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Revision as of 20:11, 13 January 2009

Some Comments

I LIKES IT! Syrthiss 11:57, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

• This is a good essay, and potentially useful. I'd expand upon the concept of "undue weight", and point out that sometimes, even if certain information is true, including it in a particular fashion in a particular article skews the article. For instance, if there's a stub biography for a certain individual that goes into detail over a particular point of controversy, while at the same time failing to give more general biographical details or outline the individual's contributions, the article is unbalanced and biased against that individual. I find undue weight to be the primary "sin" of many of the tendentious editors I've encountered. --woggly 09:00, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Haha, this is great, did you write it while reviewing the contribution history of User:RJII? :)) - FrancisTyers · 09:48, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Cut from intro:

• On Misplaced Pages, the term also carries the connotation of repetitive attempts to insert or delete content which is resisted by multiple other editors.

Wait, are you saying that if multiple other editors resist these "repetitive attempts" then by definition those were tendentious edits?

If so, there would appear to be 2 different definitions of tendentious here:

1. Edits which violate NPOV policy because their result is a biased article
2. Edits which go against the 'consensus' (i.e., majority) of contributors to an article - regardless of the merits of that edit.

In other words, if 2 or 3 editors want to violate NPOV, and 1 editor tries multiple times to return the article to neutrality THEN the editor trying to restore neutrality is guilty of "tendentious editing". --Uncle Ed 20:27, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Most policies and guidelines address more than one state of violation. In fact, it there are few policies where there is only one way to violate it, perhaps just WP:3RR, but even that there are creative ways around it that are addressed in the policy. Repeatedly bringing up baseless objections after being shown that they are baseless is by definition of tendentious editing. I think the passage is accurate is necessary, so I've replaced it. FeloniousMonk 18:22, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

When I first read this essay, I misunderstood the bit about "the term also carries the connotation". If the term carries the connotation, it means that if you describe someone as being a tendentious editor, you are implying they s/he probably has made repetitive attempts to insert or delete content which is resisted by multiple other editors. However, after rereading, I gather the sentence doesn't necessarily imply that if someone has made repetitive attempts to insert or delete content which is resisted by multiple other editors, s/he is tendentious. Overall, I prefer the Ed's shorter version, which I think is clearer, however I don't believe the current version is actually wrong. Addhoc 21:45, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I dont understand why material which is true and important to know is deleted if it is derrogatory about a subject. There are a couple of radio stations that have some ugly information about them that is verrifiable and true yet these bits get edited.

Biased editing on a regular basis is not a sin

This article says in its lead: "A single edit is unlikely to be a problem, but a pattern of edits displaying a bias is more likely to be an issue, and repeated biased edits to a single article or group of articles will be very unwelcome indeed. This last behaviour is generally characterised as POV pushing and is a common cause of blocking."There are tonnes of people with a bias and they edit articles on a regular basis. Is this a problem? No. The article is misleading. So what? This website is made from people having different biases. Without that, you wouldnt have the website. Thats how it works. If I like candy too much, I'll go ahead and contribute on that. I have a bias towards candy. If I hate candy a lot, I might go in and edit then too. Thats how people of different views get together and create an article which covers all points of view. Someone who loves candy isnt going to care about how harmful it is to our teeth if eaten regularly. Thats the job of the guy who hates candy. No single editor is responsible for putting in a NPOV. This is impossible to achieve without involving others. If I'm putting in information that is RS, thats all we need to care about. If I resist the majority of editors and indulge in revert wars etc, only this is a problem. Otherwise having a bias and regularly editing articles with that bias is not a sin, as this article incorrectly points out. The 2nd paragraph clarifies this by saying "Problems arise when editors see their own bias as neutral, and especially when they assume that any resistance to their edits is founded in bias towards an opposing point of view.", but the lead itself is not correct. The lead should be sufficient. When you go over to the "Characteristics of problem editors", thats valid. This should all thus be reworded. Biased editing is not a sin. It happens in all the edits, is not avoidable and is not something to be discouraged. Only the characteristics of problem editors is the stuff that needs to be there. --Matt57 01:41, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't disagree more. Just because some people edit with a bias, we shouldn't accept it. It should be discouraged, and it is. Of course we all have biases and opinions but wikipedia's prime directive, if you will, is to edit from a neutral point of view. Is that easy? No way, but we should try our best to avoid editing with a biased slant if possible. Just my 2 cents :) Cheers! --Tom 20:01, 31 May 2007 (UTC)ps I LOVE candy so I'll avoid that article :) Cheers! --Tom 20:03, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok well, suppose I got cancer from eating too many strawberries (assume its possible) and now I hate strawberries. Now I go and edit the Strawberries article, putting in RS and relevant information about how strawberries can cause cancer if eaten in excess. I dont see anything wrong in that. --Matt57 20:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

