Wikipedia:No episcopal threats

"WP:NOGOD" redirects here. For the project dedicated to articles about atheism, see WP:ATHEISM.

Johann Otto von Gemmingen, Prince-Bishop of Augsburg in Bavaria (1591–1598). Aside from being dead for several centuries, he's not going to help you with any disputes on Wikipedia.

When editing Wikipedia, it is inevitable: a change you make gets reverted, a piece of content you've added is contested, or really any mishap involving your contributions happens. In any case, it's of paramount importance that you stay cool, be civil, and conduct yourself properly in order to resolve the issue in the right fashion. Among the ways to bungle this orderly process are by making personal attacks, casting aspersions, and being just tone-deaf to the consensus.

There is one action of misconduct that takes the cake from anything else. It is wholly unacceptable on the English Wikipedia (and on Mulberry Street, to think that you'd see it there) to get the bishops involved. For goodness sakes', if the bishops get involved, the world may implode. The apocalypse is liable to start. McDonald's ice cream machines may start functioning properly. Dr. Doofenshmirtz may finally take over the tri-state AREA!!!!!!!

The mere thought of getting the bishops involved is just too much to bear.

If the bishops are unrighteously invoked in any event or process on Wikipedia, sheer chaos is bound to ensue. Let's just not invoke them, m'kay?

List

There are a few ways that bishops may serve as a detriment to Wikipedia when unduly called upon, so in a flagrant middle-finger to Wikipedia:Don't stuff beans up your nose, a list is provided below which details the many ways that getting the bishops involved on Wikipedia can (and will) go wrong.

• Contacting the bishop of a Wikipedia editor who happens to be a member of the clergy, in order to rat them out for nominating your favorite YouTuber's article for deletion. This is like to just make the YouTuber look bad, and will end you up banned from their Twitch chat when they livestream.
• The bishops are called as artillery offences to support an AfD vote. (keep that weird, maybe-notable-if-we-did-a-Google-search article out of sight from the internet-connected anglosphere!)
• A new Keanu Reeves movie has come out, and you've caught your Wikipedia editor-niece editing his page. Disapproving of his violent action franchise, you have enlisted a bishop and their diocese to mediate her activities on-wiki. This is only going to waste the church's time and make your niece hate you.
• A bishop is asked to perform a technical change, such as page and file moving. A high percentage of bishops of the Catholic Church haven't the slightest idea of what to do, and may be baffled to the point of transforming to a flightless bird, most commonly an ostrich or penguin.
• Ric Flair has had his umpteenth "final match". Vandals are drawn by the media attention and are vandalising his page. You decide to enlist an eparchy led by a bishop to bless Flair's page. This is not like to actually help any vandalism-combative efforts—this blessing may actually be misdirected at the vandals, and we don't want that. If this happens, even if unintentionally; the user, the bishop and his participating unit will be sentenced to 57 slaps with a wet trout each, and an evening in the village stocks.

No bishops acting as Howitzers, no bishops advocating against violence in film, and no bishops blessing pro wrestlers. For the latter, keep that activity off-wiki.

• Your garage band has somehow qualified for a Wikipedia article. You enlist a bishopric to create phony redirect after phony redirect in a bid to someday surpass Coldplay's daily pageviews.
• Union busting advocates add fringe theories to your employer's Wikipedia page in order to defame your workers' union. Asking for a legion of padres to intervene in this plight won't solve a thing.
• Invoke a misapplication of Occam's Razor in a discussion about a rouge Admin. This is a contradictory statement, as the list of epithets a rogue Admin may be called is longer the the Mighty Mississipp'. Intervention by a bishop during this point of instability in the space-time continuum may cause the atmosphere to ignite, further proving that Cillian Murphy's Academy Award for Best Actor and Christopher Nolan's Academy Award for Best Director were both well-deserved.
• A Wikipedia editor has decided to create a shrine to Bob Ross on their user page, not realising that the article's infobox image they ripped was not a free-use image. An attempt to gain input from a bishop will be futile, as Reverends are known to consistently fail to grasp the concept of non-free content.
• Dan Povenmire's Wikipedia page is vandalised fixed for the umpteenth time to read that he is the creator of the Minions. If a bishop intervenes, the trouble with the non-believers of Dan Povenmire's magnum opus will be spread all over Facebook, known across the lands as the notorious glorious origin of all Minion memes.

