User:Andrewa/your wig is on fire

Please, your honor, calm down. You're setting your wig on fire.

- Unnamed uniformed court attendant (employing fire extinguisher) in a Donald Duck comic story written and drawn by Carl Barks.

The judge (an anthropomorphic owl) in this story had good reason to be annoyed. Very annoyed. On his way to court (with his ulcers giving him dyspepsia) he had been reflecting that, in view of his also having lumbago and a sore thumb, he'd be in "an awful fix if I get a flat tire". And right on cue, Donald Duck (attacked by a stinging insect, but the judge could not see that) had dropped a bottle from the car right in front of the judge, tearing his tire to shreds. The judge noted the registration number. He then got out of the car to try to change the tire, but first tripped on some garbage, tearing his clothes and landing in still more garbage. He noted, and was horrified by, the amount of rubbish thrown on the side of the road. He decided, then and there, to be harsh on littering.

And then when he finally arrived in court, the first case was Donald, arrested for trivial littering from an unrelated incident. The judge was not in any mood to treat this lightly. But then the court papers showed Donald's car registration number, and of course it matched the car that had been responsible for the judge's flat tire. And that's when the attendant reached for the fire extinguisher.

It was a perfect storm for poor Donald. Pure slapstick. Classic Barks.

Why does Wikipedia sometimes remind me of that?

We care about Wikipedia. We spend hours defending Wikipedia from error, from vandalism, from all sorts of things. We do this most often by following guidelines and policies (including of course consensus, assume good faith, no personal attacks and ignore all rules). And in general these are pretty good guidelines and policies, providing clear and helpful guidance as to how to improve our never-to-be-perfect encyclopedia.

We don't often get it badly wrong. But sometimes, we do. And then... it can be a perfect storm.

The rhetoric and personal attack in NYRM2016 isn't altogether the fault of the contributors. When an article about which you care a lot, on a topic about which you know a lot, and into which you've put a lot of work, is proposed for a move away from the title you think is correct, that's annoying. When it's the nth such proposal over a period of twelve years, with n-1 failures, that's very annoying.

How can such a thing even happen? We're all human. We do get it badly wrong, sometimes.

And on the other side, when other editors vigorously oppose a move that is supported by a consensus unchallenged for twelve years, a policy-based consensus that clearly supports the move but somehow hasn't succeeded in moving it yet, that's annoying too.

That's all understandable. And wigs catch fire.

Or, when a basic Wikipedia policy is proposed for a change, a policy that has been the basis of a lot of work by yourself and countless others over a period of sixteen years, that's annoying. When you realise that, if the change is accepted, much of that work seems doomed to have been a complete waste of time, that's very annoying.

And wigs catch fire.