 | This is an essay on the conduct policy. 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. |
 | This page in a nutshell: You don't get to break conduct expectations even when you are right |
Some of Wikipedia's most challenging disputes arise when somebody is right on a particular issue, but expresses it in an obnoxious manner. This can entangle two issues together, namely what is being said, and how it is being delivered. The discussion, particularly if it's on the Incident noticeboard, or some other forum discussing editor behavior, where it can descend into parallel discussions where some people focus on what is being said, and that the person saying it was right about subject of the disagreement, and others focus on how it is being delivered, and how they were wrong in saying it that way.
"Violations of Wikipedia's behavioral expectations are not excused on the grounds that the editor who violated those expectations has the correct position on an underlying substantive dispute or the interpretation of policies and guidelines within those disputes. Those expectations apply universally to all editors, and violations of those expectations are harmful to the functioning of the project, irrespective of the merits of an underlying substantive dispute."
All of this would be avoided if the person being right was also civil about it.
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There might be several reasons why the other person is "wrong":
- Lack of experience in writing in the topic area
- Technical challenges with Wikipedia markup and syntax (especially seen in disputes over the Manual of style).
- Unfamiliarity with specific Wikipedia policies and guidelines (there are a lot of them - have you read them all?)
- Mismatch in cultural norms and familiarities (this place lets people all over the world edit here!)
Most discussions are the wrong place to assert that the person on the other side of the debate is clueless and needs to be smacked with a giant trout, and it's really unacceptable to use intemperate language in doing so. It's possible to be sanctioned, and even banned from Wikipedia, when you were actually correct on the merits of whatever discussion triggered the dispute in the first place.
Instead, we need to assume good faith that the other person thought they were trying to help and improve the encyclopedia. This is especially true for newcomers who will be unfamiliar with Wikipedia's culture and rules, but may nonetheless turn out to be valuable contributors. If there is evidence that a person is clueless or violating policy, there are processes for dealing with all of these, and sanctions for repeated violation of policy will apply regardless of whether bad faith was involved or not. By staying cool and collected in discussions, even when the other editor is aggravating, it helps build consensus and ensures that the person who is right and knowledgable doesn't end up the one being sanctioned.
A commonly heard trope around Wikipedia is, "My edits were right, so I wasn't edit warring!" It's been mentioned often enough by editors who've stepped over the line of the three revert rule (and got blocked for it) that's it's considered a cliched unblock request that is pretty much always declined.
If you work in combating vandalism, and plan on repeatedly reverting an editor, whether through blatant and obvious defacement of the encyclopedia or clear violations of the biographies of living persons policy, it's good practice to ignore the vandal and just quietly revert without comment. Goading to a vandal that you're right and they're wrong is likely to give them the attention they deserve, while goading to somebody acting in good faith who you mistook for a vandal is a significant error.
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