Wikipedia:Major incidents

In the immediate aftermath of major incidents such as man-made disasters, natural disasters and terrorist attacks, editors flock to create and grow new articles. Such pages often become a source of major conflict. Yet within a few days, the excitement dies down and editors will polish the article into a better one. This article is about how to do the best job of growing the page in those first few days.

One approach to such pages is to demand perfection in an article. We immediately delete any contributions that in any way reduce the perfection of the article. An editor makes an referenced contribution. Delete it! An editor makes a contribution that does not fit with the flow of the article. Delete it! The problem with this approach is that it just leads to editors wasting their time, effort and enthusiasm in arguments. Moreover, Wikipedia is a work in progress. There is no requirement that the page be perfect. Another approach would be to dump as much information on the page as possible. However this would clearly leave a huge mess for later editors to clean up.

Hard rules in Wikipedia

Wikipedia doesn't have many hard rules. Editors are encouraged to avoid being too bureaucratic, to work with others etc. Even the pillars can be bent in certain situations. However there are some rules that are hard and can not be bent.

• 3 Revert Rule - users may not make more than 3 reverts on a page in a 24 hour period. Users making 3 reverts can be given a warning. Users making a 4th revert may be banned from editing. Exceptions exist for vandalism, content that violates WP:BIO, and self editing.
• WP:BIO content must not be libelous to living persons. Therefore unsourced content about living people content may be removed immediately. This can be common in major incidents where rumours spread on the media.

Being cooperative

It is best practice to discuss major changes and issues in the talk page. Be friendly and helpful. We are all working together. Explain your views, but listen to others.

Good roles to play

• Shifting content into a logical structure: often users will place their contributions in the wrong place. Try to create some structure in the document by creating some order. You can use similar pages as an example.
• Editing style: often users making contributions to in the early stages of major incidents will write in a non encyclopedic style such as the present tense. You can improve the page by fixing this.
• Referencing: find unsourced content and match it up with an appropriate source.

Good faith vs edit wars

One way to help users to avoid breaching the 3RR rule is to place a list of user's reverts on the talk page. This gives editors who are making repeated changes a very clear signal that their behavior

Alternatives to reverting

Instead of reverting, you can raise the issue on the talk page to gain consensus. The same issues tend to arise time and time again, so doing this well early on means that other editors need not focus their efforts on rehashing the same arguments over and over.

Let the editor know on their talk page what you think is wrong with their contribution and inviting them to correct it. If your reason was good, they can revert it themselves (self reverts don't count towards the 3 revert rule). Alternatively they might take your feedback on board and improve their edit. Perhaps they are part way through adding content and were going to improve it anyway.

Inexperienced editors

Often, inexperienced editors will try to make contributions that clearly do not fit within Wikipedia's policies. Such contributions can include non neutral point of view, writing like a newspaper, original research, opinion and rumour. Such users are more often than not making good faith contributions, but may be unaware of policies. In this situation, take some time to explain to them why their contributions do not fit within Wikipeida's policies. It is good to do this in a way that recognises their desire to improve Wikipedia and encourages them to continue contributing.

Reaction sections

Reaction sections often evolve with lists of reactions from various leaders and other prominent people. These sections should give prominence to reactions that are of long term historical interest and reactions that a newsworthy in the short term. However, when these changes are reverted, they will often be replaced by other editors unaware that they have been deleted. This can lead to a good faith cycle to deletion and replacement.

One solution to this problem is to place a recentism tag at the beginning of the section and a prominent hidden message in the code asking users to avoid creating a list of historically un-noteworthy responses.

Another solution is to relax, and wait a few days for the event to die down before cleaning up the section.