Wikipedia:Activist

This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Shortcut WP:ACTIVIST

Wikipedia is a very popular reference source on the Internet. Therefore, activists with a specific ideological, religious, political, national or other agenda may put the goal of promoting their views above that of improving the encyclopedia. Anyone may become an activist for a cause once they begin editing articles on engaging topics. (Actually, from the social movement studies perspective, each person who contributes to Wikipedia already is an activist in the Wikimedia movement, part of the free culture movement/free software movement).^[1]

Activists can affect Wikipedia's reliability, especially if they violate Wikipedia's neutral point-of-view policy. The policy is subjective in nature, making it difficult to enforce. A lone activist, while irritating to editors who try to present material neutrally, generally cannot exercise controlling ownership over a topic unless they have the clout of an administrator, are an experienced editor who has a group of supporters, or both. However, when activists band together with other like-minded editors, they can overwhelm an article or skew an entire range of articles related to their common topics of interest. Once an article is "on message", such a group can act as guardians to keep it that way.

Below are guidelines for determining if an article is being unduly influenced by activists, as well as advice on how to deal with the various problems caused by violations of Wikipedia's policies.