 | 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. |
 | This page in a nutshell: When you see an article degraded by poor edit(s), remove them without delay. Do not wait or walk away. |
Aside from edit wars and conflicts between contributors (such as between those with differing points of view or tastes), there are many edits that serve to degrade articles. Though vandalism is not uncommon, there are many other types of edits that do not belong, from simple mistakes (including those made by malfunctioning scripts), to refactoring the text in promotional and non-neutral manner, injecting unsourced controversial material somewhere amid well-sourced encyclopedic text, attempts to impose a censorship, and simply incompetent changes which may look like a copy editing, fixing mistakes, or even implementing Wikipedia guidelines. If the article is watched by one or more competent editors who consistently act to repair the damage then there is no problem. However, unfortunately, this is not always the case.