Using Wikibooks/Discussion and Consensus. You are all invited to discuss and modify this contribution, which is about all discussions in Wikibooks, and everywhere.--TD (discuss • contribs) 00:18, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Thierry Dugnolle, the honest truth is, your personal ideas about how wikis should be run cannot be trusted. You're trying to bureaucratize the common-sense activity of contributing to a wiki, making something easy into something difficult, which cannot credibly be expected not to favor the sort of personal editorial control you've recently been blocked for trying to claim against policy and consensus.  Just leave it alone; there is no problem for you to fix, except the problem you have been creating by trying to claim rights that you aren't entitled to on the project.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 00:44, 18 July 2018 (UTC)


 * The common sense rules that you erased are not about how wikis should be run, only about rational discussions. They say nothing about editorial control. Your description of the previous debate is not very accurate. The community should have the possibility to discuss these rules before you erase them. This is why I reproduce them here, so that everyone can discuss them:

The ideal wikibookian in a discussion (new version)
When users disagree, discussions shall never degenerate into bad controversy, because they are bad for the community as a whole and for each participant. Here are a few rules which we should keep in mind if we want to participate rationally and peacefully in a discussion.

Remain civil, and as friendly as possible. If you humiliate a participant, you don't win the debate, you only show your wickedness. Never write about participants' intentions if they have not written anything about them. Never insinuate anything but always speak frankly and politely.

Seek consensus. If you want others to change their mind, you have to give them good reasons. Don't hope that they will be seduced by the quality of your writing. It never works. They will agree with you only if they think that it would be silly to disagree.

Invoke the rules. If you think a participant is not right, you have to find a good rule which proves it.

Never pretend you know if you don't know. Remember that a wise human being is not someone who always says that they know, but someone who always says that they don't know, except when they know.

Do your homework. Before participating in a discussion, you should read the page which is discussed, the previous interventions of others, at least if they are not off topic, and the other pages relevant to the discussion. Don't intervene if you don't know what the discussion is about.

Focus on the subject, the title of the discussion, and never make personal judgment. If you think a participant is silly, don't publish it. Just explain as diplomatically as you can why you consider wrong what they wrote on the subject. If a contribution is off topic, just answer that. You don't have to comment.

If your emotion is too strong, don't click on Publish changes. Wait until you have calmed down. Remember you can remain silent as long as you want. No one can force you to react. Take your time. Remember also that all versions of all pages of Wikibooks are archived. Look at the History tab of a page to check it. This means that what you publish can be read by the whole humanity for ever. With a few exceptions, what is written is never deleted.

Be fair. Don’t extract a few words out of their context to mislead the reader. More generally, never suggest a false interpretation of a participant's words. Remember that there can’t be any successful communication without the linguistic principle of charity : always interpret the others’ words in a way that is most favorable to them.

Respect previous workers. If you disagree with their work, start a discussion in the relevant page and be polite. Otherwise you could be perceived as a vandal.

Take always the side of the truth, as much as you can. Respect proofs and refutations. Don’t repeat a false argument if it has been refuted.

--TD (discuss • contribs) 12:31, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

The beginning of the following discussion is about an old version of the previous rules


