User:Mgasparin/My Thoughts on Wikipedia

(Many thanks to User:Ritchie333 for most of this section.)

Zen and the art of Wikipedia Maintenance

You do not need a {{fact}} tag to say that this bird has two legs and a head.

1. Always have sources to hand when creating and expanding articles. Don't write articles based upon your own personal hypotheses and inferences. Don't write articles based upon knowledge that you half-remember learning, but have no idea from where or from whom. Write articles based upon actual, concrete, sources, and ensure that the article cites those sources. If you half-remember something, go and hunt up a source that covers it first, then write. If you don't do this, expect your articles to be speedy deleted, nominated for deletion or asking the AfC help desk why your article was declined.
2. Calculus is good for mathematicians, and it's good for Wikipedians too. Don't worry about how competent an editor is now – focus on the first derivative and worry about their rate of competence change. A good newbie can teach themselves to become more competent. A bad newbie never will.
3. "I think a good number of voices of compassion, balance and reason are probably closer to the Wiki community than most people realise. I don’t think the 91% male editors are all single with no female partners, sisters or daughters."
4. On consensus : He who gets bored of the argument last, wins.
5. Every time you start a thread on WP:ANI, God kills a kitten.
6. My own wikocratic oath is : 'First, cause no drama'.
7. I really wish wikilawyering were against policy.
8. "Mark you this, Bassanio. The devil can cite Wikipedia Policy for his purpose." (The Merchant of WP:VENICE)
9. Without the content, Wikipedia is just Facebook for ugly people

   Hey, who are you calling ugly, ya mingaaah??! Martinevans123 (talk) 09:26, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

