User:Raul654/Raul's laws

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This is an essay. It is not a policy or guideline. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page.

Shortcut: WP:RAUL

If you have a law, feel free to add it to the "Laws by others" section below.

[edit] Raul's Laws of Wikipedia

1. Much of Wikipedia's content, and all of the day to day functions are overseen by a small core of the most dedicated contributors. These users are the most valuable resource Wikipedia has.

   Corollary - Of these highly dedicated users who have left, the vast majority left as a result of trolls, vandals, and/or POV warriors - typically not as a result of any one particular user, but from the combined stress of dealing with many of them. Consequently, such problem users should be viewed as Wikipedia's biggest handicap.

2. Content brings visitors - this is as true for Wikis as it is for networks, as dictated by Metcalfe's law. Of those visitors, a certain number will stay and become contributors. Of those, a certain number of those will stay long enough to become dedicated users.
3. You cannot motivate people on a large scale to write about something they don't want to write about.

   Corollary - Getting people to do things in the real world is difficult. The difficulty increases in proportion to the deviation from normal activities that such work requires.

4. For every one person who knows something about copyright law, there are at least ten who don't, and two who think they do but don't.
5. Over time, contentious articles will grow from edit-war inspiring to eventually reach a compromise that is agreed upon by all the editors who have not departed in exasperation. This equilibrium will inevitably be disturbed by new users who accuse the article of being absurdly one sided and who attempt to rewrite the entire article. This is the cyclical nature of controversial articles.
6. Wikipedia's steadily increasing popularity means that within the next year or two, we will begin to see organized corporate astroturfing campaigns.

   Prediction confirmed, August 28, 2005 (9 months after prediction was made) "One anonymous reader contacted Boingboing telling them he worked at a marketing company that uses Wikipedia for its online marketing strategies. 'That includes planting of viral information in entries, modification of entries to point to new promotional sites or 'leaks' embedded in entries to test diffusion of information. Wikipedia is just a more transparent version of [online meeting place] Myspace as far as some companies are concerned. We love it.'"

7. As time goes on, the rules and informal policies on Wikipedia tend to become less and less plastic and harder and harder to change.
8. Wikipedia has a disproportionately large number of gays, transgendered, and furries. The reason for this has yet to be satisfactorily explained, although it has been suggested by NullC that "all new media are first explored by the minorities and the marginalized".
9. Being on the Arbitration Committee is the most thankless job on Wikipedia. It is absolutely impossible to do it such that people are happy with you. If you are doing a bad job, people complain; if you are doing a good job, people don't notice (or sometimes even then complain). All of your actions are examined under a microscope. People expect you to be the Oracle of all truth - to work miracles no matter how complicated the case, no matter how bad the evidence, no matter how hostile and stubborn the disputants. And of course, there are the accusations of cabalism.
10. For Wikipedia:Requests for adminship: People support on the basis of a good track record with no "bad" incidents. That is, they think someone is a good admin because of a lack of evidence that person is bad. So when asked why they think someone would be good admin, they have nothing specific to point at (merely a lack of bad behavior). On the other hand, when opposing someone, generally they oppose on the basis of one or a small number of incidents which exposed that nominees's judgement as questionable -- that is, they have a small set of incidents which they can point at affirmatively and say "these are why I oppose". As a result, oppose votes are much easier to explain than support votes.
    • Corollary - Because specific incidents constitute evidence against bad behavior, whereas it takes a long track record of good behavior to become an admin, in a given time it is possible to build up far more bad evidence than good evidence. This explains the RFA effect often derided as "people having long memories" - that for a given number of bad incidents, it takes a very long time to build up sufficient good behavior to counterbalance the bad.
      • "It is easy to go down to hell; Night and Day the Gates of Dark Death stand wide; But to climb back up again, to retrace ones steps to the open air, there lies the problem, the difficult task." - Virgil: The Aeneid
11. The people who complain loudest about the Arbitration Committee are the ones who have been sanctioned by the Committee for their misbehavior. By the same token, the users who most zealously advocate changing Wikipedia's rules are the users who refuse to obey the rules as they currently exist.
12. Wikipedia is not a forum for Arbitration. The Arbitration Committee exists to help the encyclopedia, not the other way around. All Arbitration Committee decisions involve some sort of cost-benefit analysis. Users who have a history of improving the encyclopedia can expect more consideration than those who do not.

    sannse's corollary - However, good behaviour does not in itself excuse bad behavior.

