User:Jwanders/Disruptive user policy

I'm trying to come up with a policy for how I will deal with disruptive editors. This is a personal policy, intended solely to give me something to fall back on when problems arise. As I learn and gain experience on Wikipedia, I expect that this policy will evolve; I will attempt not to alter it while dealing with a disruptive user.

From what I've read, the established Wikipedia dispute resolution process(es) are slow, time consuming, stressful and rarely too effective. At present, I believe a better option is to simply ignore the disruptive user by devoting my time to some other area of the project. This has the disadvantage of allowing the user to "get away" with this behaviour–as many I believe many of these users enjoy the disruptive arguments they cause, however, following up with dispute resolution only gives them more opportunities to disrupt.

I believe the one exception to the above should be to, as politely as possible, inform the editor in question that I consider their edits disruptive. If they take this as constructive criticism, great; if not, declining to enter further discussions with that editor is a simple course of action.

This policy will be most difficult to follow in a situation where a disruptive editor involves him or herself with an article or project I feel strongly attached to. It that case, I will have to make the decision as to whether it's worth entering dispute resolution, or whether to recall WP:OWN and find another area on which to focus.

Created 08:02, 5 March 2008 (UTC)