Wikipedia:How to be a bully in wikipedia

The purpose of this essay is to define and label specific ways that bullying happens in Wikipedia, for easier reference. This might help in naming and countering bullying when it happens, in real time, or in discussing it after the fact during arbitration or wherever. It might also provide some ideas for those interested in bullying, oh well. These ideas are hard-won from experience.

Bullying in Wikipedia is using negative actions to harass another editor in a systematic way, in general violation of Wikipedia's civility standards.

Criticize an editor for what they did NOT do

This is a key fallacy of reasoning by many, that they are justified in harassing someone because of stuff that the someone did NOT do. Like if an editor creates a new stub article on a valid topic, but fails to develop it in some way that another editor declares they must do. *There is some room for disagreement here, about what is helpful as a minimum contribution, vs. what is arguably unhelpful in causing more work, in fact it is almost always possible for others to build upon the stubs more efficiently than if the stubs weren't there. Of course laying in copyright violations is simply unhelpful and causes work for others, but almost any other new article contribution work, if the topic is valid and sources exist, is positive. And standards in various areas can be reasoned out by WikiProjects and established by consensus, which experienced editors should abide by, but it is not acceptable for one editor to invent their own standard, or to enforce stuff on newbie editors.

• Or like if an editor develops a great list-article, but in the process creates a number of ambiguous links to disambiguation pages.
• Or uses a category that does not exist.

So yes, other editors will find their way to those minor issues and "fix" them, but they have not been forced to do so. This is a collaborative project, and it is best for editors to do what interests them and what they are good at, and let others specialize where they like. You are not entitled to appoint yourself as an enforcer of what you prefer, just because another is not doing exactly what you would do, as long as the movement is forward and positive.

Make up stuff and repeat it

For example, make unfounded accusations of copyvio and/or plagiarism, and repeat it in forum after forum.

Coin a derogatory nickname and repeat it

This tactic is more obvious now with the U.S. president doing this again and again. It certainly can be effective.

Coin a derogatory term for some behavior and repeat it, as part of criminalizing the behavior

There are some ways, one of the most effective ways is accusing one of being a Nazi when the only thing they did was revert some blatant vandalism.

Open ANI proceedings

"They also enjoy the game of "admin roulette", throwing up an AE or ANI and hoping they strike lucky."

Open ANI proceeding biased by naming of the discussion

Simple use of one editor's name is biasing. ANI is awful, in general, in terms of victimizing a target named in a section title, which makes it into a one-sided, long-running attack. The name of the discussion item is powerful, obviously, in attracting editors who have any personal grudge, related or not, against the named target. And it attracts editors who engage in negativity at ANI, when there is a designated victim, for whatever reason perhaps. But consistent with being attracted to bullying, putting down, in a temporarily authorized setting where they can be hurtful and get away with it. Some have made effort to change ANI section titles, including an editor who for a long time changed them just before archiving the discussions, apparently to protect the target somehow. There has likewise been discussion (and perhaps action?) about naming of arbitration disputes.

No matter what is said by a named target, the target can be abused more and more; whatever they say will be used against them. The targeted naming seems to embolden participants. There is a circularity about it, with the naming seeming to authorize personal attacks that would not otherwise be acceptable. There is supposedly no exception allowed, anywhere, to the wp:NPA rule, but that seems to be dropped, once a target is name. Anything that the victim says along the lines of complaining about the unfairness, much less striking back in any way, will generally be used against them.

Once an ANI proceeding is opened with such a name, the victim is toast. They need a lawyer. No lawyers are available. The victim could draft a response, but that it would end up hurting them more.

Combination of an editor's name plus disparaging adjective or phrase is even worse.

Incite, or tolerate, or do not disavow, aggressive editing by would-be lieutenants

In, say, a content disagreement between any two editors, other editors can butt in with aggressive and insulting statements, as part of their supporting one side, but without substance on the content issue. This has the effect of setting a bullying tone, perhaps towards building a mob. If another editor picks up and chimes in, then a mob has been formed. This needs to be discouraged immediately, i.e. it needs to be disavowed as unhelpful by the one being supported.