13. Raul's Razor - An article is neutral if, after reading it, you cannot tell where the author's sympathies lie. An article is not neutral if, after reading it, you can tell where the author's sympathies lie.
14. Given a communication forum with a sufficiently high concentration of trolls, the trolls will do a superb job of discrediting themselves.

[edit] Laws by others

1. The zeroeth law of Wikipedia - The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work (-Unknown)
2. Silsor's law - the craziness of the editor is directly proportional to the number of adjectives in his/her edit summaries
   • Raul's corollary - It is also proportional to the number of exclamation points and capital letters.
     • Dan's sub-corollary - And to the percent of bold and/or colored text in his talk page comments.
       • RyanGerbil10's observation - No quality edit has ever been summarized IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.
   • David Gerard's corollary - Putting a "Full stop." "At the end of every edit summary." indicates an editor so anal they alphabetise their underwear.
3. Slowking Man's law (Wikipedia's version of Godwin's law) - As a debate over user conduct or article content continues, the probability of one user accusing another of being a deletionist approaches one.
   • Jfdwolff's corollary - The longer an AFD page, the higher the probability that the original poster will be accused of censorship.[1]
   • Dysprosia's law (Alternate version of Godwin's law) - As a debate over anything related to Wikipedia continues, the probability of one user asking for Jimbo Wales's intervention approaches 1.
   • Goatsewin's Law: As the number of edits on a wiki page increases, the probability of a Goa Tse being placed at the top approaches one.
4. Netoholic's law - As a wiki discussion grows longer, the probability of an accusation by one user of another acting unilaterally approaches one. [2]
5. Luigi30's law - Ego is directly proportional to edit count. Once ego becomes too large, it is very easily bruised.

   Bots don't have an ego..... ;)

6. JamesMLane's Futility Principle - In any Wikipedia discussion, the probability that some participant will belligerently threaten to appeal the matter to Jimbo is inversely proportional to the probability that Jimbo would actually intervene in that dispute.
7. Adam Bishop's law - Anytime people organize together to present one POV, it's going to end up badly
8. Essjay's first law - The frequency and fervor of any given user's insistence that a cabal exists is inversely proportional to the likelihood said user would be aware of the cabal if it existed.
9. Essjay's second law - Wikipedia has no right to free speech. The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law..."; we are not Congress, we are the cabal. [3]
10. Essjay's third law - The first person to demand the unilateral desysopping of the admin they are complaining about loses. Always.
11. Kosebamse's law - People of strong opinion are not banned or blocked for promoting strong opinions. Eventually, they are banned or blocked for violating social standards in the attempt to defend their views.
    • Corollary: The exoticness of an idea is inversely correlated to its proponent's respect for social norms.
12. UninvitedCompany's law: Wikipedia's growth is limited by the number of people who are willing to organize facts, check references, research questionable assertions, and deal with community issues. An overwillingness on the community's part to indulge uncivil contributors risks alienating this group. [4]
13. Jacqui's law: the longer a user spends time in polls and/or debates, the more he or she will see each question as a binary of delete or keep.
14. brian0918's law: the larger Wikipedia becomes, the more emphasis will be placed on voting to make decisions.
15. David Gerard's law - On Wikipedia, the reward for a job well done is another three jobs. [5]
16. Mindspillage's law: As the length of an argument on wikipedia-l or foundation-l approaches infinity, the probability of it turning into a language debate approaches 1.
17. Johnleemk's first law: In a dispute, the higher the probability that a user is in the wrong, the higher the probability that that user will take an immediatist stance in said dispute. The reason for this is that users who are in the wrong, whether from a policy or civility standpoint, tend to fear people will figure this out and thus desire to have their suggestions effected immediately.
    • Corollary: As the ratio of one side's immediatism quotient (a measure of immediatism) to the other's immediatism quotient approaches 1, the higher the probability that both sides are in the wrong.
18. Johnleemk's second law: As the number of registered users approaches infinity, the probability of coming across an ignorant editor, troll or someone acting in bad faith approaches 1.
19. Johnleemk's third law: As the amount of policies and guidelines increases, so does the opportunity to game them.
    • Charles Matthews' law: The wikilawyers and trolls always want a codified set of rules on an issue, so they can subvert the spirit while adhering to the letter. [6]
20. Redwolf24's law: The amount of vandalism an article receives is directly proportional to the amount of readers it gets, which is proportional to how fast the vandalism will get reverted. Thus, on pages where vandalism lasts for a long time, the topic isn't a terribly interesting one, and it's often likely no one's viewed the article in between the vandal and the vandal reverted.
21. Lubaf's law: Sanity is in finite supply on Wikipedia; thus, the more contributors exist, the more likely any given user is insane.
22. Rob Church's first law: There is no smoke without fire. There is no cry of unilateralism without an action rooted in common sense.
23. Geogre's law: Any biographical article with a minuscule last name is already in trouble.
24. Extreme Unction's first law: If enough people act independently towards the same goal, the end result is indistinguishable from a conspiracy.
    • Corollary: In any sufficiently large social endeavor, there will always be some subset of people who fail to understand this, and who will see conspiracies and cabals around every corner whenever their views fall into the minority.
    • Corollary: As the number of people who independently conclude that someone is a disruptive jerk increases, the likelihood of that person actually being a positive, constructive contributor who's merely run afoul of the "ruling elite" decreases. Not that there was ever a big chance of that to begin with.
    • Corollary: The people who most need to understand this law and its corollaries never will.
25. Extreme Unction's second law: No matter how patently ludicrous a given proposition may be, any sufficiently large online community will always have at least one person willing to defend that proposition.
    • EWS23's corollary: Similarly, no matter how brilliant or perfect a given proposition may be, at least one person will oppose that proposition.
26. Grammy's law: If a user posts on User talk:Jimbo Wales about a dispute, that is a strong indication that the user in question is a) inexperienced or b) wrong.
    • Corollary: If a user starts coloring his posts in discussions, that is an indication that the user is going to post on User talk:Jimbo Wales soon. (See also James M Lane's principle above).
27. Carbonite's law: The more a given user invokes Assume good faith as a defense, the lower the probability that said user was acting in good faith. (see also: WP:AAGF)
28. Radiant's law: No matter how serious a discussion or how well-founded the arguments, there will always be someone who misses the point and seeks to discount all of it by invoking a one-liner meme in response, such as "instruction creep", "voting is evil" or "adminship is no big deal".
29. NicholasTurnbull's law: As the number of miscreants one successfully deals with as an admin increases into infinity, the probability of an RfC being filed against you approaches 1.

