User:EthicalAugur/sandbox

I’m interested in how skilled editors maintain WP:NPOV

Wikipedia somehow manages to maintain an ‘in good faith’ culture while also addressing incredibly challenging issues like vandalism and opportunism; so I’d like to respect that as much as possible by understanding some of these challenges before throwing myself into situations where I may make things worse. For this reason I have spent the two years since joining mostly reading through talk pages.

While I now believe I have logic based arguments for editing existing pages based on the WP: GUIDELINES I am still a little wary of edit warring. Having said that I also value the rationale behind WP:5P5 and so will “be bold” and trust that conflict resolution practices as per WP:POLICY will help me navigate the if/when.

During my first foray into WP I learned about ‘Lumpers and splitters’ See wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters, I pondered a possible neurological explanation for personal tendencies to choose lumping over splitting or vice versa as the concept reminds me a lot of ‘thinking in categories’ vs ‘thinking in connections’. I am also wondering if this plays a role in disputes over WP edits. Is there any argument for the choice to lump or to split being best determined by the aim? For eg. taxonomic or semantic rules that can be extrapolated into a broader guide? perhaps relating to the difference between classification and analogical objectives?

At this point I haven’t been able to backtrack and find what linked me to the lumpers and splitters page but I think it was most likely somewhere in WP:POLICY or WP:GUIDE given I had linked it to editing decisions on Wikipedia in my own mind. I’d like to know of any rules of thumb or known dysfunctional/deceptive practices exist eg. ‘selling the splitting while building the lumping’ (or vice versa) ie giving the impression of one aim while actually fulfilling the opposite aim.

My main interest in editing is to help new editors find, understand and apply WP:POLICY so that first page attempts at least get a little closer to meeting requirements than appears to be happening at present. I think it would help me to get better understanding of the rules and culture of Wikipedia myself if I’m learning these things with others that are also fairly inexperienced - it’s both a form of practice and a form of peer review I guess. Win/win.