Good faith is a term used by the Wikipedia community itself.
Most prominently in the phrase "Always assume good faith".
As I recently learned, apparently this guideline (Gebot!) arose/took such a central position not from the very beginning of the existence of the collaborative encyclopedia.
As I recently learned, apparently this guideline arose/took such a central position not from the very beginning of the existence of the collaborative encyclopedia.
It rather arose at a time when, after a significant growth in Wikipedia, it wasn't manageable to govern the project (and most importantly fight emergent vandalism which grew proportionally to the project's growth) manually anymore.
To counteract vandalism, a number of automated measures was applied.
These, however, had also unforseen negative consequences: they drove newcomers away~\cite{HalKitRied2011}(quote literature) (since their edits were often classified as "vandalism", because they were not familiar with guidelines / wiki syntax / etc.)
In an attempt to fix this issue, "Assume good faith" rose to a prominent position among Wikipedia's Guidelines.
(Specifically, the page was created on March 3rd, 2004 and was originally refering to good faith during edit wars.
An expansion of the page from December 29th 2004 starts refering to vandalism. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith&oldid=8915036)
Today, in vandalism comabting (?), there are cautious guidelines and several escalation levels, before an editor is banned. (TODO: elaborate, maybe move to vandalism)
Users are urged to use the term "vandalism" carefully, since it tends to offend and drive people away.
