User:Philip.t.day/Notspecial
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: No single user is special. We should all leave our self-righteousness at the door, and instead focus on improving Wikipedia. |
When it comes to Wikipedia editors and their ideas of grandeur, I truly believe that we all should leave it at the door. Not matter what it is.
I'm constantly encountering people who give their age, nationality, experience or expertise as a reason for why their argument is more valid than anyone else's.
I'm not just talking about people on the Pages I patrol, who have created something breaking all sorts of policies, and then defend it with: "You're being racist against me because I can't speak any English, apart from what I've just said." - Although of course, they too count in this.
I'm talking about experienced Wiki users, some are even Sysops (Admins) etc. A lot of people in the world suffer from High and Mighty Syndrome, and Wikipedia is suffering as a result.
People on here must be taken at face value. Anyone can make an unusually good, or an uncharacteristically poor edit, and it is those edits which form Wikipedia and create or complete all of the work done by those willing editors who patrol and fix this place.
Wikipedia is special. It is a precious gem of knowledge and community which is created and maintained by people who are (to all intents and purposes) not special. The sooner we accept that we are not special, the better for Wikipedia. We will then be able to react to users with the politeness we expect (and demand that) they treat us with and we can unselfishly move to improve the place.
Far too often I see people tagging for deletion, or giving single issue warnings because they don't want "another new user" to "waste their time". It is worth remembering, that every time a bad decision or tag is made by an "experienced" editor from their high horse, they can create more work for other people, reverting it to give people a chance and to assume good faith. Or at worse, it could lose thousands of man-hours of productive and useful wiki editing by putting an enthusiastic new editor off from ever returning.
It's time for the community to embrace WP:Ignore all rules and work under that ethos. Just because a policy exists, it doesn't mean we have to quote it, in spite of being helpful.