Wikipedia:Activist

File:High Noon poster.jpg

Activist? Or Good Guy? Choose: you can't be both

Wikipedia is extra popular on the Internet, and attracts the meddling of ideological activists who band together due to a common interest.

While Wikipedia depends on volunteers for its very existence, ideological activists may in extreme and upsetting cases cause a disruptive conflict of interest between themselves and other editors. At the end of their wits, an activist may become a vandal or even a visigoth.

When activists metamorphose into militant advocates, the problems caused by them become a genuine problem for Wikipedia, especially for maintaining a "neutral point of view". Then all hell breaks loose as these mercenaries (note: whilst paid editing has been a problem in the past for wikipedia, not all activists are paid) make edits that do not treat the article as a unified whole. (See WP:PIECE for one view about "piecemeal editing.) Such "piecemeal editing" includes adding contrary and argumentative asides to weaken any appearance of consensus about a topic — though the presence of such asides is not conclusive evidence of activism. They also might add a bunch of quotes that support their ideas without any attribution — though the presence of such quotes is not conclusive evidence of activism. Occasionally, blog posts made by patsies might be relied upon to illustrate their fervent beliefs in whatever cause they champion — though the presence of citations to blogs is not conclusive evidence of activism.

Any fiendish extremism associated with diehard, fanatical activist editing is a problem for Wikipedia. It leads to violations of Wikipedia's neutral point-of-view policy, a difficult policy to enforce because of its inherently subjective nature. A lone activist, however irritating to editors trying to follow the rules, generally cannot exercise ownership over a topic. On the other hand, when such activists band together or act as a group with other like-minded editors, they can skew an entire range of articles related to their common interests. Sometimes, once a topic's articles are "on message," the activists will guard the articles to make sure they stay that way, or threaten to have them deleted. Their hostility may repel genuinely disinterested editors. Cruel activists bait and hound editors with a battleground mentality (that is to say, the activists hound with a battleground mentality; not that they hound those editors that have a battleground mentality, obviously) to trap and get opponents blocked since enforcement for behavior issues is swift and severe at Wikipedia.

How can one tell if a topic has come under the nefarious and evil influence of activists? Your mind may be opened by some of the brilliant indicators taken from real life experiences on Wikipedia (just don't ask which ones). If activists are exerting excessive influence over a topic, how should you deal with the problem? Unfortunately, after considerable hesitation, it is usually up to a heroic, honorable, and wise lone editor who is a glutton for punishment to come along and get the ball rolling. Here are instructions on how to address the problem for brave editors willing to try and save Wikipedia from the filthy and odious vermin who are trying to ruin the project with their malicious activism.

Ways to spot evil

Assigning massive weight to ideas that you thought up one day

The activists are arguing in favor of ideas that are frequently fantasies they made up. They may occasionally appear in sources that other activists have produced. In the context of the topic in which the activist is active, it may even be an irrelevant opinion. While the claims may "fit" the Wikipedia article, monomaniacs are anxious to have their opinions dominate an article.

For example, in the case of a scientific area, source reliability and NPOV is a contentious issue between activists. The infidels don't think that high-quality journals, the mainstream opinion, or reliable syntheses or views published by respected institutions are worthy of consideration; and instead they promulgate their ideas published in dubious journals, exclusively rely on exploratory papers, or simply promote non-reliable sources or the views of individuals. Another issue is between the reliability and writing NPOV articles integrating scientific schools. For example; physics, philosophy and journalism are legitimate schools; however, pedagogical activists will carry their disputes into Wikipedia and disrupt the creation of a NPOV articles encompassing all schools. For example, when a physics-activists rudely assert that there is no objective evidence for paranormal activity in the face of believers in the occult, they are dragging down Wikipedia with their evil.

Content discussions degenerating into Wikilawyering

While Wikipedia has rules and guidelines, these are not to be actively ignored if that is in the best interest of an article as judged by the editors. Dispute resolution is for resolving disruption among editors creating high quality articles, not for solving personal issues. When trying to discuss the topic with the marauding hoards in a pragmatic way, sooner or later the evil ones will run out of arguments. Then the only way out for them is to base their argument on irrelevant rules. For example, when they have been debunked, they will cite WP:NOTTRUTH and argue that since their point is published in some "reliable source", it should be included in the article.

