WikiPaintball:Corrections and disputes
WikiPaintball corrections and disputes explains how contributors and readers can report inaccuracies, correct articles and resolve disagreements about historical information.
WikiPaintball is a continuously developing encyclopaedia. Many subjects involve historical records that are incomplete, difficult to locate or occasionally contradictory.
Errors may occur even when contributors make a genuine effort to research their subjects accurately.
Corrections are welcomed when they improve factual accuracy and are supported by appropriate evidence.
General principles
[edit]Corrections and disagreements should be handled according to the following principles:
- Accuracy comes first. Articles should reflect the strongest available evidence.
- Assume good faith. Contributors may make honest mistakes or rely on incomplete information.
- Provide supporting evidence. Corrections should identify reliable sources wherever possible.
- Remain neutral. Disagreements should concern evidence and article content rather than personal opinions about contributors.
- Preserve useful history. Correct mistakes without unnecessarily removing otherwise accurate information.
- Avoid speculation. Do not replace one unsupported claim with another.
- Be proportionate. Minor spelling corrections should not require lengthy discussions.
- Acknowledge uncertainty. Where reliable sources disagree, articles should not present uncertain information as established fact.
WikiPaintball's purpose is to preserve accurate paintball history, not to defend earlier versions of articles.
Making simple corrections
[edit]Straightforward errors may normally be corrected directly by contributors with editing access.
Examples include:
- Typographical mistakes.
- Incorrect punctuation.
- Broken internal links.
- Incorrect formatting.
- Duplicate words or sentences.
- Clear spelling mistakes.
- Obvious errors in category placement.
Use an informative edit summary where possible.
Minor corrections should not change the intended meaning of an article without supporting evidence.
Correcting factual information
[edit]Factual corrections should be supported by reliable evidence.
Examples include:
- Incorrect tournament placements.
- Wrong event dates.
- Misidentified players.
- Incorrect team names.
- Unsupported founding dates.
- Incorrect manufacturer or product information.
- Confused organisational histories.
- Incorrect locations or nationalities.
When making a factual correction:
- Identify the statement that is incorrect.
- Locate reliable evidence supporting the correction.
- Check whether other sources contradict that evidence.
- Update the article accurately.
- Add or correct the appropriate citation.
- Explain the change in the edit summary where appropriate.
For significant changes, contributors are encouraged to explain the evidence on the article's discussion page.
Reporting an error
[edit]Readers who identify an error but cannot or do not wish to edit an article may raise the issue on its discussion page, where available, or contact WikiPaintball administrators.
A useful correction report should include:
- The article title.
- The statement believed to be incorrect.
- The proposed correction.
- Supporting sources or evidence.
- An explanation of why the existing information may be inaccurate.
Where possible, provide direct links to relevant sources.
Statements such as "this is wrong" or "I remember it differently" may identify a question worth investigating, but are not sufficient on their own to establish a correction.
Conflicting historical accounts
[edit]Paintball history frequently relies on information preserved through tournament records, contemporary publications and the memories of participants.
These sources may disagree.
For example:
- Players may remember competing under different team names.
- Published event results may contain mistakes.
- Different sources may report inconsistent dates.
- An individual may have participated with several teams during one season.
- A former team member may remember an event differently from an official report.
When accounts conflict, contributors should examine the evidence rather than automatically favour one version.
Contemporary documentary records are generally preferable for establishing specific dates, published results and other formally recorded details.
However, official records can contain errors and should not be treated as infallible.
Where a discrepancy cannot be resolved, it may be appropriate to describe the uncertainty neutrally or omit the disputed detail.
Personal recollections and firsthand knowledge
[edit]Firsthand accounts are important to WikiPaintball, particularly when documenting older or less widely recorded paintball history.
Contributors may have directly participated in the teams, events or organisations they are writing about.
Such experience may help identify missing information, incorrect names or previously unknown records.
However, firsthand knowledge does not automatically establish historical accuracy.
Contributors should distinguish between:
- Events they personally witnessed.
- Information supported by surviving documentation.
- Information recalled many years later.
- Information learned from other participants.
- Conclusions based on incomplete evidence.
Where practical, recollections should be corroborated using tournament records, publications or other contemporary sources.
A contributor's personal involvement should not be used to override contradictory documentary evidence without examination.
Unpublished recollections should not be used to support serious allegations or disputed claims about living individuals.
