Wikipedia:Ignore personal attacks
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This essay contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints. Consider these views with discretion. |
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This page in a nutshell: When personally attacked you should ignore it, rise above it, and continue to comment solely on relevant content. |
Generally speaking, if somebody is making a personal attack on you, the best thing to do is not to "warn" them for it, nor to block them, nor to report the insult to an admin in the hopes of getting them blocked. It tends to escalate the situation (see ConflictCycle below), annoy the attacker, and possibly invite future attacks. Defending your honour will not achieve a thing.
What you ought to do is simply rise above it. Ignore the personal attacks—there's no need to delete them, just ignore them completely. Continue to comment on the content of your discussion (that is, what you were talking about that was to do with improving an encyclopedia. If you weren't discussing something like that, maybe you should back away entirely). Hopefully, the other person will recognise that you've risen above them, and do likewise. A little thick skin is in order.
Certainly, if the attack was egregious, and other editors around, those editors may call the other editor on their personal attack. This is a good thing — it means that there is no appearance of, nor actual, hypersensitivity because the person who was attacked is the person labelling the attack as such.
Note that this isn't a "get out of jail free" card for people who do make personal attacks. People who make personal attacks do damage Wikipedia, and it is right that we do our best to prevent personal attacks from occurring here. However, sometimes, if you're the person who's been personally attacked, it is better to be the better person and ignore it, getting back to your topic of discussion, than to get revenge, or demand punishment (We don't have punitive blocks on Wikipedia). It is important to take a "less heat, more light" approach to dealing with personal attacks.
In particular, a person who wishes to attack you may wish to see you get in trouble for retaliating. Cases like this often have results similar to playing chicken as far as seeing how far a rule can be pushed before it is broken.
