Wikipedia talk:Editors are not mindreaders

This essay is directed at new users but it should probably be mentioned for the benefit of new page patrollers who might use it or see it, that there is strong consensus that new pages should not be tagged with A1/A3 moments after creation, which has been discussed to death at WT:CSD, led to the direction at the top of new pages: "Please consider patrolling pages from the back of the unpatrolled backlog" and resulted in the creation of Hasty and CSD5.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:27, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:BEFORE
WP:BEFORE comes to mind; it's true editors aren't mindreaders, but rather than assuming an editor who newly created an article isn't going to reference it or that others won't, they might post to the article's talk page, the user's talk page, or look for references themselves before taking it to AfD... Шизомби (Sz) (talk) 16:33, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Why does stating the obvious have to be left to an afterthought? Question asked at the start of the article:  "If an article you've created is tagged for deletion, put yourself in other editors' shoes. Should they have known you have grand plans and will be adding more detail and references soon? How should they have known that?"  Answer provided by Schizombie: "By asking". Real SOTBO. Opbeith (talk) 21:44, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the answer is implied in the first 4 characters in the image in the top left corner of this and every other page on this site:


 * Question: "How should they have known that?"
 * Answer: "Because it's a WIKI.".

--Kim Bruning (talk) 13:09, 1 April 2011 (UTC) It was never intended to be a glorified CMS.

Use of short-cut
I came looking for WP:MIND-READER expecting something different. I guess what I am thinking of could be suited for something like WP:TELEPATH or WP:EMPATH.

This relates to problems of Wikipedians taking too much liberty in interpreting data. Essentially that they are authorities on knowing the state of minds of others, be they a fictional character, a creator, an actor, etc.

WP:TELE would refer to thinking you know what someone is thinking while WP:EMPA would refer to thinking you know someone's emotional state. A lot of times people will add this (mostly to fictional character entries) without reliable citations.

For a TELE example if Superman is holding a crook and he threatens to drop him someone might insert "he considered dropping him" but that seems wrong because just because someone makes a threat (which can be done to scare them) doesn't mean they are actually considering following through with it to any notable degree. On the other hand if one of the series writers said "Superman was considering it" or if a thought bubble said "if he doesn't tell me where Luthor hid the bomb, I'll do it!" then either could actually be cited as evidence.

For an EM example if Batman seemed to look angry to someone they might say "Batman was angry". As it is "Batman looked angry" is a questionable judgment call which seems like WP:OR (we are not necessarily experts on reading emotions and people might perceive facial expressions different) but to assume an emotional state based on outward appearances is an additional leap of WP:OR. 184.145.18.50 (talk) 13:38, 9 February 2016 (UTC)