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WP:DRN

Hi everyone, I have been going over the steps in the "Dealing with disruptive editors" section, and it occurs to me that we should probably put the new dispute resolution noticeboard in there somewhere. What do people think about this? — Mr. Stradivarius 13:17, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Just drop it? Okay.

I'm overwhelmed by the bureaucracy necessary to stop a simple edit warrior. As a consequence, I will now let the case in question slide, and leave the article with unsourced info. You don't care, you say? Well, imagine this happening thousands of times per day. In the words of GWB: the edit warriors has won.--Anders Feder (talk) 12:15, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Dealing with disruptive editing

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

In recent weeks I've seen several long-term content contributors being driven to frustration by disruptive editors - editors who may act with perfect civility but appear to have little to no understanding of basic WP policies and guidelines, especially WP:N, WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:RS. I spent hours dealing with an editor who insisted on modifying a template to include articles that had nothing to do with the topic. He wouldn't engage on template talk. When I brought the info to his user talk, he told me he thought these belonged and didn't really care what my sources said. An admin at the 3RR noticeboard refused to do anything because it was long term edit warring instead of 3 reverts in 24 hours. I finally opened a content RFC; the user created a content fork. Finally the editor moved on to disrupt another topic. The time I spent taking care of this would have been enough for me to bring another article to FA status. Instead, I managed to keep a template in a state it had been in for years and I'm left frustrated and not wanting to contribute as much. In the cases of some colleagues, weeks of disruption by other editors leads them to snap and be incivil, then the content expert is blocked and the disruptive editor gets a pass.

Disruptive editors - especially editors who blatantly ignore our policies on sourcing - are, in my opinion, given way too much leeway. The existing measures for dealing with this disruption do not work. A disruptive editor may leave a particular article alone, but they often move off to another topic with the same behaviors. How can we streamline this process to help content editors deal with disruption more effectively, while still not biting the newbies? Karanacs (talk) 18:57, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

There was a big to-do at ANI in the last 48 hours over an immature, novice editor who didn't understand our notability or sourcing policies, he got off scott free in the whole matter (with an ANI that focused on civility and ignored the content disruption), and he has, as we speak, moved on to edit warring in another content area. We must find a way to show the door to incompetent editors more quickly. Our current dispute resolution processes don't work and admins are too quick to enforce "civility" while not addressing content issues. IMO there are only two kinds of editors-- those who respect content policies and those who don't, and those who don't almost never change-- they just change articles or methods. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:06, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

• (ec with Sandy) Well, the blind are leading the blind on Talk:Paragliding--similar to what you're dealing with, though I care much less about this article than you cared about the template, and walked away. I have no answer, only frustration. I would note, though, that one should be able to find an admin who is willing to administer edit-warring blocks for long-term edit-warring (here's one), though admittedly that's not always an easy block to make (and it deals with only one minor aspect of your remarks). And, of course, you can always take it to ANI...with all the attendant drama, and often without bringing satisfactory results... It's sad, but often the best you can hope for is that the other party commits some kind of party foul, like vandalism or whatever--and that's obviously not the kind of thing you want to hope for. Drmies (talk) 19:37, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to Misplaced Pages. The problems I've encountered tend to fall into two categories: (1) dealing with irrational editors cannot understand reason and logic; and (2) dealing with POV editors that use WP:Tenditious editing to prolog debates, because they know policy does not support them. My idea to fix this is to strengthen the RfC process, to solicit input from several sensible editors when the RfC is initiated. Ideally, a handful of uninvolved editors can weigh in quickly, and steer the offending editor on the right course. Fortunately, there is a new process which sort of accomplishes that: Misplaced Pages:Feedback request service which helps bring uninvolved editors to newly created RfCs. It shows a lot of promise. --Noleander (talk) 19:11, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, thank you for the welcome-- I hope it makes Karanacs feel right at home like it does me! Like MastCell, I've never seen any DR process, or RFC, serve for much more than a runup to ArbCom, and productive editors might all be dead by the time our DR processes grind out the needed results to get disruptive and tenditious editors out the door. The point of this discussion is that we don't need another process or noticeboard-- we need to provide understanding, knowledge, incentives, and support for admins to be as active in enforcing content policies as they are in enforcing some others. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:24, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

• There is an approach that works, although it is not officially sanctioned: tag-teaming. If multiple editors cooperate in reverting disruption by a single editor, the single editor must either move on or rapidily be blocked. My approach when I encounter a determined disrupter is always to ask for help. One-against-one fights are the big time-wasters. Looie496 (talk) 19:21, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Yep. Drmies (talk) 19:37, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

• There are starting to be more of "them" than "us"-- experienced editors are leaving in droves, and they are not being replaced by similar caliber editors. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:24, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
• I don't like the term "tag-teaming", because it has negative connotations. But the core principle is sound and acceptable. 99.9% of the time, if your edits are being reverted by multiple editors, it's not because you are being persecuted by the mighty and evil wiki-cabal, it's because you are making edits against consensus. The problem here just occurs when you have editors of the mindset that "I'm right and everyone else on the project is wrong." But that's where most of the problem disruptive editors come from. Trusilver 20:12, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

• I think that 0.1% might happen a little more frequently than that. Sometimes you're being reverted not because you are a policy-hating POV pusher, but because multiple editors have a worldview vastly distanced from reality. AIDS denialism is a good example that I believe MastCell has cited in the past. In reality, essentially everyone is going to agree that HIV causes AIDS. So they have no reason to show up at those pages. But Misplaced Pages is a great forum for AIDS denialists to push their point of view. All it takes is a few of them to show up at a particular page that isn't watched very often, and then the sane editors have to decide how much time they are willing to spend fixing the denialists' junk. NW (Talk) 21:03, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

• The editors above have made excellent points. If I might suggest another topic to look at: some editors cherrypick sources to suit their point of view instead of trying to use an unbiased selection of the highest quality secondary ones. I'm thinking of one particular dispute right now, but I definitely recall seeing it in other areas, and I have never really seen a solution to address the problem. Anyone have any suggestions? NW (Talk) 19:42, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Well, WP:UNDUE sometimes functions successfully as a magic word, and in the cases where I've run into the problems you describe, it has worked--with the help of other editors who agreed (no intentional tag-teaming in my experience...). Drmies (talk) 19:45, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
    • It works as long as you have a good number of intelligent editors editing the general topic area AND interested in getting involved with your dispute when they can be doing other things more productively. If the other side has two or three editors, your second condition can vanish pretty quickly. It's bad even if you're working against one obstinate editor. NW (Talk) 19:48, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
      • Tag teaming works for POV pushers, too. In a POV article I've tried to correct for six years, there's a whole ton of them to maintain the hagiographic poorly sourced POV bio, and only one of me. And I have no intention of taking six months of my life to go through an arb case (and I note that of all the times this situation has come to ANI, NW (above) has been the only admin to even care). Another interesting tactic there is how the established guardians of the article take advantage of new editors to make sure they (themselves) can't be charged with POV editing or 3RR-- they egg on the new editors on talk so they don't have to make the edits themselves, and they revert any edits that disagree with their POV (even if well sourced), while letting poorly sourced edits that support their POV stand. No, we need admins who are willing to look at sources and deal with obvious disrupters. It has become too much for the content contributors, the tide has turned to where it's not manageable on most articles, and there aren't enough admins who truly understand and engage content issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:21, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
    • Undue works as an argument sometimes. In the egregious cases, it doesn't (I'm thinking of Catholic Church). I think we do not use the block button enough on people who refuse to follow content policies, and I'm all for blocking people who make a habit of this in the face of source-based arguments from others, but who/what determines that they are in fact cherry-picking? Karanacs (talk) 20:20, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
      • That's the problem, isn't it? The blocking admin generally isn't willing to do it, either because they're afraid they will be will accused of using the tools to push their own POV or because they think that isn't in the administrator's remit. But when one side is saying "look at this journal article I found from 1971 and this Google Scholar search" and the other is saying "here's a 2007 consensus statement from the National Cancer Institute and a selection of pages from Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine", there is clearly an issue. Maybe if multiple reviewing administrators come to the same conclusion, it is blockable? NW (Talk) 20:57, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
        • I'm very much against giving administrators even more excuses to block than they already have. We need to think outside the box, and not believe that blocking solves anything; in truth it almost certainly causes more problems than it solves, or at least that's been my experience. A determined disruptive editor will simply register a new account and carry on anyway. I'm wondering if a modified version of the pending changes abortion might work if it's applied to editors rather than to articles. It would at least take away the immediate positive reinforcement, but of course it would require a software change, so obviously completely impractical given the glacial pace of development. But the bottom line is that Misplaced Pages can't change human nature, no matter how hard it tries, and certainly not by introducing new punishments, so it must consider ways to make the rewards of disruption (whatever they may be) less attractive to those doing the disruption. Malleus Fatuorum 21:09, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
          • I'm not sure how well your pending changes analogue would work, but I understand your underlying point. I think that no matter what we do, as long as we have a system where anyone can sign up for an account and edit, we are always going to have some of these issues. For example, I think everyone on this page can agree that editors pushing the Steady State theory or trying to deny plate tectonics are bad editor. But it would be easy for such an editor to find respectable scientists and sources (if a bit dated) to back them. Assuming that these editors is perfectly civil, do not exceed one revert per day, and so on, is it still possible for us to devise a system that would be able to prevent this or at least allow us to stop it more quickly than we do? I'm not seeing any way with our current system than to allow admins more leeway to take content policy into consideration, but I am definitely open to specific ideas. NW (Talk) 01:08, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

• The trouble is that "disruptive" is in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I've been called "disruptive" or "tendentious" an awful lot, recently. I don't think I am. So if we're talking about "disruptive editors", then what I want to know is, disruptive in whose opinion? If a behaviour's disruptive in the opinion of a panel of genuinely uninvolved editors without axes to grind, and talk page discussion and third opinion have both failed, then we ought to allow a WP:COMPETENCE block. But, there must be a mechanism to protect productive editors from being persecuted by the AN/I gadflies who never seem to get any actual editing done.