    This is actually a very weak statement. For it not to be true the probability of the n-th miscreant, p(n), taking you to RfC would have to decrease very rapidly (1/n^x for some x>2?) as n increases. This is clearly absurd, so the law holds. But it is very weak. Suggest a rephrasing. Pcb21 Pete 00:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

    I would suggest that, given Metcalfe's law, this can be further refined to say that, the more miscreants one deals with, the more likely these miscreants are to find other miscreants similarly dealt with, and thus the odds of having an RfC filded are somehow related to m(m-1)/2... but I'll leave the finer mathematic points of miscreant networking to someone with more knowhow in the field. JDoorjam Talk 19:15, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

30. Snowspinner's law: All methods of dispute resolution, given time, will trend towards becoming useless or becoming the arbcom.
31. Deckiller's First Law: If treated fairly, some vandals will flock back to Wikipedia and eventually become respected contributors.
    • J.Steinbock's Corollary: Similarly, if treated unfairly, various respected contributors will degrade themselves with vandalish behavior.
32. Deckiller's Second Law: When a series of minor fictional terms or vehicles are merged into a list, the time it will take to evolve from a list to an actual article approaches infinite.
    • Deckiller's own Corollary: It only approaches infinite thanks to Mythology of Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy magic.
33. Alhutch's law: Editing Wikipedia is a privilege, not a right. [7]
34. Demi's law: "There are only two kinds of actions that can be taken on a wiki: those that can be described as unilateral and those that can be described as supporting a cabal."
35. Ryan's law: "All change, no matter how insignificant, unthreatening, or wholly beneficial, will generate controversy from somewhere."
36. Palm dogg's law - According to the WikiProphet, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to write a good NPOV article on Islam. [8]

    HereToHelp's corollary: It is also easier for a needle to pass through the eye of a camel with neither the camel nor animal rights groups complaining than to write a good NPOV article on Islam.

37. Zero and Tony Sidaway's law: The encyclopedia comes first. Always. [9]
38. Rob Church's second law: Some people are only alive because it's against the law to kill them. Some people are only able to edit Wikipedia because it's against the "rules" to block them.
39. Philwelch's Law of Article Quality: All other factors held equal, the greater the notability and encyclopedic merit of a given subject on Wikipedia, the higher quality the related article.
40. Geogre's Law: Wikipedia is not the venue for negotiating ultimate truth nor the secret history of the world. They have Usenet for that.

