User:Sennalen/sandbox/essay

Wikipedia is not to be used for advocacy, which is to say, promotion of editors' religions, commercial ventures, political factions, and so on. Some editors engage in advocacy that is obviously disruptive and get banned quickly. Others engage in more subtle civil PoV-pushing that gets sanctioned only after building a longer track record. The most challenging circumstance is dealing with an advocacy editor who is too knowledgable and patient to flaunt the rules. Nevertheless, enough Talk page discussion will inevitably reveal that an advocate's aims are incompatible with the Neutral Point of View policy. This essay is intended to help navigate discussions with such editors and continue to make progress on building an encyclopedia.

Editor behavior

Ironically, exactly those guidelines and essays meant to stymie advocates, such as WP:TEND and WP:SEALION are vulnerable to exploitation by them. Some advocates will link them early and often. That is a risky tactic, since making accusations without evidence is against policy, but it is still all too easy to muddy the waters. Controversial topics like religion and politics do attract overwhelming numbers of questionable edits, so even an advocate can build a reputation as a defender of the encyclopedia. Newer Wikipedians especially can find themselves caught in a cloud of suspicion when they edit topics guarded by the advocate.

The first rule then is to avoid letting the discussion get derailed into editor behavior. Whether the issue is your behavior or the advocate's behavior, time and effort spent talking about it is time and effort not spent on improving the article. Therefore, focus on content!

Article content

WP:USTHEM WP:ORNOT WP:DUE WP:FALSEBALANCE WP:CHERRYPICK WP:BESTSOURCES WP:BALANCE WP:SOURCEMINE WP:PRESERVE WP:IMPARTIAL WP:MORALIZE WP:ONUS WP:NPOVT