Wikipedia:Compliment before criticism

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.

On Wikipedia, one should compliment before criticizing an article, policy, practice, essay, edit, or another Wikipedian. One should provide a compliment before a criticism.

While this doesn't apply in situations such as one's third attempt to deal with a troll, clearly intentional breakage of policy, talk headings (however, see: WP:ESDONTS) or edit summaries (see {{No personal summaries}}), it should apply in almost all situations, for example, dealing with new users or mistakes.

For example, social media, such as Facebook, users risk criticism by posting a diary, but the majority of Facebook users receive a majority of positive feedback. Wikipedia, however, does not allow socializing on article talk pages, which should be used mainly or entirely to discussions regarding improving articles.

Discussing article improvement inherently regards criticism, an article is mistaken or incomplete, an article is biased or even oppressive. Since articles are written by specific, if anonymous, people, these are their mistakes or biases. Thus Wikipedia users often receive far more criticism than positive feedback, even before one considers blaming, the rude, and trolls. However, WP:PERFECTION is not required and Wikipedia:Mistakes are allowed.

While it may sound contrived, users should make it a common practice of complimenting an article or user before criticizing them on talk pages.

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