Improper addition of logorrheic amounts of information, facts, and helpful clues

Conversely, activists may insist on the inclusion of long-winded explanations of fringe positions that improperly slant the article in one direction ("Fringe theory activists"). One of their favorite arguments is that "it's verifiable so it has to be included," disregarding policies that forbid undue emphasis on fringe or tiny-minority ideas. Activist editors also frequently disregard WP:INDISCRIMINATE, which bans use of Wikipedia as an indiscriminate repository of information. They may create new articles that border on content or POV forks in an attempt to advance their position. They may misstate or distort source material to justify including it in articles, which is easy when to do when sources are not on the web; if in doubt, request that the relevant passages be posted on the talk page. One caveat: for both removal and addition of information, policies are subject to differing good-faith interpretations. The fact that someone has sought to add or remove information is not prima facie evidence that an editor is an activist.

Biographies of living people

A substantial problem with activists occurs with biographies of living people (BLP). Activists treat the BLPs of their ideological adversaries as a place to include as much pejorative information as possible, and treat biographies of their favored persons in the opposite way. They may similarly overload biographies of persons they like with peacock terminology and questionable sourcing. It doesn't really matter how tenuous the sources are. Questionable sources could include posts from an advocacy blog hosted by a political lobbying organization, a professor's self-published slide show, or the subject's signature on some controversial petition—it's all "good to go" as far as they are concerned. Attempts to remove or qualify some of the negative or positive information or balance out the BLP in question, even a little, is met with cries of "whitewash!" or "smear!" by the activists on each others' talk pages, and on noticeboards. If one tries to do the same thing to the BLP of someone who agrees with their ideology, Wikipedia's BLP-related policies suddenly become sacred, strictly interpreted and strenuously enforced with great fervor. Normally reliable sources, such as newspapers with huge circulations, become unreliable, partisan, self-published, and worse. Notice the obsessive use of "BLP" in this section. It's because of the gospel-policy "BLP" that is the flavor-of-the-month on Wikipedia today. Ironically, this means that as long as the biography is only about a living person (the "L" in "BLP"), that's when the essay-writers care about these tactics. As soon as death overtakes subject of the biography, the BLP policy loses its teeth and our dragon-slayers lose a helpful sword for their quest to slay the activist dragon.

Hostility

If you find yourself at the center of a maelstrom, stay calm and stick to the civility policies. On the other hand, this is a vortex caused by a low-flying crop-sprayer. If you see one of these coming, duck. Unless, of course, you're an activist. Then stand proud while you get doused with pesticides.

"Staying on message" is the aim of many politicians — erm — activists. They try to drive away opponents from Wikipedia with their virulent staying-on-message capabilities. Often they make other editors feel unwelcome in the articles being guarded simply because they are so on-message. Consistent and continuous incivility, including personal attacks, hectoring comments, biting edit summaries, baiting, condescension, pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, sloth, and just plain rudeness (as distinct from incivility or personal attacks) become the norm on article talk pages and user talk pages. They may behave in a superficially civil manner on-wiki but make attacks from the safety of off-wiki venues from whence they coordinate their evil designs. Frequently they will revert edits that are not on-message, even edits of extraordinary neutrality, with impolite or misleading edit summaries about the lack of on-message-ness of the edit, ignoring any attempts to discuss the edits. The activists may engage in passive incivility and hostility if they don't think they are being watched closely by Wikipedia's administrators, and, indeed, some activists on a given topic may well be administrators themselves. In short, activists will scare you away with every means they have. Only the brave will survive.

Even if an editor has the same general viewpoint as an activist, the distinction may be lost on the activist if they think that there are bad apples spoiling the bunch. It doesn't matter if you are essentially a sockpuppet of the activist, if the offending outsider interferes with keeping the article on-message, that belligerent will be treated exactly the same as a person with an opposing viewpoint. Isn't that awful?

