Wikipedia talk:Assume good faith

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What to do about government disinformation agents?

There are swaths of political teams such as China's "50 Cent Party" whose pernicious and cloaked foray into Wikipedia articles under the auspices of "good faith" and "freedom of expression" undermine the entire philosophy of Wikipedia. What are some solution? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.90.55.44 (talk) 05:03, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

It's not black and white

There seems to be a feeling here that if you're not assuming good faith, you're assuming bad faith. Is there no gray faith? If an editor continues to make bad edits in the face of all attempts at communication should we just smile and skip along our merry way claiming "This editor is doing what they feel best for the project?". I don' think so. I may not assume they're doing something because of malice, but we have to be practical and realize in certain situations after certain concessions and attempts have been made by users to rectify a situation that if an editor is continuing to make problem edits, we shouldn't be trying to excuse their behaviour with "AGF". We need to apply a "reasonable person" test to these kinds of situations. Think about the following situation: Editor A comes to an article and creates some kind of problem with their edit, (not vandalism, just a problem, poor sourcing, bad grammar, something like that) Editor B reverts/fixes it and leaves editor A a note about the problem they've caused (possibly a template if one applies) Editor A comes back the next day and either reverts that article or introduces similar problems in another article Editor B reverts/fixes makes another attempt to communicate Editor A comes back on the third day and repeats the same scenario Editor B reverts/fixes makes another attempt to communicate

Throughout this time Editor A never responded to a message nor left an edit summary. Should we blindly excuse the behaviour of editor A indefinitely? or if this cycle is maintained does there come a point where we say "Something is not right with this editor. He might not be violating any rules, but he refuses to communicate and is creating more work for others than the amount of content he's actually adding". Nowhere in that thinking is any of his actions attributed to malice, but some people would see that as a violation of AGF. There has to be a time limit in some scenarios where we stop saying "Its okay, AGF"--Crossmr (talk) 07:29, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

In that particular scenario, I believe that AGF certainly applies. Editor A is clearly trying to improve the project, not making any malicious edits at all. If all of his/her edits are intended to be positive, and add even a little bit of new information to the article, Editor A is certainly being constructive, helpful, and positive. Policies like the one you propose are part of the reason why many new users don't stick with Wikipedia; they are afraid of making the so-called "bad edits" that you refer to in your example, and being punished somehow (as you propose). Most new users don't understand edit logs, messages, etc..., and they may not be as skilled as more experienced users. Does that mean that they should be excluded from and restricted from participating in Wikipedia? ABarnes94 (talk) 03:18, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I think Crossmr is probably correct, but think about what'd happen if you tell people it's sometimes OK to assume bad faith. All editors are always biased to seeing people they disagree with as worse than people others disagree with. If someone is assumed to have bad faith, other people similar will be assumed to have bad faith, but because the accusers who disagree with them are biased, they don't necessarily need to be as bad as the first person assumed to have bad faith to be assumed bad faith. Then, people similar to the new group of people assumed to have bad faith will also be assumed to have bad faith, and they also don't necessarily need to be as bad because people who accuse them are also biased. Eventually, as more and more good faith editors are assumed to have bad faith, Wikipedia would become a trust-no-one role playing game. DontClickMeName _talk^{contributions} 20:23, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Read below this bitch just won the internet. Somehow through use of fancy words he can still pull off a solid troll on wiki laced in with general hubble bubble blah blah. I'm on your nuts for life person who wrote this bullshit.

Move back up to policy

I may be killing any political capital by posting this, but dammit it seemed like such a good idea.

It was dark and I was horizontal. I tend to come up with the best ideas in this situation. And then I fall asleep. I had the strategy all mapped out... contingencies, strategies, etc.

But I woke up and forgot what they were. So I'll just get to the crux of my thoughts: let's bump AGF back up to policy. There are good reasons for this, though I'm not entirely clear what they were... only that there are.

I know some of it had to do with IAR, albeit not in an immediately tangible way. IAR oldies might want to consider this proposal. Xavexgoem (talk) 22:15, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking about it, and while I wasn't horizontal (or even strictly vertical, figure that out!) I think I've got it worked out... And I say... No. I'm not sure why exactly, but I'm pretty sure no is the right answer.

On a serious note, though - there is no point in having a policy that can't possibly be enforced. No one can enforce good faith, nor the assumption of good faith, and when anyone has tried its just been trouble. Best to leave it as good advice. Nathan ^T 01:04, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah, some of it's coming back to me! One of the elements: we have a horrible time enforcing CIVIL and NPA. Both of these are largely a result of assuming good faith only after civility has been established. If a poor communicator says something that is both A) good, and B) nasty... it's much too easy -- particularly as this remains a guideline -- to cling onto the nasty bit and ignore the good. What say you? Xavexgoem (talk) 01:07, 28 October 2009 (UTC) I'd argue that Civility and NPA is actually only enforced 50% of the time, at best.

