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This is an essay, a page containing the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints, and they may be heeded or not based upon your judgement and discretion. |
On tendentious editing, how to recognise it, how to avoid it, and how not to be accused of it.
Contents |
What is tendentious editing?
Tendentious editing is editing which is partisan, biased, skewed—in other words, it does not conform to the neutral point of view. On Wikipedia, the term also carries the connotation of repetitive attempts to insert or delete content which is resisted by multiple other editors. A single edit is unlikely to be a problem, but a pattern of edits displaying a bias is more likely to be an issue, and repeated biased edits to a single article or group of articles will be very unwelcome indeed. This last behaviour is generally characterized as POV pushing and is a common cause of blocking. It is usually an indication of strong opinions.
Editors who engage in this behaviour generally fall into two categories: those who come to realise the problem their edits cause, recognise their own bias, and work productively with editors with opposing views to build a better encyclopedia – and, well, the rest. The rest often end up indefinitely blocked or, if they are otherwise productive editors with a blind spot on one particular area, they might be banned from certain articles or become subject to probation.
It is important to recognise that everybody has bias. Whether it is the systemic bias of demographics or a political opinion, few people will edit subjects in which they have no interest. Bias is not in and of itself a problem in editors, only in articles. Problems arise when editors see their own bias as neutral, and especially when they assume that any resistance to their edits is founded in bias towards an opposing point of view. The perception that “he who is not for me is against me” is contrary to Wikipedia’s assume good faith guideline: always allow for the possibility that you are indeed wrong, and remember that attributing motives to fellow editors is inconsiderate.
Remember: Wikipedia is not a soapbox. Articles, and particularly their titles, must conform to policy regarding verifiability and the neutral point of view.
Characteristics of problem editors
Here are some hints to help you recognise if you or someone else has become a problem editor:
- You have been blocked more than once for violating the three revert rule; you argue about whether you in fact reverted four times or only three, or whether 3RR applies to a calendar day or a 24-hour period.
- 3RR exists to prevent edit wars. Wikilawyering about the precise details is unproductive and probably means that you have missed the point: edit warring is bad, and even one revert can be disruptive. If your edits are reverted or rejected, you should take the dispute to the talk page, remembering to cite your sources, and if that fails you should try one of the various dispute resolution processes.
- On returning from a block, your first action is to head right back to the article and repeat the edit.
- A contentious fact does not become uncontentious by virtue of repetition. On Usenet and web forums you can get away with repeating something until nobody cares enough to contradict you any more; on Wikipedia, that is unacceptable.
- You repeatedly undo the “vandalism” of others.
- Content disputes are not vandalism. Wikipedia defines vandalism very carefully to exclude good-faith contributions. Accusing other editors of vandalism is uncivil unless there is genuine vandalism, that is, a deliberate attempt to degrade the encyclopedia, not a simple difference of opinion. There are numerous dispute resolution processes and there is no deadline to meet; the wheels of Wikijustice may grind exceedingly slow, but they grind fine.
- You find that nobody will assume good faith, no matter how often you remind them.
- Warning others to assume good faith is something which should be done with great care, if at all—to accuse them of failing to do so may be regarded as uncivil, and if you are perceived as failing to assume good faith yourself, then it could be seen as being a dick.
- You often find yourself accusing or suspecting other editors of “suppressing information”, “censorship” or “denying facts.”
- This is prima facie evidence of your failure to assume good faith. Never attribute to malice that which may be adequately explained by a simple difference of opinion. And in the case of biographies of living individuals it is vitally important always to err on the side of caution. If the information you want to add is self-evidently valid and important to the subject, it should be trivial to provide multiple citations from reliable sources which agree that it is both true and significant. Take this evidence to the Talk page in the first instance.
- You challenge the reversion of your edits, demanding that others justify it.
- Wikipedia policy is quite clear here: the responsibility for justifying inclusion of any content rests firmly with the editor seeking to include it. This applies most especially to biographies of living individuals, where uncited or poorly cited controversial material must be removed immediately from both the article and the Talk page, and by extension any related Project pages. Only once you have justified your edits beyond a reasonable doubt does the burden of proof shift to others.
- Your citations back some of the facts you are adding, but do not explicitly support your interpretation or the inferences you draw.
- The policy on original research expressly forbids novel syntheses of other sources.
- You find yourself repeating the same argument over and over again, without persuading people.
