Wikipedia:WikiProject community rehabilitation/Idea/We are all Switzerland


 * When Wikipedians adopt overt political or otherwise partisan positions, circumstances arise whereby other editors feel pressure to do so as well, creating an environment where stingent neutrality is compromised. For example, I've observed many a situation where some commenter takes the rhetorical tack of attacking a proposed edit by castigating its contributor as a political hack from some camp, with the Wikipedian making this claim's then going on to demonize those who align themselves IRL to the particular political or otherwise partisan camp that the Wikipedian is attacking. Such claims rarely could hold up were they to be formalized with accompanying diffs -- instead they tend to be thrown out willy nilly, poisoning the tone of articles' talkpages (AfD's and the like), any caution to "Please assume good faith!" be damned. Which is insidious 'cause editors whose proposed texts are being attacked in this manner find themselves sucked into wanting to proclaim their own political or otherwise partisan leanings as well (especially in cases where the attacked editor's leanings in reality are not of the stripe that the partisan warrior's paranoia supposed!) Should such a milieu really be WP's default? Or should we formally ban such partisan warring, encouraging every Wikipedian to maintain a carefully neutral demeanor (analagous to those of journalists on CNN rather than those of, e.g., infotainers on MSNBC)?