I think if the primary use of AGF as a policy is to moderate the enforcement of other policies, then the concept should be integrated into those policies instead. Policies should really govern actions specifically; AGF strays into legislating a philosophy. It's great as advice, but not so great as law. I think we've found that laws that primarily regulate thought are unevenly, even haphazardly, applied - and vulnerable to manipulation and a great deal of subjective interpretation. Wikipedia policies aren't law, but the idea of regulating a society is essentially the same - why repeat errors here that modern societies have learned from already? Nathan ^T 01:16, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Sound arguments. Would you repeat that when someone tries to demote WP:CIVIL from policy to the "gamed-up" essay it really is? Or would you be afraid of the wrath of Wikipedia's most CIVIL editors? --78.34.98.119 (talk) 01:22, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

(@Nathan)In what ways would it be subjectively applied moreso than it is already as a guideline? I'm going to be straight out: this is purely rebranding. A policy has more weight. This is a largely dysfunctional community, one that will ignore AGF because it's merely a guideline. Being that our options are limited, could this help? Xavexgoem (talk) 01:26, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

• Excellent idea: AGF should be policy again. Durova³⁴⁷ 01:24, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
  • If you'd be so kind as to expand on why? I'm still connecting my neurons :-p Xavexgoem (talk) 01:29, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
    • Because it's all to easy to thwart serious discussions with rumormongering nonsense that cloaks itself in the guise of wisdom. We've all seen it: User:Sensible writes "I disagree with this proposal because of...(pertinent diffs and reasons)", then User:Gossip follows with "The real reason Sensible opposes is because because I didn't support his FAC last month." A bump back up to policy would help short-circuit that kind of thing. Adds weight when third parties respond that last month's FAC is irrelevant. Durova³⁴⁷ 01:50, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
• Comment. If AGF were promoted to policy, then WP:AAGF should be promoted to a guideline to help prevent abuse. PSWG1920 (talk) 07:40, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Increasingly, WP:AGF seems to me to used by some naughty wikilaywerers as a virtual license to misbehave but be beyond censure by other editors. The policy would be more realistic if it had some examples of what is likely to be recognisable and taken by the community as Bad Faith. As it stands, it just reminds me of the attitude of school kids these days who know that corporal punishment has been outlawed, and so not only will they misbehave but they will taunt their teachers or other adults with cries of "you can't hit me! you can't touch me! that's assault! I'm gonna report you!" --feline1 (talk) 20:17, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

When others cast doubt

The third paragraph of the lead started very awkwardly - both these versions;

• When others cast doubt on their own good faith, continue to assume good faith yourself where you can.
• When others cast doubt on their own good faith or yours, continue to assume good faith yourself where you can.

This describes someone, weirdly, saying, "I have doubts about my own good faith", or, "I have doubts about both my own good faith and yours."

I've changed it to one of these;

• When doubt is cast on good faith, continue to assume good faith yourself where you can.
• When you see doubt cast on good faith, continue to assume good faith yourself where you can.

I would suggest that the whole of the lead needs re-written. It uses a mixture of first, second & third person narrative (is "Just as one can incorrectly judge ..." third person?). I would recommend second person narrative throughout - this is an instructional piece. HarryAlffa (talk) 21:18, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Lead narrative voice

As indicated above.

At present the first sentence;

• Assuming good faith is a fundamental principle on Wikipedia: it is assumed that editors' edits and comments are made in good faith.

This reads as telling you what the effects of the principle are, not what the principle is.

So in an attempt to stop the slight jarring with the rest of the lead's second person narrative I'm changing this to;

• Assuming good faith is a fundamental principle on Wikipedia: it is the assumption that editors' edits and comments are made in good faith.

Which simply states the principle.

I think the simple statement of the principle is better anyway, and would justify this change on it's own. HarryAlffa (talk) 15:20, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Reporting bad faith

Dealing with bad faith

Even if bad faith is evident, do not act uncivilly yourself in return, attack others, or lose your cool over it. It is ultimately much easier for others to resolve a dispute and see who is breaching policies, if one side is clearly acting appropriately throughout.

Wikipedia administrators and other experienced editors involved in dispute resolution will usually be glad to help, and are very capable of identifying policy-breaching conduct if their attention is drawn to clear and specific evidence.

