Wikipedia:Don't give the developers ideas

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This page contains material which is kept because it is considered humorous. It is not intended, nor should it be used, for any remotely serious purpose.

Over time, Wikipedians come to appreciate the amount of time the development and network operations teams put into keeping the site running as well as possible.

In addition to learning this, another vital rule is picked up fairly early on in the learning process.

Don't give the developers ideas.

Contents 1 Thou shalt not take the name of blocking in vain 2 Keep your hands, feet and unhelpful interface quirks to yourself 3 Don't bug war 4 Developers are deletionist

[edit] Thou shalt not take the name of blocking in vain

One minute you're joking about pwnage and running vandal bots. Next, you're getting 403 errors from all the sites. You discover that a network operator has blacklisted your entire ISP with a well-placed line in the Squid configuration. Who's pwned now?

We know the blocking mechanism experiences frequent suckage. Some plans are in place to improve it some time soon. Soon. Promise. Just don't whinge about bug 550 too often.

[edit] Keep your hands, feet and unhelpful interface quirks to yourself

Taste varies. Don't ever let the developers get the impression you're not totally satisfied with the quality of the skins in MediaWiki. All hell can break loose when CSS goes wild.

You say: Man, Monobook needs an overhaul.
They hear: We want pink ponies!

Picture it. No, it's not pretty, is it?

User tastes are diverse and sometimes freakish. We don't adjust the interface massively unless it's adding functionality; that's what the skin system and custom CSS and JavaScript are for.

[edit] Don't bug war

WONTFIX is a bitch. So is life. Get used to both, and don't revert the former.

...it's irksome and it's counterproductive. There are reasons behind such an action. Feel free to query them with the developer concerned if an explanation isn't provided. But don't REOPEN the bug unless you're absolutely sure you can justify it.

[edit] Developers are deletionist

Just don't go there. Asking for stuff to be deleted is a real minefield. You're liable to end up responsible for half the foreign language wikis being dissolved or something. Ever seen 238,000 pissy Germans wander up after their featured articles have gone walkabout? You don't want to.

Please don't file bug reports asking for stuff to be fixed when it's a content issue or when a local sysop or a bureaucrat can help out. By all means, let us know if you're having difficulties stopping a spam bot or deleting personal information from page histories, but don't bug us about trivial stuff.