Disputes on Wikipedia arise from Wikipedians disagreeing over article content or internal Wikipedia affairs, which can be discussed on talk pages, as well as from user misconduct. Disputes may result in repeated competing changes to an article, known as "edit wars", and may escalate into dispute resolution efforts and enforcement. Wikipedia editors may dispute numerous articles within a contentious topic that reflect debates and conflicts in society, based on ethnic, political, religious, and scientific differences.
Dispute resolution efforts have shifted over the years. 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. For alleged user misconduct, some Wikipedias rely on Arbitration Committees as the final word.
Disputes, editor behavior, and collaboration on Wikipedia have long been the subject of academic research. A 2023 review identified 279 articles about contributor goals, interactions, and collaboration processes, which included but was not limited to the handling of disputes. It found that Wikipedia editing peaked in 2007 and research attention peaked in 2012. The review identified 34 studies of "the causes and impact of conflict, the mechanisms for resolving conflict, and the measurement and prediction of conflict or controversial articles." The review found 29 studies of editor coordination, especially on Talk pages, as well as research on algorithmic governance that uses bots to enforce Wikipedia policies.[1]
- ^ Ren, Yuqing; Zhang, Haifeng; Kraut, Robert E. (2024-02-29). "How Did They Build the Free Encyclopedia? A Literature Review of Collaboration and Coordination among Wikipedia Editors". ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. 31 (1): 1–48. doi:10.1145/3617369. ISSN 1073-0516.