Wikipedia:Tendentious editing
This is an explanatory essay about Wikipedia:Disruptive editing. This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. |
This page in a nutshell: How to recognize and avoid various problematic and disruptive patterns of editing. |
Tendentious editing is a pattern of editing that is partisan, biased, skewed, and does not maintain an editorially neutral point of view. It may also involve repeated attempts to insert or delete content in the face of the objections of several other editors, or behavior that tends to frustrate proper editorial processes and discussions. This is more than just an isolated edit or comment that was badly thought out.
This essay is about how to recognise such editing, how to avoid it, and how not to be accused of it.
Other policies, guidelines, and essays covering tendentious behaviors include:
- How content is edited – neutral point of view, consensus
- Common tendentious behaviors – edit warring, gaming the system / abuse of process, wikilawyering, disruption to make a point, "I didn't hear that"
- Editor intentions – single purpose accounts, not being here to build an encyclopedia.
What is tendentious editing?[edit]
Tendentious editing is editing with a sustained editorial bias, or with a clear editorial viewpoint contrary to Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. A single edit is unlikely to be a real problem, but a pattern of edits displaying an editor's bias is more likely to be an issue, and repeated biased edits of a single article or group of articles will be very unwelcome indeed. This last behavior is generally characterized as POV pushing and is a common cause of blocking. It is usually an indication of strong opinions.
Editors who engage in this behavior generally fall into two categories: those who come to realize the problem their edits cause, recognise their own bias, and work productively with editors with opposing views to build a better encyclopedia – and the rest. The rest often end up indefinitely blocked or, if they are otherwise productive editors with a blind spot on one particular area, they may be banned from certain articles or topics or become subject to probation.
It is important to recognize that everybody has bias. Few people will edit subjects in which they have no interest. Bias is not in and of itself a problem in editors, only in articles. Problems arise when editors see their own bias as neutral, and especially when they assume that any resistance to their edits is founded in bias towards an opposing point of view. The perception that "he who is not for me is against me" is contrary to Wikipedia's assume good faith guideline: always allow for the possibility that you are indeed wrong, and remember that attributing motives to fellow editors is inconsiderate.
Remember: Wikipedia is not a soapbox. Articles, including their titles, must conform to policy regarding the neutral point of view and verifiability. Content within articles must be based on reliable sources and thus be verifiable; article content must not include editors' own personal opinions or theories.
Characteristics of problem editors[edit]
Here are some hints to help you recognise if you or someone else has become a problem editor:
Not learning from a block for edit-warring[edit]
You have been blocked more than once for edit-warring. Or argue about whether you actually reverted four times or only three, or whether the three revert rule (3RR) applies to a calendar day or to any 24-hour period.
3RR exists to prevent edit wars. Wikilawyering about the precise details is unproductive and probably means that you have missed the point: edit warring is bad, and even one revert can be disruptive.
Even a slow-motion edit war, perhaps involving one revert per day, is still an edit war. 3RR draws a "bright line", but meeting its minimal requirements ultimately does not shield one from the consequences of edit-warring. If your edits are reverted or rejected, you can take the dispute to the article's talk page, remembering to cite your sources. If that fails, but you still feel that you are right, consider options for dispute resolution.
Repeating a penalised edit[edit]
On returning from a block, your first action is to head right back to the article and repeat the edit. A contentious fact does not become uncontentious by virtue of repetition. Elsewhere on the internet you can get away with repeating something until nobody cares enough to contradict you anymore; on Wikipedia, that is unacceptable.
A variant of returning to the same edit is returning to the same talk page to make the same arguments. On returning from a block, if you go to the talk page of the article you were penalized for, do not repeat the same arguments that led to the block. Instead, try to find different arguments, different policy rationales, and better sources. Repeating the exact arguments you made before your block may be viewed as disruptive.
As well, you may wish to compromise on the position you are arguing for, in the interests of proposing an idea which is more likely to get a consensus.
For example: If your earlier attempts to add the phrase "Film XYZ is widely viewed as the worst film in the genre" did not lead to consensus, you may want to propose more defensible wording, like this: "While Film XYZ was widely praised by critics, critic Sue Smith of the New York Times called it 'the poorest example of the genre in 2015'." This one at least has a WP:Reliable source, which is not you.
Wrongly accusing others of vandalism[edit]
You repeatedly undo the "vandalism" of others.
Content disputes are not vandalism. Wikipedia defines vandalism very carefully to exclude good-faith contributions. Accusing other editors of vandalism is uncivil unless there is genuine vandalism, that is, a deliberate attempt to degrade the encyclopedia, not a simple difference of opinion. There are numerous dispute resolution processes and there is no deadline to meet; the wheels of Wikijustice may grind exceeding slow, but they do grind (apologies to Sun Tzu).
Asking for the benefit of doubt[edit]
You find that nobody will assume good faith, no matter how often you remind them.
Warning others to assume good faith is something which should be done with great care, if at all – to accuse them of failing to do so may be regarded as uncivil, and if you are perceived as failing to assume good faith yourself, then it could be seen as being a jerk.
Accusing others of malice[edit]
You often find yourself accusing or suspecting other editors of "suppressing information", "censorship", or "denying facts".
This is prima facie evidence of your failure to assume good faith. Never attribute to malice that which may be adequately explained by a simple difference of opinion. And in the case of biographies of living individuals, it is vitally important always to err on the side of caution. If the information you want to add is self-evidently valid and important to the subject, it should be trivial to provide multiple citations from reliable sources which agree that it is both true and significant. Take this evidence to the talk page in the first instance.
Disputing the reliability of apparently good sources[edit]
You find yourself engaging in discussions about the reliability of sources that substantially meet the criteria for reliable sources.
There is nothing wrong with questioning the reliability of sources, to a point. But there is a limit to how far one may reasonably go in an effort to discredit the validity of what most other contributors consider to be reliable sources, especially when multiple sources are being questioned in this manner. This may take the form of arguing about the number of or validity of the information cited by the sources. The danger here is in judging the reliability of sources by how well they support the desired viewpoint.
Expecting others to find sources for your own statements[edit]
You demand that other editors search for sources to support text that you added, or you challenge them to find a source that disproves your unsourced claim.
Wikipedia policy is quite clear here: the responsibility for sourcing content rests firmly and entirely with the editor seeking to include it. This applies most especially to biographies of living individuals, where uncited or poorly cited controversial or negative material must be removed immediately from both the article and the talk page, and by extension any related Project pages.
Adding citations that are inadequate, ambiguous or not sufficiently explicit[edit]
Your citations back some of the facts you are adding, but do not explicitly support your interpretation or the inferences you draw.
The policy against adding original research to Wikipedia expressly forbids novel syntheses of other sources. A simple example of synthesis is when an editor takes cited fact A and cited fact B, and then uses these two facts to arrive at newly thought-up – and unsourced – interpretation C.
Repeating the same argument without convincing people[edit]
You find yourself repeating the same argument over and over again, without persuading people.
If your arguments are rejected, bring better arguments, don't simply repeat the same ones. And most importantly, examine your argument carefully, in light of what others have said. It is true that people will only be convinced if they want to be, regardless of how good your argument may be, but that is not grounds for believing that your argument must be true. You must be willing to concede you may have been wrong. Take a long, hard look at your argument from as detached and objective a point of view as you can possibly muster, and see if there is a problem with it. If there isn't, it's best to leave the situation alone: they're not going to want to see it and you cannot force them to. If there is a problem, however, then you should revise the argument, your case, or both.