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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: Please don't link to it, just do it. |
The behavioral guideline Wikipedia:Assume good faith is one of the most linked-to pages on Wikipedia. As soon as a discussion becomes acrimonious, blue links to the acronym AGF begin to appear, in exhortations to others to assume good faith, and in assurances that the speaker is indeed assuming good faith. Try to avoid that. It can occasionally be useful to link to WP:AGF, for instance to inform very new users that such a guideline exists and they must try to adhere to it. But most of the time it's not. Consider these examples:
1. You're not assuming good faith.
"Please assume good faith!", an exclamation when one's actions are criticized, most commonly offered by defensive newcomers (AGF tends to be one of the first wikilinked acronyms they learn about, and so they use it).
"Admin, please block Z for stating my edit was non-neutral. That's a clear violation of WP:AGF, WP:CIV, WP:BITE and WP:NPA", a kind of request typically made by fake newcomers (a.k.a. socks of banned users).
2. I'm assuming good faith.
"Then User:X and User:Y accidentally formed a tag team to change the policy wording". There's an AGF link hidden in the word "accidentally", and what it says is 'I'm only putting in the word "accidentally" here because assuming good faith is supposed to be a rule in this place. I don't really think it was an accident at all.'
"Since I AGF, I'm sure your intentions were good"means 'I'm pretty sure your intentions were bad, but I'm saying it in a way I can't get warned for'.
People often link to WP:AGF while acting in the opposite way to what the guideline actually advises. Such layered, piped, ironic links are part of the ever-more impenetrable mathmosofwikijargon, a jargon that is a major reason why newcomers feel so lost and caught in meshes here. Please don't add to it. Please speak in good faith.