  A competence block is not appropriate for someone with thousands of mainspace edits—there should FairProcess for them. Any kind of FairProcess is going to be a longer and more complicated process.—S Marshall T/C 22:33, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

  • Not necessarily. The "fair" in "fair process" doesn't apply only to the accused disruptive editor. It's deeply unfair to good-faith, constructive editors to have to jump through an exhausting series of hoops to deal with obvious disruption. Right now, our processes consider fairness to the disruptive editor, but don't begin to consider fairness to those dealing with the disruptive editor. MastCell  21:23, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Well said, MastCell. Just in the last day or so I've been reminded of a process in which determination to be fair to a disruptive pov pusher led to an extremely disruptive and unfair public trial of a well meaning if inexperienced admin who'd not followed procedures in an ideal way when dealing with the disruptive editor. Hence the current position where an admin with enough knowledge and interest to have edited in an area must not deal with anything more subtle than blatant vandalism in that area. Superficially fair, but damaging to the quality of the project which we thought we were here for. So it goes. . . dave souza, talk 22:18, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure how this discussion is organized so I will repeat this at the bottom:as I understnad it the idea behind TE is to provide criteria to identify editors who should be blocked, when the evidence is not localizable to one article. In the heat of the moment most of us have been accused of being tendentious, at least i have been called an asshole a few times and I usually deserved it. In some cases I was even blocked for a day, and I deserved that too. But like most of us, I learned to come around and make contributions through consensus-building collaborative editing. The problem is not editors who have lost their cool once or twice and acted regretably. The problem is a pattern of behavior that extends over a period of time. We al have to be [atient at any one article, because it is only fair to give an editor a couple of chances to learn how to edit collaboratively. When there are fifteen edit differences that show a consistent patternm of abuse over weeks or months it is usually not that hard to find an admin willing to block. It is much harder when the disruptive pattern is only evident when looking at several articles.

In the end I see no substitute for or alternative to taking someone to AN/I. TE makes it clear that the evidence demonstrating a pattern can be across many articles. This is an important point, but I think this guideline (I think it should be a policy) makes it pretty effectively. It is not going to solve all our problems - in the end problems at WP are solved by good faith editors working collaboratively. All a guideline can do is provide a language for identifying a particular kind of problem. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:03, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposal

How about allowing the appointment (by some TBD, and revocable, method) of topic editors who have permission to go beyond 3RR for specified articles? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:59, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

• No, no, no!! Quite a few of us remember a certain admin who took it upon herself years ago to impose her own views on articles via her perception that she was enforcing arbitration cases-- she sanctioned editors unequally, which meant she generally sanctioned those who were upholding policy but didn't agree with her POV, and she was soft on POV pushers at the same time. No, we don't want to go down that path again. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:26, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

  I'm not proposing a general class of "topic editor"; I'm suggesting that, for example, Karanacs be allowed unlimited reverts on three or four specific articles related to Texas history. I'm not suggesting any other rights or authorization to block beyond current policy. How would this lead to the situation you've described? That editor would presumably not have received those rights. I would suggest giving those rights via a clear majority of editors involved in the talkpage (perhaps with an additional RfC to establish the rights) and removing them, if necessary, the same way. ArbCom could also assign and remove the right if they wanted to. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:24, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Karanacs, I sympathize with the difficulties you've just experienced (again, no doubt). I honestly think that what we need is more Category:Misplaced Pages administrators willing to make difficult blocks, and more of the rest of us choosing to support them in public when they do make difficult blocks.

Another editor and I went through months and months of hassle with an civil POV pusher: endless discussions, multiple efforts to involve extra eyes, an RFC/U—and the problem was only solved because Moreschi (talk · contribs) saw the request for ArbCom and said enough was really enough, and blocked him. That single action solved the problem. The blocked user now has his own website, where he vilifies me personally but has completely stopped harming Misplaced Pages.

I believe that the public support, BTW, is a key component. Difficult blocks are too often greeted with hand-wringing about how awful it is that the biased, hateful, power-tripping admin interfered with this person's human right to edit Misplaced Pages. Making a difficult block requires the admin to commit time to review the behaviors and to use good judgment. It is not something people do for fun. We need to show more support for our admin corps when they undertake these actions and less support for people who are wasting our most precious resource, which is the time and energy of productive editors.

This isn't difficult, and it doesn't require us to blindly support any admin action: it is the equivalent of remembering to express sympathy for crime victims before you say you're convinced that justice has been miscarried. But we have to remember to do it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:14, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I totally agree with you, WhatamIdoing. I'm willing to support those admins, but I detest hanging about regularly in the much of ANI, where, much of the time, good editors are being dragged by the disruptive ones. So much noise, so little real action. Karanacs (talk) 20:20, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

• I would reluctantly disagree with this proposal. It's an earnest attempt to address a serious problem, but 3RR is already seen as an allowance rather than a bright line; I don't want to encourage that thinking. Plus, we'd need some method of figuring out who is a trusted editor and who isn't - much potential for drama - only to see a subset of the trusted ones use their 4RR or 5RR "allowance" in order to get their preferred content in the article when others disagree. bobrayner (talk) 16:45, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 1

Admins should be able to give short blocks to users who repeatedly make a change and repeatedly refuse to provide sources when asked. Although it's nice to see volunteers for participating in RfCs, I don't see the point of having an RfC when editor(s) are providing sources to back up existing text and the editor who wants to change refuses to engage by providing any reasons for the change. At that point, it's a blatant refusal to follow policy.

Caveat: Discussion MUST be attempted first. If not already in the article, sources should be provided to back up the existing text. Karanacs (talk) 19:30, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Question(s) - Wouldn't a user who was making such changes end up reported for 3RR or end up reported at AIV for repeatedly adding unsourced information in any case? If not, should they? And if they should and they aren't, doesn't that suggest that the issue may be that problems are not being reported when they should be? As a non-admin, I'm just looking at this in terms of how I'd approach it... Doniago (talk) 19:43, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes and no. In a lot of situations like this, you don't have an editor who is repeatedly violating 3RR, but rather someone who shows up every few days and adds their unsourced POV to an article. These slow edit wars are much less likely to result in blocks, and the blocks themselves less effective because of the slower nature of the edit war. A 24, 48 or 72 hour block means little to someone who only shows up once every few days anyway. That, and the persistent disruptors often get good at avoiding the appearance of edit warring by attempting different routes to get their information into the article. Creating new sections, changing around the place where they insert their edits, creating POV-fork articles, etc... Trusilver 20:16, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

The vast majority of the time, if I make a report at 3RR on slow edit-warring, the admin who reviews it dismisses the complaint because "they didn't revert 3 times in 24 hours". Occasionally an admin who is also a content editor looks at my reports and blocks the person I reported. I think most of the admins who patrol that page are sticklers for the "24 piece" and don't see long-term edit warring as edit-warring at all. Karanacs (talk) 20:25, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm a little rushed for time at this point, but if that's the issue then I think those admins need to be reminded that that board isn't just for reporting 3 reverts within 24 hours. I've always understood that that board's scope is larger than that. Doniago (talk) 20:29, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

• support - I like the idea that putting contested and unsourced edits into an article could result in escalating warnings and blocks. I see the potential for abuse, though. Such a policy could easily result in a large number of warnings along the lines of "Please stop! If you continue to make edits I don't agree with....." But I feel that even consideration of such a proposal is a step in the right direction. Trusilver 20:20, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm a little confused, only because there's already warning templates out there that can be given to users adding unsourced material...I use them rather frequently, in fact. If a user managed to make it up to level 4/final without taking the hint, I'd report them at WP:AIV for it, though that's rarely been the case. Doniago (talk) 21:29, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Do you give those types of warnings to experienced editors? I mostly see them with people adding really random stuff. Karanacs (talk) 21:37, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, no, but then, in my (possibly limited) experience, experienced editors don't usually go around adding unsourced material...though I did have a delightful discussion about the suitability of primary sources for Animal Farm in popular culture which can be seen at its Talk page. Doniago (talk) 21:41, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

True, but under current common practice, you RARELY see anyone giving escalated warning for unsourced edits, and even less frequently see blocks because of them, even when they are warranted. Trusilver 21:55, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 2

I think we should remove this part of the instructions

If mediation is rejected, unsuccessful, and/or the problems continue:

Notify the editor you find disruptive, on their user talkpage.

Include diffs of the problematic behavior. Use a section name and/or edit summary to clearly indicate that you view their behavior as disruptive, but avoid being unnecessarily provocative. Remember, you're still trying to de-escalate the situation. If other editors are involved, they should post their own comments too, to make it clear that the community disapproves of the tendentious behavior.

I've never seen a case where this is effective in de-escalating a situation or of causing change in a user, especially when used after content RfCs, etc. It almost always makes the editor defensive and they behave worse. Karanacs (talk) 19:40, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

• Remove That's pretty bad advice. That is, the intention is doubtless good, but we are not supplying the users with useful advice how to walk the very fine line between clear communication and being unnecessarily provocative, and any editor who needs to be told how to do this (nearly all of us) is likely to screw it up if they simply follow these poorly written directions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:19, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 3

Either create a new noticeboard or change the attitude at WP:3rr so that we can better enforce restrictions against long-term edit-warring. Karanacs (talk) 19:41, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to interject again, but I haven't had a great deal of interaction with WP:3RR, and feel obligated to ask - what is the perceived attitude? Doniago (talk) 19:45, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I've had the same experience as Karanacs-- I suspect many admins won't block for slow edit warring because they're afraid drama will ensue. There are too few of them willing to do it, and as a result, I spent months cleaning up after one editor on a medical article who insisted on misusing primary sources. And who also flaunted in my face that I supposedly had filed a mistaken 3RR on him, which left him feeling quite empowered to keep doing same. The admin who denied the 3RR did the Wiki a disfavor, and empowered that editor to continue (eventually sanity prevailed there, but it costed many of us a couple months of work). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:29, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring should be used for quick, obvious violations of the "bright-line" revert rules. We should create a sub-noticeboard called Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Slow edit warring to address the issue that Karanacs brings up. Two very different sets of administrator skills are required for the two boards, namely counting and thinking respectively. All administrators can do the former, but...not everyone can do the latter. NW (Talk) 19:46, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I think I might support this, especially if as a side-effect it increased response time at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring. Doniago (talk) 19:51, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

But aren't there already a large number of noticeboards? Also, one was created recently Misplaced Pages:Dispute resolution noticeboard which is sort of aimed at what is being discussed here. --Noleander (talk) 20:05, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I looked at the DRN. I see several instances where the filing party is being told "you're right, the sources support you, the other party won't engage, we can't do anything". Same-old, same-old. I also see three-week-old disputes still unresolved. I can waste 3 weeks doing other steps. Karanacs (talk) 20:29, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I filed a report at DRN once upon a time that I believe went completely ignored and got archived without any action being taken, which was pretty disheartening. In their defense I think DRN is still figuring itself out, but they seem to effectively be a forum for mediation rather than, necessarily, resolution. If parties involved in a dispute won't play ball, nothing gets done aside from a big waste of time and demoralization. I'm really not trying to make DRN look bad, just...it has its limitations. Doniago (talk) 20:33, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

It's odd. As much as I agree with Malleus about how at least some admins are likely to overstep their boundaries and even lack intellectual competency, here is an area where I'd like to see a lot more trigger-happy admins. My pipe dream is to see a 3R report by an editor whose word I can take to the bank, and block on sight--but that never happens. The easy cases go to AIV, the difficult cases take a lot of time and usually, as Robert Cray said, you're going to come up muddy when you're playing in the dirt. Drmies (talk) 00:14, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

A lot of people seem to think that DRN is useless. Why not give DRN teeth? Make its decisions binding. Make refusal to participate a blockable offense. Do something. --NYKevin @197, i.e. 03:43, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Think about what you're saying. You think that a random editor with 500 edits and a complete lack of knowledge about NPOV should be able to show up at DRN and make a binding content decision? NW (Talk) 04:55, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

NW, I'm going to have nightmares now! Karanacs (talk) 18:36, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Never mind the newbies. Some of our most problematic disputes often include multiple people on each side along with some apparently-uninvolved editors who suddenly pop up at when a crucial !vote is going the wrong way. If DRV had teeth, instead of getting an email saying "please contribute to this poll", those apparently-uninvolved editors would be getting emails inviting them to make binding content decisions... bobrayner (talk) 16:52, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

NW, DRN has been a 100% hands off where we try to get both disputants to come to a mediated consensus. In the rare cases where we couldn't get a consensus we've referred the dispute to one of the more binding boards (MedCab,MedCom, ArbCom, RfC, RfC/U) because some editors just aren't going to be helpful and willing to compromise on their position. Hasteur (talk) 21:33, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I think it is clear we are not talking about 3RR - that is and should remain over a 24 hr. period, and specifically for editors who lose their heads temporarily and can benefit from some cooling-off time, because these are not problem editors. SOmetimes conflicts just over-hear

But I am not sure whether what people are talking about here is DE either. We need to distinguish between long-term edit wars at one article, or closely related set of articles, involving a number of people, versus long-term disruptive behavior across many different artciles. This guideline should address the latter, and I am all for any improvement.

There can I admit be an overlap between the former (an edit war that lasts a long time) and the latter (DE). If an edit war continues because of one person against a consensus of more than three editors, DE may well apply to the one person. But we still need to distinguish DE from long-term edit wars. Long-term edit wars can tire people out and are frustrating, but they will not all be cured by this guideline. The fundamental problem that WP has is: it never developed effective means for mediating conflicts. ArbCom was designed to be the mediator of last resort and a long time ago there was a more robust MedCom. We have grown, so we can predict that edit conflict will grow, but with long-term conflicts one solution is effective mediation and we lack that. I think many people behind this proposal would do better trying to reform or overhaul our mediation process.

And let's be frank: the biggest reason why we have long term edit wars is because we still do not have enough well-informed editors who are also committed to our core policies. Misplaced Pages is at its core a Wiki and the stability of articles depends on their being produced by enough well-informed (by background, or because they are willing to go to a library and do the hard research) editors working together. I have never seen a major edit conflict that could not be resolved through research and careful application of core policies. This is very easy to achieve with an article that has twenty editors, is quite achievable with ten editors, and much harder to achieve with only three editors. The fewer the number of editors, the easier it is for one person to disrupt consensus for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, the articles that often require the most expertise require far too much research than one or even a few colunteer editors can do ... yet, attract the fewest number of editors. When WP has a million active registered editors who are equally distributed across interests and expertise we will see the creation of better and more stable articles and edit wars will quickly be put out. An encyclopedia "anyone can edit any time" by design will only function well when large numbers are working on all articles. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:01, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 4

Thinking aloud, brainstorming sorta thing. The path to cleaning up a lot of medical articles was in writing WP:MEDRS, which helps explain why we don't (typically) use primary sources in medicine, and how to find high-quality secondary reviews. If all articles required serious scholarship, as MEDRS does, wouldn't it be much easier to be done with the non-serious and disruptive editors who usually have no interest in doing the real work of correctly sourcing articles? Perhaps our problem lies somewhere in the realm of too many editors who think they can add something to Misplaced Pages because they found it somewhere on the internet but they've never been to a library and don't know how to do serious research. Maybe doing something to strengthen WP:V or WP:RS would help show the disrupters the door more quickly. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:47, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

• This is Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy—but, I believe we need to make the RS standards firm one field at a time. HISTRS will look different from LITRS. And I've encountered serious resistance to HISTRS standards equivalent to MEDRS. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:04, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Actually, if we gave some of the RS/N experts wiffle bats, and RS/N became a space where broadly scoped sanctions could be enacted... Fifelfoo (talk) 01:08, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
• Just take a look at what happened at WP:SCIRS when someone tried to propose something along those lines. Admittedly, that was during The Great Climate Change Arbitration Case of 2010, but as much as I would like to see what you are proposing, I'm not hopeful. NW (Talk) 00:35, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
• I think what made MEDRS possible (noting that its first drafts were before my time) is that there was a team of good editors behind it. If you've got a dozen good, active history editors, then you might be able to produce a HISTRS and make it be both useful (addressing practical problems) and get it in front of people often enough that it will actually "stick". A lot of Misplaced Pages runs on oral tradition, so making a separate guideline be accepted and actually used requires a dozen people referring to it, until its existence and contents are just part of the "always been there" cultural background. There's a substantial time lag in advice-page work: MEDRS was started just less than five years ago. Two years ago, we still had editors complaining about its existence. Now it's widely accepted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:48, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
• Fifelfoo, do you have anything written up about history guidelines? Karanacs (talk) 18:38, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

there is enormously more likely to be some degree of consensus among secondary sources in most fields of medicine than in most fields of history. this is partially because medicine is a practical profession in the end, and all such professions tend to be very conservative. (the reasons are not altogether clear to me, though part of is the need for protection from one's colleagues in the case of unsatisfactory results, which can only be obtained by not doing things that do not have a considerable degree of consensus. Another is the--elated--inherent desire that if you are going to do something, you want it to work, and professional status is the result of success in doing this; unlike a speculative subject where the actual effectiveness or truth of what you are saying does not matter, and professional status is often the result of promulgating something distinctive and extraordinary.). DGG ( talk ) 23:48, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:HISTRS exists as a placeholder from the last time I got frustrated, it reflects actual binding practice by linking to WP:MILMOS#SOURCES (that I believe is way too lose about allowing primary interpretation) and an essay I wrote years ago. I could expand it, but I have strong views regarding historical epistemology and haven't wanted to work on it without a second set of eyes to correct against my views. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:12, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I have recently expanded WP:HISTRS on the basis of the concept of an ordered list of high quality reliable sources, and, with advice about which sources to use for which purpose in article authoring. I'll be working on it further. Fifelfoo (talk) 23:56, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

The value of stricter sourcing requirements is not in articles where the truth is obvious, but in cases where the truth is uncertain or disputed or controversial. The nature of controversies varies greatly between fields. MEDRS is a great way to prevent some lone quack (or small group) giving undue emphasis to their preferred panacea, but (for instance) historical controversies are often associated with longrunning rivalry between large national (or ethnic or religious) groups and it's possible for each group to hold a contradictory position which is backed by multiple books and journal articles. It would be helpful to understand what the nature of the problem is in each field before copy & pasting a solution from medicine (although it worked very well there and I'm sure it would be good in other places too). bobrayner (talk) 17:00, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I do not think this is related to DE. I do think that we could benefit from better guidance with the use of sources, but in the end the principles are always the same: verifiability through a reliable source is the threshold for inclusion, it is a minimal standard, because what is the best source and how it should most appropriately be used depends on the articles. We need editors who understand this, and when one editor does understand this and some yabo deletes content because it is not supported with a direct quotation, or someother yabo adds content simply because it is on google books, the problem is all the other editors who let the yabos dictate content through their narrow and off-kilter reading of policy. No policy is a substitute for the good judgment of editors working collaboratively. Editors need to be able to discuss: is this the best source? What are other important sources? Are we using the source appropriately? Are we presenting a view out of context? These questions will keep coming up and just have to be answered by editors willing to do research. We need to recruit more such editors. But beling lazy - which I think is often the case with editors Sandy Georgia refers to - is not the same thing as being disruptive. It is a different kind of problem. Slrubenstein | Talk 21:08, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 5

If an editor who places a dispute template (POV, unsourced, etc.) on an article does not start a talk page discussion that includes an intelligent treatment of source material (either sourcing in the article or sourcing that has not yet been accessed) within an hour, it can be removed. If the editor who placed the template on the article does it again without discussing valid reliable sources,

• s/he may be blocked for disruptive editing
• any admin, including one involved in writing the article, can protect the article. --Moni3 (talk) 23:46, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

POV, sure. {{unsourced}} is a little different—I think that articles that don't have references, should, at the very least, be categorized as such. NW (Talk) 00:36, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm unclear on how it's harmful to label statements, sections or articles as needing citations if, in fact, they need citations, nor do I see why it should be necessary to start a Talk thread on the subject; in my experience those tags generally speak for themselves. How would one define an "intelligent treatment" in any case? I also don't see why locating sources should fall on an editor who did not insert the unsourced material to begin with; this would seem to be a clear conflict with WP:BURDEN. Are there examples available of misuses of the pertinent templates? I've never seen such a thing, and if I did I'd remove the template. Doniago (talk) 03:27, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Support. When someone adds a dispute template, the onus is on them to justify their actions and not be a TagSlacker; it would be great if the blocking policy could reflect that. That said, in my (limited) experience with agenda-driven editors misusing {{POV}} etc, this rule wouldn't have helped. The dispute had been about what prominence the article should give to misdeeds committed by a company to which they were sympathetic (Talk:Tagged/Archive 3, if anyone's curious). As that's a matter of editorial discretion, it could not easily be resolved just by discussing sources. Adrian J. Hunter 00:49, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Good, but only one side of the equation. I've been involved in a POV article for six years, I provide boatloads of reliable sources over and over and have documented the POV dozens of times, anything I write is rejected simply because there's more of them than me (oh, and there are plenty of editors wanting to neutralize the article on talk, but none of them edit effectively-- they just fill the talk page with rants, and even if the rants are right, that's not helpful), so I can't improve the article alone, but as soon as I turn my back for a minute, the POV tag is removed. Removing a POV tag when nothing in the article has changed, and the POV is documented on talk with reliable sources, applies as well. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:01, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Sandy, twice I tagged an article I overhauled because other editors were inserting information that they made up. We did the BRD thing, and after I pointed out more than once the issues of POV and OR, more fantasy info was inserted in the article.

Ideally, the way a template should be placed is:

• You come across a WTF?? in an article and post a WTF?? question on the talk page, saying Source A and B say something significantly different--or the Source X used in the article doesn't say what is in the article at all.
• If you get no response or a lackluster one, up goes the template. Discussion ensues with you and all other parties using sources as your guide.

If you're referring to Venezuela or Chavez-related articles, clearly there's a genuine dispute there between those who believe Chavez and the rest of the world. This isn't intended to address such contentious articles as Israel-Palestine, Armenian genocide, or Scientology. It's meant to force editors to buck up and do some work and stop using templates as bricks to the head of well-written and sourced articles. Even the well-written and sourced articles can be improved. If editors wish to improve them, they need to become familiar with the sources and engage in a meaningful manner on the talk page. --Moni3 (talk) 14:02, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

"Unsourced" isn't in Category:Dispute templates; it's a routine clean-up template. There's really nothing disruptive about accurately indicating that an article needs to be cleaned up, even if you don't leave a message on the talk page. An editor might realize that an article really needs to be fixed, but doesn't have the skills or knowledge to do it.

As for {{POV}}, the template's own documentation says that anyone can remove the tag in the absence of an active discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:57, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

I've watched the Chavez article from a distance for years. It's disgusting that the people of Venezuela are forced to pay civil servants to do his bidding. Use that article as a model with which to develop a better system for countering the systemic-bias brand of disruptive editing, and I'll support. Perhaps part of the bloat on this page is caused by the fact that there needs to be a bulleted list of the basic forms of disruptive editing. You can't solve all types with a single process. Tony (talk) 09:58, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

It generally isn't a great idea to raise a specific instance of politicised information when trying to form policy; as people who agree with the need to use scholarly analyses of politicised information, may feel offended if their own politics is in the least analogous to those of the politicisers of information you criticise, and disagree with you because of some petty political offence. This is true whether it is the deputy chairman of the local RSL sub-branch, or a governing politician commonly identified with a particular ideology. I certainly agree with your point about the disruptive use of primary and/or involved sources. I have had a couple-of-year discussion emerging out of an RS/N discussion that non-published diplomatic advice from a US government unit is necessarily a primary source and the conclusions drawn from such are original research. Some people simply prefer primary government material to HQRS, and don't respond to source disputes by escalating sourcing quality. Fifelfoo (talk) 10:08, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 6

Thinking aloud here. Administrators Noticeboard/Incidents doesn't want to touch content disputes and the Arbitration Committee is the very slow, deliberate venue for massive content disputes. Various other noticeboards seem little trafficked and essentially powerless. There needs to be an intermediate content authority — binding content mediation with teeth. What is needed are elected "Mediation Committees" — one for science, one for mathematics, one for history, one for current affairs, one for popular culture, one for Biographies of Living People. Something like that. More or less failed institutions like the Reliable Sources Noticeboard could be liquidated once the new Mediation Committees are established. Carrite (talk) 15:14, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Like MedCom? (But then again, we all know how successful that has been in resolving disputes.) –MuZemike 20:29, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

I still think this is the kind of route to go down. MedCom, I think (though I haven't had much personal experience of it), lacks the teeth that ArbCom has. We need mediators who really can (and I mean "can" both in terms of the powers we give them, and in terms of personal ability) focus discussion on the issues that matter encyclopedia-writing-wise, identifying and stamping out any disruption at an early stage. We don't need arbitrators posing as a court, handing out punishments based on vague gossip and months late.--Kotniski (talk) 20:50, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

This basically sounds like the existing RFC system, only with volunteers who actually show up and help people resolve the disputes. The problem isn't really a lack of opportunities or noticeboards; it's an unwillingness among our volunteers to do the hard and unpleasant work of showing up at disputes in articles they personally don't care about. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:49, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

It would be great to create a series of content mediation committees. But as WhatamIdoing says, the difficulty is in finding volunteers to read and understand long content disputes that they may have no interest in. If people really wanted to try this, someone could set up just one subject committee as an experiment, and see what happens. SlimVirgin 20:32, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I have little interest in mediating content disputes in my area of expertise where this means a voluntary process; "mediating personalities in dispute;" where the result is a non-binding mediation because personalities refuse to adhere to an agreement grounded in the content-encyclopaedic principles of wikipedia; and where personalities refuse to accept results that do not gel with their own belief regarding content—why mediate with crunchy nut bars? I have more interest in arbitrating disputes where I can make a binding ruling regarding content; based on V RS HQRS OR SYNTH WEIGHT FRINGE; and, where content rulings allow for restrictive sanctions on people whose conduct violates the ruling. Similarly, I'd rather trust some kind of content magistrate who draws bright (if reviewable, or periodically reviewed) lines; than a talking circle who lets crazy Jack's screaming parrot run the show. For the latter, RS/N works perfectly, as a scholarly reference desk that gets hijacked regularly by insane parrots. Fifelfoo (talk) 04:29, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

To a certain extent that's the purpose of DRN, to hear lower level disputed and attempt to negotiate a solution that all sides can live with. In some cases it turns out quite well, in other cases the situation is so far gone already that we refer it to one of the more specialized areas (Med*, ArbCom) when we can't get the parties to a consensus. Hasteur (talk) 21:41, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with this proposal in general but I'm not sure how well it will work in practice. There are a lot of editors who don't understand the policies as well as they think they do (or at least as well as I think they should!). A lot of those who do understand the policies don't want to get into someone else's dispute. Karanacs (talk) 18:42, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Discussion of problems currently on this page

We just don't have enough admins who understand or will take the time to deal with the content policies and their violations, but it's really easy to go on a rant when you see the word "fuck" or "arse".

That entire section needs to be rewritten-- it's pretty bad. That so many steps are required to deal with disruptive editors is the problem-- the disruption is all too often blatant, and ANI should be better equipped to deal with these content policy violations beyond the average obvious BLP violation. The page is horribly written-- can it not be strengthened in ways that will help admins begin to understand that civility is not the only pillar or policy of Misplaced Pages, and help ANI be more effective in dealing with content policies? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:30, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

You are of course quite right, but another problem here is the confusion between "civility" and "personal attacks". And of course placing civility as one the five pillars, which quite frankly look to me like something written by someone high on cannabis. Malleus Fatuorum 02:51, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Just as in the real world, I am under no obligation to be civil to you or anyone else, but I am constrained from calling you a "nigger lover", a "gollywog", a "holocaust denier", or a member of the KKK. (Not that I believe you to be any of those things of course.) Malleus Fatuorum 03:03, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

What works

• Tag team reverting definitely works, low-level irritation on the bird project (persistent little tweaks from the "diet of frogs" vandal) have been kept under control.
• You have several admins regularly haunting FAC, including me, who understand content disputes, and are prepared to take action. I tend to resolve content disputes by the trigger-happy technique of threatening everyone concerned with a block (in a civil way, of course), protecting the page if necessary, and carrying out the threat if the problems doesn't go away. Don't waste time with endless debates here or elsewhere, just contact one of your friendly neighbourhood admins (sorry Malleus, we do have our uses). Do we need a easy list of admin regulars? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:48, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
• WP:AE? Seems more orderly than most other venues, although I'm sure mistakes happen there too once in a while. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:44, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Memes, nonsense, and other frequently stated misunderstandings

What isn't useful-- in all of these discussions-- is the amount of nonsense that gets thrown around every time we have these discussions.

1. Content contributors believe they have a free pass at incivility.

   Bullroar. Inevitably, when top content contributors end up in a tussel with someone who has displayed no evidence of any understanding of Misplaced Pages's sourcing, NPOV, or other content policies, it is typically the content contributor who is sanctioned, blocked, upbraided or reprimanded for civility, while the content violator gets off scott free. This is apparently because admins usually understand and police civility better than they do content.

2. Content contributors are a gang who stand together to defend uncivil behavior in their ranks.

   Nonsense. We/they don't typically support uncivil behavior-- we/they just want symmetrical blocks of both parties (instead of just the top content contributor), and equal attention to content disruption as behavioral issues.

3. I think that FA writers sometimes forget that as long as articles provide the information people are looking for (i.e. Misplaced Pages being used as a reference work), and people treat that information with due caution, it doesn't matter hugely whether said articles are featured or not. Carcharoth (talk) 01:12, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

   Now this is a big fat problem, and I'm surprised to see Carcharoth put this forward as if it's A Good Thing. One of Misplaced Pages's worst defects is that anything gets equal google time, even if it's crap, even if it's unvetted. FA writers do get some credit for being willing to run the gauntlet, expose their prose and sourcing to peers, expose themselves to the vagueries of the ever-changing MOS and those who perseverate on it, expose their work to the mainpage where every Tom Dick and Harry and Randy from Boise gets to detroy it with crap edits, open themselves to being on the plague list of someone who has never written an FA but loves to target those who have, and so on. This notion that there is a whole lot of content out there that is FA worthy but whose authors don't want to run the gauntlet is nonsense. Sure, there are some editors (Giano, for example) who became disgusted at being targeted, ending up FAR, having to do the MOS nitpicks, etc who have given up on FAC, but the rule more than the exception is that those who don't bring their aricles to FAC often have something to hide-- generally poor sourcing or POV that they don't want to have to change because of being subjected to the intense scrutiny of FAC. They know they can get equal attention on Google without correcting their article deficiencies, and they know they can get their articles run on In the News or On this day. Frequently, once their POV or poor use of sources is pointed out at FAC, they withdraw rather than correct the issues, because they prefer to keep their POV and their google hits.

Responding just to the point where you quoted me, I wasn't referring to FA-level articles not being submitted to FAC, I was referring to how sub-FA and even sub-GA articles are used and read every day by readers of Misplaced Pages. Some are stung by incorrect information, some don't realise what they are reading is incorrect, but I would hope that a large majority find whatever they were looking for and go away satisfied (or can use the article as a starting point to conducting their own search if the information they were looking for is not there). They in all probability didn't come to Misplaced Pages looking for featured articles, they came in the hope that some nugget of information they were looking for could be found and verified through Misplaced Pages, and also probably to gain a bit of background information. That is what I, as a reader (not editor) of Misplaced Pages mostly use this site for, for many years, from long before I became an editor. It is nice and all that, when an article is featured, but not essential, as those who use Misplaced Pages properly know the need to verify things in the sources (if any are provided), and know that absence of sources is a red flag (I do this even for featured articles as the quality is so variable). If everything except the GAs and FAs disappeared tomorrow. The readers would howl in protest. I think some have forgotten what it means to be a reader of Misplaced Pages, rather than an editor. In other words, Misplaced Pages as a whole is an active, living reference work, not a collection of brilliant and engaging prose for armchair/bedtime reading. Much as I enjoy reading featured articles, much of what I read every day on Misplaced Pages is not featured, and yet somehow it serves its purpose. That is the only point I was trying to make there. By all means defend FA content, but don't elevate that content to the level where defending it has a chilling effect on the rest of the project. Carcharoth (talk) 20:54, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Sandy, let's talk about your #2, with the obvious example in mind. You say that symmetrical blocks are wanted. What I saw (maybe I missed something?) was one (1) editor using profanity in a difficult discussion, and getting blocked for it—and promptly being unblocked by a friend.

Now if we actually wanted symmetrical blocks, wouldn't blocking the other guy have been the way to achieve a symmetrical block?

And exactly what grounds would you have blocked the other editor on? Having been involved in a dispute in which, through no fault of the second editor, the first editor freely chose to start cussing? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:38, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

In that particular case, I would have blocked the other editor for baiting and for tendentious editing. Karanacs (talk) 18:45, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I might not have blocked either of them, but if you're blocking for a behavior that's only being displayed by one side, then a symmetrical block seems inappropriate, even if the offender is a "content contributor". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:35, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

The quality of FA articles with respect to their contents rather than their formatting is rather overstated in my experience. (See User talk:Looie496/Analysis of FAC.) ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 17:50, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I certainly object to "this article is a FA" as being anywhere near a reasonable rationale for rejecting changes. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:48, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 7

A page that keeps track of long term disruptions and disputes (somewhat similar to Misplaced Pages:Long-term abuse). It will be in the form of list with a link to a subpage for each item. Each subpage should include a brief documentation of each dispute explaining the problem, the desired outcome, the rationale and the track of edit wars there. Each subpage should track one specific problem (possibly in multiple articles) but not more than one problem in one article. This way uninvolved editors could learn quickly about disputes and disruptive editors know they are been watched. Sole Soul (talk) 09:01, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Better would be a page perhaps managed by a bot that keeps a record of people who have been blocked or warned at more than one article x number of times. I basically like this idea but it will work better if editors use warnings more deliberately, and if a bot can keep a record of how often a user has been blocked or warned across all pages. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:05, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Good idea. Both ideas could coexist, though. The aim is to summarize and document long term disputes in an easy to read way. I recently saw this page also. Sole Soul (talk) 17:50, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 8

A informal noticeboard for reporting vandals (and other nuisances), and we can action it based on its own merits, so bans, blocks and other things can be done to stop. We would also have LTA to keep the record. ~~Ebe123~~ → report on my contribs. 11:40, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Some kind of noticeboard for incidents requiring administrative action? Fifelfoo (talk) 11:49, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Isn't this what AN/I is for? I think that what we really need is an administrator's page where usernames appear when the user has received x number of warnings on her talk page. I would think that this could be automated. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:45, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:AIV. It's not automated, though. — This, that, and the other (talk) 08:59, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages needs a wake-up call

We can chip away at the edges, but until there's an obvious ground swell of opinion then nothing will change. So let's pick a day that every editor agrees not to edit, and let's see what the result is. Malleus Fatuorum 06:56, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

An editors' strike such as you suggest would in my view only be effective if all or nearly all editors supported it, and it would probably have to last for longer than a day, even to get noticed. As you know, the number of responsible editors on the project is greatly outnumbered by those for whom it is a plaything, a means of self-assertion or a destructive weapon; they're not going to stop editing. So how will things have improved for the "good" editors, when they return? Brianboulton (talk) 11:28, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

A walkout is effective when one's oppressors might actually miss you, like workers in South Africa under Apartheid, when the majority of menial labor was being done by blacks for whites.

What did it take for Misplaced Pages to see that BLPs needed some attention? Change that into the next step: anyone editing Misplaced Pages needs to know what s/he's editing about, and drive-by slackers are no longer the engine running the train. --Moni3 (talk) 14:06, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be more constructive to propose a solution before getting into a flap about the continued existence of the problem - there clearly is a problem, but what are some of the realistic things we might do about it?--Kotniski (talk) 14:14, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

It wouldn't work Malleus-- 90% of the Project has no idea what the 10% who write the thing (much less the top content) are doing, they don't know FAs exist, they don't worry too much about policy, and the absence wouldn't even be felt. It's like two different worlds in here; those who care about policy-compliant content and work it at the top level, and the rest. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:41, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

True, but Misplaced Pages has always been like that. Misplaced Pages is a fundamentally anti-elitist concept, and the current round of angst is nothing new. Those producing high-quality work on Misplaced Pages have always, at some point, woken up to the realisation that it is hard to prevent the work they produce from degrading precisely because Misplaced Pages supports so strongly the "anyone can edit" principle. One thing I would say, is that if this is to change there should be formal processes to identify an editor's competencies that don't just involve looking at GA and FA production. There are many areas of competency that lie outside those areas, and identifying weaknesses is as important as identifying strengths. Even the best editors here have weaknesses and areas or behaviors they really should avoid, but sometimes don't. I think a lot of the problems would go away if people were gently steered away from areas where they were causing problems, to areas where they were helping. The problem being that many people are not very good at self-assessment, and try (in good faith) to help out in the wrong areas. Carcharoth (talk) 23:59, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

... and the current round of angst is nothing new. Nope, been around for six years, it's much worse than ever. Yes, the good ones always leave when they discover that one person can't prevent the dozens of FAs that person wrote from degrading because every Tom Dick and Harry wants to chunk in some claptrap-- but the good ones leaving weren't historically being replaced in droves by incompetents, advocates, children, college kids forced to edit for class credit even though they have no interest in Misplaced Pages, etc. As Misplaced Pages became more known, the caliber of editors replacing those who give up has gone down, and the problem is far worse than ever ... and anyone who thinks that training people will help isn't paying attention-- look at how much damage is being caused by the various university (actually usually community college) projects, where we get kids who appear to have missed high school adding content to articles they couldn't care less about; perhaps Carcharoth will help gently steer these students away from the articles they're damaging (which at least aren't FAs). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:21, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

To be fair, that argument (about college projects) is something that should be raised on something like a mailing list, or brought to the attention of the WMF, who might be able to do something about it (I was under the impression they have a network of online ambassadors that are supposed to help with stuff like that you are describing). And I thought there were at least some good university projects? Can't those serve as a model for the other ones? And if training and mentoring isn't an answer, then what is? Protecting all the featured articles? If that's what it takes to retain content writers, and talk page requests were dealt with at least every week (with possible unprotection if no-one is able to engage with the questions), I could support that. For now, though, I'm going to try and improve an article that I tried during the week to use to look up information - I think that FA writers sometimes forget that as long as articles provide the information people are looking for (i.e. Misplaced Pages being used as a reference work), and people treat that information with due caution, it doesn't matter hugely whether said articles are featured or not. Carcharoth (talk) 01:12, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

The network you're describing is at Misplaced Pages:Ambassador. Adrian J. Hunter 06:09, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank-you. I agree with what you and WhatamIdoing have said in this section, though I'm slightly confused as to whether WhatamIdoing is addressing me or Sandy. I agree with what you say about casual editors, though I don't think 'power editors' is the most diplomatic term to apply to the first group, there are some who (for want of a better word) become over-confident. The mark of the best Misplaced Pages editors is a constant willingness to learn and engage with the best of other editors, and to help all editors (not just new ones) improve as editors (enculturing the next generation). I usually fail miserably at that (through inaction), but sometimes people learn just by watching how others act. Direct interaction isn't always needed.

Maybe what is needed is a noticeboard where those maintaining and acting as stewards for featured articles could ask for those who are more patient to mentor and help well-meaning editors who need a bit of guidance? Though it is difficult to direct people to a place like that without seeming to be patronising. I also agree with what WhatamIdoing said here: "We're really just looking for improvements". I've been trying to add details to Challenger expedition on where the ship went during the expedition, and some of the information was in other articles. There are books in the secondary literature on the expedition, but until someone arrives with one of those books (one is mentioned in the external links) all that can be done for now is improving the article steadily, bit by bit, so that readers at least find the basic information they may be looking for. GA and FA only really kicks in at the end of a long process of article nurturing (unless we are very lucky to have someone massively improve it in one go).

But this is getting off topic. The issue being discussed here is essentially how to deal with disputes between those who think an FA needs additional changes, and the FA writers who say that the existing article is fine and the changes make it worse. It is nearly always a content dispute with the two sides disagreeing on sourcing and weighting issues. The resolution for such disputes should be: (1) Suggest change on talk page providing source and example of text to be added; (2) Discuss reliability of source and go to noticeboard if needed; (3) If source is reliable, discuss relevance to the article and either agree to add something to this article or suggest an alternative article where the material is better placed; (4) If there is agreement that the material is relevant and well-sourced, consider weighting and agree on the best way to mention in the article, whether that be a footnote, expanding an existing sentence, adding a few new sentences, adding a new paragraph, adding a new section, or expanding an existing section but spinning it off to form a subarticle to avoid unbalancing the existing article. All these options should be considered, and one of them usually works. Carcharoth (talk) 11:26, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

My intention is starting this is not to focus on FAs at all. It is to focus on people who write content. The bulk of the issues I've run into with disruptive editing are not just with my FAs but also with other articles I am improving - whether for GA, FA, or just because. We need to target disruptive editing in general, not disruptive editing in FA-class articles. Karanacs (talk) 18:50, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

The college students I've seen are usually starting with a horrible stub or a redlink, and what they leave behind is better than what they found. This is an example of what three students did to a neglected stub on their first day, and it's a clear improvement: more sources and more information. The end results are rarely GA-class, but we don't actually require that people produce excellent work, especially on their first attempts. We're really just looking for improvements, whether that is a major improvement, like tripling the length of a stub and adding half a dozen sources, or a tiny improvement, like fixing a single typo. Every improvement helps, and every improver deserves respect for their efforts to help out.

We were once all clueless newbies, and I doubt that many of us would be here today if our first efforts had been greeted with complaints about our imperfections. Sandy's earliest edits, for example, show her asking a lot of questions and complaining about a mess at an article—and getting back pleasant, helpful responses.

Compare that positive attitude to what we're saying here about the next decade's "Sandy": everyone who joins today is incompetent, immature, damaging, biased, and untrainable. Is it really any wonder that the people who could become excellent editors are choosing to find more pleasant uses for their time? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

That doesn't account for a single example of the college students I've seen (but I'm glad to know there is a counterexample); ambassadors aren't engaging (how could they when one professor may have 200 students required to edit Misplaced Pages); I'd crawl under a rock and eat worms before I'd post about anything to some Misplaced Pages mailing list (especially when these significant problems are already being discussed on Misplaced Pages with even professors complaining the ambassadors aren't engaging ); and finally, it's always interesting that no matter what one writes, some will read what they want to read. In my experience 100% of the time, these students do not engage either on article talk or on user talk, do not come back or stick around Misplaced Pages, repeatedly insert the same (reverted) content, commit significant copyvios, do not understand reliable sources, do not even post content to the right articles, and clearly have no interest in contributing to Misplaced Pages or learning Misplaced Pages policies. Comparing my initial edit history to that sort of thing is ridiculous-- my initial edit history was one of desperately trying to find someone who would talk to me so I could figure out how to make this thing go-- these kids don't even bother to respond anywhere, and don't care, because they're only doing it for college credit, not because they are committed to Misplaced Pages. Does anyone have an example of a single one of these students who has gone on to a really good regular contributor? This is where I was a week into editing (and I did all of that, brought TS to featured status, and cleaned up or started just about every related article)-- by all means, show me one of these editors who are contributing because they have to for college credit who is similar. My point being, we are not attracting the same caliber of editors we used to, and this resorting to recruiting and trying to train college students because editorship is declining ain't the solution.

But pls, let's stay on topic. I see all over this page several references to the need for a place where disruption on FAs can be brought. I raised that at least a year ago on WT:FAC and (IIRC) it was beaten down-- I think by some of the same participants now advocating for it here. I guess I'll start it myself somewhere, because the systemic problems on Misplaced Pages aren't going to be addressed, so at least we should try to get a break for FA writers. What is missing in a lot of the analysis (below) is that, once an FA writer has 20 or so FAs on widely known topics, defending those from idiots becomes practically impossible (some FA writers are more lucky than others because they write on obscure topic that get left alone). Those casual editors do not have the same problem-- they aren't going to see their years of hard work end up at FAR and destroyed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:06, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely. It seems some of Misplaced Pages's most senior and respected editors are forgetting that the vast majority of substantive content on Misplaced Pages is written by casual contributors. Don't believe the science? Take a look at a few (non-randomly selected) articles from my watchlist:

• Prokaryotic cytoskeleton – a scholarly and well-researched article, with 85% of the readable prose added in the very first edit by someone who's never made a substantive edit to another article.
• Fungicide use in the United States – 164 refs, 9453 words, practically all of it written by someone who's made a grand total of 72 edits.
• Aspergillus fumigatus – an outstanding article in which 77% of the readable prose was added in this edit as part of... wait for it... a college project.

I think what's going on here is the result of a kind of selection bias. Crudely put, there are three kinds of contributors:

1. The power editors The long-term constructive editors; (amended per Carcharoth)
2. The destructive editors; and
3. The casual editors.

Group (1) is highly conspicuous. You see them at WP:FAC, WP:RFA, WT:DE, and so on. Group (2) is highly conspicuous. You see them at various noticeboards, and dealing with them takes up an unfortunately high proportion of the time of group (1). Group (3) is incredibly inconspicuous. This conceals the facts that they are by far the most numerous group and that, despite what group (1) would love to believe, that they have done by far the bulk of the work that's gone into this encyclopedia.

Adrian J. Hunter 06:09, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you might divide group (2) into regular and casual as well. I don't know whether the casual positives outnumber the casual negatives, but there's not a lot we can immediately do about that anyway, except create a public perception of Misplaced Pages that somehow attracts the right sort of people. But the question here (and recognizing that the division into two groups is very crude and simplistic) is how to stop the "regular destructives" wasting the time and negating the work of the "regular positives".--Kotniski (talk) 07:11, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm largely in agreement with Adrian J. Hunter on the group 1/3 issue. No doubt there are also persistently disruptive editors in group 2 that are hard to get rid of because they do some good work. The recently semi-banned guy with 34 blocks comes to my mind. I'm sure there are others, *cough*, check recently closed RfCUs. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:12, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Before we start set up bivouacs between your three groups, Adrian, perhaps you should qualify your statement about by far the bulk of work into the encyclopedia. With 8,000 editors, by far the bulk of content added to the site is done by about 150-200 editors. Most editors add no more than a paragraph. This is reflected in a great many articles that have no cohesion and appear to be lists of stuff that may or may not be accurate. --Moni3 (talk) 21:44, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

"by far the bulk of content added to the site is done by about 150-200 editors."

What I'm trying to say is that that's an illusion. Did you read the article I linked? The crucial analysis is on the second page. Anyway, you can see for yourself that the numbers you suggest don't add up. Even if Misplaced Pages's 200 most prolific content writers have written an average of 200 articles each – surely an overestimate – those 40,000 articles would be barely 4% of the ~960,000 non-stub, non-list, assessed articles in the encyclopedia today (source). If I were to qualify my statement it would be to note that the bulk of the highest quality content comes from a small group of editors. But you already know that, and that's not why I posted. Adrian J. Hunter 04:09, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Those statistics of Moni3 seemed pretty bogus to me as well in light of m:Research:WikiPride statistics. That is a pretty odd name for a research project, but it has good data. If there's a single identifiable large "user" group of sizable byte-count impact, it's the bots; almost 1/3 of bytes contributed are theirs. But that's across all namespaces. What's clear in main article space (see graph) is that new user cohorts contribute a sizable amount of bytes every year. So don't be that surprised that the WMF is more worried about attracting those than keeping happy the old ones; the old ones get pretty "dry" on average after a while, it seems. Perhaps they spend a lot of time in discussions like this? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 11:43, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

A suggestion

People have suggested this before, and it has been dismissed, but I always thought it had merit. Is there any interest in establishing an editors'/writers' guild (for the want of a better phrase) -- an association of some kind to promote the interests of content contributors and the content they create?

There was an incident last year that concerned me. A company started offering print-on-demand books at hefty prices that were just Misplaced Pages articles, including FAs, bound with a nice front cover. What bothered me was this: first, that the prices were high ($50 or so), and the Misplaced Pages connection was not made clear enough. Secondly, the books had a byline of three non-existent people, which suggested they had actually written the content. And third, when a journalist in the UK asked whether Misplaced Pages objected to this, they were told by a spokesperson (David G), no, it's fine, we welcome it.

I found this objectionable. Yes, we agree to free licences, but that doesn't mean we cease to exist as writers. The attitude that we don't matter as individuals feeds into Brian's point about how many/most editors use Misplaced Pages as a plaything or weapon, not as a serious place where they can write. It's also directly connected to the disruption factor, where the person who writes an FA/GA is seen as having no more moral rights over his creation than someone who wanders past to introduce errors into it.

Creating a guild specifically for content creators (with the stress on "creation") will give us a voice. We could deal with our own civility issues (and there are issues, though it's more complex than a lot of the discussions about it imply), without it needing to be addressed by admins. And we could create guidelines about how to deal with disruption to content creation.

I'm not suggesting setting something up that would be oppositional and divisive, but something that would focus on writers' interests, which are currently completely unrepresented. In fact, at the moment, we don't even have any concept on Misplaced Pages of "writers' interests."

Is there any interest in doing this? SlimVirgin 01:14, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Possibly. Though what about the idea of a location specifically to deal with content disputes related to featured articles? And to ask for help with vandalism or to ask for a featured article to be put on a watchlist if no-one is maintaining it any more? I think this has been suggested before, but I can't remember the arguments advanced against it (if any). An actual guild of writers, though, how would you set that up? Would it be modelled on existing structures (there are some guilds around already) or be something completely new? Carcharoth (talk) 11:33, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

SV's proposal has more merit than suggestions of walkouts or protests. It offers, if nothing else, the framework for a way forward. Initial thought: I wouldn't call it a "guild". That name is a kiss of death, vide the "Guild of Copyeditors", the "Editors' Guild", etc. "Association of Content Editors" (ACE) might sound less pompous. It should have at its core a simple and strict code of principles that reflect its objective (protecting content quality and supporting the rights of content creators). Membership could be open to anyone who has steered an article through GA, FAC or FLC – and through any other criterion that indicates a commitment to quality content.

Bear in mind, however, that Misplaced Pages is what it is, and we all began our participation with our eyes open to its flaws – or if we didn't we soon learned. Also, the perspective of the quality content creator (for want of a better term) may be at times blinkered by self-interest. Reform initiated in the way that SV suggests will not be a giant leap forward, rather a small step, perhaps along the lines of the mild reform, a couple of years ago, of WP:OWN by the introduction of the principle of "stewardship". I have had many an occasion since to bless that modest reform. Brianboulton (talk) 14:15, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good (though WP:ACE redirects to the arbitration committee election pages). I think a potential sticking point is this: "Membership could be open to anyone who has steered an article through GA, FAC or FLC – and through any other criterion that indicates a commitment to quality content.". You will get numerous people arguing that almost any activity that aims to improve Misplaced Pages 'indicates a commitment to quality content'. The critical points being 'commitment' and 'quality'. (How much commitment is needed?) You may get people arguing that nominating articles for deletion (or bringing substandard FAs to Featured Article Review, to make this more relevant) helps improve the overall quality of the encyclopedia, so should the focus be purely on content creation? You will also get people saying that suggesting or adding minor changes to existing featured content is a commitment to quality, but there is a valid argument that endless discussion over the addition of a sentence here or there (or, capitalisation in an article title as I saw in a recent FAC) is just as 'valuable', when I would say that such discussions are more a timesink than anything else. The other sticking point is how long ago does having steered an article through (say) FA count? Though actually, that is not really a problem if GA is included. The biggest problem will be when someone notices that people are being excluded and says "hang on, this should be open to everyone!". And I can't really say they would be wrong to say that. All you can do is encourage people to sign up with a summary of their wiki-writing credentials, and let the chips fall where they may. You may end up with a group with good working dynamics, or it may all fall apart really quickly. You can never tell. Carcharoth (talk) 15:15, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I have to go offline in a minute, but just some thoughts (sorry if I'm being repetitive).

My thinking is that a lot of the problems we see (experienced editors leaving, reducing their input, or angry; and the content contributor-versus-admin tension) can be attributed to not being able/allowed to take pride in what we do. We write articles that get lots of readers. But at the same time we're told it doesn't matter who does the writing, do not act as if you're an owner, and if an anon arrives to revert you at an article you've spent months or years on, you must discuss his concerns politely, even if they're nonsensical. And the more experienced we are, the more we risk being seen as "vested contributors".

This is not humane. No ordinary voluntary organization treats its volunteers as dispensable. Misplaced Pages does, because some people think there is an endless supply of good volunteers, but I think they're wrong about that.

An Association would help us in several ways. We could make it formal, with a membership and elected directors, or keep it informal, as we chose. We could open it to anyone who takes their writing on Misplaced Pages seriously, with FA/GA/FL participation as one of the criteria (we can come up with others). It wouldn't have to be elitist, aggressive or divisive. It would just have to be something that allowed us to feel that content creators on Misplaced Pages were actually valued. SlimVirgin 16:07, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. A critical point about the belief that a stream of new good editors will replace frustrated good editors is that if the Facebook or 4chan crowd ever establish a significant presence, any new good editors would find an unwelcoming community where good edits are overwhelmed by bad, due to the diluted efforts of the remaining good editors. Now that Misplaced Pages is Number 1, it is attracting people who normally would have little interest in contributing to an encyclopedia. Also, the WMF is spending serious money on attracting passers by, with no commensurate effort to manage the new arrivals. Johnuniq (talk) 03:07, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Having done my share of AfC patrol, I respectfully disagree. Missing articles on important topics are still being submitted by people with no Misplaced Pages experience, and they are sometimes being rejected for not conforming to WP:REFB even when their writeup could well be published by a journal (they use parenthetical referencing etc.) See some examples on mw:talk:Article creation workflow. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 18:05, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Related to my involvement at the WikiProject Council, I have spent a lot of time thinking about whether a group can reject participants. The thought experiment works like this: A WikiProject is (exactly) a group of editors who voluntarily want to work together. Alice and Bob and Chris and Daisy are productive, useful members whose utility to the encyclopedia is increased by working together. Ed wants to join, but the first four member do not want to work together with Ed. Should Ed be able to demand that the group want to work with him, over their objections?

There are two questions: Is it even possible for Ed to force inclusion? If it were possible, should he do that?

I think that the answers are no and no: Even if he posts to the project page, the first four can WP:SHUN him, and there is zero possible method of preventing them from doing that. Also, forcing them to permit his involvement is likely to destroy the functional working relationship that the first four members have.

IMO the right answer is that the group should be able to directly reject a would-be member (for sufficiently serious reasons), because, in the end, the practical alternatives are (1) that the group rejects Ed and (2) the group disbands to avoid working with Ed. The cost to the encyclopedia for option 1's rejection is smaller (though not zero) than the cost for option 2's forced inclusion.

In practice, however, the accept-all-comers ideal is so strong that you'd probably have to proceed to AN or ARBCOM and get Ed formally topic-banned from the group's pages. So if you want a group with some sort of controls on who can join, I honestly believe you are best advised to find an off-wiki host for it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:33, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Should it matter at all who joins and makes suggestions as long as those suggestions forward the aims of helping to increase content quality on WP? There are editors who do not have FAs/GAs to their names but who do high-quality work. There are editors with FA credit who have been among the most disruptive I have ever encountered. Content editors need to be represented in some way, but we need to be very careful as the perception will be that this is another cabal to protect vested contributors no matter what. Because of that, I am hesitant of any idea of a noticeboard to post individual issues with FAs. I'm personally more interested in discovering where we can change WP attitudes - to make it easier to block for disruption, to make changes to streamline policies and guidelines, etc - so that we can get broader buy-in to some of these attitude shifts. Karanacs (talk) 19:02, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Membership ultimately determines the group's activities. If your primary goal is a sympathetic ear (and perhaps a little practical support) from people who share your concerns about the great unwashed mass of editors being permitted to "destroy your work", then you pretty much need to restrict the group's membership to people who are likely to be sympathetic to that feeling—ideally, people who fundamentally trust you, so that whatever your position is about a proposed change, they'll defaultly believe you're right.

Given that this isn't a culturally approved attitude on the English Misplaced Pages, an open board isn't going to achieve that. An open board is likely to attract more people complaining about your "elitism" and "ownership" and "refusal to hear" critics than anything else. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:44, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

NB that I'm not making a recommendation that anyone create a limited-membership group: I'm only saying that, based on what I know about group dynamics and the en.wiki culture, if you want to achieve this un-en.wiki result, you need an off-wiki tool. You may be used to wielding a hammer, and hammers work fine for pounding in nails, but that comfortable hammer isn't going to drive these screws. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:47, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Re "off-wiki tool": What you're suggesting sounds much like the Megaphone desktop tool. Wasn't there an arbitration case about something like that, WP:EEML? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 22:20, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

The basic principle is open editing, and it has gotten us to the present degree of importance and usefulness, and given us who do it a great deal of satisfaction. It has also given us a considerable amount of friction and unpleasant and misunderstanding, but that's the nature of human activities. If we abandon openness and become exclusive, the friction within the group will be replaced by the friction with those outside it. Most of us engage in a mix of activities--in most cases, as we gain experience, including more than content editing, because there is also the satisfaction of teaching others--as well as trying to influence the encyclopedia come closer to whatever our individual vision of it is. I think any exclusive group will be against the entire purpose here. In the extreme case, an individual who is disruptive only in a certain activity can be banned from it, and that gives the necessary protection to particular activities.

this isn't the only way to do things. It isn't the only way to write a general encyclopedia . It almost certainly isn't the way to write a high quality scholarly encyclopedia, which needs strong authoritative central editing. But its a way which has yielded surprisingly excellent results, and made something that is, in its way, better than has ever been done before. We should keep it, and experiment elsewhere. Misplaced Pages would be all the better for some viable competition.

As for the concerns listed in the first paragraph: if you are an expert writer, you will know how to deal with difficulties, and know how to express yourself so clearly and source so carefully that your position will be obviously correct,and will prevail in discussions. The problem is exactly the opposite of that proposed there: the experienced people here can protect themselves, the beginners are the ones who need the assistance. Society of New Member's Advocates is what we need, more than a Society of Experienced Writers. DGG ( talk ) 23:41, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

The basic principle is open editing, and it has gotten us to the present degree of importance and usefulness, ... Are you confusing open editing with Google's ranking algorithm? The discussion here started because the experienced people are not in fact protected from the "Society of New Member's Advocates", (whose ranks include increasingly younger and less experienced editors). I'm aware of your long-standing support for the notion that children who haven't learned to write, research or paraphrase in their own words or deal with conflict can contribute meaninfully to a reference work, which may explain our differing viewpoints. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:15, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

The basic principle seems to be "to be an encyclopaedia." I can tell you from an analysis of systematic bias, that we don't have open editing from technical, nationalist, gendered, language, class and poverty bases. USENET also had an equivalent system of "open" editing. USENET doesn't seem to be an encyclopaedia. USENET still has "open" editing. The communities behind the text based sections of USENET have largely evaporated, being replaced by high volume binary pornography trading and automated robots talking to one another. I don't, and won't, produce high quality content here because I prefer to experience systematic and ritualised abuse of finely crafted detailed work from people with an ideological unwillingness to meet common standards of proof by reference to text in offline spaces only. Fifelfoo (talk) 04:00, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

I meant that as our distinctive principle. there have been other encyclopedias. Open editing of a general encyclopedia is essentially distinctive to us. In my experience, the experienced people here who want to be protected include some who want their ownership of an article or topic protected, or want to justify their long-standing idiosyncrasies or even patterns of disruption. As for children, I know personally of some who have made excellent contribution as young as 11. I can't name them, as most of them do not want the ages public, in order to avoid the prejudice mentioned above. What I also know about children is that they are capable of learning. That ability seems often to decrease with age. It is certainly true there are unconstructive editors at early age groups, but they are much easier to deal with than the ones who have more experience and sophistication at it. DGG ( talk ) 20:38, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

"Unencyclopedic"?

The sections Dealing with disruptive editors and Signs of disruptive editing refer to "unencyclopedic" edits: "First unencyclopedic entry by what appears to be a disruptive editor", "revert uncited or unencyclopedic material", and "cites unencyclopedic sources". My question is where is the term "unencyclopedic" defined in WP policies/guidelines? If it isn't, who decides what "unencyclopedic" means in discussions? Shirtwaist ☎ 22:52, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

It isn't defined. You must use your Best Editorial Judgment in deciding whether something is encyclopedic. Your judgment would ideally be informed by both common sense and major content policies like WP:NOT. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:39, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Seems a bit too vague to be part of a guideline that's telling us what we're supposed to do. What should we make of this, for example? Shirtwaist ☎ 02:50, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

It's not rocket science. An encyclopedia is a repository of knowledge, not opinion or prejudice. It needs to be factual and verifiable. It needs to be in plain language, not in jargon. Its prose needs to be authoritative, not journalistic or magaziney. Any edit transgressing these broad principles might be termed "unencyclopedic". If you are making this charge against an editor, you should say why the edit is unencyclopedic, rather than using the term as a blanket condemnation. Brianboulton (talk) 12:42, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

you should say why the edit is unencyclopedic, rather than using the term as a blanket condemnation - Absolutely, and so should this guideline. Shirtwaist ☎ 20:44, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

"Unencyclopedic" is useful shorthand. It refers to material that does not belong in a serious, respectable reference work. MastCell  21:36, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Shirtwaist here. If this word is being used as a standard in a guideline, it needs a definition--one communally agreed upon. It's confusing and circular to use a word most readers are unsure of.

I use the word to describe edits that change the tone of an article to make it seem more melodramatic or...less like an encyclopedia. --Moni3 (talk) 21:40, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Add

Please add Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Delaware to the hatnotes. 71.146.20.62 (talk) 04:23, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

 Not done I believe this has been misplaced. Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Delaware does not redirect here nor does it seem related in anyway. Could you please elaborate as to the reasoning because I just removed a similar hatnote at the Canadian portal were you added Misplaced Pages:WikiProject California that again does not seem related nor is it redirected there in anyway. Is this because of the old shortcut abbreviations like WP:DE and WP:CA? Moxy (talk) 04:32, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Disruptive cite tagging

This article mentions disruptive cite tagging but I wondered if there was any policy anywhere that defines what level of cite tagging is acceptable and when it is viewed as disruptive. Obviously we expect featured articles to be fully sourced, but how necessary is it to tag every section and every sentence in developing articles? Is there a limit as to how many such templates can be added to an article? Dahliarose (talk) 23:34, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Application of this guideline

Please consider joining the feedback request service. An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. Within 24 hours, this page will be added to the following list: Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.

The behavioral guideline WP:Disruptive editing does not make clear whether it applies to Talk pages, or is only about Main pages. In particular, do the remarks about failure to get the point apply to the Talk page? Brews ohare (talk) 17:26, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Comment

Here is a hypothetical situation where I'd like to know how Disruptive editing is meant to apply: An expert editor (for the sake of this argument, a real expert) with some knowledge of a topic suggests that WP has some incorrect article statements. The expert points out the problems and suggests some sources. However, those interested in this page do not agree that changes are needed. They suggest the distinctions constitute undue weight, that the purpose of WP is to present facts, not to teach a subject, that the expert has a fringe view, and so forth. The expert editor provides more detail on the Talk page, attempting to educate those present in the intricacies of the topic and to explain how thought on this topic has evolved over the years, making the WP statements and sources old thinking.

As we all have experienced, heels dig in. The discussion begins to go in circles. The expert's arguments are not directly addressed, the discussion spins off into abstract arguments over WP policy implications, and the whole matter is going no-where. At some point the page editors invoke the notion of failure to get the point and go to AN/I.

The expert, of course, finds AN/I a poor venue to discuss details of a subject that no-one really is interested in. The subject becomes conduct, not content. The matter becomes one of Admin judgment (perhaps not described as "counting noses", but pretty close to that) to see if there is "community consensus" and the expert is disciplined.

Is this a correct use of Disruptive editing? Should an editor be allowed to go on indefinitely on a Talk page? After all, no-one has to join his thread - people can just "walk on by" and leave the expert talking to himself. There is no disruption in that. Is there?

Insistence on disciplinary action in Talk-page matters appears to be contrary to the health of WP. Brews ohare (talk) 15:58, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Example

A cautionary experience by an expert is detailed in Timothy Messer-Kruse (Feb 17, 2012). "The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Misplaced Pages". Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2012-02-14. concerning the treatment on WP of the 1886 trials related to the Haymarket riot. In this case the expert simply gave up, having concluded that AN/I was forthcoming, and not wishing to go there. That was not a good thing for the accuracy of WP. Brews ohare (talk) 16:12, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

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