Young people

I am going to be brutally honest, I am afraid to ask this question because a part of me thinks it's a stupid question. But, I am going to ask anyway just in case. Does this policy have any consideration towards young people?

Younger editors are obviously going to have a lower level of english and are still in a learning stage of their lives, are we seriously going to call them incompetent? CycoMa1 (talk) 20:06, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

It's contextual. Anyone, of any age, who cannot write good English, is often not competent enough to contribute here. So, incompetent for this particular task. HiLo48 (talk) 00:03, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I didn't necessarily ask if they couldn't write good english or not.

My question is more like, what level of english would you expect a 16 year old wikipedian to have? A english level at their age level or above that?CycoMa1 (talk) 02:20, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

That is not relevant. A five-year old is welcome to edit regardless of their English capabilities so long as they don't disrupt articles or talk pages. That mainly means that they need to be capable of taking advice. If the advice is that their edits are unhelpful, they should be able to take the point after perhaps some minor explanation. This essay concerns people who persist past the advice stage and whose edits are unhelpful: if someone is not capable of editing without disruption, the kindest thing is to bid them farewell. Kindest to them and to established editors who would otherwise have to waste time. Johnuniq (talk) 03:11, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Being able to read and write the language is not a necessary competence for all tasks. For example, I'm in the top 100 editors ever at the Haitian Creole Wikipedia. I don't know that language. I don't even know any French (which would help a lot). But I have made hundreds of useful edits there, because I know wikitext. Anyone in this discussion could probably do the same.

w:ht:Kategori:Paj ak lyen fichye kase is an automated error category, similar to Category:Pages with missing files. Mostly pages end up in there because the file was deleted on Commons or because someone took "File:Example filename.jpg" and ran it through machine translation to get "File: Egzanp filename.JPG". Solving the problem means removing the dead link or replacing it with another image (e.g., whatever's used at the French and English Wikipedias, as these are the typical origins for translated pages). Again, anyone in this discussion could probably do the same. You need to be competent at what you're doing, but you don't necessarily need to be competent at speaking the local language. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Being young doesn't automatically make you incompetent and yet being fluent in English doesn't suddenly make you competent to edit here. Vice versa: being non-fluent in English doesn't bar you from being able to edit the English Wikipedia. Knowledge and understanding of the subject, ability to apply Wikipedia proceedures and policies, and the ability to source reliable material and properly cite it are what's required. The wisdom to know when to start/stop editing is also useful. Technical competency will be required for things such as metadata editing and creation. A young person may well have all these competencies and could edit standing on their head while clapping out We Are the Champions — Iadmc♫^talk  03:49, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

BTW, how many editors are there at the Haitian Creole Wikipedia? If it's 100 I not impressed! — Iadmc♫^talk  03:55, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

w:ht:Special:ActiveUsers says 28 humans with registered accounts made an edit during the last 30 days. This month, I am the second most active editor there, but that is not usual for me.

Since it was created, it has accumulated 33,356 registered accounts (compared to 47.5 million here; number includes bots), of which 3,550 users have made 1+ edits, 565 have made 10+ edits, 178 have made 100+ edits, 73 have made 1,000+ edits, and 18 have made 10,000+ edits. The editor with the highest edit count is just over 70K. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:43, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

OK I'm impressed... — Iadmc♫^talk  05:47, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Many years ago (maybe around 2006), I once encountered an admin who was 12-13 years old. He was dealing with complex issues, handing out excellent advice, dealing with disruptive editors, making complicated edits, etc. He may have been an autistic savant; I don't know, but he was phenomenal. All this stuff was at the level of a mature and very experienced admin. That was a wake-up call to me of the potential value of our young editors. It's a bit analogous to my idea of "When is a child old enough for explicit sexual information?" Answer: Their age is not the issue. They deserve honesty when they are old enough to think about it and obsess about it. If a young editor wants to edit and is doing okay, then let them edit and offer advice and help as needed. Only if they refuse to accept advice and warnings should they be held back from creating too much disruption. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:53, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

