 | This page in a nutshell: Disruptive editing is harmful to the project and may result in blocking or banning. |
| “ | Show the door to trolls, vandals, and wiki-anarchists, who, if permitted, would waste your time and create a poisonous atmosphere here. | ” |
| — Larry Sanger, Wikipedia:Etiquette | ||
Disruptive editing is a pattern of edits that has the effect of disrupting the project, impeding the ability of others to edit and work productively; and preventing the improvement of the encyclopedia.
Summary edit
Wikipedia owes much of its success to openness. However, that very openness sometimes attracts people who seek to exploit the site as a platform for pushing a single point of view, original research, or self-promotion. It also attracts editors that have disruption and drama as their main intentions. Sometimes a Wikipedia editor creates long-term problems by persistently editing a page or set of pages in a fashion contrary to policy and community standards.
Collectively, disruptive editors harm Wikipedia by degrading its reliability as a reference source and by creating an undesirable environment for other editors. Compounding the disruption, productive editors may quit the project in frustration when a disruptive editor continues with impunity.
Signs of disruptive editing edit
This guideline concerns gross, obvious and repeated violations of basic policy, not subtle questions about which reasonable people may disagree. This type of behavior disturbs the editing environment and obstructs the improvement of the project. Disruptive editors will tend to:
- Disregard and refuse to works towards consensus, often refusing to productively participate on talk pages. This is often accompanied by a rejection of community input, such as refusing to heed user warnings and resisting requests for comment.
- Insist on their version of an article without explanation and ignore points to the contrary.
- Rely on original research, unverified claims and misrepresented reliable sources.
- Abusively use user talk templates, article tags to assert article ownership, disrupt discussion and/or harass other editors.
- Focusing on the letter of policy over the spirit of policy is often a sign of disruptive editing. For example, the three revert rule is often gamed by disruptive editors. It's observence is often abused as a defense.[1]
How disruptive editors evade detection edit
Preventing disruption forms part of numerous Wikipedia principles, such as our blocking policy. However, some editors game the system in an effort to avoid disciplinary action.
- Edits occur over a long period of time and/or across a number of articles watched by few other editors; in this case, no single edit may be obviously disruptive, but the overall pattern is disruptive
- Edits maximize disruption while avoiding the most obvious violations of behavioral rules, thus avoiding sanction for edit warring or violations of civility, such as personal attacks. Otherwise productive editors may be goaded and frustrated into edit warring, incivility and other easily sanctioned behaviors, giving the disruptive editor a distinct advantage in mainpulating the article content and related discussion.
- They engage in "low level" disruption that may not attract the general community's attention or exhaust its patience, but exhausts the patience of productive editors on certain articles.
Dealing with disruptive editors edit
New or inexperienced users engaging in disruptive editing should first be informed of Wikipedia's policies and practices, and the problems with their editing approach. More experienced contributors should be reminded of the project's behavioural standards and encouraged to seek dispute resolution should discussion be insufficient to resolve the issue.
If warnings and dispute resolution fail, uninvolved administrators may block disruptive editors. Disruptive editing may be reported to administrators at the incidents noticeboard. Blocks should be used in situations where an editor fails to moderate their behavior in the face of community concerns. Persistent disruptive editing may lead to a ban or other sanctions, by community discussion or an arbitration case.
Notes edit
- ^ As stated in that policy:
- This does not imply that reverting three times or fewer is acceptable. In excessive cases, people can be blocked for edit warring or disruption even if they do not revert more than three times per day.