Accusing others of bad faith

Making accusations of bad faith can be inflammatory and hence these accusations may not be helpful in a dispute. It can be seen as a personal attack if bad faith motives are alleged without clear evidence that the others' action is actually in bad faith and harassment if done repeatedly. The result is often accusations of bad faith on your part, which tends to create a nasty cycle.

I find the above, all that I can find in the guidelines on the subject, to be highly unsatisfactory. First of all, the record is quite clear that administrators are highly resistant to seeing bad faith behavior when it happens, and prefer to label reports of it as "uncivil," "a personal attack," anything but consider it possible that someone would willfully be obstructive, lie, etc., and deal with it. Perhaps the worst example was a situation relevant to The Green Hornet. In discussing the title character's relationship to The Lone Ranger, an unregistered and therefore anonymous IP continuously changed the character name Dan Reid to Andy Reid, and made a Wikilink of it. That led to an article on a football player and coach born in 1958, by which time the two titular radio series were both defunct, as was the TV series version of the Western character. As it continued after the clearest possible descriptions of the problem were made by various editors in various edit summaries, it quite clearly and quickly became obvious (to us rank-&-file editors working sincerely on the article, anyway) that it was willful. At one point, when I was the only one still dealing with it, the IP started calling me a vandal, and eventually placed a "Final vandalism" warning—with neither of the two preliminary ones having been made—on my talk page, with an appropriate administrator's signature forged to it! I checked the guidelines for ways of dealing with this, and found nothing but "open a discussion on the other editor's talk page." There were two problems with this: As an anonymous and unregistered IP whose number changes every few weeks, he had no genuine talk page, and obviously the jerk was not open to discussing anything with me. I put up a help request post, describing the situation in detail and asking for alternatives, but the response I received was to open a discussion on his talk page! Subsequently, some (other?) administrator just happened to correct the same vandalic edit, received similar response/treatment from the vandal, and after going back and forth several times blocked him. Whether the jerk failed to realize that the block would last only until his IP number changed or decided he had pushed that one far enough, I don't know, obviously, but that particular edit has not been tried again. As I said, this is more extreme but the fact is that clear evidence of willful misconduct to the detriment of the encyclopedia has been dismissed by administrators regularly, and attempts to report have been criticized as personal attacks and refused on the grounds of having taken it to the wrong place. The latter has been done only when their denials of the situation constituting bad faith behavior had been utterly refuted, but that should—and if true would—have been said at the outset. This resistance is obvious to many, and encourages those of less than completely ethical minds to commit such acts, as they know full well that nothing will be done to them for it. This is why Wikipedia has a widespread reputation of being completely unreliable and untrustworthy. Until this attitude (which is in fact common to most administrators and moderators on the internet, and consequently bad faith behavior is common on most sites and discussion forums) changes, and editing is restricted to registered, etc., editors, the bad reputation will endure.

Bottom line: I have a clear instance of bad behavior to report, and as the above does not flatly prohibit doing so, I want to know where said report should be filed. Thank you. --Tbrittreid (talk) 22:31, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

More than ten days and no response whatsoever. Is it because my straight to the point request left you people no room to evade the point? You had to either point me to the place to file such a report or flatly admit that you want no such behavior reported, and while the latter is the truth something (probably legal counsel) prohibits saying so, right? --Tbrittreid (talk) 19:55, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Assume good faith page. You can report misconduct by another user at WP:WQA. Please see the instructions on that page. You are more likely to get consideration if you provide a short neutral summary of the situation showing diffs for any claims you make. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 00:43, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Note that I started out by pointing to passages that I found "highly unsatisfactory" and explained why. As for WP:QA, by its stated rules it is totally not what I asked for, would be of no help whatsoever. I have an editor who cares about nothing but keeping the edits he committed himself to in place and will twist and distort or ignore anything I say as to the reality of the situation. I need something that will be binding, that will force him to leave the correct edit in place no matter how much it offends his ego. And no venue for settling disputes will acknowledge anything but both sides being willing to genuinely discuss the problem, or be forcibly binding. Hence, Wikipedia has a major credibility problem outside. --Tbrittreid (talk) 20:35, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