How does one know the age of another editor? Generally all we ever see is the output from any editor. We are simply judged on our output. If that is OK, then there isn't a problem. (Incidentally there are probably a few editors who fail on competence through being at the other end of the age spectrum.)ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 17:55, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

In the case I describe, the editor told me. I was blown away. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 21:27, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

There are plenty editors in the middle who fail too, it seems — Iadmc♫^talk  05:50, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Contradiction in advice

From the intro: "Some otherwise competent people may lack the skills necessary to edit Wikipedia. Rather than labeling them as "incompetent" in the pejorative sense, we should ease them out of the Wikipedia community as graciously as possible, with their dignity intact."

From a section at the end of the guidance "When all else fails: Sanctions such as blocks and bans are always considered a last resort where all other avenues of correcting problems have been tried and have failed. Before bringing an issue to the incidents noticeboard or another similar venue, you should have exhausted all reasonable attempts to communicate with the user and correct their behavior. Use their talk page, explain things to them, and demonstrate how to do things correctly. On rare occasions, after a pattern of behavior has been well established and a user shows they are unlikely to do things correctly, a block, topic ban, or full ban may be the only solutions that minimize disruption to the encyclopedia."

The intro suggests that editors should endeavor to make an editor who has been judged as incompetent by another editor leave.

The second text suggests that incompetent editors should be alerted to the guidance, coached, and only as a final resort be banned.

This is a clear contradiction. What exactly is the guidance here? If it is more aligned to the more reasonable and sensible second text, then the intro is non representative and needs to be adjusted. Moribundum (talk) 05:17, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

There is no contradiction, the lede summarises the body so is necessarily lossy. Bon courage (talk) 10:48, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

The phrasing "we should ease them out" certainly does not summarize the meaning of the rest of the article. It suggests that is the initial action that should be taken in 100% of cases, i.e., to encourage such an editor to leave.

Compare with rest of article: "use their talk page to introduce yourself, provide diffs while explaining the problems, and direct them to further readings or to forums such as Wikipedia:Teahouse or Wikipedia:Help desk. In the vast majority of cases, this will be sufficient and no further action will be needed."

If it did summarize the rest of the article accurately, it would be more like "we should explain things to them, and show them how to do it correctly. Rarely, sanctions may be needed as a last resort." That is substantially different. Moribundum (talk) 11:00, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

The two messages in the key sentence are:

• Don't insult people ("You're an incompetent editor!").
• If the person actually is invincibly incompetent, then find a way to get them to stop editing that doesn't needlessly hurt their feelings.

That's rather different from your summary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:31, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Some questions

This page advises Rather than labeling them as "incompetent" in the pejorative sense, we should ease them out of the Wikipedia community as graciously as possible, with their dignity intact which is good advice. I rarely see this (or maybe it what I see is so gracious it doesn't read as easing out) but instead often see editors being linked to this essay. I don't see a big difference between straightforwardly calling them incompetent versus linking to a page called "Competence is required", and it reminds me of User:Ritchie333/How newbies see templates. I have three questions:

• Should this page advise editors avoid linking the page?
• Should the page be split between audiences, one for editors policing competence and one for editors whose competence is being challenged? The audience seems hazy. Alternatively, a new page, specifically for linking editors who have issues with competency in the same way we have WP:RS and WP:42 covering the same material for different audiences.
• Should explicit suggestions be given to raise competence issues while keeping dignity in tact? For instance: "I don't think you have the fluency in English right now to contribute to en.wiki. Would you consider working on [other language] wiki instead?"

Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 22:44, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

My thoughts:

• Yes, we should advise editors against linking to this page. It won't do much good, but it might do some good.
• I think the audience for this page is experienced editors – those "policing" rather than those "being challenged", to use your language.
• I like the idea of a few examples because they could help the "policers" understand what the page is about. For example: "You seem to be struggling with wikitext formatting. Have you tried the visual editor? It does all the brackets and stuff automatically" or "I need some help with [simple task: adding links, adding images, tagging dead links, removing bad websites from external links sections...]. Could you help with that?"
• I think that creating a section or a page intended to be read by "editors who have issues with competency" is incompatible with keeping their dignity intact.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:43, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks WhatamIdoing,

• I'll add something in. I share your scepticism that people will read the article and stop, but my thinking with such additions is that they empower other editors to say: "That guideline explicitly says not to do this. Don't do this per WP:DONTLINKCIR etc." which is the actual mechanism for change.
• 3: I think we want to distinguish easing out of an area of incompetency (easier) vs the entire project (harder). And I think special attention should be paid to long-term editors; being linked to a page called "Competence is required" 100,000 edits in must hurt.
• 4: I'm sure you're right. I don't know how such a page could be written to preserve dignity.

Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 00:27, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

The closest I've come is Wikipedia:Policy writing is hard#You might not be very good at this, and I'm not sure that it is either effective at convincing people that they might not be good at it, or at preserving anyone's dignity. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:27, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

I like it. I read it a while ago, and in the counterfactual I would be posting a lot more proposals. It actually seems like a good idea to have it across discrete pages rather than a laundry list of sympathetic responses to an editor not being competent to edit in an area; the framing therefore being about the area rather than a lack of competence. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 11:07, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

The difficulty is that a problem editor either lacks competence or is working here with malicious intentions. (The latter may originate from the former.) The key competence for an editor is not how well they write but their capabilities in identifying and, crucially, understanding reliable sources. Poor writing is usually obvious in an article. A failed verification or a non-RS source is more difficult to spot. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 07:48, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

ThoughtIdRetired What would you say to this editor to address the RS competence issue while preserving their dignity? Is it as simple as try to shuffle them into gnoming grammar/categories etc, and hope they don't want to keep writing articles? Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 10:34, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

The two cases that are prominent in my experience of this both involve editors with high edit counts. Both have an argumentative style when article content is challenged (however politely). Both have a track record of leaving Wikipedia in a huff after arguments involving editors other than myself. (One is still absent and the other is recently returned.) The high edit count shows that they both have a good knowledge of how Wikipedia works. All one can do is politely point out things like "this is not an RS because it is only a newspaper article and we are dealing with a historical situation here where we should be guided by WP:HISTRS" and "[name of source] may have said this in his 2006 book chapter, but he contradicted this in his 2008 paper, so surely we should go with the later view from this researcher"; and where a reference given makes no mention of the article content it appears to support, there seems no alternative to a {{failed verification}}, with an explanation of what fact is missing, if appropriate. Perhaps I do not have the right answer. Or maybe the issue is that the required competence that is needed is the ability to take criticism. (Self audit: I think I am able to do that – including a case where I was absolutely 100% sure I was right until I looked it up, then felt exceedingly embarrassed.)

In other more ordinary cases a {{failed verification}} or just a simple question of, e.g., "I can't spot where [name of source] says this" on the article talk page. I think the more occasional editor is receptive to this sort of thing and, if they get a lot of it, the penny might drop that they might need to find some other pastime. Sometimes the issue of understanding technical language comes up (I edit a lot on the history of maritime technology, and the terminology in that field is a bit of a nightmare – I could give you an RS that explains that in less dramatic language). Generally, if you point out a problem with an RS to an editor to show what you are talking about, that is well received. ("Went ashore" is not synonymous with "ran aground", mentioned here so I can track down the full example if you need it.)

So, writing this, my thinking crystalises into the problem being with high volume editors who never got the point that they don't understand the sources they are reading/selecting. They have been around long enough for this to be a relatively intractable problem. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 12:10, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for these examples. I wonder, when you think back on these instances of sloppy sourcing, whether there might be an element of POV pushing involved. For example, an ordinary search for "blue green widget" might turn up the 2006 source but not the 2008 one. It's better to be up-to-date, but is a "failure" to have extensive knowledge of the subject area actually incompetence per se? But if the 2006 were chosen because it said the Right™ POV, then that's a problem. Similarly, while an old newspaper article isn't an ideal source, WP:HISTRS is a {{failed proposal}}, and using the best source you can find isn't really incompetence.

