Disputes on Wikipedia
For content disputes in English Wikipedia, as of 2024, editors most often resort to Requests for Comment, along with specialized discussion structures, such as Articles for Deletion.
"[1] The review examined numerous studies of editor coordination, especially on Talk pages, as well as algorithmic governance using bots to enforce Wikipedia policies.
[7] Generally, edit wars are provoked by the presence of highly controversial content,[3] such as abortion or the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, but can also occur due to other disputed matters, such as the nationality of artist Francis Bacon.
[4] According to a 2020 study, the longest edit war sequence, with 105 reverts by 20 users, was a 2008 tug-of-war over the biography of Turkey's first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
[8] Researchers also designed an analytical platform, titled Contropedia, to observe and measure protracted editing controversies, such as global warming.
[10] Accordingly, in a 2014 chapter, Yasseri led a different team to identify the most controversial articles in 10 Wikipedias, including Arabic, Hebrew, and Hungarian.
A 2021 study claimed 80% accuracy in identifying "conflict-prone discussions" by their structural features, such as back and forth commenting by two editors (ABA pattern), before any contributions by a third person.
[14] In a comparative study of such network gatekeeping on French and Spanish decolonization cases, it was found that more active editors experience fewer deletions and appear to function within rival camps.
[14] Disputes are widely seen as a drain on the Wikipedia community, without adding to useful knowledge,[15] and as creating a competitive[16] and conflict-based culture associated with conventional masculine gender roles.
For example, after the 2019 ban of a user by the Wikimedia Foundation, media stories covered the internal debate and the resignation of 21 administrators from English Wikipedia.
[23][24] Nonetheless, adversarial editing has been defended by Wikipedia leadership as important for collaboration[25] and scholars have argued that well-managed friction among editors can benefit the encyclopedia.
[27] Coordination tactics include asking questions, providing information, supplying context, offering a compromise, conceding or admitting lack of knowledge.
[11] During editing disputes, Wikipedians have been found to adopt five conversational roles: architect (of the discussion structure), content expert, moderator, policy wonk, and wordsmith.
[28] Indeed, when editors bring up Wikipedia policies during a general content dispute, "wiki-lawyering", they tend to escalate the editorial conflict.
[29] Editing disputes may go through stages or a life cycle, as David Moats showed for the use of sources in the early days of writing about the Fukushima nuclear accident.
[29] Consistent with previous research, they found that the first "vote" (i.e., comment) can generate a "herd effect" and predict outcomes 20 percent or more over the baseline.
[29] In English and several other Wikipedias, an Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) handles a variety of intractable disputes, including conflicts among users who edit multiple articles within a topic.
[21] Some topics appear to be unavoidably polarizing, such as abortion and climate change, although the level of editor conflict may not match the degree of public debate.
Researchers expressed surprise that Wikipedia policies, designed to ensure balanced viewpoints, were instead leveraged to favor one point-of-view in contentious articles.
However, the Shroud of Turin article was vulnerable to the meta-fallacy of bothsideism, according to the case study authors, because the "tenacity" of religious Wikipedians "might simply aim to enable other believers to continue to do so, by illustrating possible lines of argumentative defense, that indeed seem unending".
[35] In a case study of two post-colonial topics, Algeria vs. France, and Gran Colombia vs. Spain, scholars found that the most active, presumably reputable, editors suffered the fewest deletions of their writing.
Experienced editors have been found to reduce reverts by citing Wikipedia policies, especially "Neutral point of view" (NPOV), "Consensus", and "No original research".
However, a significant number "go stale" because they are ignored by veteran editors or, conversely, the RfCs are overwhelmed with comments and too complex or controversial to be closed.
[37] A Universal Code of Conduct for all Wikipedia organizations is designed to restrain the most egregious actions, some of which may arise from editing disputes.