It has now been twenty days, and the only response was patently inappropriate. My tenth-day post seems to stand. Not good. --Tbrittreid (talk) 20:14, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Even though you were dealing with an unregistered IP user — and someone who most likely would not have paid any attention to anything you might have tried to say to him — it would still have been advisable to post a comment about his misbehaviour on the IP address's talk page anyway. This would have provided a useful record of the ongoing incident for other people to see, in case there were a continuing pattern of abuse. Further, with such a warning in place, the offender could not possibly say later that he had been ignorant of proper procedure and would gladly have acted differently if only someone had explained the situation to him. Being able to say "you (the IP-anon) were responsible for seeing the warnings that were posted on the talk page of the IP address you were using, and we won't allow you to claim ignorance" — or even "we tried to contact you in the only possible way, and yet you kept on doing your bad stuff despite having been warned" — is considered a better approach here than "we didn't bother trying to warn you because there was no reliable way to contact you and we figured you probably wouldn't have listened anyway". And the amount of effort required to post that warning to the IP address's talk page — even if ultimately futile — would probably have been less than the effort you've expended since then, trying (in vain) to argue that it's not reasonable to expect people to warn IP-anons about their misdeeds. The next time something like this happens, please take a couple of minutes to post that warning. Richwales (talk) 02:22, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

You are under-describing the situation. First, as an anonymous IP—a number that by definition changes every few weeks—this person did not genuinely have a talk page of his/her own (which I said previously here), a post from me would not have been a usable, let alone "useful record," and there was no "probably" about his/her ignoring it. Second, his/her having forged an administrator's signature to an improper and unjustified "final vandalism warning" on my talk page (the irrefutable proof that a talk page post from me would have been at best futile, if not a provocation of further abusive behavior) was enough of a useful record against any defense of any kind. However, I see that you are not an administrator (but would like to be one), so will leave it at this, as it is my desire to get administration to deal with reality as it actually exists, for the good of the encyclopedia. --Tbrittreid (talk) 18:41, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Basically, there's nothing you can do. At least, nothing that you're going to find emotionally satisfying. I think you have a fundamental misconception about what Wikipedia is, the way you're counting off the days since you posted your message. There isn't any general "administration" - people who are called admins simply have user accounts with extra abilities that others don't have. They don't have any authority or responsibilities, just power.

Wikipedia is the Wild West and the people with admin accounts are essentially the ones who have guns. Fortunately many of the people with guns consider themselves to be sheriffs and try to do right in the world and settle quarrels and administer frontier justice when something happens right in front of their face, but Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, it isn't a cohesive system where anybody tries to police and control all the behaviors of others. If your neighbor lets his dog bark all night and spits in your eye when you ask him to quiet it down there's no one to "register a noise complaint" with, you aren't going to get anywhere. If someone is sneaky enough they can do all sorts of bad things and they're going to get away with it. All you can do is revert them when you see them doing it and correct errors in the encyclopedia when you come across them and they can keep kicking over your sandcastles if they want to.

If you want to change Wikipedia fundamentally because you think you can make it work better or produce a better encyclopedia with the same resources you probably wouldn't get anywhere strictly through persuasion. You would probably have to set up a completely different encyclopedia project and web site as a test run and prove that your new system works better. But so far no one has done that convincingly. (And whatever your ideas are, realistically they have probably already been tried on one of the many Wikipedia-clones and Wikipedia-alternatives out there.) --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 20:49, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

All of which boils down to: Wikipedia is an untrustworthy pile of **** and always will be, with anybody serious about making a good encyclopedia here just wasting their time. I hope that's not true at all. --Tbrittreid (talk) 22:36, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, you definitely should never believe something just because you read it on Wikipedia. You should always check the sources. I think that the major distinguishing thing about Wikipedia is that it's an encyclopedia where you actually can check the sources; if you want to call that a "pile of ****" be my guest. But I don't see why you want to contribute to it at all in the first place if you've found it to be of such poor quality or why you're so worked up about it.

Just use another encyclopedia, there are tons of them out there - even like I said, tons of Wikipedia alternatives that you can edit yourself, including ones based on the same software where it's much easier to become an admin if having those sorts of abilities would make you feel better. You can even copy anything you want from Wikipedia right on to another web site and change it to suit your preferences as long as you follow the Terms of Use - so none of the work you've been doing is lost, you can move what you've been working on straight into another encyclopedia or web site and keep working on it. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 23:48, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

My last word on this is here. --Tbrittreid (talk) 21:38, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, at least he got the last word. ☺ --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 23:25, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

== Violator! Desecrater!!! turn around and meet the hater!

