Thursday 5 June 2008

Stuff that happens on Wikipedia but rarely in real life

Some words and phrases

1. non notable
2. has good judgement
3. I echo the above
4. Per
5. Per above
6. As nominator
7. drama (when referring to arguing)
8. trolling
9. do you have a reference? A reliable one?
10. RFA spam
11. mass welcoming
12. machine editing
13. thought process

There are plenty more, please leave them in the comments. You know you want to.

Stuff you do but would never in real life:

1. Warn a vandal (for smashing up your car)
2. Sign your name with ~~~
3. Click edit to talk
4. Click edit to do anything
5. Rollback any mistakes you make
6. Ban people you don't like from your house/land/office/school/workplace
7. Punish vandals by blocking them for 24 hours (block being down in a police cell)
8. Ensure that when you're writing, Section Headers Do Not Have Capital Letters
9. Make italics with two apostrophies (and bold with three)
10. Always write vote with a pointless exclamation mark before it. It really makes all the difference.

Can you think of anymore?

10 comments:

Josh ("Anonymous Disident") said...

A phrase I seem to be seeing everywhere on en these days: "net positive/negative". Cheers.

"Steve Smith" said...

"net positive/negative" is used frequently in real life.

Me, I constantly feel the need to provide edit summaries for e-mails, blog/forum posts, etc.

Anonymous said...

"a portmanteau of..."

It seems we can't have a portmanteau without mentioning it. :)

Statements starting with "Agree, "

The Bold, revert, discuss cycle doesn't have very frequent real-world analogues either, although I wish it did. :)

Alison said...

"That's POV!" (pronounced as a word, not an acronym)

"Revert-warring"

"Socking / Sockery"

"Wikistalking"

Anonymous said...

Dude, WP:WIKISPEAK - we got there first!!!

Anonymous said...

How could I forget, "Meatpuppet"

jeem said...

I use "drama" to refer to arguments all the time outside WP; must be a gay thing.

On the other hand, only Wikipedians really use the verb "to salt" outside the context of food or icy pavement. (History buffs really enjoy the allusion, though.)

llywrch said...

Nah, "to salt the earth" is used from time to time -- but it's such an extreme threat/act of destruction that there are few occasions for its proper use. Sad to say, thru its frequent use "to salt the earth" has lost all connotation of its viciousness. And besides, more people understand the contemporary phrase "nuke 'em till they glow" -- which has practically the same meaning (a threat of not only death & destruction but creating a sterile wasteland), only without even the possibility of humorous intent.

Geoff

Unknown said...

"Citation required". A few days ago I was driving back from the local Portuguese chicken takeaway place having just bought lunch, with the car window open because it was a warm day, and as I started driving a guy on the footpath said some statement to the girl he was walking with, and she looked dubious and then said "citation required". And of course I thought to myself "well, she _must_ be a Wikipedia editor!" ... either that or my hearing is going :-)

MessedRocker said...

Take young children seriously, unless they have impressed me the way my 12-year-old self would impress me.