Wikipedia:Don't delete the main page: Difference between revisions

This is a humorous essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors and is made to be humorous. This page is not 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 essay isn't meant to be taken seriously.

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This page in a nutshell: There are jokes, and then there are "oh, hell no" situations.

Just the fact that you *can* push the button doesn't mean you *should*.

One admin was discussing the deletion of the main page in IRC and asked if the technical ability to delete pages with over 5,000 revisions, like the main page, had ever been re-enabled. Another admin (jokingly) commented that he had tested it and found that the main page still couldn't be deleted. The first admin thought he would test it for himself. The main page got deleted.^[1]^[a]

You might think you are having a laugh, but sometimes, the joke is missed. If you find yourself having to say "jokes do not come across well here", you are best off having avoided the joke in the first place.

In other words, do not even joke about causing disruption – someone may miss that it was meant in humor or sarcasm and act on it.

Historical context

[edit]

As honored in the village stocks, this succeeds the admin who locked the servers for half an hour by deleting the Sandbox, necessitating the restriction of deletions for pages with over 5,000 edits. It is followed by the editor who used a bot to add 1,200 useless edits to the Main Page, hoping to bring it up to the 5000-edit level where it would not be deletable. Fortunately, the English Wikipedia Main Page now enjoys a sui generis immunity to deletion in the software.^[2]^[3]

Notes

[edit]

^ This was not, by a long stretch, the first time the Main Page was deleted. See its deletion log entry. Some resulted from the involved administrators' accounts being compromised. For example, the deletion as of 05:08, December 8, 2007 – which resulted in a desysopping – was apparently the account being used by a relative after the admin failed to log off, and the incident as of May 7, 2007 was the result of a password hack. In total, the Main Page has been deleted 16 times. (Yikes!)

References

[edit]

^ "I deleted the Main Page". Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive363. Retrieved 21 February 2010.
^ Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages Tim Starling, WikiEN-l Mailing List, February 4, 2008.
^ The code that implements the protection

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@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{short description|Humorous Wikipedia essay}}
 {{Humorous essay|WP:DDMP|WP:IDIOT}}
-{{nutshell|There are jokes, and then there are "oh, fuck no" situations.}}
+{{nutshell|There are jokes, and then there are "oh, hell no" situations.}}
 [[File:Bomba atomica.gif|thumb|200px|[http://movie-sounds.org/war-movie-sound-clips/sound-clips-from-dr-strangelove-1964/as-you-know-the-premier-loves-surprises Just the fact that you ''can'' push the button doesn't mean you ''should''.] ]]
@@ Line 14: / Line 14: @@
 == See also ==
-[[File:Try to delete the main page.png|450px|thumb|Following this incident, the vulnerability was addressed. If a person tries now, they ''should'' receive the message shown above: "you can't delete or move the main page." This is '''not''' an excuse to try to delete the Main Page. It might work! (We mean the deletion might work{{mdashb}}not the excuse.)]]
+[[File:Enwiki Main Page delete screen.png|500px|thumb|Following this incident, the vulnerability was addressed. If a person tries now, they ''should'' receive the message shown above: "{{int:cant-delete-main-page}}" This is '''not''' an excuse to try to delete the Main Page; the deletion might work!]]
 * <span class="plainlinks">[{{fullurl:Special:Log|page=Main_Page}} Main Page log]</span>
 * [[Wikipedia:Silly things/Template:Uw-delmain1]]
 * [[Wikipedia:Don't stuff beans up your nose]]
+** [[Wikipedia:Don't stuff beans up your nose/Uh-huh|/Uh-huh]]
 * [[Wikipedia:Bad Idea Machine]]
 * [[Wikipedia:Village stocks]] – other very bad ideas that have been tried

Latest revision as of 07:55, 11 December 2024

Historical context

See also

Notes

References