Talk:Learning from conflict and incivility

Merge?

There is a similar project to this Ethical Management of the English Language Wikiversity. I'm sure both started off on a different foot, however. Dzonatas 12:57, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Currently there is a protect template on that page asking that the page not be edited while the project is being created. Also, it is not clear from the current state of that page what the goals of that project are. I would keep them seperate for now, and perhaps consider a merge at a later time. --mikeu ^talk 13:51, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

There is now a redirect from that page to this project. --mikeu ^talk 15:58, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Non-participation

I envisage that there may be people involved in the recent conflicts that may not want to participate in this project, for whatever reason. I'd be interested to hear if there would be any other ways that these conflicts could be studied, or learnt from. Please add ideas and comments here. Cormaggio ^talk 16:07, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

See also: Talk:Ethical_Management_of_the_English_Language_Wikipedia#Status_update.2C_and_an_introduction and User:Jayvdb/EMELW --mikeu ^talk 16:14, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I was arrested by this characterization of the self-narratives that Cormaggio called for:

“ I thought it might be an idea, as a start, to write a self-narrative about our own role in this period, and our thoughts and feelings about what has happened within this period. Please add a subpage (ie /Username) with your own narrative. From recent (bad) experience of the case studies in the ethics project, I think these should be deliberately personal (and self-reflective), and general discussion can take place either below the narratives, or on their talk pages. Cormaggio ^talk 10:53, 11 September 2008 (UTC) ”

I do not reckon my experience with Centaur of Attention or Salmon of Doubt as either good or bad. Rather I reckon it as vexing and perplexing. I have been studying, thinking about (and occasionally solving) challenging ethical conundrums ever since I was a teenager, studying them under the tutelage of Rabbi Myer S. Kripke. The ethical conundrums supplied here by Centaur of Attention, Salmon of Doubt, Mike.lifeguard, and KillerChihuahua are fascinating to me precisely because they are so bloody hard to solve. Most of their maneuvers here are frankly beyond my pay grade as a lifelong student of such conundrums. The whole point of the Ethics Project is to discover better ethical practices (enroute to best ethical practices) when challenged with ethical conundrums of the caliber that CofA, SofD, M.l, and KC are wont to toss my way. So for me this is not a "bad" experience at all. It's an educational experience at my own frontiers of learning, which is exactly what I seek as a learner in any subject of interest to me. As long as Cormaggio prefers to limit this project to those who characterize their experience as "bad", I am disqualified from participation.

—Moulton 14:13, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I would agree that it was vexing and perplexing - I sometimes describe such experiences as bad experiences, ie ones that I would prefer not to do again in exactly the same way. It was an entirely personal (and deliberately signed) comment - I saw the conduct of the case studies as bad/negative/unproductive, and I therefore proposed that we wrote individual narratives from the beginning, which we could use to learn about each other's perspectives. It's a complete misreading of what I wrote to suggest that I only invite people who would characterise recent experiences by the word "bad". I also agree that it's been educational - and that's why I started this project. Does this change your perspective in any way? Cormaggio ^talk 15:34, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

If you would amend the intro to that section to invite narratives, be they good, bad, exasperating, intriguing, enthralling, vexing, perplexing, whatever, then I could see the invitation extending to people like myself who are wont to take on difficult problems and issues that many people would shy away from (even as I once did for many decades of my life). —Moulton 05:37, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know - I never asked that the narratives be good, bad or anything other than "personal (and self-reflective)". In any case, I'll remove the word "bad" - it doesn't fundamentally change the meaning of my original sentence. And I set up this project precisely so we would not shy away from anything - when I said "not to do again in the same way", I am referring to the fact that I'm willing to learn from experiences to modify subsequent actions. Cormaggio ^talk 08:31, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Moving on

Firstly, I'd like to thank everyone who has participated so far - there are some very interesting observations and methods in the initial narratives, and even some quite creative licence being taken! This is all to the good - I've set up this project to be a genuinely participant-led one - we're all in this project together, even if we don't necessarily agree (indeed, often precisely because we don't agree). I'd encourage everyone to read each other's "narratives" (perhaps we need a better word? reflections?), and leave comments and questions where appropriate. The major methodology of this project is to learn from each other through mutual reflection and discussion. However, as I commented to User:Jade Knight, the methodology should adapt to the desires of the participants - so please do make suggestions about how you think this project might be improved...

Moving on (though please do continue the initial personal-reflective work) - I've set up a workspace: Learning from conflict and incivility/Instances of incivility. As I say there, I imagine that this is contested ground - what exactly do individual people think is uncivil? I hope that this can generate discussion around specific actions, through which we can hopefully learn about ourselves and others. I don't see any other way for this to work than, again, to give personal opinions - we are not (for now) forcing an NPOV "account" of a given instance. As always, comments about this proposed method are very welcome - here, or on its talk page. Cormaggio ^talk 15:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC)