So You Want to be an Edit Warrior? Take this quiz: True or False:
- I don't edit war. I'm just fixing things so they're right.
- No, but all articles relating to <field of interest> should be alike.
- I have it on good authority that the claims in the article are not true!
- I'm an admin. I use my best judgment, and I fix things.
- I have never edit warred, but it seems like everywhere I go there are edit warriors trying to frustrate my edits.
- 3RR is a great tool for winning disputes
If you answered "true" to any of these, you may already be an edit warrior.
The charge of "edit warring" is thrown around quite often. Perhaps only "incivility" and "fails to assume good faith" are more often hurled insults, and so perhaps we can light a candle and curse the darkness at the same time by trying to come up with an operative understanding of edit warring -- what it is and how it can be avoided (at least some of the time).
- The mystical power of status quo.
"Status quo" means "where things stand." It refers to the way things are now. It is a truism in all debate that the status quo has inherent advantages over all changes because it is already operative. Want the world to power vehicles with methane? You have to first demonstrate that there is a problem with the status quo, then establish that methane can work, and then impose fewer problems in the conversion than continued presence of the status quo entails. In other words, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." If it is broken, know exactly how broken it is, exactly where, and fix it in a way so that the cure isn't worse than the disease.
In articles, the status quo has the inherent advantage of being already written. Wiki's are palimpsests, but just because they can be infinitely written and rewritten does not mean that they should be rewritten without a motivation, or for any goal but improvement. Be bold in editing, of course, but have the objective of betterment, not making your mark, serving your master, or defacing someone else.
- Change from the status quo requires justification
If "all articles about plays" are currently heterogeneous, then that is the status quo. If you and three others have decided that all plays must present the performance information in the first paragraph, the first cast in a table, the plot in the second section, the critical reception in the third section, and the themes in the fourth section, then you have to argue the virtues of that change to the messy status quo. You can argue it at a ProjectDrama page, but you also have to argue it at the individual plays, if the edits are contested. You are the one making the change. If the dominant authors or janitors of the article keep wanting to go back to the way it was, then they have the right. It is up to you to open a Request for Comment and to get outside reviewers whose neutrality and opinions the others respect. Otherwise, you may have to lump it.
- Change in point of view is unacceptable
An article that has a point of view other than neutral is an article that should be changed. An article that is neutral cannot be changed to have a point of view. If you freight a particular word ("choice" or "right" or "victim" or "medal") and want one of those used because it reflects your point of view of the facts, then you are edit warring. If the extant language actually takes a connotative position, then a third way has to be found, a neutral way, where either neither or both viewpoints are represented.
Edit wars are rarely necessary for nuances of point of view. "Contemporary conservatives in the United States, such as George F. Will, regard the concept of English as the official language of the United States to be mandatory, while those not in the conservative movement see it as either irrelevant or destructive" will cover the matter precisely. "The camp was set up, according to the Israelis, as a refugee camp, but Palestinian commentators regard it as a detention center or even, as XX says, a 'concentration camp'" will get the range of opinion, attribute it, and allow readers to see that we are not saying that one is correct.
- Truth is irrelevant
Not really, of course, but Wikipedia is a tertiary source of information. We do not report the truth. We report what other reporters have reported. We do not go out to discover the real truth. We are not journalists, not investigators, and not arbitrators. When reporters disagree, we either try to fairly show the range of opinion or, in the case of extreme and minority points of view, indicate that there are minority points of view that we are not going to reiterate.
- Avoiding the wars
Discuss the matter.
No, really. Talk about it.
Seriously: talk it out. Get a feel for a real community of outsiders -- not your friends from the mailing list, or your church, or your web forum, or your high school computer science class, or your wiki-project. Get fresh eyes, if you're stalemated. When you go get those fresh eyes, do not ask the new person to read through the hundreds of screens of name calling and tit-for-tat on the talk page. Instead, ask the opinion on the actual matter being discussed with regard to the article.
If you're stalling out or at logger heads, then ask one person from the "other" point of view to write a summary of his or her position. You do the same. Ask a third party to merely read the summaries, with no regard to who is being the bigger dick. You're trying to solve the issue of the edits, not the pleasantness of the other people.
- Apply our already existing policies
Look at the reliable sources page. Look at the Three Revert Rule page. Look at the page on Disruption. Look at the page on NPOV. Look at the page on RFC's.
- Be prepared to lose.
Be prepared to acknowledge that Wikipedia is wrong. (Who in the world thinks that it isn't?) Be prepared to admit that Wikipedia is wrong about Bigfoot's role in the JFK conspiracy, that you alone know the truth and that those fools wouldn't let you utter it. Be prepared to act in real life politics in your real life and not on Wikipedia. Remember: anyone who thinks that advertising on Wikipedia is a good idea is already failing in business, art, and life. Similarly, anyone who thinks that they can win a struggle against the voices of oppression on Wikipedia is misdirecting his or her energies grossly, if not criminally.