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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

Wikipedia is very popular on the Internet, and attracts ideological, religious, philosophical, political, and other activists. These activists present a difficult problem for Wikipedia. They repeatedly violate Wikipedia's neutral point-of-view policy, which is a difficult policies to enforce because of its inherently subjective nature. A lone activist, although irritating to editors who are trying to follow the rules, usually cannot exercise controlling ownership over a topic. On the other hand, when activists band together with other like-minded editors, they can skew an entire range of articles related to their common interests. Once a group of activists have all the topic's articles "on message", the activists guard the articles with noteworthy dedication to make sure they stay on message.

How can one tell if a WP topic has come under the influence of activists? The indications listed below provide an easy-to-follow guide. 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

Removal of information

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WP:BADPOV

The easiest way to tell if a group of editors has an activist agenda is how often they seek to remove reliably sourced information from non-biographical articles, instead of cooperating and compromising with other editors to find a way to include it at appropriate length. A variety of reasons will be used to justify the removal. The most common are WP:UNDUE and FRINGE, which are routinely cited to justify the removal of material—even when well-sourced—that is judged to be on the wrong side. Citing UNDUE allows material to be dismissed as a tiny-minority view, a non-specialist view, a view from a good source who has been taken in, a non-peer-reviewed view, a view peer-reviewed by the wrong people, in the wrong way, or in some way controversially so that it doesn't count. The frequency with which UNDUE is cited is one of the most prominent markers of activist editing.

The difference between neutral, good faith editors and those who are activists is fairly obvious. Editors operating in good faith will try to cooperate, collaborate, and compromise with almost all 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. 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 seek to minimize the information as much as possible, such as by edit-warring to remove mention of it from the article lede, and/or 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." Obviously, the activists want no ambiguity in their articles, as it does not serve their purpose, which is to promote a single common point of view.

Biographies of Living People

A substantial problem with activists occurs with biographies of living people (BLP). Activists treat the BLPs of their ideological adversaries a place to include as much pejorative information as possible. It doesn't really matter how tenuous the sources are. They could be 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 information or balance out the BLP in question, even a little, is met with cries of "whitewash!" 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 rabid fervor. Normally reliable sources, such as newspapers with huge circulations, become unreliable, partisan, self-published, and worse.

Hostility

"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. 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 get 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.

Activism to advance fringe points of view

Just as WP:UNDUE and other core policies can be overused, they can also be abused or ignored to give excessive weight to fringe points of view. Activists pushing fringe views may engaged in abuse of dispute resolution processes and wikilawyering, including long talk-page arguments. Even when tempers flare, try to maintain your poise so that administrators do not see equal fault on both sides.

What can you do about it?

Do not be an activist or engage in battleground behavior. Assuming or assigning editors to a POV side, may aggravate the issues. Realize than a NPOV means articles are 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. Acceptance and wining means reliable sources are given due weight in their appropriate articles to create great content.

Documentation

First, one needs to gather evidence as to whether activists have infested 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 aren't freely available online, 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, videlicet, 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 vague 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, attempting to derail the nomination. 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

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 can't help themselves. 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, the other faction should cease the same behavior. We hope.

Notes

External links

Meatball:DefendEachOther

@@ Line 26: / Line 26: @@
 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 get treated just like a person with an opposing viewpoint.
-WP has a guideline: [[Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers|new editors some leeway]].  New editors need some time to learn how we do things around here and what the policies and guidelines are and how they are applied.  Activist editors may well ignore that guideline in their zeal.
+One WP behavioral guideline directs us to give [[Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers|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 may 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.
+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.
+[[File:Unbalanced scales-too-far-left.png|right|thumb|160px|Some activists seek to push [[WP:FRINGE|fringe points of view]].]]
-==Activism to advance fringe points of view==
+===Activism to advance fringe points of view===
+Just as [[WP:UNDUE]] and other core policies can be overused, they can also be abused or ignored to give excessive weight to [[WP:FRINGE|fringe]] points of view. Activists pushing fringe views may engaged in abuse of dispute resolution processes and wikilawyering, including long talk-page arguments. Even when tempers flare, try to maintain your poise so that administrators do not see equal fault on both sides.
-[[File:Unbalanced scales-too-far-left.png|right|thumb|220px|Some activists seek to push [[WP:FRINGE|fringe points of view]] or seek to violate core policies, especially [[WP:UNDUE]].]]
-Just as [[WP:UNDUE]] and other core policies can be overused, they can also be abused (or ignored) to give excessive weight to [[WP:FRINGE|fringe]] points of view.
-It is important to distinguish between ''use'' of [[WP:UNDUE]] from ''abuse'' of that core policy.
-In articles on controversial subjects, fringe activists may engage in repetitive POV-pushing, which tries the patience of other editors. The tactics employed by fringe activists include, but are not limited to:
-* POV pushing, civil and otherewise.
-* Abuse of dispute resolution mechanisms.
-* Wikilawering (use of Wikipedia policies in a misleading manner, rather than proper insistence on correct use of policies)
-and above all:
-* Talk page argumentation, designed to wear out the opposition, frequently spotted by posts of fifty or more lines each.
-Tactics employed by fringe activists may involve excessive emphasis on sources being compliant with their own interpretations of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:V]], and downplaying or ignoring other factors, principally [[WP:WEIGHT]].
-Fringe activists may charge that they are victims of "personal attacks" or that their opponents overemphasize [[WP:WEIGHT]], when it is they who act against Wikipedia policies. Some activists have long block records, or have been sanctioned by Arbcom with topic bans, while other activists may have "clean records."
-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.
 ==What can you do about it?==
 Do not be an activist or engage in [[Wikipedia:Battleground#Wikipedia_is_not_a_battleground|battleground]] behavior. Assuming or assigning editors to a POV side, may aggravate the issues. Realize than a NPOV means articles are 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. Acceptance and wining means reliable sources are given due weight in their appropriate articles to create great content.
@@ Line 70: / Line 49: @@
 ===Why this works===
-[[File:Richard Caton Woodville - Bear Baiting in Saxon Times.jpg|left|thumb|125px|Bear Baiting in Saxon Times—try to avoid succumbing to provocation of this type.]]
+[[File:Richard Caton Woodville - Bear Baiting in Saxon Times.jpg|left|thumb|160px|[[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 can't help themselves''.  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.
-In many instances, activists are acting in good faith. Many believe that they are "in the right" and are upholding the highest principles of Wikipedia, only to find that the community, or the arbitration committee, disagrees, and imposes topic bans or other sanctions upon them.
-Warning: the Wikipedia community may not take sides and could discipline many in a tainted dispute.  The Arbitration Committee is also likely to make a long list.
 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.