Show the door to trolls, vandals, and wiki-anarchists, who, if permitted, would waste your time and create a poisonous atmosphere here.
This page is a guideline on the Simple English Wiki Simple English. Many editors agree with the ideas on this page. It is a good idea to follow it, but it is not policy. You can change the page as needed, but please use the talk page to make sure that other editors agree with any big changes. |
This page in a nutshell: Disruptive users may be blocked or banned indefinitely. |
“ | Civility, Maturity, Responsibility | ” |
Disruptive changing is when many of a user's changes put together stop other users from improving pages or cause other effects that stop people from achieving our purpose of building an encyclopedia.
Wiki works because it is a very open place that anyone can change. However, that openness sometimes means that people who come here to promote themselves, a point of view or original research find it easy to do so. While different viewpoints are welcome when backed up by reliable sources, and constructive users occasionally make mistakes, sometimes a Wikipedia user creates long-term problems by persistently changing a page or set of pages with information which can not be backed up by reliable sources or insisting on giving too much attention to a view that is not held by most people.
Put together, disruptive changes harm Wikipedia by making it less reliable as a reference source. They also harm Wikipedia because productive users might want to stop changing Wikipedia when they spend energy trying to improve Wikipedia and see disruptive people go unpunished.
It is very important to recognize patterns of disruptive changing. Our policy on multiple reverts already acknowledges that one act, by itself, may not violate policy, but when it is part of a series of acts that form a pattern it can still violate policy. Disruptive changes may not occur all in the course of one 24-hour period, and may not be the same thing done over and over. This does not have to mean that the user's changes are any less disruptive to the project.
Disruptive users may seek to make their behavior look like productive changing. Certain marks separate them from productive users. When discussion does not help the problem and when a group of fair users from outside the argument agree (through requests for comment or similar means), any more behaviour of the kind that was being disruptive can lead to blocks through the administrators' noticeboard or to more serious disciplinary action through the dispute resolution process. In extreme cases, this could include a site ban by the agreement of the community.
The three revert rule, if observed, must not be used as a defense against action taken to enforce this guideline. As stated in that policy:
Disruptive changing is against our policies, yet certain users have managed to be disruptive for many reasons:
This guideline concerns gross, obvious, and repeated violations of basic policies, not subtle questions about which reasonable people may disagree. A disruptive user is a user who:
In addition, such users may:
Users often post minority views to articles. This fits within Wikipedia's mission so long as the contributions are verifiable and do not give undue weight. The burden of evidence rests with the user who initially provides the information or wishes the information to remain.
From Wiki: Neutral point of view:
Verifiable and noteworthy viewpoints include protoscience as published through reputable peer-reviewed journals. Users may reasonably present active public disputes or controversies which are documented by reliable sources. This exemption does not apply to settled disputes; for example, the insertion of claims that the Sun revolves around the Earth would not be appropriate today; even though this issue was active controversy in the time of Galileo.
Sometimes well-meaning users may be misled by fringe publications or make honest mistakes when representing a citation. Such people may reasonably defend their positions for a short time, then concede the issue when they encounter better evidence or impartial feedback. Articles are acceptable that document widely discredited hypotheses (and/or their advocates) that have an organized following, such as the Flat Earth Society. However, claims that the Earth is flat would be inappropriate in articles such as Earth or geography, even if presented as a minority opinion.
In order to protect against frivolous accusations and other potential exploitation, no user shall be eligible for a disruptive user block until after a consensus of neutral parties has agreed that a user has behaved in a disruptive manner. This consensus can be achieved through requests for comment, third opinion, wikiquette alert, or similar means. This does not include users whose changes constitute violations of probation or other change restrictions, who may be blocked for such changes independent of this guideline.
Following is a model for remedies, though these steps do not necessarily have to be done in this sequence. In some extreme circumstances a rapid report to WP:AN may be the best first step, in others, a fast track to a community ban may be in order. But in general, most situations can benefit from a gradual escalation, with the hope that each step may help resolve the problem, such that further steps are not needed:
It is important to be as patient and kind as possible. Techniques such as reverting need to be combined with sincere efforts to turn the user toward productive work. Only when users show themselves unwilling or unable to set issues aside and work harmoniously with others, for the benefit of the project, should they be regarded as irredeemable, and politely but firmly removed.
See also - meta:Conflicting Wikipedia philosophies (try to look at your actions and actions of others from a philosophical point of view)
This article uses material from the Wikipedia Simple English article Wiki:Disruptive changing, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki Simple English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.