Wikipedia:Pay actions forward
 | 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: If you add to a backlog, try to help clear a backlog. |
Wikipedia has a large number of discussion boards—such as articles for deletion, requested moves, and requests for closure—where proposals are made on a daily basis. Often these pages get backlogged, and old discussions can remain unactioned for a long time. As these backlogs get bigger, a kind editor will occasionally spend their time helping to clear the backlog, but as the backlog grows the task becomes more daunting. Unfortunately, there are many more editors involved in the initiation and continuation of discussions than in their resolution. Every discussion that is initiated generates some work on the part of others to review, consider, possibly participate in, and ultimately resolve and close out. This results in a vicious cycle where backlogs continuously grow and fewer editors feel capable of clearing it.
Therefore editors should pay actions forward and break the cycle by reducing the disparity between number of nominations and number of comments. The principal can be summarized as:
| “ | In order to avoid backlogs and balance workloads, when you take an action that will require the work of others to resolve, you should take on a comparable amount of work which helps resolve similar actions taken by others. | ” |
Of course none of this is required, but following this principle would generally be helpful to the community. In some circumstances, it may even be wise to not follow this principle. There may be times where the nominator knows the correct process, but not enough to participate in a helpful way. Be careful in applying this principle, as an eternal September of inexperienced editors in discussions can lead to more problems in the long run. As always, use common sense and know your limits.
Examples
- If you open a deletion discussion, find other discussions which you can help resolve.
- If you are an administrator or an XfD closer, find a pending discussion to close.
- If you are not someone who should close a discussion, find a discussion where your opinion will help form a consensus (or solidify the absence of consensus).
- If you open a move request, find another move request and take some action towards resolving the request.
- If you template articles for others to fix, aim to remove more templates than you add.
If you don't feel qualified to engage in actions that would resolve matters of the specific type you have initiated, try to find some other backlog of work needing to be done, and make some contribution there. For example, there are always articles with {{citation needed}} tags, for which you might be able to find a citation for the tagged content; and there are always disambiguation links needing repair.