How does "If you get a warning and then you get another one, it goes to the next level, even if it was for something different." violate the spirit of the project and WP:AGF? Keyboard mouse (talk) 15:10, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Who says it does? Cuddlyable3 (talk) 10:57, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

AGF and improving a page after unsuccessful AfD

I would like to see something along the following lines added to this guideline:

• Improvement of an article can take place at any time. An editor's failure to offer new sources or other material for an article at some earlier time is not, by itself, indicative of an intention to damage the article by withholding material which might have been useful. In particular, if an editor nominates an article for deletion and later (after the AFD has failed and the article is kept) offers new sources or other material to improve the article which he had originally proposed to have deleted, it is generally not appropriate to suggest that the editor's failure to find or offer the new material earlier was a deliberate attempt to sabotage the article and increase its chances of being deleted.

I've seen this line of argument made a few times, and I don't believe it's proper, and I'd like to see something explicitly discouraging it in the future. Comments? Richwales (talk) 21:20, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

What you're saying seems too specific to me, particularly because I have observed a number of situations in which, taken along with the editor's other behaviors, an attempted deletion does appear to have been somewhat malicious. This project page should not be seen as papering over or denying that possibility, I think. And of course there are people who are inclined towards deletion and are often simply mistaken or didn't really read the article too carefully before they made a nomination and are, shall we say, a bit reluctant to admit that and admit that they came close to effectively destroying a big chunk of another editor's or editors' invested time; which isn't bad faith in and of itself of course but we shouldn't be using policy to shield them from criticism or save face for them, I don't think. Better maybe to just say something simpler like

• Remember that deletion of some articles at some times is an important part of improving Wikipedia. In general it should be assumed that an editor's nomination of an article for deletion was made in good faith. In some cases it may simply be the case that the editor's initial impression of the article or the article's subject was incorrect or incomplete and she may acknowledge this by later helping in providing material and citations. Past disagreements of this sort are best put aside to focus on the improvement of the encyclopedia.

And we could put a link directly to that paragraph so that it can be easily cited when a disagreement gets to the point where accusations of the sort you mention are made. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 07:18, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, I like your version better than my original idea — especially the last sentence. Richwales (talk) 08:25, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

One man VETO through UNDO is too powerful against good faith edits

Summary:Veto of updates by any person removes good faith additions, as well as vandalism. Wikipedia needs tools to show who is "controlling the message". Harness required webforms, counts of links and words deleted, and use Community voting to keep UNDOers Honest. VETO particularly when combined with vague policy violation labels, and stonewalling, does not assume good faith in the very structure of Wikipedia. Asking the users to "assume good faith" is not going to fix this design flaw in Wikipedia.

Every user has veto power to remove anything recently added they don't like. If the newer editor disagrees three times in 24 hours, they get banned for edit warring. Fighting flagrant vandalism such as out of context grafitti, profanity, and "Hi Mom!"'s and other defacing actions probably requires a swift mechanism. We have UNDO (and synonyms like REVERT) under the article's "Page History". (Each time I use the word undo, I mean all similar reversion verbs as well.)

But any "good faith" addition or update that is disliked by any single attentive user can simply be "vetoed" and deleted through the UNDO. This greatly encourages "vetoers" to decry any "good faith" additions as "vandalism." The fall backs are apparently decrying "unsourced" or "not enough references or citations" in new content, even if the old content is unsourced or already has a specific bias or major holes in the article, such as a lack of definition of the topic. The most striking examples of serious political disputes are over what Neutral Point Of View is. Original Research excuse is also widely used. UNDOers sometimes use vague labels in the Page History to dispose of large or significant changes, and do not follow up this VETO with talk or more specific labeling of "problematic" portions of text added in good faith. Some articles are not neutral, but appear neutral. If an existing article has subtle wording to appear neutral, but serve a specific agenda, the VETO of "good faith updates" with UNDO, becomes too powerful.

UNDOers need to specify with with a forced web form (not a just a vague opt-in summary) what is wrong, and the community needs to be able to vote if this UNDOer is reporting accurately. We need to be able to quickly review which words and links are being deleted from an article, and which user is deleting, and how often. UNDOers need to specify "Nonsense Grafitti" or "Disagree with good faith edit".

UNDOing "Nonsense Graffiti" must be fast, easy, and reviewable by the community. If a "nonsense graffiti" edit has a link added, the UNDOer must be forced specify "All links supported graffiti, not spam and not good faith" or specify which links were commercial SPAM.

The "Disagree with Good Faith Edit" must have drop down labels for which policy the UNDOer is using to delete the good faith edit, and which portion of the text violates that Wikipedia 'policy'. The UNDOer must text edit (in the same transaction) the words of the recent text that they believe is contrary to a policy. This updated text markup must be saved to the article before the same user can UNDO to a previous update. The community can then remove the undo and use newly marked up text instead.