What if your RS were from anti-strawberry or anti-fruit websites? Websites that claim they are not anti-strawberry at all. Rather, the problem is that other websites are controlled by the pro-strawberry lobby. And what if your edits (although truthful about the cancer causing potential of strawberries) gave undue weight to that viewpoint? To me, it's about context. If your intent is to smear or stigmatize strawberries, rather than present potential health problems about strawberries in a responsible manner, with fairness of tone, then you are probably POV pushing. In my opinion, this kind of editing is far too common on the Misplaced Pages. It's a far greater threat to Misplaced Pages's credibility than the infantile vandalism that goes on. The difference is, there are thousands of "vandal fighters" and not enough people willing to take on POV pushers, especially when the POV pushing is popular. A perfect example is the War in Iraq and members of the Bush administration. It's an unpopular war, Bush is an unpopular president, and people don't seem to have much sympathy if criticism cited in the various articles about prominent neoconservatives is poorly sourced (e.g., from advocacy websites, or left wing "news magazines"). People, organizations, or wars that are this notable don't need POV sourcing in order to produce a controversy section, because there's enough in the mainstream news media. But it's not juicy enough for some editors, who prefer to parrot the allegations of the less responsible news sources. Regards, MoodyGroove 00:11, 2 June 2007 (UTC)MoodyGroove

Out of interest, is there any mechanism on Misplaced Pages for dealing with consistently tendentious editors? The type is recognisable. They have no interest in other topics or helping Misplaced Pages maintenance. Every single thing they add to Misplaced Pages relates to their anti-strawberry obsession. They create biographies of anti-strawberry campaigners and scientists. They add huge bibliographies of scientific papers about strawberries and cancer. If they can find papers relating to strawberries and other diseases, that'll go in too. They may break no guidelines, and every single edit is perfectly true and reliably sourced - just selected entirely to support a particular stance. Is this kind of editing pattern a matter for, say, WP:RFC? 86.145.94.23 (talk) 03:19, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

violation of this

I think there is tedentious editing (and edit warring), and tedentious comments on here Template talk:History of Manchuria. What do you do if editors are violating this? They are clearly biased but they have done nothing wrong like edit warring, 3RR, or vandalism. Good friend100 23:14, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

"Defamation case" removal

My edit comment was truncated, so just explaining here. I removed "One defamation case could bankrupt the Foundation and see us shut down." because I don't think this is a wholly accepted or complete explanation of the motivation behind BLP. Better to leave that to the BLP page itself. Dcoetzee 21:53, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be wiser to legally doubt this. Wiki is a public medium, as such noone and certainly not the foundation is responsible to the whole of its content at every given time. Certainly most contemporain historical issue's that have warranted legal procedures will give people thoughts, and may lead them to unjustly defame or feel bias. In none of these cases wiki would bear any responsability as the mechanisms to undo flawed aspects of contributions are always there. If in a certain article one such bias would remain over years, it actually proves noone had a such severe interest to change it, that it could actually not consist (significant) defamation. Lastly, If something is on a well visited wiki, stays there for a long time, and is obviously eronneous or defaming, the fact it stayed there proofs it had not much significance. Saying you can loose a proces over defamation now, opens up the possibility that the actual investment in wiki can later be made undone at will (preempting an (il)legal proces, through censory mechanism (governmental or corporate), that would hold personal blame over knowledge, basically). Limiting ones owns freedom of expression provides tools in the hands of the ones that don't favour these freedoms. It's a bit like how promoting familylife will cause overpopulation as a sideeffect. We should not promote the limiting of freedom of expression by legalising it ourselves. That said i'd excuse in advance to everyone unjustly and personally hurt, through either negative feelings towards their persons, or corruptions of the historical knowledge through the representation of interests. I do find it a general flaw of wikipedia article's that they tend to promote certain pov's not in the least the sociostratic "status quo"'s. However i also witness in some cases bias slowly dissolves. And that a somewhat relevant discussion can always be opened again with relatively new people. So i don't think the intrinsic bias of intellectual options of some kind or another is an unmendable one in wiki. That is btw. not on the defamation "clause" (in fact 'laws'), but it is relevant to compare (cases of) 'bias' instrumental. The historical relevance of defamation is related to 'bad intend' , wikipedia being easily and even openly editable should not fear to withstand such attempts on her concepts, as they logically present the very same bad intend, the limiting of expressions in an open source (instrumental for defamation). 77.251.179.188 13:57, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Another talk page trick

