Wikipedia:Competence is required

This is an explanatory essay about the disruptive editing guideline.

This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.

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Be cautious when referencing this page, particularly when involved in a dispute with another editor, as it could be considered a personal attack.

This page in a nutshell: Sometimes editors have good intentions, but are not competent enough to edit in a net positive manner. They create work that others have to clean up.

Wikipedia is a big place, with many editors, all with their own opinions on how to do things. It seems surprising that we are able to work together functionally, but somehow this is what usually happens.

One of our core Wikipedia guidelines that facilitates this is assume good faith. It is good advice, reminding us that, when we disagree, everyone involved is (usually) trying to do what they think is best. We get people who intentionally damage the project as well, but they are usually quite easy to deal with. They can be blocked from editing as needed, with little fuss and generally no controversy.

More often, substantial controversies arise when editors unintentionally disrupt the encyclopedia while trying to help it. In such cases, they may not have been able to anticipate a potential for their edits to be disruptive in the first place. As a matter of course, their fellow editors are generally encouraged to assume good faith behind their actions. This principle should not be misconstrued to such an extent that good faith is considered all that is required to be a useful contributor; competence is required as well. A mess created in a sincere effort to help is still a mess that needs to be cleaned up. When patterns of behavior emerge that indicate an editor might not be capable of making constructive contributions to the encyclopedia, it may be necessary for the community to intervene.

Everyone has a limited sphere of competence. For example, someone may be competent in nuclear physics but incompetent in ballet dancing or vice versa. Some otherwise competent people may lack the skills necessary to edit Wikipedia. Rather than labeling them as "incompetent" in the pejorative sense, we should ease them out of the Wikipedia community as graciously as possible, with their dignity intact.