User:Friday/Competence

WP:AGF has/had a section about assuming intelligence. I'd been kicking around the idea of making Wikipedia:Assume competence until I saw that this was already in AGF. But maybe not for long...

The same way that we want to assume good faith, we should also assume other people are of reasonable adult intelligence. Most people are, and treating them like they're stupid may piss them off- this is just a basic social truth.

Like AGF, this is not a demand that we ignore evidence to the contrary- sometimes people demonstrate poor intelligence or judgment. However upon first spotting of what looks to us like foolishness, our first guess should be that we're looking at a miscommunication or legitimate difference of opinion, rather than that we're talking to a foolish person.*

Like "assume good faith", "assume competence" also means "expect competence". While perfection is not required, basic competence is. Past a certain point, editorial incompetence or immaturity can become disruptive. Obviously, wide latitude is given to good faith contributors and we accept that mistakes are an unavoidable part of the wiki process.

Footnotes

In fact, focusing on other editors as people at all may often be a mistake- what we really want to focus on is edits. Other editors should look to us like a set of edits. This helps us consider each edit on its own rather than thinking about the person. Thoughts like "That damned so-and-so is up to his mischief again!" become less possible when we think less about people.

Footnotes

See also