I also have some concerns about social skills in the events you describe. Perhaps that's the bigger problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:23, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, POV pushing is a good explanation for this behaviour. What I don't know is if it is subconscious or deliberate. In other words does the person read something to say what they expect it to say, when really it says the opposite? In the case of the 2006 and 2008 sources, from use of both references by the problem editor for other facts in other articles, we know that both sources are familiar to them. So that's cherry picking – which, alongside many blatant failed verifications over a range of articles, suggest this is all deliberate POV pushing.

...old newspaper article... I didn't explain this too well. Firstly we are talking more prehistory (but I guess the guidance to prefer academic sources is as strong or stronger for this), so, secondly, there clearly were no contemporary newspapers. This is just a journalist trying to summarise the subject concurrent with the release of a book on broadly the same subject. I have read the book and the article and they don't say the same thing. Perhaps the journalist interviewed someone associated with the book and got a different slant on things (it isn't clear), but the newspaper article is just going for a good headline to grab attention (my opinion) and it really is not clear where it comes from (hard fact).

Overall, my intervention in this discussion has drifted into considering POV pushing. To what extent is that related to competence? If it stems from not being able to take a good understanding of a subject from the sources, then I argue that lack of competence is very relevant. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 18:30, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Wellll... It's not exactly diplomatic to say it out loud, but we have some very skilled POV pushers. You can find a group of such editors over at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard, and IMO Wikipedia is better off for having them. I disagree occasionally (e.g., there are subjects that I think are better described as fraud or superstition instead of pseudoscience, but pseudoscience is the go-to smear word for that group), but I think they're competent editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:14, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

I think we might have a terminological difference here. Perhaps I need to find a stronger term than "POV", because to me, frequently overciting a statement in a Wikipedia article with four or five failed verifications is probably a much more serious bit of bad editing practice than taking a partisan position on some aspect of a subject. Especially when said "statement" is at variance with many, if not all, sources. I am all for people testing the boundaries on a subject – which I think may be what you mean by Wikipedia being better for having POV pushers. But totally misrepresenting a subject to fit one editor's view of it is surely not acceptable. The difficulty is that large spectrum of shades of grey (to mix the metaphors) means that it can be difficult to demonstrate where on that scale a particular editor is operating. Perhaps instead of POV I should have used the term "dishonesty".

Looking at the Fringe theories noticeboard, I think that is somewhat different from the prehistory of maritime technology. Those working in this field are pretty clear about what we do know (not a lot in many parts of the world). There is a range of theories, but from people who are all aware of the uncertainties. They all respect each others views and all talk to each other, sometimes even sharing archaeological evidence with their opponents so that they can publish contra to the possessors of that evidence. One editor taking a single thread out of all that as the only narrative allowed is a characterisation of the subject that does not match the professionals working in that field. So the missing competence is not being able to take a rounded view of the whole subject. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 20:17, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

One of the problems I see, especially in Wikipedia:Contentious topics, is what I call the filter bubble problem. We have, e.g., Jewish and Muslim editors who "just know" that everyone feels the same thing about the mess in Gaza. We have trans editors who "just know" that everyone thinks the most important thing about the author of Harry Potter books is her trans-exclusionary politics. We have American editors who "just know" that everyone believes that the COVID pandemic started with a research lab instead of the wildlife trade. We have autistic editors who "just know" that identity-first language is endorsed by everyone on the spectrum. And so forth.