The community must be able to vote on several questions. If the UNDO was helpful. If "graffiti" vs "disagree" was accurately categorized. If the text markup and policy spotting was accurate. If the intensity of UNDOer was accurate. If the link really was Spam. Community votes should be agree and disagree with intensity. So a drop down box with plain English, "strongly disagree with undo", disagree, mildly disagree, mildly agree, agree, strongly agree, (-3,-2,-1,+1,+2,+3, on the backside). In a disagreement over policy, the community voter needs to specify in the text with their own policy.

We need sortable list of counts all words deleted in an article due to nonsense graffiti by each user in article. We need three sortable lists (Wikipedia links, external links, spam links) of counts of all links deleted due to nonsense graffiti by each user in an article. We need three lists "disagree with good faith edit", overwrites, and these combined, of sortable list of counts of all words deleted by each user in an article, and who most frequently added the word deleted by the deleter. We need concordances of words deleted, and links deleted, the counts of each deleted, compared with current version, and who deleted a word the most, and who added the word the most. We need to be able to detect for each user, the controversy level of that editor. Controversy is not bad, it just means that their is disagreement. Tabulating votes meaningfully is complex. The number of people voting is one number that matters. How polarized the voting is, is very important. We need to let users easily see a deleters history from the page history. How many times has a user undone claiming nonsense graffiti? How many times was that heavily voted on? How polarized was the voting? Even what the average was? The same is true of "Disagree with good faith edit" UNDO. We need to know how many words and how many links an individual user deleted. If a user is the most active deleter, it becomes much simpler to review their honesty and accuracy in deletion. We need to know who is adding the most citations (not yet deleted) in extant articles, because these people are adding the most value to Wikipedia. Perhaps we could also have tools to determine how quickly people are deleting "graffiti" and how quickly people are deleting "good faith edits". Perhaps in the future, we could learn how much time is being deleted by each user.

People who use the extraordinary power of UNDO, must be held accountable when they are poisoning the well of Wikipedia. Npendleton (talk) 08:09, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

You've been repeatedly told what it wrong with your edits. All you have to do is to cite reliable secondary sources. The edits as written are irredeemable, because they appear to be original research or personal interpretation of the US Constitution. If you are really editing in good faith, then you will find the necessary secondary sources and rewrite the material so that it conforms to and is supported by those sources. I note that you have been previously blocked for making additions to articles that did not conform to either our reliable sourcing or neutral point of view policies. You are now approaching the point at which you may be blocked for disruption. Is that what you want? Yworo (talk) 17:28, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Mango

The label is too dark to see. Kayau Voting IS evil 06:24, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

• done CybergothiChé (talk) 17:28, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

You know something, if thats a problem for you, why don't you come down and see me? You know my number and my name, so why don't you come on down, bub? Come get me and see what happens! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.3.119.127 (talk) 17:44, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

lmao people can threaten other people on wiki and get away with it? My new hobby is going to be digging through wiki to find random acts of trolling lmao.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.169.224.104 (talk) 17:13, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Are you talking to me or to Kayau Voting IS evil or are you just hatin' on the mango?

I have replaced the image of the mango with the same image, only with it's colours enhanced to show more clearly the producers label, which reads "AGF". The humourous caption, "See, even this mango agrees!", which implies that the mango is also assuming good faith (possibly that it will be eaten, and so happily awaits an unknown hunger), is still the same, although the exclamation point has been removed.

Also, Wikipedia has a policy of no hatin', either against other wikipedians or against all types of produce (including the mango), so you should address the problem, rather than be hatin'.

So, what up, G?

CybergothiChé (talk) 06:25, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Unnecessary redirect?

Does anybody else feel that Wikipedia:AFG is a pretty much useless redirect to WP:AGF? Not many people use it (page statistics). Guoguo12--Talk--  23:32, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Looks like it's catching an infrequent, but not unheard of, typo. The existence of the redirect has the considerable benefit of preventing it from going somewhere other than here; and catching the typo has greater than zero utility. --Pi zero (talk) 11:49, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

All right, fair enough... Guoguo12--Talk--  20:41, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I made a number objective, good faith edits only to be automatically rejected by some process which redirects here. It happened in a matter of minutes. WTF? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.245.164.83 (talk) 02:42, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

AGF derails discussions

I read the article, Reductio ad Hitlerum. One of its references says,

In almost every heated debate, one side or the other—often both—plays the "Hitler card", that is, criticizes their opponent's position by associating it in some way with Adolf Hitler or the Nazis in general. This move is so common that it led Mike Godwin to develop the well-known "Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies": "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." <ref name="FallacyFiles1">Curtis, Gary N. (2004). "Logical Fallacy: The Hitler Card". Fallacy Files. Retrieved 2007-10-08.</ref>

I suggest in Wikipedia that there is a similar law concerning WP:AGF: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a charge that a party is not assuming good faith approaches one."

