Wikipedia:Avoid inconveniencing editors
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Essay on editing Wikipedia
This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
This page in a nutshell: Inconveniencing editors can hinder the encyclopedia for readers. |
Although readers generally come before editors its important not to unnecessarily inconvenience editors if readers are not likely to benefit but it does clearly inconvenience editors. For example if a redirect causes maintenance problems but isn't likely to be used by readers its generally best to delete it, see WP:RDAB for example. Similarly adding unnecessarily disambiguation may appear to be helpful to our readers but using the simpler titles may actually be more helpful and allowing unnecessarily disambiguation means editors have to decide how much is appropriate, see User:Born2cycle/Unnecessary disambiguation.
Reasons
[edit]- Editor time and resources may be used on a maintenance burden that could be spent on improving articles.
- Maintenance burdens may cause an editor to abandon the area leaving problems for readers.
- Maintenance burdens may cause an editor to leave Wikipedia completely due to the stress in maintaining the issue.