http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...ev&oldid=596665
QUOTE(WP:No personal attacks 2002)
No personal attacks on the Wikipedia, period. No calling people trolls, no calling people Stupid White Men, no accusations of any kind relating to the character of another person, nor their race, creed, sex, national origin, etc. The only thing that matters is the articles, not the people who write them.
Unlike the other rules, which are community conventions enforced only by our mutual agreement, this one may also be implemented in extreme cases as policy,
i.e. grounds for banning that go beyond our traditional "sheer vandalism" threshold.
If you support this rule, then you support the idea that Jimbo should, in extreme cases after considerable consultation with the community and the offender, actually cut someone off from participation.
Likewise, when a debate threatens to become personal, confer about the problem in e-mail. If parties to a dispute start exchanging insults or other unpleasant words, it's preferable to confer privately in e-mail rather than continuing to expose Wikipedia to the unpleasantness. This is not to say that the debate should be moved to e-mail, because the debate is in most cases of genuine public interest. So the substantive debate should remain where it is; the unpleasant personal problems should be discussed, as necessary, privately.
Unlike the other rules, which are community conventions enforced only by our mutual agreement, this one may also be implemented in extreme cases as policy,
i.e. grounds for banning that go beyond our traditional "sheer vandalism" threshold.
If you support this rule, then you support the idea that Jimbo should, in extreme cases after considerable consultation with the community and the offender, actually cut someone off from participation.
Likewise, when a debate threatens to become personal, confer about the problem in e-mail. If parties to a dispute start exchanging insults or other unpleasant words, it's preferable to confer privately in e-mail rather than continuing to expose Wikipedia to the unpleasantness. This is not to say that the debate should be moved to e-mail, because the debate is in most cases of genuine public interest. So the substantive debate should remain where it is; the unpleasant personal problems should be discussed, as necessary, privately.
This is a far cry from what the policy became. See how the opening line is "No calling people trolls", and recall that by Wikipedia's worst era (circa 2007), the policy had morphed into almost the opposite of its intended purpose. Hardcore Wikipedios, notably Phil Sandifer, changed the policy around 2005 to reflect a completely different ethic, to the point that the policy had accompanying pages such as Wikipedia:Dealing with trolls and Wikipedia:What is a troll?.
Recall as well that around 2007, all manner of behavior was being considered actionable under the WP:No Personal Attacks policy. Including merely editing the same page as powerful editors like SlimVirgin. Instead of the original premise of "The only thing that matters is the articles, not the people who write them", it became all about the "people who write them", and how so stop those people. Ask an administrator like JzG.