I also suggest that once such a charge is made, the discussion is derailed because the charged party then defends their discussion as good faith and makes a countercharge of WP:AGF.

--Kevinkor2 (talk) 17:05, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

The only reason that this would result in the conversation being derailed is if someone is interpreting WP:AGF to mean "bad faith cannot be discussed" or "no behavior may be described as bad faith". WP:AGF does not mean either of those things. (Not to mention - if someone has actually done the equivalent of accuse another editor of being Hitler, THAT is what has derailed the conversation, not the response to it.) --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 14:58, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

The Bad faith article section on editing encyclopdias needs help from available editors

The Bad faith article will contain a section on bad faith in editing encyclopedias. Please help out by contributing Talk:Bad_faith#Section:_Bad_faith_in_editing, and create a new section in the article and WP:Bold it in if your contribution has RS. Can the WP:GF article somehow be a RS for this? HkFnsNGA (talk) 07:31, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, this page is about the assume good faith guideline. You may want to post this in Talk:Bad faith instead. Kayau Voting IS evil 06:47, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

No one is responding on that talk page. Someone familiar with WP:GF is needed because there is a section proposed here. HkFnsNGA (talk) 07:31, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Good faith in Interpedia

An add proposal:

Subject: 3.5.2 What will their responsibilities be to the Project?

The responsibilities of editors will be to act in good faith in the advancement of the Interpedia, to communicate regularly with other editors and with techies as needed and, above all, to try to add the

highest quality material possible to the Interpedia.

Useful for an historic view of good faith in Internet encyclopedia projects? Regards. emijrp (talk) 22:32, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Adultery, absolution, and related sacraments*

My present wife and I performed an unlawful act, sought forgiveness in the Catholic Church where we reside, and continue to practice our faiths in the Catholic Church. Our priest informed us that we now have permission to participate in all sacraments, namely communion. Is there any other cannon law that disagrees?

Mark & Mary — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.58.7.32 (talk) 13:15, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

I think I am going to die if I keep finding trolls all over the same articles lol... the above is a troll post that has nothing to do with the page. It's no different than a post about the civil war with a label "Horse f**king and you; how to not get injured" This is just more subtle but still no one removes it. lol.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.169.224.104 (talk) 17:17, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

¿Dealing With Bad-Faith Abuses?

There are many people here who are deeply entrenched in their “position” that even the least little challenge to them results in bad-faith attacks; For example, “Adam” has written a shoddy POS article on a subject of some importance, with the overall tone of the article clearly showing a bias against all persons employed as “Employees.” It’s slip-shot, poorly researched, what little research IS conducted is taken completely out of context (a form of plagiarism), but if you point out that this is so, Adam makes it personal by degrees. Pointing this out becomes a bad faith attack, but he still won’t stop trying to “gun down” everything you do, including changing submission standards to suit whatever he wants at the moment; when consensus supports him, that’s his position no matter how WRONG the consensus is, when verifiability shields him by a dearth of articles that opposes him, suddenly he’s all about that- Anything to ensure everything you do is saboteurs. So fine- ¿What do you do about maliciously obstructionist? A. J. REDDSON

The {{uw-agf}} is among trolls' favorite weapons. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 23:08, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Good faith and POV-pushing

There is a subtle but important difference between pushing a point of view and editing in bad faith. It seems to me that if someone with an agenda makes edits reflecting his point of view, but does so with citations to reliable sources and in the belief that his is a point of view held by a significant body of persons knowledgeable of the subject, then a charge of bad faith is unwarranted. Indeed, I'd argue that this is how most articles on topics that are at all controversial actually end up being written. And that's fine as long as editors with different points of view are all editing in good faith and do not try to squelch the contributions of other editors with different points of view.

