User:Logical Premise/notation

There are four basic premises I adhere to after long experience with Wikipedia.


 * 1) All administrators are unlikely to view anything with the understanding that the Real World Is Not Wikipedia. Anything involving logical reactions to the real world are likely to come out badly.
 * 2) Any involvement in the back end of Wiki only brings stress, strife, and disgust.
 * 3) I am always wrong. There will never be an article, or issue, worth wheel warring, edit warring or even getting upset about.
 * 4) Civility is best practiced by not interacting. If you must interact, state nothing you can't back up with hard facts and logical arguments.

Things that piss me off
Why I despise lists - Why I despise In The News - Why I despise IAR - Why I despise dispute resolution - Why I despise unsourced articles - Editors without a clue

{| align="center" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="10" style="background: none;"
 * style="background: white; border:2px solid Brown; -moz-border-radius: 20px;" width="8%" rowspan="2"|[[Image:Nuvola apps core.png|60px|center|Toolz]]
 * style="color: white; -moz-border-radius-topright: 20px; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 20px;" width="700px" align="left" bgcolor="Brown" | Hypnocrasy! 
 * align="left" style="background: #FFFFF3; border:2px solid Brown; font-size: 85%; -moz-border-radius-bottomright: 20px; -moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 20px;"| I forget where I got this list from and I don't really care. It's a list of shit that is supposedly supposed to be "universal truths" about Wikipedia.
 * align="left" style="background: #FFFFF3; border:2px solid Brown; font-size: 85%; -moz-border-radius-bottomright: 20px; -moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 20px;"| I forget where I got this list from and I don't really care. It's a list of shit that is supposedly supposed to be "universal truths" about Wikipedia.

Learn, young padawan. The dark side is strong.

Hypnocrasy, Part One

 * When someone complains loudly about censorship, you may be certain they are up to no good.

''Yes, of course. Wikipedia has NO people who would ever try to censor anything. Why, merely by editing here you are so virtuous and noble that auras surround you at all times.''

''What a pile of fucking propaganda. If someone complains loudly, someone needs to investigate. So much for AGF.''


 * Many people, leaving the project, blame either the project or the people working on it for their departure, rather than recognizing that it is normal in life for one's enthusiasm to wane. It does with all things that we once found exciting.  This is neither pessimistic nor tragic:  one needs always to find new exciting things to do.  All things in life change and end, and this includes one's involvement with Wikipedia.

''Riiight. Because again, there's never anything wrong with the project or the people here. Everytime you changed jobs, or got a new partner, it was due to you being worn out.''

''Tired, bullshit, Meatball-wiki like arguments like this don't fly in the real world, so when people read this it makes you look like a pack of flower-eating nutcases. Face reality -- most people leave WP because they're fed up with bullshit or they are driven away. Like, say, !!''


 * Troublesome editors waste far more of the community's time than vandals. One who sometimes has good edits, but endlessly bickers, insults, whines, and is eventually banned, will have taken a hundred hours from other users who would have better spent that time building the encyclopedia.  This is in part due to people's fascination with conflict.  Efficiently managing troublesome editors is one of the best ways to improve the project, but also one of the most difficult.

''Wrong. The idiots who he's arguing, whining, etc with aren't writing articles, and they never have. I'm ten billion times the article writer than some of the admins on this site are, but since I'm not "tight" I won't get any FA's any time soon. The hard reality is that a "troublesome editor" is a label you stick on someone who doesn't kowtow to your goddamned infantile wishes.''

''I honestly wish some of these people would either wake up, or go jump off a bridge and stop wasting perfectly good oxygen. A vandal who vandalizes cats with a picture of goatse when a 7 year old child happens to be looking at it is less important to you than harassing someone who disagrees with SlimVirgin? If you idiots stopped arguing over crap you could clean up the vandalism just fine.''


 * People who have the insatiable need to retaliate for perceived wrongs should be removed from the project as quickly, but gently, as possible.

''Right. Okay, so let's say that you think I'm POV pushing. You get me banned, even if I say I'm not. In your opinion, you did the right thing and in mine you did a percieved wrong. If I were to reverse the issue, suddenly I'm a problematic editor and you're still in the right. It's a no win, all bullshit situation.''

''The best thing to do, if one is not a mental defective living in fantasy land, is try to find ways of dispute resolution (GOD i hate that phrase) that don't rely on browbeating your wikipeasantry with the flail of bans and blocks. You aren't allowed to judge me, you goddamned pretentious cretin.''


 * Since mid-to-late 2005 there has been an increasing focus by Wikipedians, especially new Wikipedians, on designing pretty user pages, userspace widgets, fancy signatures, and other similar stuff rather than contributing content. This is probably not a good trend, but it is unlikely to change.  The best content contributors often neglect these things, and vice versa.

''Funny, I fiddle with my page lots but contribute just fine to. Gotta love that nice little touch of stereotyping though.''


 * Any logged-in user whose first edit is vandalism of a user page, or a nasty personal attack on a talk page, should be immediately and permanently blocked, without comment.

Granted...but wait, there's more.


