As we discuss somewhat in the introduction, the complex community of Wikipedia is what makes it possible. However, sometimes this community can cause an article to stall without some more pointed and bold interventions. While the community does its best to prevent its policies and procedures from being an obstacle, it is inevitable that issues will arise within this socially complex editing environment. These problems should thus be recognized so that editors can then find ways through these issues in relevant articles.
The community of Wikipedians make and reinforce the policies for editing, thereby making the clarifying and enforcement of its policies a community issue. Occasionally, the policies meant to preserve the integrity and quality of Wikipedia make it hard for an article to move forward. Although Wikipedians attempt to avoid such obstacles through policies like no firm rules, this tension is inevitable—and even desired in some cases. Nonetheless, these policies can cause articles (both important and mundane) to stall as the barrier to entry for editing them becomes higher. To move forward into a good form, such articles need diplomatic editing skills of a high level as well as time and patience for navigating the community.
The major examples here are the difficulties with a neutral point of view (WP:NPOV), conflicts of interest (WP:COI) and fringe theories (WP:FRINGE). These policies are essential to maintain appropriate content on Wikipedia but can also stall an article when NPOV is difficult to maintain. Those who have knowledge and interest of a topic tend not to be those who can situate the topic in the way that is appropriate for Wikipedia. Likewise, articles can stall when scrutiny of fringe topics leads to an excessive cutting down of an article and significant pushback and even suspicion to new contributions. Similarly, it can be difficult to move an article forward when conflict of interest editing becomes the primary intervention in an article such that it is unclear what should be in the article and little space is given to discuss.
Ghost Hunting: As of 2019, this article had stalled into a form that put skepticism towards a certain kind of Ghost Hunting front and center, such that other ways of approaching the topic as a historical or cultural phenomenon became difficult. This article clearly arose from a United States perspective related to the increase of ghost hunting media around the turn of the century. However, to address these issues about balance and make space for better kinds of information, contributors would have to reckon with the understandable (to a degree) skepticism towards editors trying to work on this article, as a student did in attempting to remedy these issues (refer to their talk page discussion).
Clinical Vampirism and Vampire Lifestyle: These are articles whose cultural interest likely outweighs the amount of legitimate information available in each, and yet they have survived multiple nominations for deletion. How does one establish good content when public interest outweighs the amount of quality publication on the topic?
Tourism in Mumbai: This is a classic case of an article that has trouble getting going because of clear violations of WP:Promo. In this case, it's not that no one is interested, but that those interested have trouble fitting the content to the particularities of Wikipedia (especially WP:NOT), which push against the kinds of content and tone that one would expect in material on tourism in Mumbai.
Examples of Worldwide perspective: For a period of time, Wikipedia had an editing guideline that suggested that all articles should be written from a worldwide perspective. This guideline has since merged with the pages about systemic bias, but nonetheless remains an important general expectation that creates a particular problem: articles organized around particular countries. This is particularly common for certain topics, such as professions (see this version of Psychologist) and foods (refer to this version of Iced Coffee). To remedy these issues, a whole new organization and kinds of content would have to be created, but only after navigating the fact that the attempt to provide a worldwide perspective has created the less appropriate organization.
Basic Life Support: This article has experienced a combination of issues. In 2011, it contained content that was too geared towards instruction (refer to WP:NOT) and organized around different regions. These issues remained in 2020, when a student attempted to remedy these issues with some generous encouragement from the community. While this moved things forward, as of 2022, one can see that additional bold edits are needed to address these issues.
Sometimes a particularly active Wikipedian can have a very strong role in setting the form, focus, and tone for an article or a series of articles. Their understanding of the topic will then color how the topic is set up and develops. Most of the time, this is just part of the necessary process of an article being worked out. But sometimes these quirks become magnified and create confusion down the line.
DIY Ethic: This is one of the most interesting cases we've discovered on Wikipedia. Early in its development, an editor worked on this article alongside a number of other articles about punk culture, which goes back to its first iteration in 2003. The resulting article was therefore built around punk culture in a way that remained for a surprising amount of time—until 2018. This created confusion between this article, Do It Yourself, and Maker Culture, with content in this article being more relevant for the Punk Subculture article. Eventually, the article was merged into Do It Yourself.
Rowing: In this case, in looking through the history, one can see a lot of idiosyncratic edits that don't cohere in part because particular approaches to this topic get solidified into the structure. First, some editors added things about Venetian rowing and Whitehall rowboats, which remained a significant portion of the article for a long time. Then an editor added an only moderately appropriate section on what makes a good rowboat, and another editor later added a very technical section on oars. All this content had to be sorted through and reorganized into a more appropriate form; a student worked on it in 2019 and it has since evolved into a much more appropriate form.
Prayer in the New Testament: This article was originally heavily focused on one theologian's classification of prayer. This was then merged into the Christian Prayer article, but the content was not able to be neatly integrated into the larger article. Another editor later more thoroughly integrated this particular citation and approach into the larger article.