- If your arguments are rejected, bring better arguments, don’t simply repeat the same ones. And most importantly, examine your argument carefully, in light of what others have said. It is true that people will only be convinced if they want to be, regardless of how good your argument may be, but that is not grounds for believing that your argument must be true. You must be willing to concede you may have been wrong. Take a good, long hard look at your argument from as detached and objective a point of view as you can possibly muster, and see if there really is a problem with it. If there isn't, it's best to leave the situation alone: they're not going to want to see it and you cannot force it. If there is a problem, however, then you should revise the argument, your case, or both.
- You delete the cited additions of others with the complaint that they did not discuss their edits first.
- There is no rule on Wikipedia that someone has to get permission from you before they put cited information in an article. Such a rule would clearly contradict WP:BOLD. There is guidance from ArbCom that removal of statements that are pertinent, sourced reliably, and written in a neutral style constitutes disruption.[1] Instead of removing cited work, you should be questioning uncited information.
- You do not thread your posts on talk pages.
- Seemingly an unrelated style issue, tendentious editors often do not indent their talk page comments. While threading discussions (by indenting your replies to others' posts) is not strictly required, it is standard practice and highly recommended since it makes discussions easier to follow. Failing to do so may be interpreted as inexperience with Wikipedia conventions at best, and as inconsiderateness or arrogance at worst.
- You ignore or refuse to answer good faith questions from other editors.
- No editor should ever be expected to do "homework" for another editor, but simple, clarifying questions from others should not be ignored. (e.g."You say the quote you want to incorporate can be found in this 300 page pdf, but I've looked and I can't find it. Exactly what page is it on?") Failure to cooperate with such simple requests may be interpreted as evidence of a bad faith effort to exasperate or waste the time of other editors.
Undue weight
A particular problem is to assign undue weight to a single aspect of a subject. For example, you might know that there is some controversy surrounding a particular politician’s behaviour with regard to a property dispute. You may be very interested in that dispute, and be keen to document the politician’s role in it. So you would create an article on the politician which goes into detail about that, but includes little or no other data. This is unacceptable because it gives undue weight to the controversy.
Similarly, if one single person says that a particular country is a state supporter of terrorism, then adding that country to the article state-sponsored terrorism would be undue weight. It is very important to place all critical material in the proper context, and ensure that an overall balanced view is provided. A balanced view does not need to be a sympathetic view—our article on Adolf Hitler does not portray him as a sensitive and misunderstood individual who was kind to his mother—but it does need to reflect the balance of opinion among reputable authorities.
Righting Great Wrongs
Wikipedia is a popular site and appears high in the search engine rankings. You might think that it is a great place to set the record straight and Right Great Wrongs, but that’s not the case. We can record the righting of great wrongs, but we can’t ride the crest of the wave because we can only report that which is verifiable from reliable secondary sources, giving appropriate weight to the balance of informed opinion: what matters is not truth but verifiability. So if you want to expose a popular artist as a child molester or vindicate a murder convict you believe to be innocent on Wikipedia, you’ll have to wait until it’s been picked up in mainstream journals, or get that to happen first. Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought or original research.
How to pull back from the brink
First and foremost, however bad you believe the faults of your accusers are, think long and hard about your own behaviour. Critique it in your mind with the same vigor you critique theirs. Is there not at least a germ of truth in what they say? Have you perhaps been less civil than you might have been? Have you provided high quality citations from reliable secondary sources to back your edits? In addition, it may be a good idea to scrutinize all your behavior this way, even if you are not presently involved in a dispute, so that such disputes may not arise in the first place.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia – a tertiary source. If what you want to say is genuinely verifiable, then it should be possible to find at least one reputable and respected authority who says the same thing in pretty much the same words. It’s fine to précis the arguments of other authorities, but it’s not acceptable to editorialise or interpret them. If only one authority says something then to include it might constitute undue weight, or it might be acceptable by agreement with other editors to state the opinion duly attributed to the named authority.
A good way to find out what people find problematic about your edits is to ask, in an open and non-confrontational way. If an edit is rejected, try something along the lines of:
According to {citation of source}, the following is the case: {statement from source}. You have disputed its addition. How do you think we should state this fact?
It may become clear that the problem is simply one of ambiguity of phrasing, or it may be that you have a hill to climb and will need to work with other editors to find a compromise. Once you have done that, however, the compromise text will be defended by all parties and is far less likely to be skewed by future edits.
