Editing Guidelines

Core Principles

There are three overarching core principles that inform the consensus here, and these are not going to change:

Non-violence

We do not advocate or condone violence, even against animal abusers.

Beyond any concerns for virtue ethics, violence is simply not effective https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/11/05/peaceful-protest-is-much-more-effective-than-violence-in-toppling-dictators/

Violence, including actions against property that put others at risk of harm like breaking and entering and arson, absolutely cross the line too.

In this case, the line also extends to technically non-violent personal threats, terrorism, and intimidation. We do not condone the actions of S.H.A.C. (threats, rape alarms thrown into the gutters of people's houses at night, etc.) even if they technically skirt the boundaries of physical violence.
It's also inappropriate to protest in front of the house of a private citizen with whom you disagree[1], or take things beyond argument online to launch campaigns to get people fired from their private and unrelated jobs (if the job is related to the issue e.g. teaching the .

Honesty

We do not tolerate dishonesty here, and this applies to both overt dishonesty (a knowing lie) as well as intellectual dishonesty.
False claims are not justified by naive ignorance of the fact that they are false; everybody makes mistakes, and there will surely be occasional mistakes on this Wiki, but there is a measure of responsibility to research and self-criticism in spreading information.

Propagating false statements or core beliefs, whether rooted in sophistry or pseudoscience, is not beneficial for the vegan movement. A significant part of this Wiki is dedicated to debunking bad vegan arguments which we believe are counterproductive because we want people to use better methods. Dishonesty, whether overt or only apparent and of the intellectual variety (deriving from bad arguments and a lack of self-criticism), makes vegans look bad and harms our credibility.

There are cases where it is prudent to withhold irrelevant criticism from potentially false beliefs unrelated to veganism, particularly when those beliefs are very popular: such as mainstream religion. This is not a lie of omission, it is simply beyond the scope of this Wiki. This is the Philosophical Vegan Wiki, not the Philosophical Atheist wiki (even though the default assumption is naturalistic).

We recognize that sometimes we need to be willing to work within the perhaps dubious ideological or metaphysical frameworks of others. The framework itself may or may not be intellectually honest, but we can work within it as honestly as possible without endorsing the framework itself.
The path of least resistance is not often found in challenging religious metaphysics directly but rather in accepting and discussing them for the sake of argument.
Discussing something for the sake of argument, as long as everything is laid out on the table and you do not claim to agree with the metaphysics being discussed, is not in itself dishonest. In these situations we are not promoting the core belief: it is already prevalent and we are working around it as honestly as possible.

Pragmatism

We are interested in doing the most good, and saving the most lives. Sometimes that happens by asking for less than what we want (e.g. go vegetarian or to try Meatless Monday) because it may result in more people changing and saving more animals overall vs. telling them to go vegan. Other times the most good may be achieved by working with people we don't agree with. Pragmatism doesn't always mean being nice, and shaming may have its place in certain circumstances, but it usually means at least being nice to carnists who represent the cultural majority (for whom shaming is counter-productive). Pragmatism often also means not obsessing over purity; the perfect can be the enemy of the good. Sometimes it even means siding against a badly behaved vegan.

Other General Principles

Scientific Naturalism

Scientific naturalism, and implicitly at least agnosticism, is the default assumption for the vast majority of articles here outside those articles where it is explicitly noted otherwise.

In the vast majority of cases, consensus here is equivalent to scientific consensus.
Bear in mind this is with respect to the hardness of the science. Consensus on chemistry (a hard science) is much stronger than consensus in sociology.

• Physics
• Chemistry

• Biology
• Medicine
• Economics
• Nutrition

• Psychology
• Sociology

Theistic Metaphysics

Some few articles, for purposes of exploring vegan argumentation within religious frameworks, step outside of scientific naturalism and explore religious metaphysics. Such explorations, however, should be limited to those articles: it is not necessary to give alternative religious accounts or perspectives on unrelated topics. All other articles take the perspective of scientific and ethical naturalism, as explained above.

Please remember that alternative metaphysics are being discussed only for the sake of argument, and not to endorse them.
Even if you, as an editor, subscribe to one of these religions, please be mindful of claims made in the relevant sections and remember that these are thought experiments.

Establishing Consensus

If you're the first to edit an article, it's pretty safe to go by the above principles to the best of your ability.

If something is scientific consensus as represented by credible government and non-governmental health, environmental, or scientific organizations, it will probably be consensus here too.

However, try to search the philosophical vegan forum (a google search is usually more effective than using the forum search function) to see if there are any threads discussing the issue to be assured that there is not significant disagreement before writing a large article.