    Extreme Unction's corollary: Wikipedia is the Second Coming of Usenet.

41. Running a large wiki is like cooking a small fish. Adapted from the Tao by Septentrionalis 20:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
42. Alphax's first law: The longer you know an editor, the more likely it is that they will turn out to be a dick.

    Kbdank71's corollary: The longer you know an editor you like, the more likely it is that they will leave the project for good.

43. Alphax's second law: As the number of banned users increases, the probability that any given troublemaker is a sockpuppet of one of these banned users approaches 1.
44. the wub's first law: The impossible holy grail of Wikipedia policy is a complete definition of common sense. It follows that anything less is flawed by comparison.
45. the wub's second law: Wikipedia is not a democracy, a bureaucracy or an anarchy, but draws elements and characteristics from these and other systems when it benefits the encyclopedia to do so.
46. Bhadani’s First Law: The truth does not depend on a consensus of opinion.
47. HereToHelp's First Law: The probability that any new user with "wheel" or "communism" in their name will be blocked on sight is very close to 1. Whether or not they would turn out to be vandals or priceless contributors is uncorrelated.
48. HereToHelp's Second Law: Albert Einstein said: "The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits." Such, "The difference between a good contributing admin and a vandal is that the admins have their limits."
49. HereToHelp's Third Law: The following things are all inversely related: the probability of someone threatening to complain to Jimbo over a heated issue and the probability of whether they actually do, the probability of them threatening and the the probability that Jimbo will react positively, the probability that Jimbo will react positively and the probability that he will intervene, the probability that a user will threaten to tell Jimbo and the probability that he will intervene, and the probability that a user will not threaten to tell Jimbo about a dispute and the probability that he will intervene. (The probability that any law of Wikipedia will make sense mathematically is 0.)
50. HereTohelp's Fourth Law: The length of time an editor has been around and the amount of contributions to articles they make are inversely proportional.

    Corollary: Articles are grunt work.

51. Noisy's Law: You can tell someone's role by their edit profile: Mainly Wikipedia space - an admin; mainly User or Talk space - an editor; mainly article space - a valuable Wikipedian. What's yours?
52. Septentrionalis's Two Marks of Crankishness:
    • This source must be perfect; it appeared in a peer reviewed journal.
    • This perfect source was rejected because of the Foolander conspiracy against The Theory.

    Really skilled cranks can achieve both of these in the same sentence.

53. Knucmo2's law of Wikipedia - More often than not, for every act of vandalism at Wikipedia, there are at least 3 RC patrollers ready to revert.
54. Knucmo2's second law (in contradiction of Alhutch's law) - editing Wikipedia is neither a privilege, nor a right, but an opportunity. (A privilege is an honour granted by a government or group. No groups or governments on Wikipedia grant this right, as it would be a contradiction of the principle that anyone can edit it (with a computer of course). Nor is it a right, since an editor has no "just claim" or ownership to enact editing upon Wikipedia.)
55. Knucmo2's third law of Wikipedia - Attempts to change POV articles to NPOV invariably result from a different POV.

    Corollary: The Wrong Version

56. Sceptre's law: only admins and vandals ever use policy.
57. Alkivar's law: as the number of users in #wikipedia increases... the closer to #GNAA it becomes
58. Sceptre's second law: If only five bytes have been added to an article in a diff by an IP, it will almost always be the word gay.
59. Knucmo2's fourth law of Wikipedia: Biography pages on Wikipedia tend to receive most contributions from either their greatest advocates or greatest detractors.
60. Jfdwolff's law: The more attributes (e.g. bold, capitals, italics) used to post a trivial factoid in an article, the less likely that it is notable
61. Ellywa's law : Ellywa's law is a varation on Murphy's law. It states that when a wikipedia page has existed long enough, a new page will appear with the same subject, but under a different name.
62. Aquilina's Carnot law: as any contentious article cycles through the four states: (low cruft, low POV) --isothermal expansion--> (high cruft, low POV) --increasing temperature--> (high cruft, high POV) --mass pruning--> (low cruft, high POV) --mass voting and citing--> (low cruft, low POV), it generates enough heat to sustain several edit wars, and may also do a small amount of work on the surrounding encyclopaedia
63. DragonflySixtyseven's law - Vandalizing Wikipedia is like masturbating. It feels good to you, but not to anybody else, and it results in a sudden spurt of useless information that needs to be cleaned up.
64. Sceptre's abuse law: If a user gets a valid block for longer than the policy guideline, the blocking admin will be accused of admin abuse. Will (^E_@) T 12:28, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
65. Loom91's First Law: (contradicting Bhadani's First Law) All attempts to determine the Truth instead of the NPOV are predestined to be complete failures for the simple reason that the Truth is a construct of the mind and as such necessarily subjective. Loom91 12:24, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