 * It's plausible that you don't see the bias in these "rules", probably because you're so immersed in the biased perspective yourself, but this is not advice about how to conduct oneself in a spirit of cooperative comeraderie; it's a set of rules to condition users to expect an argumentative atmosphere. Wikipedia has a viciously argumentative atmosphere, which is a major reason why it's considered socially toxic and users emigrate from Wikipedia to more friendly projects such as this one.  (Of course this is all connected to your campaign for personal editorial control; you've described in some detail how you envision that working by argumentation; but even independent of that, it's fundamentally a mistake that Wikipedia made and we should not.)  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 01:36, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * These rules are inspired from Wikipedia's rules, because I read the latter a long time ago when I was an active wikipedian, but they are not a reproduction. I wrote them my way because it helped me to bear the psychological tension which results from discussions, especially when their participants don't respect these rules. If wikibookians think my way is biased, they are free to rewrite these rules in an unbiased way.--TD (discuss • contribs) 02:06, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * You're trying to redefine your change to be the default from which others must argue for changes. Bluntly, that's nonsense.  The default is the status quo, from which addition of your rules is a major deviation that would need to be justified &mdash; and would, on the contrary, be lethally toxic.  It would turn this project into the kind of horrible place that Wikipedia has become.  You seem to have profoundly missed the point, because you seem unaware that you are supporting my position when you say they were inspired by Wikipedia.  My point is that Wikipedia's strategy has turned that project into a place that people don't want to be.  Wikibooks is a place people do want to be, and that is what would be destroyed by your attempt to impose Wikipedia-style argumentation.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 03:05, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Your personal attitude towards Wikipedia is off topic. I only told the truth about the relation between these rules and Wikipedia's.
 * Your argument against these rules: they are like Wikipedia's rules. Now Wikipedia is a horrible place. Therefore these rules are lethally toxic. This argument is not conclusive since its main premise, Wikipedia is a horrible place, is very doubtful.--TD (discuss • contribs) 09:48, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * The dire state of Wikipedia is widely recognized amongst the non-Wikipedian sisters, and even fairly widely acknowledged on Wikipedia. And you are missing the point, still.  Humans are not merely automata; feeding them these "rules" would shape their behavior to create the sort of world the "rules" imply; in this case, a dystopia.  This may be difficult for you to see because you have been carrying that dystopia around with you, creating microcosms of it on several pages over the past two weeks.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 10:34, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that Wikipedia and Wikibooks are united. You should not pretend that your personal attitude is representative of the community.
 * A community like Wikibooks can't work without rules. The common sense rules that you think are lethally toxic are ordinary rules of all rational discussions. They are of common use everywhere when participants seek consensus, not bad controversy. This is not a dystopia.--TD (discuss • contribs) 10:44, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I"m not pretending; I've been paying attention, listening to and interacting with the communities of the non-Wikipedian sisters for nany years now. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 10:51, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * You are an administrator. Please distinguish your personal attitude from the consensual values of the community you represent.

What happens in Wikibooks when one of these rules is not respected?--TD (discuss • contribs) 10:56, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I am an experienced Wikibookian (somehow, over the years, I'm surprised to look around and realize I'm probably the senior infrastructure expert here, as many good friends have made their contributions and moved on to phases of their lives that, at least for now, do not involve Wikibooks). Also, an experienced citizen of the wikimedian sisterhood at large, having been centrally concerned with, and on-the-spot witness to, relations between sisters for many years.  People like that, who have deep insight into the history, character, and dynamics of the projects, are often admins.  I note you have shown a preference for dismissing others' opinions as merely their own while presenting your own as authoritative; in your recent voluminous campaign for web hosting/editorial ownership you repeatedly tried to pass off the demonstrated widespread community consensus and understanding of experienced Wikibookians as a sort of flight-of-fancy by two users who, presumably randomly, happened to have admin privs. You're asking a strawman question.  Pushing your "rules" on users conditions them to expect their interactions with other users to be adversarial (a highly unusual situation on Wikibooks, though you have been actively creating that unusual situation around yourself, of course).  The operative question is, what happens to the peaceful Wikibookian community when you systematically condition users to expect an adversarial atmosphere; and the evident answer is, over time you change the atmosphere to an adversarial one.  It puts me in mind of science fiction stories in which the aliens come to earth and set out to transform its atmosphere to something that humans can't breathe.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:56, 18 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Your judgment on me is off-topic. This is a discussion about the rules of rational discussion.
 * That these rules could change the atmosphere into an adversarial one is a good objection. I rewrote them in a more peaceful way.

Can someone find a good reason against the addition of the new formulation of these rules to Using Wikibooks/Discussion and Consensus? --TD (discuss • contribs) 12:49, 18 July 2018 (UTC)


 * The problem with your "rules" is structural; the superficial changes you've made don't touch the essence of it. Your entire undertaking here is not addressing any problem that actually exists, and in doing this it insinuates its argumentative mindset into the minds of users.  The argumentative foundation on which the "rules" are built would not be at all easy to remove, one would always have to wonder if it was really all gone, and it really appears that thing one is trying to remove was the motive in the first place.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 19:52, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

I suppose this means that you still think that these rules are lethally toxic. Could you be more specific and explain about at least one of these common sense rules why it is not good?