If you find an existing article you disagree with, please do not just make substantial edits changing the general position in the article, and please do not compromise the single voice style with alternate opinions. Instead, please broach the subject of your disagreement on the forum for discussion; consensus can and does change, even if just by being moderated.

Citing Sources

It is not necessary to cite sources for everything you write; even a stub without any sources is useful to build upon. So please do not be intimidated by the need to cite sources for everything before contributing. You don't need to be afraid of making small errors when an article is in early stages (somebody else will likely read through and spot any serious mistakes), but even if you can't find good sources for something try to do some fact checking of anything you think may not be accurate or if you haven't done research on it in the past.

However, without sources, unless the claim is common knowledge it has a higher chance of being redacted by another editor; particularly if he or she can not easily verify the claim.

When you do cite sources:

• Please cite primary sources where possible
• Avoid any links to Wikipedia (instead, follow up on where the sources there go)
• Look for .gov, .edu, or industry sources where possible.
• Where those are not possible, look for credible articles on reputable news sites.
• When citing videos/movies (even those available for free), please upload brief low resolution clips (limited to 4mb) and cite the file (video details in the description). Videos, unlike text content, are not typically preserved.
• When citing books not available free online, please upload images including pictures of the relevant information and immediate context (no more, for copyright reasons), and cite the file attachment (include details on the book in the file description).
• When citing scientific studies not available for free online, like with books, please upload images including the relevant quote, and cite the file (with relevant information and link to abstract in the file description).

Original Research

Original research, unlike on Wikipedia, is allowed and encouraged (just ask on the forum first so we can confirm it would be helpful).

If you can get a quote from a professional at your university, or an interview, we would very much like to include that information. We only need to have a way to confirm that it is legitimate. There are a few ways of doing this:

• Easiest: Ask the professional to copy the email to us from his or her address (which will be a faculty email address, or one listed on his or her web space). You will need to ask for our email address by PM on the forum.
• Do a video interview, in which case it's easy to confirm ID based on faculty photos etc.
• Ask the professional to post the interview on his or her faculty web space (temporarily or not)
• We can upload a text interview on a page locked from editing, and the professional can view it and confirm its accuracy by email (we can email him or her and await reply).

Tone & Point of View

We do not pretend to be unbiased; we are pro-vegan, specifically from an ethical perspective, and we are in favor of changes that bring people closer to veganism for reasons of environmental ethics, animal ethics, and even health.

Aside from the obvious pro-vegan position, we also do not currently attempt a completely neutral, because:

1. Achieving a neutral tone requires more editing work, and without strong evidence of payoff from that work (and only subjective impressions of something being "too mean", or "too snarky" etc.) there's no reason to devote resources to that particularly when:

2. It makes articles less enjoyable to write, thus discouraging contribution. People are not emotionless robots without feelings on these subjects, and trying to hold back is demotivating: as is being told something you have written is subjectively bad. If there's evidence that something is factually wrong that's more acceptable, but encroaching into stylistic contributions can be a problem and it's an argument we'd rather avoid unless something is far over the top (e.g. overtly calling somebody "retarded", etc.)

3. There is some evidence that attempting neutrality may also make articles less interesting to read, thus affecting outreach and use of this information.
While some people appreciate the extremely professional tone, they seem to make up a very small minority of the general audience, and a neutral point of view and professional tone as exemplified in Wikipedia articles is often cited as a reason people find it boring to read[2][3]

By comparison, | RationalWiki takes a similar position on tone/POV, and has had a phenomenal level of success with it.

We have to keep in mind that the target audience is not academic. There are, however, a few exceptions:

Words to avoid

We are not coming from either extreme of the social justice spectrum, and our goal here is not to eliminate ableist language (an endeavor which can be anti-pragmatic when it interferes with normal usage), but there are a few words that are only used for shock value and in effect appear extremely immature; to a point they seem to cross the line in terms more obviously reducing the value of the wiki content.
Except when used literally in discussion, using these terms as insults (whether of ideas or people) is discouraged:

• Gay
• Retarded/Retard generally (anything)-tard
• Autistic/Autism

(We'll try to keep this list as small as possible)
Again, it's not that it's wrong to use these words, but they make the voice of the article sound too childish due to the correlation with people who commonly use these words. A preference should be made for analogy, and at least more sophisticated denunciation.

