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Civil is something that has been regarded as increasingly important in the last year or so [1]. I have often heard it claimed that uncivil behavior is responsible for driving away new editors, and creating an unproductive editing and working environment.
However, I think it would be good to get some data on this. We have some anecdotal evidence that is a bit contrary to these claims:
- Militaries, such as the United States Marine Corps, seem to be quite productive and have not done anything over the centuries to try to squelch incivility in in the interests of a better and more productive working environment. If this contributed to winning wars, surely this would have happened.
- Academia itself is very uncivil. And yet, it seems to do good work. Wikipedia tries to emulate academia and uses peer-reviewed academic work as the gold standards in its references. And yet, this has not been the subject of any civility drives and movements.
- The halls of Congress and Big Business are quite uncivil. And yet, there are no massive drives to stomp out incivility.
- New York City, London and Paris are famous for being rude uncivil environments. And yet, these cities function and attract new residents. People do not flee these cities because of incivility for the most part. In fact, New Yorkers who move to other places frequently state they miss the incivility.
I do think civility is important, but not for those reasons. Clearly, being the 7th most popular website on earth and the number one destination for all kinds of information, Wikipedia is very visible. And just like Al Jazeera and CNN and the BBC and the New York Times and Google and Yahoo and other high visibility information sources, we are under scrutiny as a result. And just like other high visibility sources, we have to present a certain inoffensive public image. A public relations disaster is just around the corner if we allow uncontrolled incivility and profanity behind the scenes at Wikipedia.