Why do some things get worked on and some things do not? Why do some open violations of Wikipedia form and policies get passed over but others get scrutinized with great attention? We will leave it to others to study these questions with more detail in terms of actual patterns. For our purposes, we simply want to note that what gets worked on and when depends on who happens to be present, has time, is interested, understands the policies, and has access to the materials needed to move an article forward. Thus, an article might sit stalled simply for lack of attention. Give it a bit of attention, and suddenly it might move forward quite rapidly.
Red-Tiger Bulldog: This article was somewhat elaborate and remained on Wikipedia for a decent period of time before someone raised the question: Is this breed even notable enough to warrant a Wikipedia article? Refer to the Deletion discussion that ensued. It was then deleted.
Calvin (Calvin and Hobbes): This is an example of what some Wikipedians call fancruft, which is an excess interest in a specialized topic particularly around a cultural topic that one is a fan of. The article was created in 2006, and by 2008 it had a lot of content. At first, this article was trimmed significantly before then being absorbed into the larger article related to the subject, as is more appropriate for the level of detail that the Wikipedia community has agreed should exist for topics of this sort (as documented within the Manual of Style and primarily driven through communities such as WikiProject Comics).
The Hitcher (2007 film): Film articles tend to follow a similar organization and focus. In this case, that structure was put in place for this article in 2014; as of 2022, progress had been made on those sections, but they still need to be finished up. Granted, as a critical and box office failure, this film does not warrant much attention, but the lack of content is noticeable when these Needs Expansion boxes remain for almost a decade.
Lightwater Valley: One can also consider violations in WP:PROMO and WP:COI as a kind of excess of interest. In many of these instances, an editor or off-wiki person of interest is watching an article carefully, which can lead to inappropriate edits but also keep others from editing the article productively. This was the case with someone with this IP address who was keeping too close an eye on this theme park page.
The community on Wikipedia is essential to its function and maintaining its quality. Despite guidelines like Don't bite the newcomer, editing—especially bold editing—can still be intimidating and sometimes outright unwelcoming. Experiencing harassment while editing—or even being afraid of potential harassment in this online, semi-anonymous setting—undoubtedly keeps many from contributing in a manner that might keep certain articles and topics from continuing to develop. Since such cases are about what did not happen, they are less apparent and harder for us to make statements about in this study, although others studies have looked directly at the prevalence and effects of harassment.[17] In our experience, many students working with Wikipedia expressed these anxieties (as we will discuss in Part 2). In our case, the educational framework used in our gathering of these articles served to dampen or discourage negative reactions to students, or helped us quickly dispel any negative reactions by coming to the aid of the students. But the broader public of potential contributors does not have this framework.
At the same time, in our time working with students, we can affirm that most interactions with the community were positive, sometimes greatly so. Thus, here we want to highlight how even in positive interactions, the careful involvement of editors can also create some trepidation for those with fresh ideas and bold edits. This intimidation has to be overcome to push the article forward.
Sometimes, the fact that something has been worked on by an experienced editor can actually make bold edits less likely, as even editors who are familiar with editing conventions might be less likely to step up and provide bold edits and feedback when it is clear that a highly experienced editor has either created or significantly worked on an article. In reality, bold editing is usually welcome on the part of the editor, since experienced editors usually understand the complexities involved.
We want to emphasize these here to highlight the extra, less tangible work often performed by an editor (but sometimes by others in a writing team): coordinating varying degrees of expertise, languages, and opinions amongst contributors to a document. We thus want to highlight the following examples with a great deal of appreciation for these volunteer efforts while also demonstrating the extra layer of editing work that arises from them.
Food and wellness articles, such as Coconut Milk and Shavasana: These articles are particularly difficult to move forward because the standard is high for their verifiability, and new edits to them are often watched carefully. When a student went to work with these two articles, for example, we found out that they were checked regularly by Zefr, who is one of the most active Wikipedia editors we've encountered. Zefr's commitment is incredible and necessary, and they do a lot of work to help teach new editors. To contribute to these kinds of articles, one needs to learn to look for, work with, and respect this kind of attention. In our case, we were able to benefit from Zefr's help and patience, although it was at first disorienting for the student.
Cats in Ancient Egypt: This article has been worked on extensively by an editor who takes particular interest in articles on cats, perhaps due to their professional expertise. As is clear from the edit history, they have kept a close eye on this page. Again, while such interest is welcome and needed in many cases, sometimes it can be difficult to make space for other content and bolder edits such as might be needed.
Health Information on the Internet: This is a difficult type of article since it deals with a rapidly evolving topic that is about the status of an abstract set of information and tied into a series of more or less implicit questions and controversies. It was created in 2013 by Bluerasberry, in part to create space for information about concerns about health information on Wikipedia. They worked on it extensively over the next year, developing it into a more complete article. In 2020, a student found it and had a lot of smart suggestions for reorganizing the article and making space for other kinds of content. Thankfully, BlueRasberry was graciously willing to not only accommodate the editor but work with them. The result of this new set of eyes was that the article was able to keep evolving.
[17] On harassment on Wikipedia, refer to the results of Wikimedia's 2015 Harassment Survey, McDowell and Vetter (2021), Chapter 4, and Menking et al. (2019).