One WP behavioral guideline directs us to give new editors some leeway. New editors may need some time to learn how we do things, and what the policies and guidelines are and how they are applied. Activist editors may well ignore that guideline in their zeal. Or, sometimes even more nefariously, the activist will accuse their opponents of ignoring that guideline. Sometimes everyone, activist or otherwise, ignores the guideline and that's when a stern a-talking-to is appropriate. Of course, even though everyone's at fault, the initial problems can almost always be traced back to those pesky activists.

Incivility by activists usually follows the same pattern. First, the activists revert the unwelcome edits with curt, dismissive edit summaries (e.g. "This is false." when reverting an edit that introduces a factual error). If the reverted editor starts a discussion about it on the talk page, the activists, if they respond, belittle the editor's opinions in that discussion, such as by asserting superior knowledge of the topic, saying the editor does not understand what the source is really stating, and that they should read the discussion page archive before participating further, and asserting that the edit really added no value to the article (e.g. "I have a degree in the subject of this article and you are Randy from Boise"). In a few extreme cases, the activist may even accuse the good, angelic, neutral editor of being a sock puppet for some other good, angelic neutral editor, or editing on behalf of a banned editor. In extreme cases, the activists will gang up and pile on the editor with incivil comments either on the article talk page or on the editor's user talk page. The goal is the same, to drive off anyone who is not part of the common interest group and who has the gall to edit the encyclopedia that anyone can edit without doing necessary background research.

Even when tempers flare, try to maintain your own poise. All too often, an outside administrator will see fault with just two editors - you and one of the activists, leaving the article as ill off as before. Then you are no better than your enemy, grasshopper.

Quality of writing

Uneven writing in an article with experienced editors working on it may indicate that the activist game is afoot. Activists stress their key points incessantly, grinding away at the facts and insisting that their lies be included while opponents' lies are couched or removed. This generally comes at the expense of overall quality of the article (see WP:PIECEMEAL). If your irony detector has started beeping incessantly, then you've probably noticed that this essay is a case in point. When activist editing becomes dominant, what matters is that certain key points with which they agree are are present and prominent, and points with which they disagree are minimized. Edits which show a subject to be more complex than the truth "known" by the editors are likely to be removed, especially when they are made by good people.

While there are many reasons for poor writing, incongruity between the quality of the writing and the number of experienced editors involved in the article's maintenance may signal the presence of ideology rather than the seeking of a truly neutral point of view. The helpful rule of thumb is: if everyone is experienced but the writing is poor, it must be due to activists. There can be no other explanation.

Remember, however, that some Wikipedians are rather unskilled at writing, and that uneven writing is more likely to result from other factors, such as their involvement rather than the presence of activism. But then, you should have noticed that those unskilled Wikipedians were not precisely activist. It's important to keep this stuff straight.

Common complaints of activists

Improper removal of information

Activists will routinely complain about their edits being removed on the grounds of UNDUE WEIGHT to remove views as minority, fringe, or not specialist enough. Only the regular editors' views will be sufficiently weighty. Beware also of fringe physics activists attempting to insert pedantic comments about "1-ton" being a unit of mass not weight, and not being a SI unit either. You have been warned.

Activist editors sharing a common interest will typically complain about the (im)proper removal of fringe material per WP:UNDUE and FRINGE, by arguing that the material could have been included in some appropriate detail. A common argument used is that WP:UNDUE and FRINGE are improperly cited to censor material that is judged to be on the wrong side. Indeed, activists will often accuse the other editors of being activists, by working together to keep sourced information out of Wikipedia.