I'm wondering if other editors agree, and if it's worth adding something about this to this policy page. Don't really have a bee in my bonnet here -- I think my own contributions to Wikipedia have been relatively noncontroversial -- but the thought occurred to me as I was looking over this page. --Yaush (talk) 15:09, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

You're correct about there being a difference between POV-pushing and editing in good faith. This distinction probably even applies to chronic POV-pushers as well. When somebody has a strong POV, they believe that they are right, and those who hold contrary opinions are wrong. In their mind, they might sincerely believe that their biased edits are helping the project. That's not to say that their intent would absolve them. PS Excuse my torturous prose.--Piast93 21:32, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

AGF and declared conflicts of interest

When an editor declares he or she has a conflict of interest on their user page and on the talk pages of articles they wish to edit, do we throw AGF to the wind and assuming the editor is pushing their agenda to the detriment of the encyclopedia or do we evaluate each edit on its own merits? Rklawton (talk) 01:46, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

An open acknowledgement of a conflict of interest is a sign of good faith, in my opinion. Given that folks knowledgeable about a subject are unusually likely to have conflicts of interest, I should say that we evaluate each edit on its own merits, with perhaps a bit of extra scrutiny to ensure that reliable sources are being used, rather than reflexively dismiss. --Yaush (talk) 17:27, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

What it means to AGF

I saw a good attempt at defining what it means to "assume good faith" recently, which (slightly modified) might have some place on the guideline page: "Never assume malice when ignorance will suffice; never assume ignorance when error will suffice; never assume error when information you hadn't accounted for will suffice." (I'm not interested in editing the guideline page myself, but perhaps some brave soul might think it worth it. ;-) User:Glenn Willen (Talk) 03:35, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

تابعيه

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Politeness isn't the only reason not to revert first and ask questions never

Sure it's more polite not to revert an edit made in good faith, and sure it's better form to improve an edit made in good faith rather than reverting it because the revert button is there, and the button wouldn't be there if it wasn't meant to be pressed, but another equally valid reason not to revert is because this is an encyclopedia, and it's meant to be a repository for information. Not only that, but there's even a citation needed template! How serendipitous!

WP:AOBF

I was reading though this guideline tonight and I feel compelled to say that the WP:AOBF section is very bizarre. I'm guessing that there is a noble intent behind it, but I'm not really sure what it is. I quote: "Although the assumption of good faith is dictated by Wikipedia policy, there is no corresponding policy requiring editors to act in good faith" is just false: see the editing policy, third section: Try to fix problems. Also, "accusations of bad faith serve no purpose"? I suppose I get the general spirit of that, but it also challenges actual consensus . . see our policy on bad faith editing, which directly encourages editors to warn and notify editors that they have acted in bad faith when it is obvious. NTox · talk 09:43, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I've made a small change that hopefully fixes these problems. NTox · talk 17:56, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the change you've made. I think it's more articulate, makes more sense, and fits better with the rest of this page than the previous text. --▸∮truthious ᛔandersnatch◂ 18:07, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

navigating the site

I have no idea how to navigate. The site. Dreflydre Dreflydre (talk) 20:38, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Can anyone with administrator rights define "Good faith" for me?

I am not happy with the explanation of good faith. User:Middle 8, please help me. What to do when you want to put up a paragraph warning potential consumers from being cheated on the Indiatimes shopping website. It is true (just Google "Indiatimes fraud"). Does Indiatimes allow people to put good faith in its business dealings? I think sometimes Wikipedia should "break" rules.-59.95.15.38 (talk) 17:01, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Where to report violations of AGF

I am an unregistered user who recently nominated an article for deletion. The rationale was valid, being that the article was created by a vandal. In the AfD discussion page, User Zeng8r called it "bogus" while also suggesting that I am the vandal that created the article. See Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Most_played_rivalries_in_NCAA_Division_I_FBS 71.90.216.96 (talk) 01:33, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Spirit of WP:NOTPEOPLE in conflict with WP:AGF

Per NOTPEOPLE's talk. 220.246.156.175 (talk) 02:52, 25 December 2012 (UTC) ok i am abit wired but i like it like that — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.51.112.99 (talk) 03:43, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Admin discussions of bias, etc. and AFG

I'm sure I read somewhere that it's ok to discuss editor biases (and other questionable behaviors) in some/all? administrative discussions without being accused of not AFGing. But it doesn't seem to be in this article, except implicitly in 3rd paragraph where it reads: If you wish to express doubts about the conduct of fellow Wikipedians, please substantiate those doubts with specific diffs and other relevant evidence,

A) Anyone know where something more explicit is? and B) should a note on that topic or link to that subject be here somewhere? (Or that be made more explicit if it is that quoted sentence that refers to that topic. THanks. CarolMooreDC 02:16, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Neutral

I'm neutral toward this issue. I don't have a tendency to think on moral grounds, and this issue is a neutral one. Sometimes I contribute, sometimes I disrupt, but I don't really think of myself as doing either until someone starts whining. That's how I know I made a boo-boo in someone's eyes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.70.202.28 (talk) 13:42, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Sinebot.

Sinebot does not assume good faith, it is a bot, therefore that is a clear falsehood.