Wikipedia:Ping pong
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This is an essay; it contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. It is not a policy or guideline, and editors are not obliged to follow it. |
Sometimes editing an article can be like a game of ping pong. This can happen when a topic is either a political term or a partisan term. The only potential way out is to never define or cover the thing, but to describe the political fight. If we try to describe the phenomenon, we're participating in it. We could delete such articles or merely redirect them to sections of existing articles. It's not because we are enemies of the topic, but because we think the topic is a ping pong ball. Until the game ends, we can't get near the table without either hitting the ball ourselves or getting hit by it, and, either way, the players get ticked off. In the words of WOPR, "The only way to win is not to play."
Most examples of Ping pong originate in real life beliefs and concerns that Wikipedians believe are simply true. Because the parties to the discussion are operating on the level of warrant and founding assumptions, rather than propositional logic, they cannot find via media or any attenuation of the foundational truth.