The difference between neutral, good-faith editors and activists is fairly clear, isn't it? Editors operating in good faith will try to cooperate, collaborate, and compromise with other editors. For example, if an editor comes to the sky page arguing that the sky is yellow, the good faith contributor will compromise and modify the text to say, "the sky is green" so as to accommodate this opinion as congenially and politely as possible. Rather than acting like activists and rudely removing reliably sourced information to expert fringe believers, good-faith editors will instead work with others forever and without ceasing to resolve the dispute and try to retain some substance of the text at issue if it is verifiable, relevant, and can be presented neutrally. Thus, the sky becomes green and everyone is happy! Activists, on the other hand, categorically refuse to compromise on the color of the sky. During any content dispute with activists, tag-team edit warring and long, convoluted wiki-lawyering on the article talk page become the norm. Where the activists agree to include the information, such as if a content request for comment (RfC) fails to agree with their positions, they will still seek to minimize the information as much as possible, such as by edit-warring to remove mention of it from the article introduction, or to word it in a way which favors their point of view. (E.g. "While blathering idiots say the sky is yellow, the fact remains that the sky is blue." See how unreasonable those freaks are?) Often activists will remove substantial parts of an article and present the stub as an "Article for Deletion." Isn't that mean? Surely the article on yellow sky deserves inclusion in Wikipedia. But, alas, activists can handle no ambiguity in their articles or in their lives in general, pitiful as they are. Such uncertainty does not serve their purpose, which is to promote a single common point of view forever and ever. Amen.

What can you do about it?

Do not be an activist or engage in battleground behavior even if doing so would illustrate your point brilliantly. Assuming or assigning editors to a POV side or "faction" may aggravate the issues, so instead just make your accusations about other editors outside of Wikipedia at, say, Wikipedia Review. Realize that achieving and maintaining a NPOV means article creation is a balancing act, and that many sources which have a POV get used in order to form a more neutral article. Ask fairly stated questions on the talk page and give fair warning before escalating disputes. The overly defensive, or editors who remain unaware of how their behaviors may be disrupting Wikipedia's best interests, will become self-apparent to disinterested parties.

Documentation

First, one needs to gather evidence as to whether activists have dominated a topic area or not. The easiest way is to dive into the topic oneself and start making NPOV edits to the articles in question. Activists do not want their articles to be NPOV because it does not serve their purpose, which is advocacy. So, you will quickly encounter fairly consistent and determined resistance to your efforts.

One method to prove beyond a doubt that activists are at work in the topic area is this: find a subject in the topic area which doesn't have its own article yet and write one. The best is a subject that, for whatever reason, the activists have tried to keep from being mentioned or covered to any extent in the other articles in that topic. Go to the library and find sources, especially sources which are freely available online and can be easily checked, to support writing the article. Then, draft a complete, comprehensive, factual, well-sourced, and NPOV article on the subject on a page in your userspace or offline. Make sure you give appropriate weight to all sides of the issue. When the article is ready, post it in mainspace and link it, as appropriate, to the other articles in that subject area. If there are activists in the topic area, they will react in almost the same manner every time, meaning that they will clearly engage in most, if not all, of the three types of behavior listed above.

The activists will delete large swaths of material and sources from the article you posted almost immediately, citing policy violations or for other reasons, such as UNDUE, SYN, BLP, or V. They may remove all the links to the article that you had added to other articles. If they do add any additional material, which will usually be in small amounts if at all, the information will be obviously intended to swing the article's message to their POV. If the article is a BLP, they will be especially aggressive in adding or deleting negative or positive information depending on the subject.

The activists may, after deleting significant content and removing many of the sources cited, nominate the article for deletion and then dogpile into the AfD to support its deletion, although they will probably do so over several days to try to disguise that they are acting together. At the same time, they will likely edit war to prevent the restoration of the sources and content they have removed.

Although the article you posted may have been of sufficient quality for GA or FA, the activists will act as if they couldn't care less that they have just ruined the article's chances of passing the review. In fact, if you have already nominated the article for GA or FA, they will jump in and interfere with the process—disregarding the fact that this is your article. When you attempt to protest what they are doing on the article's talk page, they will collectively hit you with not only the usual hypocritical wiki-lawyering, but also a shotgun blast of animosity, ridicule, derision, and/or condescension.

Why this works

Bear baiting—try to avoid succumbing to provocation of this type.

