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This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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WP:ACTIVIST

Don't use Wikipedia articles to promote your cause.

Wikipedia is very popular on the Internet, and attracts ideological activists bound by common interests in articles.

Where such common interests verge into zealotry, the problems engendered by any such group or groups becomes a genuine problem for Wikipedia, especially with regard to maintaining a "neutral point of view" for an article as a whole. Where edits are made to articles which do not treat the article as a unified whole, this is further exacerbated (see WP:PIECE for one view about "piecemeal editing).

Zealotry behind editing present a difficult problem for Wikipedia. This violates Wikipedia's neutral point-of-view policy, a difficult policy to enforce because of its inherently subjective nature. A lone activist, although irritating to editors trying to follow the rules, generally cannot exercise ownership over a topic. On the other hand, when 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. Once a topic's articles are "on message," the activists guard the articles to make sure they stay that way, or threaten to have them deleted. Their hostility may repel genuinely disinterested editors.

How can one tell if a WP topic has come under the influence of activists? Some of the indications listed below may help. If it is evident that activists are exerting excessive influence over a topic, how does Wikipedia deal with the problem? Unfortunately, it is usually up to a 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.

Ways to spot activists

Assigning undue weight to tiny minority POV

The POVs the activists are arguing in favor of, are often notable enough to have appeard in the literature. However, in the context of the topic of the Wiki-article in question, it is often an irrelevant opinion. While the opinion may fit well in some Wikipedia article, activists will be motivated to write about their POV in a more prominent article, thereby assigning undue weight to that POV.

Activists and experts

The way activists defend their POV are sometimes in conflict with the Wikipedia's verification principles. It is possible that activists are also experts, and there may be disagreements between that them and other experts.

Content discussions degenerating into Wikilawyering

While Wikipedia has rules and guidelines, these are not to be enforced if that is not in the best interest of an article as judged by the editors. When trying to discuss the topic with activists in a pragmatic way, sooner or later the activists will run out of arguments. Then the only way out for them is to base their argument on Wiki-rules. E.g., when by any reasonable standard the point they want to make has 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 information

Conversely, activists may insist on the inclusion of views that are either fringe positions or 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.

Hostility

If you find yourself at the center of a maelstrom, stay calm and stick to the civility policies.

"Staying on message" is the aim of many activists. They try to drive editors they don't approve of away from Wikipedia. Often they make other editors feel unwelcome in the articles being guarded. Consistent and continuous incivility, including personal attacks, hectoring comments, biting edit summaries, baiting, condescension, and just plain rudeness 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. Frequently they will revert edits, even of extraordinary neutrality, with impolite or misleading edit summaries, 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.

Even if an editor has the same general viewpoint as an activist, the distinction may be lost on the activist. It doesn't matter. If the editor interferes with keeping the article on message, they are treated just like a person with an opposing viewpoint.

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.

Incivility by activists usually follows the same pattern. First, the activists revert the unwelcome edits with curt, dismissive edit summaries. 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. In a few extreme cases, the activist may even accuse the neutral editor of being a sock puppet, 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.

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.

Quality of writing

Uneven writing in an article with experienced editors working on it may indicate that activists are involved. Activists may stress their key points 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.

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.

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.

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.

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WP:BADPOV

Activist editors sharing a common interest will typically complain about the proper removal of fringe material per WP:UNDUE and FRINGE, by arguing that tyhe material could have been included in some appropriate detail. A commen 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 actividsts, by working together to keep sourced information out of Wikipedia.

The difference between neutral, good-faith editors and activists is fairly clear. Editors operating in good faith will try to cooperate, collaborate, and compromise with other editors. Rather than removing reliably sourced information, good-faith editors will work with others 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. Activists, on the other hand, usually refuse. 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. Often activists will remove substantial parts of an article and present the stub as an "Article for Deletion." Activists want no ambiguity in their articles, as it does not serve their purpose, which is to promote a single common point of view.

What can you do about it?

Do not be an activist or engage in battleground behavior. Assuming or assigning editors to a POV side or "faction" may aggravate the issues. 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!

Multiple factions

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 all of the behavior described in this essay is far less likely to be activism than it is to be neutral editing by disinterested editors. Under the policy of assuming good faith, that needs to be the default position.

Notes

External links

Meatball:DefendEachOther

@@ Line 41: / Line 41: @@
 ===Quality of writing===
-Uneven writing in an article with experienced editors working on it may indicate that activists are involved.   Activists may stress their key points at the expense of overall quality of the article (see [[WP:PIECEMEAL]]). 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.
+Uneven writing in an article with experienced editors working on it may indicate that activists are involved.   Activists may stress their key points 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.
 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.