Can someone find a good reason, clear and simple, against the addition of the new formulation of these common sense rules to Using Wikibooks/Discussion and Consensus? (Please don't use words like structural or essence because I usually don't understand what people mean with these words.)

If no one finds a good reason against it, I will feel free to complete Using Wikibooks/Discussion and Consensus and it won't be a policy violation.--TD (discuss • contribs) 22:54, 18 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I've observed this pattern in your behavior: You propose what you've decided to do; then, you reject what others say out of hand, keep saying that nobody has given any rational argument against what you say (which must be true if one defines "rational" as "what you want to hear"), repeat until your opponents no longer bother to repeat themselves, and pronounce yourself the winner on grounds that nobody has any further arguments to offer.  That modus operandi is clearly not directed toward consensus, but rather toward beating your opponents into submission &mdash; that is, it is argumentative rather than collaborative.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 02:24, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I thought I was simply working like every wikibookian. I make suggestions, I invite others to discuss them, and I follow reasons. Isn't it normal behavior?


 * Rational arguments are a form of cooperation. All participants in a discussion cooperate if they respect the rules of reason.


 * These rules tell what to do and not to do. Wikibookians usually already respect these rules, because they are common sense. But even if there wasn't any problem to fix, it would still be a good thing to write these rules, because they show that disagreement and cooperation shall not be mutually exclusive. Disagreements are ubiquitous in science and everywhere, but this is not a problem if the rules of reason are respected.


 * The question of the addition of these rules in Using Wikibooks/Discussion and Consensus seems to be settled, because its main opponent doesn't give any clear and simple reason against it. Therfore I feel free to edit this chapter. I hope it won't be considered as a policy violation. If administrators disagree, they are invited to warn me before blocking me. This doesn't mean that the discussion about these rules is ended. It never will. Wikibookians can discuss, modify or delete these rules on the relevant pages, but they have to justify rationally their decisions.--TD (discuss • contribs) 19:07, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Pi zero just reverted my edit. He should justify his decision here: "imposing your personal ownership-oriented theory on the community". These rules are nothing but common sense rules. They are not my "personal ownership-oriented theory".--TD (discuss • contribs) 19:29, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
 * (Added after edit conflict: I have made considerable efforts already to explain this to you.  Your philosophy of editing, in conflict with the character of the project, is deeply inculcated in to the entire worldview propagated by that set of "rules".)


 * TD, regarding your question about normal behavior: Your profile in these discussions is not typical of this project.  The whole effect is difficult to summarize, but, to start with, you tend to inundate the project; if anyone replies to you, you reply with more inundation, and your replies very often fail to grok what has been said to you.  Nor is that failing-to-grok a simple phenomenon, btw; your misunderstanding appears to be a complex thing, with some things you just seem to not hear, while others are subject to misinterpretations.  All this discourages others from responding; they're all volunteers, with limited time that is used profligately in attempting to engage in discussion with you, and as it becomes clear their words are not getting through to you, they're not likely to write still more that would meet the same fate.  And then, when you're not getting further responses, you're apt to convince yourself that you've won the debate.


 * Now, in my own experience, this project occasionally has discussions that go on for a bit, but they have a very different feel from the above. A telling difference, seems to me, is that those discussions generally have a very rate of successful communication; although you mention from time to time that English is not native for you, and your English is on the surface quite good, there appear to be some subtler things that have routinely gone wrong in your practical understanding of the overall sense of things said to you in the discussions.  It seems as if your personal beliefs interact with these subtleties of loose translation, in ways that interfere with things that might challenge your personal beliefs &mdash; an extraordinarily difficult effect to pin down, though it appears to be rather widespread.