Another thing I've noticed, besides failure to thread, is endlessly restarting new sections of the talk page on the same topic after they were unable to gain consensus last time -- sometimes immediately following the very same section -- and then claiming users are refusing to discuss (if everyone is tired of it by that point). Anyone else seen this? Of course the more general problem is talking an issue to death and claiming victory. Maybe re-sectionalizing lets them pretend to themselves they aren't just fillibustering, or that they are making ground somehow and not just running in place? -- 146.115.58.152 17:00, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Righting Great Wrongs section

lol, maybe I'm tendentious, but Mother Theresa does not strike me as the ideal antitheses to Stalin, looking at her public tributes to people like the Duvaliers and Enver Hoxha. Not to mention her belief that the suffering of others was a good thing, which perhaps led to the appalling practices of her clinics as documented by the British Medical Journal and The Lancet. Perhaps there are apologias for Stalin that are similarly reputable, and this section is very clever. 86.42.124.92 07:24, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Responding users with convoluted and long comments

I think this goes in line with repeating the same arguments over and over again. Some tendentious editors that I have encountered tend to not care so much about brevity and clarity for the convenience of other editors to read and make them extremely long instead, probably hoping that it will throw some naive editors off. I think this can be added to the "Characteristics of problem editors." Can everyone edit the project article? I just wanted some opinions before I add this. миражinred (speak, my child...) 20:53, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Who uses this word?

We should aim to clarify, not obscure. "Tendentious" is not a word that most people commonly use, in my experience. Any reason not to call this simply "biased editing"? Sure seems like it'd be more clear. Friday (talk) 17:32, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you, and would go further and say that this entire essay is vague, and at best redundant with WP:NPOV. Obviously if "everyone has bias," as it states, then everyone editing may be "tendentious" if that bias makes its way into articles, as it easily can. In a dispute, the accusation of the other side being "tendentious" is all too easy, and the accusation seems to be a violation of WP:AGF that is tolerated by the community. In my albeit limited experience, this essay is more often used to attack and remove editors with an opposing POV (who are in the minority) than to actually enforce WP:NPOV. Blackworm (talk) 20:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree that "tendentious" may not be the best word, but here on wikipedia it has come to mean what it's come to mean, so I think we're stuck with it, and I'm not sure that "biased editing" really does the trick either. I would disagree, however, that this article is vague; in my mind it's anything but vague. It clearly states that, hey, we all have our biases—and that's cool, man—but when these biases get in the way of NPOV editing to the point that we that start exhibiting many of the characteristics described therein, then that's a problem. And in that regard, I think the essay is very useful, more useful, in fact, than WP:NPOV, because it gives concrete examples of problem behavior. And don't think calling an editor is necessarily a violation of WP:AGF if they fit description laid out here, after all, "It's okay to call a spade a spade … but be sure to use discretion and politeness when you do." Yilloslime (t) 03:57, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

The evaluation of an editor this essay calls on us to make is this: a pattern of edits displaying a bias is more likely to be an issue, and repeated biased edits to a single article or group of articles will be very unwelcome indeed. That is the root of all "problem behaviour" described here. I've seen cases where that statement is simply untrue -- where editors showing such tendencies are praised, barnstarred, and have multiple supporters in high places. However, in most areas I've edited, I've seen cases where perceived bias in favour of a minority viewpoint will be very unwelcome indeed. Accusations of violating WP:TE sometimes follow suit, and in the context of editwarring or large disputes, the first such accusation seems to be the only one considered.

