View source for Directory:The Wikipedia Point of View/Dealing with pseudoscience



== Civil POV pushing ==

Wikipedia, and specifically the dispute resolution process, has a difficult time dealing with civil POV pushers. These are editors who are superficially polite while exhibiting some or all of the following behaviors: 

*They often edit primarily or entirely on one topic or theme. 
*They attempt to water down language, unreasonably exclude, marginalize or push views beyond the requirements of WP:NPOV, or give undue weight to fringe theories - pseudoscience, crankery, conspiracy theories, marginal nationalist or historic viewpoints, and the like (PCCTL for short). 
*They revert war over such edits. 
*They frivolously request citations for obvious or well known information. 
*They argue endlessly about the neutral-point-of-view policy and particularly try to undermine the undue weight clause. They try to add information that is (at best) peripherally relevant on the grounds that "it is verifiable, so it should be in." 
*They argue for the inclusion of material of dubious reliability; for example, using commentary from partisan think tanks rather than from the scientific literature. 
*They may use sockpuppets, or recruit meat puppets. 
*They repeatedly use the talk page for soapboxing, and/or to re-raise the same issues that have already been discussed numerous times. 
*They hang around forever wearing down more serious editors and become expert in an odd kind of way on their niche POV. 
*They often make a series of silly and time wasting requests for comment, mediation or arbitration again to try to wear down the serious editors.