Disputes over tournament results
[edit]Tournament results are an important part of WikiPaintball.
When published results conflict:
- Identify the event, year and division.
- Examine the original competition records where available.
- Distinguish preliminary standings from final placements.
- Check whether the published results were subsequently corrected.
- Verify that similarly named teams have not been confused.
- Use the most reliable available record, explaining meaningful unresolved differences where necessary.
Do not construct final standings from incomplete match information unless the competition rules and complete underlying results establish them.
Disputes over team identity
[edit]Historical teams may share names, players, managers or sponsors.
Contributors should not assume that two teams are the same organisation because of these similarities.
When determining team identity, consider:
- Established team names.
- Geographic location.
- Documented periods of activity.
- Contemporary tournament records.
- Official announcements.
- Verified changes of name.
- Evidence of organisational continuity.
If two separate teams share a name, follow Help:Naming conventions and use appropriate disambiguation.
Do not merge separate team histories without evidence.
Disputes over historical significance
[edit]Contributors may disagree about whether a team, player, product or event was historically important.
Such disagreements should be resolved through documented evidence rather than personal preference.
Avoid unsupported statements such as:
- One of the greatest teams of all time.
- The first team to use a particular strategy.
- The most influential manufacturer of its era.
- The best-known player in a country.
- The product that revolutionised paintball.
These claims require appropriate supporting evidence and context.
If a claim cannot be substantiated, use a more precise factual description or omit it.
Articles about living individuals
[edit]Particular care is required when correcting articles about living people.
Unverified or inadequately sourced allegations, defamatory statements, irrelevant personal information and speculative claims should not be published.
Corrections involving living individuals should remain focused on documented paintball-related facts.
Personal disagreements, rumours and private disputes do not belong in encyclopaedia articles.
Potentially harmful unsupported claims should be removed rather than retained while awaiting discussion.
Using discussion pages
[edit]Article discussion pages provide a place to raise questions about factual accuracy, source reliability, naming and article scope.
Discussions should focus on specific issues.
Contributors should:
- Explain which statement is disputed.
- Provide relevant evidence.
- Respond to the substance of other contributors' sources.
- Avoid personal attacks.
- Remain open to corrections.
- Work towards a version supported by the best available evidence.
Disagreement alone is not evidence that an article is inaccurate.
Likewise, the number of contributors supporting a claim does not determine whether it is historically correct.
Avoiding edit wars
[edit]Contributors should not repeatedly reverse one another's changes without addressing the underlying disagreement.
If a factual change is challenged:
- Review the sources cited by both contributors.
- Explain the disagreement on the article's discussion page.
- Identify what additional evidence may resolve the issue.
- Seek assistance from WikiPaintball administrators where necessary.
- Avoid further contentious changes until the evidence has been considered.
This does not require retaining clearly unsupported or harmful material about living individuals while a dispute continues.
Correcting article titles and duplicates
[edit]Some corrections concern article organisation rather than factual content.
Examples include:
- Two articles covering the same team.
- A team article using an incorrect name.
- Different teams incorrectly combined into one article.
- A redirect pointing to the wrong subject.
- An ambiguous article title.
Such issues should be handled according to Help:Naming conventions.
Where an article requires renaming, use MediaWiki's Move function where available to preserve its editing history.
Avoid creating unnecessary duplicate pages.
Revising previously published information
[edit]WikiPaintball articles may change as new historical evidence becomes available.
A previously published statement should be corrected when stronger evidence establishes that it was inaccurate.
Contributors should not retain incorrect information merely because it appeared in an earlier version of the encyclopaedia.
Where a substantial historical correction is made, an informative edit summary or discussion note can help future contributors understand the change.
The goal is to improve the reliability of the record while preserving a transparent editing history.
When evidence is insufficient
[edit]Sometimes a historical question cannot be resolved.
In such cases, contributors should not guess.
Appropriate responses may include:
- Omitting an unsupported date.
- Removing an unverified roster entry.
- Describing a tournament appearance as the first documented appearance rather than a founding date.
- Attributing a published but disputed historical claim to its source.
- Leaving an unresolved question for future research.
Contributors should not manufacture certainty where the surviving evidence does not justify it.
Final principle
[edit]WikiPaintball is intended to become more accurate as additional records, research and firsthand information become available.
Corrections are a normal and necessary part of that process.
The objective is not to preserve the first version of an article, but to preserve the most accurate account supported by the available evidence.