Wikipedia:There is no Divine Right of Editors
This is an civility policies. 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: Just because you are an established editor, you are not above the rules, nor are others below you. |
Scenario
You have been editing Wikipedia for many years. You have 40,000 edits and have just become an administrator. But a new Wikipedian, with 40 edits and less than a month editing, notes on the
A.
B. Delete the conversation (ideally with an edit summary "rv trolling / harassment"), block the editor permanently without attempting to reply (after all, it's probably another Vote (X) for Change sock anyway), and sit back confident you have done the right thing?
C.
D. Comply with
The answer is C or D, and if you answered anything else, that is not a good way to handle it. You are relying on the Divine Right of Editors.
There is no Divine Right of Editors. (Hopefully the title made this obvious.) It does not matter who or what you are, you have to be a responsible, considerate editor.
A brief summary of a Divine Right
A Divine Right is the belief that God made you to be superior. You can tell someone believes in a Divine Right if:
They claim ultimate superiority
They openly claim that they are superior in their comments. It doesn't matter if the article they were working on cited
They say they are above the law
They expect the law to flow around what they do rather than hitting it. "Hah! I only did three reverts within 24 hours, and
They think they have automatic consensus before they declare it
They block without good reason and refuse to unblock. Bad cases may even WikiStalk the blocked userpage to weed out any unblock requests. This also applies to closing conversations and deleting articles with no reason. "It's a sockpuppet! I saw somebody write an article similar to this 10 years ago! It must be block evasion! I'm going to annihilate it with my
How to depose a Divine Right of a Wikipedian
A good way to point out the error of their ways would be to calmly explain protocol. If they go back to the old "above the law" claim, give them this page to read. If they still argue, an ANI may be in order. Note: This does not include editors who refuse to respond, see WP:Communication is required.