What may be most startling about the activists' behavior is that they will act this way knowing full well that they are entrapping themselves. Perhaps they will have even already read this essay and know that you are not hiding what you are trying to do. They will act this way anyway, because they have strong ideological or professional motivations. The activists have spent too much time and effort getting the topic area on message to let anything challenge the status quo they have created. Their belief that their cause is just and right is so strong that they don't feel that they are doing anything wrong. Thus, most activists will find themselves unwilling and unable to act in any other way.

Make sure that you never allow yourself to be baited by the activists into responding with incivility, edit warring, or any other violation of policy yourself. For sure it can be frustrating to spend 30 minutes adding a new paragraph with robust sourcing to an article, only to have it reverted 10 minutes later. Always act, however, with kindness, patience, forbearance, calmness, and with continual attempts to cooperate, collaborate, and compromise.

The admins and uninvolved editors who respond to your first attempts at dispute resolution, such as an RfC in which you document the activists' actions, may at first appear not to support your assertions of partisan editing in the topic area, especially if the activists' POV seems to agree with popular opinion on the topic or several of the activists are established editors with many wiki-friends. Admins may also be reluctant to take action, especially against the activists' apparent leader, because of the intimidating gang-up, pile-on response which will result from the other activists in that bloc. Don't give up, however, repeat the same process above with another article and try again. Sooner or later more editors will notice what is going on and try to do something about it.

Lastly, make sure that you are not the activist! (A frequent sign of activism is to yell with excessive use of BOLD CAPITALIZATION, big font or exclamation marks!!!

Multiple factions

Activist editors will sometimes use image captions to insert POV commentary where it may not be noticed.

In some cases, there are competing groups of activists. Frankly, staying clear of both is difficult. One of the groups is usually dominant, either because it has more editors, has administrator members, is better organized, adheres more closely to Wikipedia policies and guidelines, or a combination of these. The activists can still be identified because they engage in the behaviors listed above. If you dive in, first deal with the faction which most abuses Wikipedia policies. Once they have been dealt with, unfortunately, the other faction is unlikely to cease the same behavior.

A caveat

It could be argued that this essay is founded on a fundamentally false premise - that there are 'neutral' contributors, and 'activist' ones, and that they operate in fundamentally different ways. Everyone has strong opinions about something, which will make them an 'activist' over that issue. The correct way to deal with people you consider to have a strong POV is to discuss issues of content, not make sweeping assumptions about their motivations. To do otherwise is itself activism - trying to impose your own views of neutrality and exclude those who you see as not conforming.

It also should be emphasized that edits that seem like activism could be neutral editing by disinterested editors. Under the policy of assuming good faith, assume this until different evidence shows otherwise.

Areas where blocs have been alleged to have operated

Some areas where confrontations between groups of ardent supporters of particular positions include: Scientology, Eastern European history, Israeli-Palestinian articles, Prem Rawat and related articles, Sexuality related articles (including LGBT issues), political articles, Transformers related articles, climate change related articles, and religion related articles in general. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Cases

See also

Other essays, policies, and guidelines

• Wikipedia:Advocacy
• Wikipedia:Advocacy articles
• Wikipedia:Assume good faith
• Wikipedia:Assume bad faith
• Wikipedia:Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars/2008 report#Definition of tag team
• Wikipedia:Disruptive editing
• Wikipedia:Cabals
• Wikipedia:Canvassing
• Wikipedia:Civil POV pushing
• Wikipedia:Conflict of interest
• Wikipedia:Consensus
• Wikipedia:Describing points of view
• Wikipedia:False consensus
• Wikipedia:Gaming the system
• Wikipedia:Griefing
• Wikipedia:KNOW
• Wikipedia:POINT
• Wikipedia:Randy in Boise
• Wikipedia:Single-purpose account
• Wikipedia:Sock puppetry#Meatpuppets
• Wikipedia:Tag team
• Wikipedia:Vested interest
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not here to tell the world about your noble cause
• Wikipedia:Words of Wisdom
• Leaderless resistance
• Meta:What is a troll?

Articles

• Criticism of Wikipedia
• Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia
• Group-serving bias

External links

• Meatball:DefendEachOther