I'm drafting an essay on people using Wikipedia for activism here. Some WP participants have already provided some good feedback on my user talk page. In my experience, the three behaviors I have listed in the essay are the three most common behaviors that agenda-driven WP participants exhibit.

My only attempt at WP essaying is WP:PANDA, which has the advantage of being much shorter, if not slightly more fun to read.

Enough is enough.


Bless you for that, Charles.

Sorry to be critical but:

1. How exactly do we define 'activism'? Is it holding strong views? But what is wrong with that? I have fairly strong views about the eliminativist theory of mind, about Scotus' theory of haecceity. Does that mean I can't write about these?

2. Is it that activists tend to cluster in large groups of 'like minded' people, as you say? But again, what is wrong with that, according to Wikipedia? The whole theory of crowd-sourcing is that appealing to the view of the crowd is the best way of getting to NPOV. So why aren't activists or movements of like-minded people to be encouraged?

3. You say that one test of activism is frequent use of WP:UNDUE. This used to be the main weapon in the armoury of us objective seekers of truth. What has gone wrong?

4. You say "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. " But how do you know if your own edits are NPOV? And note that all activists believe their own view is NPOV. How do we know you are not just another activist who happens to be opposing some other activists?

All valid questions:

1. There is nothing wrong with having strong personal opinions on a topic. The problem is if you edit in a way to support what you feel about a topic. That's where someone crosses the line into using Wikipedia for activism. Those three behaviors I listed in the essay are three of the clearest indications that I've seen that editors are editing to support their personal views on the topic rather than making an attempt to cover it in a neutral manner.

2. If like-minded participants at least make an attempt to follow NPOV, which as I explain in the essay means that they make an effort to work with other editors to include reliably sourced information that they may not agree with, then there isn't a problem. When like-minded participants take over a topic, or attempt to do so, then that creates more of a problem for Wikipedia than having fewer participants in that topic area.

3. Using UNDUE as a reason for removing a minority opinion from an article is often ok, especially if its in a BLP. What activists do, however, is use it with much more frequency than occurs in other subject areas. What I've seen is that they'll first argue over the validity of the argument and the source (FRINGE). Then, if they lose that argument they'll resort to UNDUE.

4. Of course my edits may not be completely NPOV either. One of the headaches about trying to edit in an area controlled by agenda-driven editors is that your edits will all appear to support the other side, which will make you look like an advocate yourself. Well, for one thing, someone who is trying to follow NPOV and WP's other policies won't engage in the same three behaviors of removing cited information, attacking BLPs, and being rude to other editors.

For the purposes of the essay, it should be fairly easy to define: an activist is someone who is consciously exploiting the enormous Google-reach of Wikipedia in order to use it as a WP:SOAPbox. I might add that to do this in any meaningful way, it is necessary to be an admin, or have one in your pocket.

One aspect of the BLP problem is the question of primary vs. secondary sources. WP policy favors the use secondary sources, but permits primary sources to describe the viewpoints of an LP under SELFPUB. Clever abusers of process [cough Will Beback] will attempt to slant a BLP by insisting that only secondary sources, which in the case of a relatively obscure person may be dominated by criticism, are permissible. These sources may attribute views to the LP which contradict the LP's public utterances, which may in turn be only available in primary sources (of course, WP:V recommends that primary sources be the preferred ones for an LP's views.) All this may appear convoluted, but attempting to ban primary sources is a tried and tested means for an activist to slant a BLP.

The usual approach for activists to achieve the editing goals they are advocating is the tag team, either informally or formally organized. No administrator required for that. Encounters between opposing tag teams can be so tedious as to produce a sensation of nausea over the spectacle, with edit warring over a single point continuing for weeks, months, or years. Sometimes the arguing is over the use or non-use of a single word, or over a single source being WP:RS.

Rather ironic that SV is editing the essay given her previous activist tag-teaming on I/P issues with Jayjg and others and activist tag-teaming on other matters with Crum.

Is she speaking as a reformed offender a la Frank Abagnale Jr. or does she lack the self-awareness to realize that many people reading the activist essay would think it describes SV, at least in her younger days, fairly accurately?

It describes her later days just as accurately.

Subsequent edit: isn't there an arbcom decision that says SV and Cla must stay out of one another's business?

If so, it would take an Activist ArbCom to enforce it.

But Activists are suppose to recuse themselves from cases where they have a self-serving motive to become involved.

Obviously people who have been involved in these problems, as I have also (and perhaps you also), are in a position to understand the problems. I see no contradiction between being an activist and proposing activist reform.

I regard this effort as good intentioned. It is probably also futile, because so many WP users are there only to play it as a MUD, and (of course) to advocate for their team (ie the issue and cause they personally identify with).

Tanto è inutile.

supposed

While most MUDs were combat-oriented, at least five of them were non-violent educational MUDs. Two of them were started in 1990 and all of them played a notable role in the history of online educational projects for young people. In that regard, I still employ ideas developed some two decades ago, in the era of the non-violent educational MUDs, MOOs, and MUSEs.


Yah, I saw that after I posted it, but I just didn't have the stamina to edit it.