It should go without saying, but please also avoid racial slurs or language that disparages entire groups of people by ethnicity, sex/sexuality or religion. The latter case is more complex since there are religions which promote vile ideology that goes against secular ethics, but when dealing with these cases please be as specific as possible to avoid pitfalls public critics (such as Sam Harris) have made: e.g. with the current trend of criticism of Islam, you should condemn Wahhabism specifically, and not Islam generally (there are obviously peaceful Muslims, vegan Muslims, and some are even respected members of our community here).

When Niceness is Important

There are a few rare exceptions where being exceptionally nice is evidently pragmatic or even essential, and that is when all of these conditions are met:

• The criticism has a strongly personal element (not just of general ideas)
• The person in question is not already widely disliked within the vegan community (in which case it probably doesn't matter much). This applies in particular if there may be a significant fandom in our target audience (which would suggest that we may need to address fans). If somebody is generally unknown, there's probably no point in mentioning them just to criticize them.
• The person is his or herself very nice, and never employs insult or sarcasm (which would suggest fans of this person may be put off by that kind of tone and may not receive criticism as well)... even if that niceness is apparently phony.

This is particularly true if there's evidence that the person is known to engage in arguments honestly/respond to criticism, and doesn't promote an echo chamber (in which case Attempt private discussion).

This is also not to say that we should be mean if all of those requirements are not met, but just that there's less of a basis for tone-policing. As always, try to keep the snark to a reasonable level (comparable to what might be seen on RationalWiki) and avoid excessive meanness.

Articles Addressing People

While people will inevitably be mentioned in connection to the ideas they advocate, whether good or bad, we discourage articles specifically on persons; this isn't Encyclopedia Dramatica.

Where specific persons appear multiple times across substantive articles (For example, NameTheTrait and the upcoming article on Racism in veganism for Isaac Brown) a single short entry pointing to those discussions should be created, but where at all possible these pages should remain indexes to mentions elsewhere rather than contain substantive discussion to avoid duplicate content. If the information isn't important enough for an article, it's probably not necessary to mention.

Attempt Private Discussion

Where possible, and where individuals are referenced (particularly if they are vegan or otherwise sympathetic) we should attempt to contact them privately before writing lengthy criticism.
The exception to this is where the person has long held the ideas in question, has built somewhat of a career on them (published books, etc.), and has failed to engage with competent criticism in the past from other sources (e.g. Francione or Benatar).

Defamation/Libel

Libel is briefly summarized as publishing false information about somebody that could be harmful to his or her reputation.
Do not intentionally publish false information about people; this is illegal. Particularly if the info may be damaging, make sure to double check it to ensure that it is true.

Insults which are obviously either opinion or not intended to be taken as true are not usually libel; it typically only applies to sincere statement of fact. The exception to this is when an opinion may imply a factual statement... like "In my opinion it is not safe to leave him alone around children", which may imply that the accused has molested children (which would be libel per se).

Public Figures

As to accidental publication, this is a little more complicated and it depends on whether the person in question is a "public figure".
In general, what we deal with on Youtube and various other online platforms are "limited public figures". If the person is not a public figure or a limited public figure, we shouldn't be discussing that person on the Wiki.
The people who have put themselves on Youtube to discuss a particular subject are not fair game for any and all gossip about them, particularly with respect to their private lives, but there are protections around what they say as connected to their activity as public figures.
That is, as long as discussion is limited to topics the youtuber had brought into public discourse (around vegan arguments, or other positions they have advocated), making an honest mistake does not create liability.

Libel Per se

Regarding the subjects that count as Libel per se, the plaintiff does not need to prove damages which lowers the bar to sue considerably (This is how Anna was able to sue Marlow for damages without the burden of proving them)

Libel per se relates to:

• Sexual accusations; misconduct, "unchastity", etc. (As Marlow's claims about Anna)
• Claiming the person has a "loathsome" disease (Such as Marlow's claims that Durianriders had HIV)
• Accusing a person of committing a crime of "moral turpitude" (that is not something innocuous like loitering or tax evasion)
• Claims against a person's business or trade

The first three are relatively easy to avoid, and should be avoided.
The third is somewhat more complex when we're dealing with criticism of something connected to these youtubers' or academics' business. However, such claims will probably be within the scope of the person's limited public figure status.
Just try to avoid claiming, as some have, that the person is scamming people on Patreon (for example).

Check your Jurisdiction

Please check the libel laws in your jurisdiction. While the above limitations and considerations are fine for the Wiki, your place of residence may vary, and if you contribute something libelous the fact that it was posted here and we're only worried about progressive legal frameworks may not be relevant to your situation if somehow your anonymity is lost and you are sued directly.

We can't indemnify anything.