Thread:Imamadmad/@comment-24200325-20150816124758/@comment-4189499-20160622094738

I've left a reply, although the situation had already been diffused by the time I got there. In general, I think all parties were in the wrong there to some degree. The fact that Munkondi kept writing those comments rather than posing a direct challenge to Flockky on his/her message wall puts her/him in the wrong, but I also think the people accusing Munkondi were also to blame. At least Munkondi responded well to all arguments put directly to her/him in the thread, but the attitude of the CCSW regulars just inflamed the tensions rather than calming them down.

While I can tell you were trying to calm the situation Rose, I do think you could have handled it better. Next time, don't go on the attack. Bring up links to the content you think is wrong, quote the lines you think are wrong, explain why you think they were wrong, and suggest to the user what they should have done instead. Remember to be specific. If you just accuse without specific evidence (as in links and quotes), the other party will just go on the defensive and accuse back and you won't get anywhere. That is why you have to rely on showing the evidence, explaining your interpretation, and giving them advice for improvement in good faith. Assuming good faith is vital in any wiki community, because the vast majority of people don't mean to hurt others. Munkondi obviously didn't realise she/he had done anything wrong, which is why you need to show her/him calmly and politely why what they did wasn't OK. In the case of your first comment, you do give a single quote, but not a link, and you do try to explain why things are wrong, but you do it from the side of the comment it was responding to, rather than saying why the response itself was bad. You need to put these things in terms of the user's actions, as it it the user that is under scrutiny, not those around them.

Anyway, I'm glad to see the situation seems to have been resolved :)

PS: Freedom of speech is a false argument. Under freedom of speech, you have every right to say what you want, and I have every right to respond to that in any way I please, including by asking you not to say what you said. Anyway, freedom of speech only applies to government agencies and not online communities, as best expressed in https://xkcd.com/1357/