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Wikipedia:Mostly negative

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See also: Wikipedia:Replies to common objections
Graham's hierarchy of disagreement

Actions on Wikipedia appear to receive mostly negative responses. Examples of responses include edit summaries, comments on article talk pages, and messages on user talk pages. In contrast, no matter what one posts to Facebook, one will receive, on average, a greater than 50% response. In part, this is because most of the people who see what one posts to Facebook are one's friends and relatives. This is a problem on Wikipedia because it contributes to hostility and aggression (rather than civility) while it discourages contributions, collaboration, and new editors.

Negative responses being ubiquitous is exacerbated by the fact that, anywhere, negative reactions feel worse than positive reactions feel good: a negative response is more likely to be remembered and cause an emotional reaction. Even if negative reactions were in the minority, they would still discourage contributions and contribute to hostility.

Negative responses are often worse on Wikipedia when the person who insults or criticizes the article or editor could have fixed the "problem" (instead of posting a comment that a word is misspelled, one could have just edited the article and fixed the spelling; it probably would have taken less time than posting the comment).

Similarly, negative responses are often a bad idea because an editor who may have collaborated with you and helped fix problems may end up an "enemy". For example, with images, one might not be capable of creating an image so as to fix an image's mistake, but the user who was capable and did create the image is more likely to fix the mistake for one if one has a positive but critical response to the image's mistake.

The worst are "empty" negative responses, such as, "this article sucks and was written by an idiot!" since they provide no assistance in improving an article. The more emotional the negative response, the more strange. If one cares enough about an issue, topic, or person so as to post a highly charged comment, and if one actually knows enough to know whether an article is right or wrong/good or bad, one could have spent one's time fixing the article instead of posting insults.

Despite Wikipedia not being a forum, in order to be preventative, encourage editing, and acquire new editors, Wikipedia needs policies and practices which encourage positive responses and discourage negative responses in favor of critical responses.

The following types of responses may be distinguished:

  • Positive response: "This article does a good job of..."
  • Empty positive response: "This article is great!"
  • Negative response: "The artist's name is misspelled."
  • Empty negative response: "This article is horrible!"
  • [Positive but] Critical response: "This article [does a good job of..., but] could be improved by..."
  • Disruptive editing, harassment, vandalism, witch hunts

See also

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