 | This page documents an English Wikipediabehavioral guideline. Editors should generally follow it, thoughexceptions may apply.Substantive edits to this page should reflectconsensus. When in doubt, discuss first onthis guideline's talk page. |
 | This page in a nutshell: When notifying other editors of discussions, keep the number of notifications small, keep the message text neutral, and don't preselect recipients according to their established opinions. Be open! |
In general, it is perfectly acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions, provided that it be done with the intent to improve the quality of the discussion by broadening participation to more fully achieveconsensus.
Canvassing refers to notification done with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way, and is considered inappropriate. This is because it compromises the normalconsensus decision-making process, and therefore is generally considereddisruptive behavior.
An editor who may wish to draw a wider range of informed, but uninvolved, editors to a discussion can place a message at any of the following:
The audience must not be selected on the basis of their opinions—for example, if notices are sent to editors who previously supported deleting an article, then identical notices should be sent to those who supported keeping it. Do not send inappropriate notices, as defined in thesection directly below, and do not send messages to users who have asked not to receive them.
Notifications must bepolite, neutrally worded with a neutral title, clear in presentation, and brief—the user can always find out more by clicking on the link to the discussion. The{{subst:Please see}} template may help in notifying people in a quick, simple, and neutral manner.
Note: It is good practice to leave a note at the discussion itself about notifications which have been made, particularly if made to individual users.
| Scale | Message | Audience | Transparency | ||||
| Appropriate | Limited posting | AND | Neutral | AND | Nonpartisan | AND | Open |
| ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ↕ | ||||
| Inappropriate | Mass posting | OR | Biased | OR | Partisan | OR | Secret |
| Term | Excessive cross-posting ("spamming") | Campaigning | Votestacking | Stealth canvassing |
Inappropriate notification is generally considered to be disruptive. Canvassing normally involves the posting of messages. However, it may also include other kinds of solicitation, such as a custom signature to automatically append some promotional message to every signed post. Do not use abot to send messages to multiple pages as this can be seen as a form of spamming.
The following behaviors are regarded as characteristic of inappropriate notification (and may be seen as disruptive):
Below are brief explanations of the most common types of inappropriate notification:
Indiscriminately sending announcements to editors can be disruptive for any number of reasons. If the editors are uninvolved, the message has the function of "spam" and is disruptive to that user's experience. More importantly, recruiting too many editors to adispute resolution can often make resolving the dispute impossible. Remember that the purpose of a notification is to improve the dispute resolution process, not to disrupt it.
The inclusion of links to discussions, including featured content nominations, in signatures has been found to be disruptive spamming.[3]
Campaigning is an attempt to sway the person reading the message, conveyed through the use of tone, wording, or intent. While this may be appropriate as part of a specific individual discussion, it is inappropriate to canvass with such messages.
Votestacking is an attempt to sway consensus by selectively notifying editors who have or are thought to have a predetermined point of view or opinion (which may be determined, among other ways, from a userpage notice, such as auserbox, or fromuser categorization), and thus encouraging them to participate in the discussion.
In the case of a re-consideration of a previous debate (such as a "no consensus" result on an RFC, AFD or CFD), it is similarly inappropriate to send a disproportionate number of notifications specifically to those who expressed a particular viewpoint on the previous debate.
Posting anappropriate notice on users' talk pages in order to inform editors on all "sides" of a debate (e.g., everyone who participated in a previous deletion debate on a given subject) may be appropriate under certain circumstances.
Because it is less transparent than on-wiki notifications, the use of email, IRC, Discord, or other off-wiki communication to notify editors is strongly discouraged unless there is a significant reason for not using talk page notifications. Sending a notification to a group of editors by email is usually looked at more negatively than sending the same message to the same group of people on their talk pages.
The most effective response to quite recent, clearly disruptive canvassing is to politely request that the user(s) responsible for the canvassing stop posting notices, possibly using{{subst:Uw-canvass}} on their talk page. If they continue, they may be reported to theadministrators' noticeboard for incidents, which may result in their beingblocked from editing. Users with a prior history of disruptive canvassing, which they have previously been asked to discontinue, may be blocked immediately without further warning.
For other types of actions that are inappropriate in the consensus-building process, see thepolicy on consensus. Apart from canvassing, these includeforum shopping (raising an issue on successive discussion pages until you get the result you want),sock puppetry andmeat puppetry (bringing fictional or real outside participants into the discussion to create a false impression of support for your viewpoint), andtendentious editing.