It seems to me that it would be very easy for some editors to have such biased input in their everyday lives that they really are unaware of sources saying the opposite. This could look like deliberate POV pushing, and it could be disruptive, but I'm not sure that "competence" is quite the right concept for it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:45, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps I am too much of a purist, but if we are writing an encyclopaedia that it is based on its sources, it is important to gather a wide range of sources that provide a representation of the subject. In an academic field, this should not be too difficult. I appreciate that it might be a step too far to include, in this explanatory guidance, that having an incomplete view of a subject may be a lack of competence. Incidentally, one of the editors that I have referred to has actually refused to read a reference that I suggested, even though I infer, from the huge volume of academic material that he uses as references, that he has access to a good academic library that must have the reference in question (it is The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania. OUP. ISBN 978 0 19 992507 0 - books in this series are often available electronically to academic libraries). But since that might come back to social skills, we seem to be back to that point on the circle. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 21:57, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that having an incomplete view of a subject is a competence problem. For one thing, we all have incomplete views of all subjects. The problem might lie in being unaware of the incompleteness of our views, or at least unable to consider the possibility that our views are incomplete and that this incompleteness matters. This is a social/emotional skill, but it's also context: If someone's bombing your home, you're probably not in a good space for determining the relative merits of different arguments for or against it.

[tangent] That book is available via Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library: Log in to get access to https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/partners/93/ and then go to https://academic-oup-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/edited-volume/34645.

We don't seem to have an article on the Oxford Handbooks (it's just a redirect to the OUP article). I've been trying to make notes on the talk page to help editors find TWL sources. See Template:Wikipedia Library, and please add them to the talk pages for notable books/journals/publishers whenever you can. I hope that making the availability more visible will encourage editors to use better sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, I was unaware that this Oxford handbook was in the Wikipedia Library. That, of course, does not solve the problem of an editor refusing to read a reference that has opinions other than their own, but it gives them less excuse. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 19:39, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Assuming they're eligible, yes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Eligibility is based on edit count, I believe. They are eligible. But one question (and perhaps I am being a bit dim here) is there a quick and easy way of denoting that a reference is in the Wikipedia library? That way any editor who wants to check a reference can see that it is available to Wkipedia library users. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 19:45, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

I have been using the |via= parameter in the citation templates, and adding a hidden HTML comment: <!-- [[WP:TWL]] -->. I hope that will tip off editors (if they're looking at that ref while editing). It's not really useful information for readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:00, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Noted, but I guess that the vast majority of readers who check references are other editors who may well have access to the library. What is the difference to the non-Wikipedia Library user between a paywall url and a Wikipedia library url? I suggest absolutely none. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 20:08, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

If the non-Wikipedia Library user is also a student at a university, then the paywall might not exist for them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:09, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

As a note to User:WhatamIdoing, I have raised the issue of WL visibility at ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 16:35, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

• I think the big issue here is that it doesn't do a great job describing competence as a spectrum... Easing them out is only the answer for the worst of the worst, most still have some place on wikipedia. Competence is relative to the intended interaction with wikipedia, for example closing RfCs in contentious topic areas requires a significantly different set of competencies than adding mainspace material, or correcting grammatical and spelling errors does. It may be entirely reasonable to discourage an editor from making closes in contentious topic areas without it being reasonable to encourage them to leave the wiki in general. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:23, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

The issue of Competence-is-required only comes up as a result of disruptive editing (the short description says Explanatory supplement to the disruptive editing guideline). So that implies that we are already in a relatively serious situation – so we are only looking at one region of the spectrum. Yes, a problem might arise when an editor messes up a task that many experienced editors would avoid as too complex. Surely this needs pointing out only when the problem editor is not self-aware enough to understand the position. But that can be done without even using the word "competence". ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 22:18, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Someone making incompetent closes in a contentious topic area is a disruptive editing issue. That doesn't change anything at all about the sprectrum. That editor is also much more likely to cause serious disruption and to be sanctioned for it than an editor who can't figure out how to format citations or consistently uses unreliable sources for example. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:38, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, you are absolutely right. I was trying to address the issue of whether an editor messing up demanding tasks needs either to be labelled "incompetent" or to be ease[ed] them out of the Wikipedia community as graciously as possible. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 07:40, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

What I'm trying to say is that the general idea is that we try to ease them out of the area in which they are causing issues as graciously as possible (both for their sake and the communities, both benefit from keeping it as polite, respectful, and low key as possible)... But rarely does that mean that we're easing them out of the Wikipedia community in total. If the only answer to incompetence was separation from the community we would not see competence based topic bans, but we see those pretty regularly. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:49, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Well, WP:CIR blocks happen. Bon courage (talk) 16:57, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Did I ever suggest that they didn't? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:59, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

