Wikipedia:Title warrior

A title warrior is an editor that adds or removes contentious words to article titles in order to promote a point of view on global conflicts. This typically involves the word "massacre", but can also include words such as "genocide" or "war crimes". Title warriors add or remove these words based on the ethnicity or cultural group of the victims, not based on Wikipedia policy. They often coordinate offwiki, since successfully changing the title of a widely read article can attract mainstream media attention and shape popular discourse.

Official guidelines

Main page: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events) § Maintaining neutral point of view

1. If there is a particular common name for the event, it should be used even if it implies a controversial point of view.
2. If there is no common name for the event, and there is a generally accepted word used when identifying the event, the title should include the word even if it is a strong one such as "massacre" or "genocide" or "war crime". However, to keep article names short, avoid including more words than are necessary to identify the event. For example, the adjective "terrorist" is usually not needed.
3. If there is no common name for the event and no generally accepted descriptive word, use a descriptive name that does not carry POV implications. See above for how to create a descriptive name.

Common title warrior arguments

Title warriors try to influence requested moves by making a variety of subjective or source-distorting arguments:

Personal definitions

Instead of following the sources, title warriors will use their own personal definitions of what constitutes a massacre, genocide, or war crime. This is original research, but title warriors will camouflage this by implying the nature of the event is self-evident and therefore does not need citations.

• This event is a massacre because of the number of civilians that died.
• This event is a massacre because it involved militants shooting people in close combat.
• This airstrike is not a massacre because a massacre is up close and personal.
• This event was not a massacre, because it had a legitimate military purpose.

A subtype of title warrior uses dictionary definitions to make their point. For example:

• According to the dictionary, "a massacre is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenseless." Because news articles agree that civilians were killed, this is a massacre.

This is synthesis of published material, which is a form of original research because it combines multiple sources to reach a conclusion not reached by the sources themselves.

Righting great wrongs

Main page: Wikipedia:Tendentious editing § Righting great wrongs

Reliable sources can be biased. Title warriors argue that reliable sources as a whole are biased against their preferred ethnicity or cultural group and Wikipedia should correct for that bias in order to ensure a neutral point of view. Title warriors also argue that Wikipedia should recognize the proper nature of an event in order to do justice in the world.

• Even though there are more sources calling this event a "killing" than a "massacre", the sources that we do have are systemically biased against this ethnic group. The sources that I have presented should count more, in order to correct for that bias.
• This ethnic group is facing genocide in the face of its oppressors. The least Wikipedia can do is to recognize the nature of the event.

These arguments are against the purpose of Wikipedia, because an encyclopedia is not a means to promote one's viewpoint. The purpose of a tertiary source such as an encyclopedia is to summarize secondary sources.

Cherry picking

Instead of looking at the overall presence of a term in reliable sources, title warriors will cherry pick sources that use a term and link as many of those sources as possible, hoping to overwhelm opposing editors. Title warriors will not explain how their limited subset of sources was selected, or how their selection process formed a representative sample of reliable sources on a given topic. This type of argument is common when there are more sources covering an event than Wikipedia editors have time to read. Title warriors can post dozens of sources supporting their POV, without reflecting on the hundreds of other sources that disagree.

• I found a dozen articles from different news organizations that refer to this event as a massacre. Therefore, we can assume that those news organizations exclusively identify this event as a massacre in all of their coverage.

Legitimate arguments will try to address the prevalence of a term:

• I searched JSTOR for the location of the event and the word "massacre", then again with the word "attack". I found 500 articles using the term "massacre", and 20 that use something else. Therefore, "massacre" is generally accepted by academic sources.

Inability to judge authorial voice

Another common tactic is to conflate a source quoting the usage of a term with using the term itself. Reliable sources use the authorial voice to indicate that they agree with a factual claim. If this authorial voice is not present, the source is discussing what other, less reliable sources have said.

• This newspaper article quoted an advocacy group as calling the event a "war crime". We can determine that the newspaper considers this event to be a war crime.

Identifying title warriors

• Is the editor a single-purpose account with little-to-no edits outside of the topic area?
• If the topic area is under a 500 edits/30 days restriction, did the editor suddenly shift their interests to the area once hitting that threshold?
• Does the editor have any interest in requested moves outside of the topic area?
• Does the editor take conflicting positions on content policies depending on the culture or ethnicity of the victims?
• Does the editor exclusively participate in requested moves when a specific group is the victim, but never when it is another group?

See also

• Wikipedia:Genre warrior