The contrast between WP:TE and WP:NPOV is that the latter calls for neutrality in the article, the former for a non-"offensive" POV in the editor. Entire groups of editors band together in favour of certain viewpoints in Wikiprojects, messaging each other out to help in disputes, but since those viewpoints are "approved," or simply have enough of a majority to gain traction, members are not seen as violating WP:TE. If a viewpoint in itself is offensive to some, inevitably those offended will be editing related articles. Other lone editors seeing an unbalance in the representation of the "offensive" viewpoint, and consequently seeking out information and presenting cited material about the viewpoint (WP:NPOV), are often seen by the first group of editors to be tendentious. In case you can't tell, yes, I've been accused of being "tendentious." I now read "tendentious" as "appearing to me as espousing a viewpoint that is somewhat offensive." Blackworm (talk) 06:23, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Indenting

Please advise...How To Indent...Thank you--Buster7 (talk) 06:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm self-schooled...LOL...--Buster7 (talk) 12:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Promotion suggestion

Often cited, used in policy, should become a behavioral guideline or guideline for the specific application of Disruptive editing.--Ipatrol (talk) 18:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose The page is currently too rambling. A putative policy/guideline should have a tight focus so that its meaning or topic is clear and will not be subject to creep. A ironic problem for this one is that tendentious editors will typically subvert such policies or guidelines to make them weapons with which to wage their interminable edit wars. How would we guard against the expansion or drift of the definition of tenditious editing when it is so vague? Colonel Warden (talk) 22:33, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose promoting this to a guideline for reasons discussed above, but what about giving it the status of "information page", like WP:COMMON? PSWG1920 (talk) 02:34, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

• Support, I cite it all the time and see others doing so as well. Long overdue. KillerChihuahua 18:39, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Removal of examples

I do not see what is wrong with these examples. One that I added previously was perhaps over-the-top, but most recently I omitted that. I also do not see how WP:POINT applies here, since these examples are not disruptive to anything. PSWG1920 (talk) 04:30, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Fewer examples, not more; making a laundry list of pet peeves only invites the development of more forms. There are millions of forms tendentious editing could take (at least ;) Cheers, Jack Merridew 09:46, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Editors often excel by Tendentious editing

This section is not the case:

Editors who engage in this behaviour generally fall into two categories: those who come to realise the problem their edits cause, recognise their own bias, and work productively with editors with opposing views to build a better encyclopedia – and, well, the rest. The rest often end up indefinitely blocked or, if they are otherwise productive editors with a blind spot on one particular area, they might be banned from certain articles or become subject to probation.

There are several examples of editors who have carte blanc control of certain articles and subjects because of tendentious editing. travb (talk) 01:56, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Removed examples to talk page

You do not thread your posts on talk pages.

Seemingly an unrelated style issue, tendentious editors often do not indent their talk page comments. While threading discussions (by indenting your replies to others' posts) is not strictly required, it is standard practice and highly recommended since it makes discussions easier to follow. Failing to do so may be interpreted as inexperience with Misplaced Pages conventions at best, and as inconsiderateness or arrogance at worst.

As the paragraph states, this has absolutely nothing to do with tedious editing.

Only once you have justified your edits beyond a reasonable doubt does the burden of proof shift to others.

I don't think this is policy.

Your citations back some of the facts you are adding, but do not explicitly support your interpretation or the inferences you draw.

The policy on original research expressly forbids novel syntheses of other sources.

This is not necessarily a tedious editor, and has little to do with tedious editing. travb (talk) 02:18, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I just revert back to the prior revision. W/r/t to the examples removed by Inclusionist, they are meant to be "Characteristics of problem editors" as the section title says. Thus, while I agree that by itself talk page layout does has nothing to do with tedious editing, it is, none the less, a common characteristic of problem editors. Likewise, problem editors often have problems with WP:SYN/WP:NOR, thus that observation is also relevant. Finally, the introductory sentence I removed (Tendentious means having or showing a definite tendency, bias, or purpose) was, in my opinion, redundant given that the next sentence begins ] editing is editing which is partisan, biased, skewed... At least, that's how I see it. Yilloslime (t) 04:30, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with Inclusionist/travb's changes and rationale. I think the article is better when focused upon truly tendentious behaviors that are problematic. --Ronz (talk) 17:00, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

User:Ronz has reverted with a summary inviting me to join the discussion. I will do by noting that he has a conflict of interest. For example, the admonition You have been involved on a particular page for a long time, yet all you have ever done there is delete, revert, tag, and criticize. seems to describe his own editing behaviour. Naturally, he would prefer for this not to be considered tendentious but so it goes. Issues of this sort were the reason that I opposed promotion of the article above. Policy formation is quite broken in this place since anyone may edit the policies and so they are naturally dominated by those with an axe to grind. Colonel Warden (talk) 20:11, 13 January 2009 (UTC)