Wikipedia:Shunning

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WP:SHUN
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.

We all know to not feed the trolls. However, this idea can easily be applied without us having to consider another editor a troll. People can be difficult to work with for many reasons. Certainly we should make reasonable efforts to collaborate with others, but if someone seems more interested in fighting than collaborating, it may be time to simply shake the dust from our feet.

The advantages of simply shunning a difficult editor are several: First, it can be done individually. If you ignore someone, they're no longer able to bother you — you don't have to wait for community consensus for a ban, for example. If enough editors do this, the shunned editor becomes effectively removed from the community with no sound and fury.

One may often avoid any drama resulting from other editors objecting, as there's no need to publicly announce that you'll be avoiding another editor. Of course, it may be courteous to inform other editors of your intention to shun. This can be achieved by a polite note left on a user talk page. Note that responding to comments related to the shun announcement might dilute the impact of the shunning.

This is probably not quite a form of dispute resolution. It's more like dispute avoidance. Like nearly any technique, it's not always applicable — actively disruptive behavior may not always be ignorable.

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