Wikipedia talk:Avoid personal remarks

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This page is gentler and shorter than Wikipedia:No personal attacks. I prefer it, when trying to get contributors to stop teasing each other. -- Uncle Ed (talk) 20:18, Jun 11, 2005 (UTC)

Should be made an offical policy and be mentioned in WP:NPA. --Cool Cat ^{My Talk} 20:39, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Provoking personal remarks[edit]

Some users encourage others to engage in personal remarks during discussions through the manner in which they frame the discussion and phrase their comments in the discussion. While we should only hold those who make personal remarks responsible for having made them, we could greatly reduce the number of personal remarks made by encouraging editors to not provoke personal remarks (pedestrian safety is my model here). For example, when criticizing an article using the two alternatives below one is much more likely to provoke a response centered around the article and one is more likely to provoke a response centered around the user who lodging the complaint:

This article is well written for the most part but the first section is confusing in that it does not explain any of the technical terms used.

I think this article is a dangerous piece of crap and like my father doesn't explain anything, especially the first section's technical terms.

Hyacinth (talk) 02:50, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]