Wikipedia:Are you NUTS...

This is an essay on the civility policy. 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.

This page in a nutshell: Both common courtesy and wikipedia policy preclude suggesting our correspondent's disagree with us because they are mentally ill. So, politely focus your counter-arguments on policy issues, and bear in mind inexperienced contributors may still make valid points, because even the most experienced of us are fallible.

In some wikipedia discussions one can find one party asking someone with whom they disagree a question that is some kind of variation of "Are you NUTS?"

Well, one obvious problem with questions like this is that most ways of asking this question are lapses from our wikidocuments on civility.

Participation should remain open to anyone who does a reasonably good job at complying with our policies, without regard to any real world mental health issues they may have.

Some minors, individuals below the legal age of consent, nevertheless participate with the maturity and competence as if they were already adults.

There are discussions where a participant tacitly acknowledges a comment they made, or an edit they made in article space, wasn't helpful, or was a lapse from WP:CIVIL, or some other policy or guideline, but added something like, "Hey, cut me some slack, I have XYZ mental disorder, and I find working on the wikipedia therapeutic."

It is great when wikipedia contributors get something out of their participation, like a feeling of a job well done, find their participation therapeutic, but their contributions cannot interfere with the project's goals.

When those who find participation therapeutic also manage to measure up to the same expectations we expect of everyone else? Great! No problem! There may be a meaningful fraction of our contributors, who don't try to claim 100 percent mental health, with their closest real world friends, who, nevertheless show no signs of their mental health issues here. That is great!

However, the good faith participation of individuals who have managed to participate in a more or less fully policy compliant manner, in spite of mental health issues, means that we should take a hard line in admonishing those who frivolously state or imply others are showing mental health problems. So, don't state or imply that disagreement with you is a symptom of an underlying mental health issue.

We have a guideline on competence, WP:Competence. Contributors whose good faith is not in doubt can, nevertheless, have their participation restricted, monitored, or blocked, when they can't or won't understand that they keep lapsing from some policy or guideline.

The competence guideline should not be used crudely or without consideration, as a rhetorical tool during a disagreement.

Rather than a direct accusation of incompetence, try asking a direct question of what the other party thinks the relevant passage from the policy means. We are all human, and subject to human fallibility, so it could turn out that their reply teaches the questioner something about our policies, and they drop their concern, with neither party bruising their ego.

The wikipedia has had, in the past, competent, good faith contributors who were too young for their agreement to release rights to their contributions under the free licenses we use to be legally binding.

Most of these individuals eventually grew old enough that the question of their legal competency became moot. A few individuals have tried to claw back their intellectual property rights, after claiming they were too young to have released them.

Should it be a problem for us, when we suspect another contributor is legally still a minor? No, so long as their actual contributions remain competent, we should keep those doubts to ourselves.

Unfortunately, there are contributors who don't always behave as if they were mature adults, who nevertheless are mature adults -- even senior citizens.

Once again, polite specificity is what is required. If you see someone who made comments or edits you were concerned lapsed from a policy or guideline, because you thought they were immature, don't mention your concern over their maturity. Rather have your concern politely focus on what you thought was their lapse from policy.

• WP:Teachable moments