Wikipedia:How to improve civility

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Treat your fellow editor as a respected and admired colleague, who is working in collaboration with you on an important project.

See also:Wikipedia:Etiquette

User pages

Civility is appropriate on all user pages. Wikipedia provides user pages to facilitate communication among participants in its project to build an encyclopedia, and if user page activity becomes disruptive to the community or gets in the way of the task of building an encyclopedia, it must be modified to prevent disruption. Observe community policies in user space. Do not make personal attacks in user space or elsewhere.

Do not include in your user space material that is likely to bring the project into disrepute. Inappropriate content on user pages may be removed. You should not reveal the personal information of other editors without their consent.

Harassment and disclosing personal information (outing)

Harassment occurs when a particular user is "targeted" by another editor, and may include any untoward attention such as seeking to communicate inappropriately with that user, or contacting other persons (either on- or off-wiki) in order to cause harm to that user. Repeated instances of incivility, if unchecked, can also constitute harassment.

Because of privacy concerns, which apply to the Internet in general, editors (users) are encouraged not to supply superfluous identifying information about themselves, such as home address or telephone number. This minimizes the likelihood of spamming or harassment by outside parties. If personal information becomes available in such a way as to constitute a risk of harm to a user, the information can be deleted or oversighted if necessary.

Outing occurs when a particular editor's personal information is revealed by another editor without their explicit permission.

Editors who harass other users, publicly disclose personal information on another user, or enable the harassment of a user, may be blocked for doing so.

No legal threats

You should always first attempt to resolve disputes using Wikipedia's dispute resolution procedures. Wikipedia cannot prevent editors from taking legal action if they feel they must do so. However, we require that you do not edit Wikipedia until the legal matter has been resolved to ensure that all legal processes happen via proper legal channels.