Wikipedia:Disruption
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This is an essay. It is not a policy or guideline. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page. |
Disrupting Wikipedia is a serious offense, blockable under Wikipedia's blocking policy. Wikipedians want to produce a comprehensive, correct encyclopedia, and disrupting the mechanisms we have in place to ensure that we are working towards that goal makes us very very mad.
Because of the extremely negative connotation the word "disruption" has on Wikipedia, it is tempting every now and then to use the word to refer to certain acts that, while they should not have been committed, do not actually disrupt anything, either. Please try to avoid this.
For instance, one user gratuitously insulting another user, while inappropriate, is not disruptive. Neither is simple small-scale vandalism.
Furthermore, don't cause actual disruption in an effort to fix a perceived disruption. An excellent example of this is the Great Userbox War of 2006; several users who claimed userboxes were disruptive, set about deleting and trying to stop further creation of such userboxes. The ensuing fight was orders of magnitude more disruptive than any supposed disruption for which the userbox opponents were able to provide evidence. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it is disruption. Disruption is a large-scale hindrance of Wikipedia's ability to function, whether technically, administratively, or socially. An insult, or even a string of insults targeted at several users, does not do this.
Certainly, acts which, taken by themselves, are not disruptive may be part of of a larger disruptive act.
