A WikiWarrior on the warpath

A WikiWarrior is a wiki user who believes that the lot of preserving the neutrality of wikipedia has fallen upon them. WikiWarriors have a highly developed sense of POV and can detect an instance of NPOV in a page, article, paragraph, or sentence from a great distance. Once the NPOV is detected, wikiwarriors park themselves at the article and the talk page and engage the enemy until either the battle is won or the WikiWarrior is martyred.

Taxonomy

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Two types of WikiWarriors have been identified:

  1. Edit and Revert WikiWarrior This type of WikiWarrior tends to have some knowledge of the subject matter of the article and a superior knowledge of what an unbiased version of the article should look like. On encountering biased text in the article, the WikiWarrior changes the text and then engages in an Edit war with the original, and biased, editors. To aid the noble cause, the WikiWarrior uses weapons such as Sock puppets and Meat puppets to level the battlefield since the WikiWarrior usually tends to be outnumbered by the many POV editors. Repeated blocks and bans placed by partisan administrators does not stop this WikiWarrior. Unfortunately, in most cases, the evil POV empire triumphs and the WikiWarrior finds himself or herself at the receiving end of an indef-ban. This type of WikiWarrior can be identified by their high number of 3RR and Sock puppet blocks and by the concentration of their edits in a small number of articles, usually within the same general topic area. They also tend to be a part of a tight-knit cohort group of similar WikiWarriors.
  2. Talk Page WIkiWarrior Talk Page WikiWarriors are guardians of the policies and principles of Wikipedia and usually have little interest in content matters (unless they perceive a policy violation). For example, these WikiWarriors can easily detect a violation of Naming conventions where the ordinary editor would be taken in, even after the violation is repeatedly pointed out by the WikiWarrior, by the fake facade of neutrality placed by biased editors. With a better grasp of warcraft than the Edit and Revert WikiWarrior, these warriors do not resort to edit warring but, instead, haunt the talk page and conduct a war of attrition on the POV editors who are so obviously violating policy. Their usual approach is to repeat the same arguments on the talk page, ignore any arguments (propaganda?) deployed by the enemy, escalate the dispute to a RFC, request mediation, etc. Supplemented by a 'don't take no for an answer' strategy, the Talk Page WikiWarrior stays focused on message until the POV editors tire and move on to other pages. By ensuring a border line civility, these WikiWarriors avoid the sad fate of their cousins and usually live on to fight the good fight. These WikiWarriors are easily identified by the fact that their edit count on article talk pages tends to far outnumber their edit count on articles; by the concentration of their edits on a few article talk pages in completely unrelated areas; and by the fact that they don't move in tightly knit packs but do find kindred souls to help them in the good fight when they arrive at a talk page.