Wikipedia:How to lessen wikibattling

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Ice hockey

Have you noticed there are lots of fights in hockey but few in football (U.S. kind)? They're both contact sports. And there are numerous instances of road rage but few between pedestrians -- even if pedestrians bump into each other. And there is substantial Edit warring here in Wikipedia, but much less animosity when, for example, people discuss politics face-to-face in a coffeehouse.

What's going on?

What's common to all three -- hockey, car travel, and Wikipedia -- is that anonymous competitors can come on suddenly with little or no warning and cause big damage to us. We can not read their faces to get cues about their emotional state. It happens fast. And the damage can be substantial. These circumstances create fear, and we deal with the fear by becoming angry.

In hockey, an opposing player can come out of nowhere -- from behind or from the side-- and knock us down or trip us, and it happens so fast. In football, however, there's more time to react -- we can see a huge opposing player coming at us in many circumstances. Players expect a pile-up while pile-ups or trip-ups are more unexpected in hockey. (One counter-argument: football helmets block the visibility of faces to some extent.)

In driving, we rarely see other drivers' faces. There are huge fast-moving metallic shapes which can come out of nowhere and potentially kill us. Walking, however, there is less potential damage of being seriously hurt or killed; and we can read other people's faces and say excuse me or sorry, along with well-established rules for how to co-exist.

In Wikipedia, an anonymous handle can come out of nowhere and challenge our addition or edit or even delete our article or block us from editing -- huge damage; happens suddenly; faceless; we do not get to read the other person's facial expressions. Wikipedia is like hockey and driving in this sense.

If this is right -- a big if -- there may be ways to lessen the wikibattling by adjusting the Wikipedia interface.

• Face icons. Suppose users had face-icons, perhaps their real faces or else an image of another face, or even a cartoon image -- preferably smiling or friendly-looking. Then, perhaps, these thumbnail images could be put next to their contributions on talk or Wikipedia pages (not in articles obviously). It might help humanize Wikipedia, perhaps lead to a friendlier atmosphere.

• Time buffer. The idea is to lessen the surprise of a huge revert or change. Here's one way it might work. Suppose user X adds two sentences. User Y wants to delete those two sentences. So, user Y would delete them, but what user X would see is first a notice that the edit was challenged which appears for perhaps ten minutes to a half hour or whatever time period is chosen. That gives user X a chance to explain the addition to user Y, to fix the sentences or add references. There's less of a SHOCK of a surprise delete -- user X knows it's coming ahead of time, has a chance to react, and when the delete finally happens in terms of what user X sees (the Wikipedia software interface makes the change now), it's easier for X to accept it.

There still will be back-and-forth challenges, but there may be ways such as these to limit the anger by modifying the software interface.