 * 1) If a user's first and second edits are creations of their user and talk pages, devoid of content, their third edit will be vandalism, a personal attack, or another form of trolling. That people spring up to defend these accounts when they are blocked is neither complicity nor malice, but rather just inexperience.

''HOW GODDAMNED HILARIOUS. That's funny, | I fit that pattern exactly except my third edit wasn't vandalism, a personal attack, or trolling. I'd really like to suggest you find the biggest can of shut the fuck up you can find.''


 * Logging in as an anonymous IP or sockpuppet, in order to vandalise a user page or leave a nasty personal attack, is a particularly despicable form of cowardice. If you have a problem with someone, work it out in the open.

''Heh, cowardice in a project of anonymous editors who are hidden by the software? An IP is geolocating themselves, doing that sort of thing is braver than using a stupid WP account.''


 * Single-topic editors are rarely, if ever, either interested in or capable of NPOV. Additionally, if you look closely you will often find a conflict of interest.

''FUCK, I'm BLIND! It must be a blinding flash of the obvious. Next you'll tell us Vandals are usually only seen making nonsense edits to pages or blanking them and that Willy-On-Wheels was a bit interested in pagemoves!''


 * The more extreme and unencyclopedic the viewpoint, the greater the likelihood of it attracting sockpuppet support.

''Two clues, jackass. 1) Unencyclopedic isn't a word. 2) I'm goddamned blind again.''


 * If an editor is truly writing from a neutral point of view, it should be impossible to tell from that person's edits what their viewpoint is. This is most obvious in political articles, but applies everywhere.

An editor writing from a neutral point of view usually has not enough information or understanding of nuance to write about a subject they truly have no viewpoint on.


 * Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. The primary job of Wikipedians is to write it.  Everything else is secondary.

''And you wrote this list up WHY? You are a failed encyclopedist.''


 * As the primary job of Wikipedians is to write the encyclopedia, any user whose principal activity is to interfere with the writing should be removed from the project, as painlessly as possible. The best way is to persuade them that they will be happier elsewhere, and to wish them well; the worst is to beat them up and make them angry:  but however it happens, it must be done.

''What if the people disrupting it are also admins? Do we get bonus candy? What if the people making the very rules interfere with the writing? Should we remove them too?''

Hypnocrasy, Part Two

 * There IS a cabal. It's a core group of editors united by the belief that the encyclopedia must protect itself against jerks, and against people who write junk.

This would be moar funneh if the cabal itself wasn't a pile of jerks pushing it's own various POV's.


 * As soon as someone attacks the community, or any portion of it, by writing a rant on their user page, Act V of their Wiki Tragedy has begun. It will end, inevitably, with their departure or expulsion from the project.

''Shit, as opposed to things like this? Secondly, there are tons of rants of authors still on line who've ranted to the high heavens.''


 * All the virtues and vices shown by humanity as a whole can be found on Wikipedia. Anyone who runs from the community because they cannot tolerate its vices, divisions, and politics, will have to face the same vices, divisions, and politics again elsewhere in life.

''Fucking please. All the vices, maybe, magnified by anonymous editing and dickish lifestyles, but virtues? Spare me.''


 * Good people leave the project all the time. Fortunately, good people join the project all the time as well.  Bad people also come and go.  The project survives in spite of all these arrivals and departures.

And is worsened whenever some wikiprick drives off a GOOD editor and we get a BAD replacement.


 * When someone screams about "admin abuse", it's most likely true – they're probably abusing admins again. If there's a block involved, expect to see a battalion of sockpuppets in short order, making even more shrill cries of admin wrongdoing.

Right, because we all know that admins NEVER make bad blocks, edit war, wheel war, etc. Isn't that right, FeloniousMonk?


 * Try to be as tolerant as you possibly can regarding edits by established contributors. Should you need to revert one, leave as polite an explanation as possible, with room for compromise:  and if they're simply wrong, don't rub their nose in it.  The risk of losing long-established contributors due to avoidable conflict is one of the greatest the project faces.  People who have been here a year or more, and made thousands of contributions to the project, are its greatest asset, and this cannot be overstated.

''Now wait a fucking minute. A few lines up you said editors come and go and the project is fine without them. What is THIS happy shit? Oohhh. I get it. "established contributors" means who ever kisses enough ass to have the goddamned wikideathsquads out to protect them. People like !!, RickK, and Badlydrawnjeff are just vandalistic hooligans, but God forbid some mere wikipeasant chase off a "valued contributor" like Chip Berlet. ''

The arrogance is as astoundingly shocking as it is shallow.


 * While it feels bad to be attacked by one of the persistent, nasty, obsessive trolls, it is helpful to remember that some of these people are profoundly miserable. They are really suffering; life is hell for them:  often they are neither in control of their impulses, nor completely sane.  A little compassion can help, although one's initial impulse is to strike back.  Don't.  It's a sign of strength not to retaliate, and a peaceful response may actually do some good.

''Translation; anyone who disagrees with you are insane, crazed, losers, or otherwise mentally defective, so feel free to ignore whatever they say. You people are right up there with the Nazi's sometimes.''
 * }