 * Another difference I notice is that the usual sort of discussions are much more oriented toward communication. That is, they aren't debates, certainly nobody is trying to win points against anyone, they're exchanges of information by folks who share a common goal.  Come to think of it, that sort of collaborative spirit, which I think of as typical here, is not something I've usually seen on Wikipedia... although I recall making a few remarks in that spirit in a Wikipedian discussion a few years ago, and one of the other participants in the discussion took a moment to come over to my user talk page there to thank me. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 20:39, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * All those remarks are off topic. This is a discussion about rules of rational discussion. If you have something to say on this topic, say it. These rules are common sense rules, they are not my personal beliefs. I remind you that I don't obey to arbitrariness. If you want me to obey you have to give good reasons.--TD (discuss • contribs) 20:49, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * No, TD, they aren't off topic. You asked "Isn't it moral behavior?", which you may have meant as a rhetorical question, but in fact your behavior is not at all normal, and the reasons it isn't normal are extremely important to the various discussions you are engaged in over these issues.  You say "If you want me to obey you have to give good reasons", but, besides the fact that you evidently find it natural to frame things in terms of obedience, you routinely fail to understand what others are saying, and at a high level you're consistently not up to assessing the reasons others give you.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 21:17, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I always respected the rules. This is what I mean by "normal". I said "normal" not "moral", please be precise. I speak of obedience because Leaderboard and you want me to obey. If you didn't want me to obey, this controversy would not be.--TD (discuss • contribs) 21:22, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

A single book on a single subject?
If I understood them correctly, a few wikibookians think that that there should be one and only one wikibook on each subject. Here is my reaction as a scientist. We need many different books on the same subject, we need many different points of view. If we collect all different points of view in a single book, such a book is usually huge and unreadable by a beginner. In an educational library like Wikibooks, the freedom to write many textbooks on the same subject should be respected. Otherwise it will never be a truly scientific library.

My proposal is that any wikibookian should feel free to write a new wikibook on any subject even if other wikibooks on the same subject already exist.

The current philosophy of this project is that cooperation is an obligation. This is contrary to the free-thinking of scientists. We cooperate if we want, we are opponents if we want. This is freedom. Let each one write freely the wikibooks they want, otherwise you will be an impediment to the development of science and freedom.--TD (discuss • contribs) 21:40, 18 July 2018 (UTC)


 * You raise two unrelated points. The first point has to do with having more than one book on a subject, a common situation in our collection; either you have encountered somebody else who is unaware of how routine this is, or you have misunderstood something somebody else said.  (From my observations of you, I'd guess the latter is more probable.)  The second point is your usual rambling about editorial ownership; your core argument is a Wikibookian form of a common political ploy by elitist groups who want to take away the rights of others, in which they try to present this depriving-of-rights as protecting the rights of the elite.  On that second point, your particular phrasing, this time around, is apparently based on several confusions, amongst them a basic lack of understanding of the concept of cooperation; if one supposes that you understand that concept, that whole paragraph would fail to make sense.  If I were able to figure out the origin of that failure to understand cooperation, I would be proposing an addition to Using Wikibooks myself; but so far, no luck.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 02:09, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
 * The two points are related. If there can be different textbooks on the same subject then we can decide to cooperate or not with the authors of existing wikibooks.--TD (discuss • contribs) 08:06, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Not in favour. One can't have two versions of rotational physics, for instance (otherwise one of them will be wrong, as there is only one correct version). A far better idea is to improve on that one book which would be there for each topic. The other problem is obvious: it'll simply result in duplication. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 04:40, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * It depends entirely on specific context. It might well make sense to have just one book on a particular subject.  There might be any number of reasons why it might make sense to have more than one book on, more or less, the same subject.  The pros and cons of a single book, or different books, can have about as many variations as there are possible books, which is to say, effectively infinite variations, which cannot possibly be anticipated until the event.  In our collection of 3000+ books &mdash;which I certainly can't claim to be thoroughly versed in, but due to my infrastructure work over the past couple of years I've at least touched on almost all of them&mdash; there are lots and lots of books that are the only one on their topic, but also, as I recall, over the whole collection a fair number of cases where books are covering pretty much the same topic.  I think it would be counterproductive to have any sort of guideline either way.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 05:07, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Different doesn't mean contradictory.--TD (discuss • contribs) 08:19, 19 July 2018 (UTC)