10. "If I had a choice between trusting a compulsive liar locked in a straitjacket in a padded cell scrawling his inane ramblings about how the lizard people secretly run the world through an extensive mind control programme on the wall of said cell with his own faeces and trusting what is written in The Sun, I'd flip a coin because they truly are about equivalent in reliability."
11. "... every time I have commented in general on infoboxes, I have criticized both advocates and opponents equally. I will continue to do so. I consider the whole matter to be one of the most useless wastes of time on Wikipedia, but a lot of editors feel passionate about this ongoing battle, for reasons that completely evade me."
12. "It's important to remember that however set-apart and distinct we feel the project is, the point of contact with the real world is the user of the encyclopedia, the person who pops into Wikipedia to find some needed information or just to browse a bit, and couldn't care less what the Wiki-world experience is like to those inside of it"
13. On consensus : "if everyone opposes every proposal that doesn't 100% match their idea of perfection, nothing will ever happen"
14. "Being right and being a dick are not mutually exclusive."
15. If somebody tells you to "get a life", they might have a point. Enjoy editing Wikipedia, but don't let it consume you, and make sure you experience the real world enough to get perspective on things. Especially if you have a wife and kids.
16. "As for why I like editing Wikipedia, well it’s better than watching Eastenders or Strictly Come Britain's Got The X-Factor or whatever passes for Saturday night television these days".
17. When people have problems with editing wiki markup, it's a problem with the software's poor interface, not the end user.
18. If you see an angry rant on a talk page about your revert to that article that talks about "the truth" but ends with — Preceding unsigned comment added by..., you can probably ignore it. If it's an IP, you probably can rest safe that your revert hasn't even been touched.
19. There is no race to be "first" to answer a question on WP:HD, WP:RD, WP:AFCHD and WP:ANI .... all you get is an edit conflict with SineBot for your troubles if you're lucky.
20. If you want to be an admin, find your best friend's car, take out the rotor arm, slash the tyres, then tell them to their face you did it. If you can survive the abuse you get back, you might have what it takes.
21. "You have a userbox saying you want to be an administrator some day. Remove that userbox and the overtly political ones as well. Then, stop bouncing around like a ping pong ball, and start conducting yourself in a more level headed fashion. Those steps will enhance your chances."
22. Twinkle has a lot of magic buttons to automate tasks. None of them are for writing content and adding sources. The best content editors ignore twinkle, and vice versa.
23. Assume good faith can mean deleting an article or doing a blanket revert, then apologising to affected editors that you needed to do it.
24. Those that can, do. Those that can't, bicker about the manual of style or the citation guidelines. I mean, who cares that somebody's falsely accused of murder – just put that bloody full stop BEFORE the ref tag.
25. Make your articles good or utterly brilliant if you so wish, but beware the lure of the rubber stamp and remember that if it doesn't improve the encyclopedia, balls to it.
26. If somebody really wants to win an argument, just let them. You'll live. As Mark Twain put it, "Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of good example."(other religious magazines are available)
27. If I see one more editor throw the term WP:RS at a newbie without explaining what it stands for and why it's relevant, I will scream.
28. "We can't do anything to change Wikipedia until the WMF crumbles. In the meantime we should all go write an article to console ourselves." (with apologies to Banksy)
29. As for gender itself, all we should be interested in here is what an editor has in their head, not in their pants.
30. One of the most dangerous habits you can get into is to take Wikipedia too seriously. Dozens of editors have been indefinitely blocked at ANI and Arbcom because the encyclopedia is super-duper important and blocking them is soooooo unfair.
31. If you use personal attacks in a debate, you're wrong. Even if you think you're right, you're still wrong. That the other party is also wrong is irrelevant.
32. Any WP:CIVIL or WP:NPA based block of a user with at least 3 FAs will cause more problems than it solves. "Let's all move on guys and gals before this turns into another pantomime. I have an FAC to write."
33. The longer the edit summary, the more likely the edit will be reverted. Nobody ever reverts "ce" or "fmt"
34. In an argument involving two people, it's possible for both participants to be completely and utterly wrong, but good luck to anyone trying to convince them of this.
35. "Since such a high percentage of anonymous IP editors are vandals, they are all treated like shit. Trying to make serious edits to Wikipedia as an IP editor is like blindly blundering through the countryside on the first day of hunting season dressed like a moose." Furthermore, Wikipedia has a surprising number of editors who think that openly declaring you are using an O2 4G IPv6 address is more "anonymous" than signing your posts "Dawnslayer666" which gives no clues to your identity or location whatsoever.
36. "I think all new editors should be reported on ANI immediately. This would reduce editor retention to zero, and as older editors die or drop out we'd eventually have no editors at all. At that point there would be no more edit warring, no more conduct or content disputes, and no need for Arbcom. Paradise."
37. "No one should cheer after a block ... doing so trivializes the most powerful tool in our toolbox and celebrates a power that should be handled with care."
38. Never pull rank or throw your weight around, lest it backfire on you. "Nothing is more satisfying than winning an argument on its technical merits even when you should have lost it on political merits" and some long-standing non-admin editors love this, and a handful of IPs really love this.
39. "Wait until you get the bit. You will experience frustration on a level you've never seen. Having the tools doesn't mean you can always use them. Wait until someone gets in a personal argument with you and starts calling you names, and then technically it might look like you are "involved" so you can't act, and seemingly every other person with an admin bit is out back taking a smoke break leaving you twisting in the wind...then two of their friends jump in, and you are just standing there getting busted in the chops, being called an "abuse adminz!" at ANI, etc. It WILL happen, and you will run out of cheeks to turn, so you just have to take it for a while. Sucks to be an admin sometimes."
40. On !voting "keep" at AfDs : "If you think the article has good sources, then f...ing add them. They won't add themselves, you know."
41. "When such an editor is blocked, of course the pitchfork brigade turn up. And all too often they kind of have a point. ... Admins should always take time and care when blocking someone, but failing to do so when dealing with people who you know will have a pitchfork-bearing army behind them always strikes me as rather short-sighted"
42. "Next time you think you're right and someone else is being a jerk, write whatever you were going to post on-wiki in a text file instead, or maybe in a vent email to a friend, or even, if you must, in an edit window, but wait till tomorrow to decide if it's really worth posting."
43. "Blocking an IP for block evasion for nothing other than protesting their innocence should not happen . Ever. Blocking an established user for sharing an IP address with a troublesome user without supporting evidence should not happen. Ever. Blocking IP addresses that support a potentially maligned user, when there's no evidence they are a block evasion, as happened to the user at 77... on the Admin page, should not happen. Ever. ..... Most people, especially newbies, would have walked away from Wikipedia long before being vindicated. That is not a good thing. Lessons should be learned from this. People are so pissed off at the trolls and socks that they are forgetting to assume good faith."
44. "I wouldn't bother looking at Jimmy's talk page expecting anything enlightening. It serves primarily as flypaper to trap problem users".
45. "I always log in to have a discussion, because it's otherwise impossible to keep tabs on who you're talking to. I don't really care if you call yourself "Shark Infested Custard Monster, Volume III" as long as the handle is consistent."
46. Civility, Competence, Diversity. Pick two.
47. Domestos Reliable Sources. Kills all AfDs. Dead.
48. There's an old legal saying that goes, "If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table." This applies very well to Wikipedia, where those who have neither just shout into empty space, disrupting all conversation and destroying the process. If you find one of those people, a nice block often helps to cool heads, or to get trolls out of here. If you are one of those people, it's probably high time you got off your laptop and went outside to clear your head.
49. This guy understands the trouble in discerning consensus around here. As a rule, the more defined the RfC, the more difficult the consensus will be to determine.

An Interesting Essay on Becoming an Admin

User:Ad Orientem/So you want to be an Admin?

An ANI Limerick

Wikipedia's not for the meek.
You need a de-stress technique.
Sip tea with biscotti,
go fish – try karate.
But edit war? Blocked for a week!

(Stolen from EEng, who adapted it from Levivich.)