It is part of bullying, in general, as we see in national politics, to allow for others/lieutenants to attack. It is not enough for a leader to merely avoid being caught directly inciting violence or violent-type attacks; IMO a leader has a further obligation to actively disavow and discourage the violence. Consider when a national leader comments that there is right, or good people, or whatever on both sides, when talking about a dispute between white supremacists and protesters against them. That is inadequate, and encourages the white supremacists.

How do you know when lieutenants have gone too far? I think one content-less attacking type comment is too much. However the chiming in of multiple editors, following on, can make the bullying clear. If there is a gang, it is bullying.

Not explaining

One principal way to cause frustration is not explaining your negative actions directed towards a victim editor, within any challenge to their work. Just express disdain or disgust or dismissal, as if it is obvious how terrible the victim is, how worthy they are of being, well, bullied and dismissed and rolled back. If asked to explain, absolutely do not!

Deny deny deny

NotExplainingDiscussion

In a WikiProject Talk page, you can just say that a person's proposal on some formatting issue or whatever is "horrid", and that "it's not how we do it", and not deign to give any explanation about how it is "horrid". A total dismissal with no explanation can be seen as powerful. Don't worry about your being a jerk, pretty obviously to some. You may well get away with it, in part from other editors' general aversion to dealing with conflict and perhaps to some editors' having an automatic deference to authority, or at least authoritative statements.

NotExplainingAFD

For example, you can open an AFD about the victim's new article, but not explain the basis for your deletion nomination. In the past, AFDs with no explanation at all were allowed. Nowadays, an AFD with no reason supplied might be closed, speedily, on the specific basis that no deletion rationale has been supplied. But you can push the limits on what suffices for a nomination, and just say nonsense. You may succeed in causing grief as other editors will notice the AFD and might support it, either because they attribute reason where none exists, or they are generally wp:Deletionists, or whatever. It will cost the victim to explain the merit of their article. If questioned directly in the AFD about your reasoning, you can just ignore the question, or obfuscate. This is especially unbecoming of an administrator. However, it can be an effective tactic in dragging down a target victim, threatening the loss of their editing efforts, perhaps sapping their morale, and causing them to respond to the bureaucratic process that will usually last at least seven days.

Asserting incivility and personal attacks

Here the idea is to abuse Wikipedia's naively-stated policies about civility and personal attacks, to drag the victim down, while cynically abusing the policies. The policies are naive in that they make broad, over-stated assertions about what should never be said anywhere in Wikipedia, such as the suggestion that comments about other editors should never ever be allowed. Perhaps there is some merit in policy statements seeming very noble; it would be a wonderful world if what they proclaim is bad was never allowed. However, they obviously fail to cover the factual true fact that comments about other editors are indeed allowed by common practice by administrators and other editors, in many circumstances. Something said in a user talk page might be okay, by current practice, but be deemed verboten in an edit summary in mainspace or in a Talk page for a mainspace article. For another example, there is no exception allowed for this, but note that wp:ANI is all about discussing editors and so are the arbitration processes. The policy statements don't divulge that discussion is allowed and rampant, and do not define where personally-directed comments are allowed or not. The goal for bullies, here, is to take advantage of their knowledge when and were personal attacks are in practice uncommon or disallowed, and to present false outrage that a personal attack has been made. Who knows what current practice is within various forums, and a tuned-in bully can take advantage of the victim's relative lack of awareness of unstated norms, in order to rally indignation against them. For example, most editors will not know that fairly strong statements allowed by common practice in AFDs, are highly disdained/disallowed in the appeal process for AFDs (deletion review, where current editors are very intolerant of any statements which may be interpreted as incivil). Of course, by the literal statements of the policies, any comment at all that an editor is commenting about another editor, is itself an abrogration of the asserted policy. Often/usually, accusations of incivility and personal attacks are obviously themselves violations of the naively stated policies. Making these assertions can be quite useful in dragging down victims, who tend to try to respond rationally. Anything they say can be used to make more negative accusations about them. This is deeply incivil, by any sensible definition.

See also

• Wikipedia:POV railroad
• Wikipedia:WikiBullying