Other direct nuisances

• No bishops acting as meatpuppets of an editor who is on the losing side of a discussion. Deus videt peccata tua (no relation to Hawk Tuah).
• No bishops are to be summoned to weigh in on incidents involving members of their parish at the Administrators' noticeboard. That constitutes a conflict of interest.
• No bishops are to register on Wikipedia for the sole purpose of removing white spaces at the end of paragraphs in articles.
• No bishops are to aid POV-pushers on articles such as Jesus cloth and Freddy's. They must not especially go near the article for the place with the steakburgers.

Once, a bishop attempted to butt into Pedro Pascal's Good Article review. A Commons user ended up capturing the result posted on a pole near Puebla Cathedral in Puebla de Zaragoza, Mexico.

• No bishops may attempt to canvass the process of Canonization—er, good article nomination. This has (allegedly) happened once before, to Pedro Pascal's page, and this guideline was enacted as a result.
• No bishops are to act as snipers, especially from atop the Reichstag.
• No bishops (of the clergy or the board game) are allowed to tilt the reception rection for DC Studios' latest film to unduly reflect opinions held by disenfranchised fans of the SnyderVerse.
• No bishops may attempt to copyedit each section of Ohio's Wikipedia page so it reads each word from right-to-left.
• No bishops may use the magic word {{!}} to escape a vertical bar character "|" in wikitext markup, in any article which was created on the date Friday the 13th of any year.
• On Wikipedia, bishops are permitted to see if they still feel, but no bishops are allowed to be involved in the shooting of the most emotional music video ever filmed (while on Wikipedia. We simply don't want to run risk of a repetition of the "White & Nerdy" music video that Weird Al filmed). Off-wiki, there is nothing stopping bishops from trying to beat Johnny Cash's swan song, but it's highly unlikely their efforts will bear fruit.
• No bishops are allowed to dance on any POV pole if it is easily recognisable as not being straight. When a POV pole is generally accepted as being at a 90 degree angle with the Earth, then and only then is any pole dancing allowed.
• No bishops are allowed to take part in any forum-like discussions concerning long-awaited creative works, i.e. "when is Peter Gabriel's next album?" i/o (2023) or "When is C418's next soundtrack?"; "when is George R. R. Martin going to finish Winds of Winter?"; "is a Cursed Child movie happening with the main cast?"
• No bishop is allowed to censor any images regarding rocky road ice cream, an offence punishable by a weekend in the village stocks.

Glossary of bishops (& how to avoid their insanity)

Okay, now things have gotten a bit weird.

A user who involves two bishops is said to have the bishop pair. Two bishops are considered to have an advantage over two Sysops, or a Sysop and a bishop (as if a bishop would join forces with a Sysop). Two Sysops may have the ability to delete the main page, which may be undone, but two bishops can annihilate the main page to a point beyond recovery. If this happens, ask a global renamer or steward with a vanishing request to courtesy vanish your account.

When two bishops unite, they are able to perform disruptive actions on Wikipedia. The most pressing of these activities would be performing a DJ set of "Music Sounds Better with You" (1998), "Lady (Hear Me Tonight)" (2000), and "So Much Love to Give" (2002). Each classics of dance music, they would definitely leave the crowd rolling in the morning. However, as one bishop performs the set, another takes an illegal recording and attempts to upload the set to Wikimedia Commons, constituting a copyright violation. This usually only occurs on April Fools' Day of leap years, but it is a worrisome occurrence enough. When two bishops unite, they are able to transform the teahouse into the Nether from Minecraft. The lava alone is tedious and dangerous to remove from the page alone, so caution is advised during cleanup in the event this happens.

Do not attempt to ask two bishops to fix the village pump in the event it breaks. Chances are, they will grossly overestimate their skill in repair, causing untold shenanigans to unfold. Nor should you ask two bishops for ideas on how to re-write the first paragraph of the lede of Taylor Swift's page, as the bishops may be tempted to write of their love for slushies instead.

Cautionary note

St Nicholas preferring the argument of force to the force of argument

The story of St Nicholas punching Arius' lights out at the First Council of Nicaea is generally thought to be apocryphal and may not be used as precedent.

See also

• The thread at ANI that inspired the creation of this essay

External links

• "The Bishop" (Monty Python sketch)
• "Hurt" (Johnny Cash cover) – official music video – a song whose music video may not be attempted to be surpassed in perfection by any bishops on Wikipedia.