No, but as I see it the reality is that editors with a serious WP:CIR problem will be run out of the Project on a rail, rather than (say) being put on gnoming duties, maybe because the system can't enforce that kind of nuance. Bon courage (talk) 17:26, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

We enforce that kind of nuance all the time, the permissions system is the big one. Almost all of us are not considered competent enough to be trusted with admin tools for example. We place restrictions on non-autoconfirmed users explictly because they lack competence. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:39, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

Young people/old people

Someone opened a thread about Young people above on this page, and I'm thinking that related issues concerning the elderly might be raised as well. Following the Joe Biden issue last year where he was taken off the democratic ticket due to age related issues, then should Wikipedia take this issue seriously for the elderly editing on Wikipedia when age related issues take over. For example, Wikipedia is at its 25th year now and there were editors that were in their late fifties then, but now they are octogenarians. In a serious way, how does Wikipedia deal with persons sadly developing early stage Alzheimer's and Parkinsonism which may reflect in editors who were once excellent contributors who then start making more questionable edits. Should the Competence article make some issue about age-related handicaps and disabilities? It was a big issue for Joe Biden, and it was a big issue for Ronald Reagan late in his presidency well before Biden. Is this a valid issue for the Competence page here on Wikipedia? ErnestKrause (talk) 16:35, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

There are many possible reasons why someone's editing may display a lack of competence: too young, too old, intoxication, neurological problems, simply trolling, etc. I don't think we should mention any of them, because they don't really matter and we have no way of knowing. To quote a comment from #Young people above: "How does one know the age of another editor? Generally all we ever see is the output from any editor. We are simply judged on our output. If that is OK, then there isn't a problem." I agree. — Chrisahn (talk) 00:00, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. There is no reason to discuss whether some category of people (young/old/whatever) needs special mention or consideration. Editors are assessed based on their contributions and WP:CIR only applies when someone persists with disruption after being given advice on a few occasions. Their age or mental ability is not relevant. Johnuniq (talk) 08:23, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks to both editors for their comments. I'm going to add one or two comments along the lines of liability which Wikipedia experiences and recognizes in its policies for mental health already on the books. Using my previous analogy, the losses to the democratic party for not anticipating the Joe Biden issues ahead of time is that it cost the party over one billion dollars (a new record) to put forward Kamella Harris as an unsuccessful candidate because of the Biden mental health issue not being anticipated. Similar issues for Reagan at the end of his 2nd presidency when he is reported by his biographers to have fallen asleep during Oval Office meetings. Bad news all around.

Wikipedia already recognizes mental health crises as a issue with liabilities to Wikipedia at the article for Wikipedia:Responding to threats of harm, which includes discussion of people going through end of life decisions and what to do if it happens while on Wikipedia. I'm going to suggest that part of this applies to the elderly as well who are experiencing either early forms or later forms of Alzheimer's or Parkinsonism. There are early warning signs for each of these such as forgetfullness on the part of editors or repetitive edits (repeating the same edit twice for example) which are tell-tale signs. This is a difficult topic to discuss though it seems relavant to discussing old age competence in particular. Regarding the issue of 'anticipating' such problems, then there are early warning signs which might be useful to discuss for this article. Thanks to both editors above for their comments. ErnestKrause (talk) 22:41, 3 December 2025 (UTC)

Can you point to any evidence that this is a real issue on Wikipedia? AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:50, 3 December 2025 (UTC)

If you are asking the question of medical demographics for the elderly, then Wikipedia editors are just as likely to suffer from the issues I've listed above as in any other sectors of the economy and workplace. It may also be of use to read about the evidence for prevalence of these symptoms in the elderly in the Wikipedia articles for Alzeimer's and Parkinsonism. ErnestKrause (talk) 23:06, 3 December 2025 (UTC)