Wikipedia:American Politics Contentious Topic Thoughts

American Politics Contentious Topic Thoughts

This is an attempt to reply to questions I received in response to alerting an editor to the contentious topic of American politics. The contentious topics procedure has been developed by ArbCom over the course of more than a decade to provide an expedited means of dealing with editors who edit disruptively in areas that are subject to frequent battleground editing. These areas that are subject to frequent disputes are designated by ArbCom as contentious topics. Editors who edit disruptively in contentious topic areas can be reported to the arbitration enforcement noticeboard, where they may be subject to topic-bans and other editing restrictions, warned, partially blocked, or even banned from the site. Procedures at arbitration enforcement are often more expeditious than community enforcement at WP:ANI, which is especially important with topics that divide the community. Disruptive editing includes personal attacks, other incivility, tendentious editing against consensus (such as ignoring the result of an RFC), and civil POV pushing.

The contentious topics procedure was previously known as discretionary sanctions, which meant that administrators had discretion in how to sanction disruptive editing. The name of the procedure was changed to contentious topics in 2022. References to discretionary sanctions should be understood as references to contentious topics.

American politics has been deeply polarized in the twenty-first century. The reasons for this polarization are complex, and I will not try to identify them here. The ArbCom put discretionary sanctions in force for American politics in 2015. There has been controversy about what period of time should be covered. The period covered was originally after 1932, and has since been narrowed to after 1992.

The question was asked whether California genocide is within the contentious topic of American politics, because the actions that are considered genocidal were in the nineteenth century, but the debate has been in the twenty-first century. The answer is yes, that the topic of California genocide is a contentious topic, because the secondary sources, on which Wikipedia is based, are twenty-first-century historians. Contentious topic designations are usually imposed with the phrase "broadly construed", and a broad construction is that twenty-first-century historiography about events in the nineteenth century is likely to reflect the polarization of American politics in the twenty-first century.

Two general rules should apply to thinking about editing in a contentious topic area. First, if you are not sure whether a topic area is a contentious topic, it is best to assume that it is a contentious topic. However, second, the contentious topic rules are only applicable when an editor's editing is somehow disruptive. If an editor has experience in editing collaboratively and in respecting the second pillar of Wikipedia, which is neutral point of view and the fourth pillar of Wikipedia, which is civility, they probably will not have a problem with the contentious topic rules.

On the one hand, if you are not sure whether a topic is contentious, it is best to assume that it is. On the other hand, if you edit in a collaborative manner and respect neutral point of view and civility, you are not likely to get into trouble.