Wikipedia:Understanding the extended confirmed restriction

This is an explanatory essay about WP:Extended confirmed restriction.

This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.

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A handful of highly contentious topics on English Wikipedia are subject to extended confirmed restriction by either an ARBCOM or community decision, prohibiting new editors without at least 500 edits and 30 days of tenure from editing or discussing these topics anywhere on the project. New editors wandering into these topics are typically notified by means of a template that covers a lot of ground relating to the broader contentious topics system, with lots of links to Wikipedia policy pages that can be overwhelming for a new editor. As ECR is a strictly enforced component of CTOP measures that is often misunderstood by new editors, this page serves to clarify how to navigate the restriction and avoid sanctions.

List of topics affected by extended confirmed restriction

Scope of the extended confirmed restriction

For many people, the first instinct that they have when they hear that there's a restriction that applies to them, especially when it concerns a topic that they have strong feelings about, is to try to get as close to the line as possible. Additionally, for many affected contentious topics, particularly those that have to do with ethnic/national military conflicts, the boundaries of the topics are themselves contentious. Because the entire point of topic restrictions is to reduce the amount of time that we spend arguing technicalities in relation these topics, the topic restrictions are thus always "broadly construed". What this means in practice is that if there is any question as to whether content is related to the restricted topic, we treat it as if it is in fact related to the topic.

To use the example of "Indian military history", we consider that

"India" refers to both the modern state of India and the entire land of the Indian subcontinent, and thus any states/organizations/people associated with that region
Military history obviously includes battles, wars and weaponry, but it also includes considerations relating to the casus belli and underlying conflicts motivating the wars, which can include a wide variety of political topics.

So while this obviously includes the entirety of an article like 2025 India-Pakistan conflict, it is also going to cover significant chunks of articles as varied as Mughal Empire, Afghan Civil War (1992–1996), Indira Gandhi, Manipur, Baloch people, or British Empire.

Ethnic disputes get messy

It is not an accident that essentially all of the highly contentious topics that get ECR treatment are related to conflicts between ethnic groups. In addition to being topics that affect people very personally, and whose participants often have very particularist perspectives, the fact that there is a conflict over ethnic claims to land and local customs means that elements of these groups' culture and history can be entangled into the question of right to the land today. Thus, while the Arab-Israeli conflict is not primarily about who gets to claim falafel, cultural ownership of falafel is disputed and thus falafel becomes part of the conflict. For conflicts that included the displacement and/or settlement of peoples, even seemingly benign details about geography and its history can fall into dispute, as these details can be held up as evidence of a group's historical presence there and thus their claim to the land.

What to do if you encounter a topic that you are restricted from editing

If you are not yet extended confirmed and encounter an ECR topic, you should avoid it entirely. Do not edit it, do not comment on its Talk page. You should pretend that this content is invisible and that you cannot interact with it until you hit 500 edits and 30 days. Go work on literally anything else for now. If an experienced editor asserts that you have stepped over the line and are violating the restriction, accept it and do not argue (if you really, really doubt that they are correct, ask an active admin for advice). You can come back to the article once you hit extended-confirmed.

But aren't there exceptions?

There is an exception to the ECR rule to allow people to make constructive edit requests in the affected topic area. The exception is not an invitation: it is there to avoid the undesirable situation where a Wikipedia reader, unfamiliar with our community practices, could arrive on a talk page and make a clearly uncontroversial suggestion, and get shut down by a technicality.

It is important to understand that "constructive edit requests" are expected to comply with the instructions laid out at WP:EDITXY, which is linked from the relevant line on the page explaining ECR. In particular, the changes must be specific and uncontroversial. What that means in practice is that it is something that should require no further discussion, and which anyone, regardless of their side of the conflict, regardless of how partisan they are, should consider to be an improvement. Edits that meet these criteria include correcting spelling errors or updating information using sources already cited in the article.

I want to appeal the ARBCOM and/or community ECR!

Don't. It is arguably a violation of the ECR in itself. The request will be declined with prejudice, and while you are unlikely to be sanctioned simply for trying to appeal ECR, anyone aware of the proceedings is going to be recognizing it as a sign that you are not interested in learning and following English Wikipedia's rules and norms, that you have no understanding of the amount of deliberation and discussion that goes into these decisions, and they will be seriously wondering whether you're here to build an encyclopedia. Learn your way around the normal way, earn your stripes, and if you still think that English Wikipedia would be better off without these restrictions after hitting 500/30, you can consider appealing the decisions then. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the set of people who think that they are prepared to appeal an ARBCOM/community sanction without first learning the ropes of editing are exactly the sort of people that have no business editing contentious topics on Wikipedia at all: it suggests a combination of Dunning-Kruger arrogance, together with combativeness and not taking no for an answer that is a strong sign of a WP:BATTLEGROUND attitude.

Why do these restrictions exist?

These restrictions are there because we need them. They were not placed in anticipation that there would be problems, but rather in response to actual disruptive editing that was occurring, in particular pervasive sockpuppetry. The ECR restriction allows editors with experience editing Wikipedia to focus on actually improving the affected articles in compliance with our policies and guidelines, rather than having to endlessly respond to edits by people who are unfamiliar with how to engage in a dispute on Wikipedia. It also prevents editors who have been banned for persistent disruptive behavior from trivially jumping back into editing under a new name. To learn more about the specific discussions that led to the imposition of ECR for a given topic, read through the case pages and community discussions linked from each of the topics listed at #List of topics affected by extended confirmed restriction.

Beyond that, it's also worth recognizing that these topics, and contentious topics more broadly, are a terrible place to learn how to edit Wikipedia as a new editor. In general, for topics that are not contentious, editors will be fairly forgiving of mistakes made by newbies, and will be willing to help you learn the ropes if you are having trouble with something. In contentious topics, editors are still expected to be civil, but they are also going to be curt, and will not hesitate to try to get you blocked if you appear to be disruptive. They are generally not going to be as willing to go out of their way to help you, they are going to suspect you of secretly being a previously banned editor, and they are going to be quicker to conclude that you are not actually here to work collaboratively on a general encyclopedia if you fail to quickly adapt to best practices. Having learned this, while it may be tempting to try to race to 500 edits as quickly as possible, this is doing yourself a disservice: you will be robbing yourself of the opportunity to thoroughly learn English Wikipedia's policies, culture and best practices before heading into inevitable conflict with other editors, and if your edits are too careless, you will be accused of WP:GAMEing and violating the spirit of the restriction, which may well result in you losing access to these articles indefinitely. Take it slow, learn your way around, and only start editing these topics once you meet the official prerequisites and have a strong understanding of what to do in the event of disagreements with other editors.

It is worth remembering that even with these restrictions, the bar for editing these topics is very, very low in the grand scheme of things. Imagine if you could simply join the editorial board of the BBC or Taylor and Francis by submitting them 500 emails and waiting a month. ECR merely makes it so that editors have to first demonstrate that they are able and willing to engage with the Wikipedia community in good faith in order to edit the most fraught topics of all time.