    Corrollery: What must pass for Truth in Wikipedia is determined by consensus. Loom91 12:24, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

66. Users who cite "Wikipedia is not a democracy" when the consensus is overwhelmingly against their POV are usually doing so because they have no better argument. Kevin Baas^talk 20:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
67. ^demon's Website Law: The number of vandals on an article referring to a website is directly proportional to the website's Alexa ranking.
    • ^demon's corollary - The lower the Alexa rating, the more POV the website article will be.
68. Tearlach's Law. The narrower the topic range of articles edited, the more likely that editor to be a problem user. Tearlach 12:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
69. Josen's Law: People called Willy shoud not use that as their username ON WHEELS!
70. Alphax's third law: Articles on fictional subjects should include as much detail about the real-world aspects as possible, and make a clear distinction between fact and fiction.

    Corollary: The amount of detail on the real-world aspects is inversely proportional to the average age of the fanbase, and directly proportional to the age of the subject. [ælfəks] 06:51, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

71. Kitia's law: Micronations rule!
72. Deckiller's law of Fictional Miniarticle Lists: There is always a 90 percent chance that a fan will dump his cruft into a related list. There is always a 100 percent chance that a fan will dump his cruft into a two sentence article if there is no list. CONCLUSION: Take the list over the 150 miniarticles.
73. Kizor's hopelessly vague law lament: Maintaining good content is at least as difficult as creating good content. --Kizor 12:24, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
    1. That's not vague at all; it's absolutely correct.--HereToHelp 22:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
74. Ikiroid's law—as the amount of communication and process between administrators and everyone else decreases, the chance of a cabal's existence approaches 1.--The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 20:34, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
75. GangstaEB's law---Even though it isn't all that hard to become an administrator, you are still in a very powerful spot. GangstaEB (sliding logs~dive logs) 12:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
76. GangstaEB's second law---(Prediction) In the next 3 years, Wikipedia will be a MySpace. Only Exo-pedians will keep it going as an encyclopedia. GangstaEB (sliding logs~dive logs) 16:45, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
77. Mailer Diablo's Second Law - The Wikipedians who cast the votes decide nothing. The sysop/'crat who count the votes decide everything. (adapted from Stalin).
78. Deckiller's self-discovered law of over editing: When a user pushed more than four articles to featured status in a three week period, the user will become ten times more rude, snappy, and frank about matters.
79. Mailer Diablo's Third Law - Probability of an editor gaining adminship is inversely proportional to probability of landing in ArbCom as a defandant, provided that an editor is not already an admin.
80. Extreme Unction's Third Law - Problematic users will drive good users away from Wikipedia far more often than good users will drive away problematic ones.
81. JDG's First Law - There are Waves or Generations of Wikipedia Editors, with a Generation time exactly equal to the human gestation period.
82. JDG's First and a Half Law - The earliest Generation of Wikipedians (that is, the Wales/Essjay Cabal) is the most likely to insist on new content being "encyclopedic", despite the fact that Wikipedia ceased being an Encyclopedia, and became an entity with no descriptor, by the time of the Third Generation. _{The closest English descriptor is "Megacompendium".}
83. Bachmann's Law: Trolls are the driving force of Wikipedia. The worst trolls often spur the best editors into creating a brilliant article with watertight references where without the trollish ecapades we would only have a brief stub [10]
84. Voice of All's law: the level of the subjectivety of any debate regarding the inclusion of an article or image is inversely proportional to the extent of it's informative nature. See also: User:Voice of All/Sexual image concerns
85. Teke's law: The participation turnout for an Article for Deletion is often proportional to the amount of edit-warring in said article.
86. Extreme Unction's Fourth Law - Any article, or edit to an article, which is accompanied by the exhortation "PLEASE DON'T DELETE THIS!" (or similar phrasing) almost certainly needs to be deleted as soon as you can hit the delete button.
87. Slowking Man's second law - As the time between the last edit to an article and the last edit to the article's Talk page increases, the more likely the article is to be filled with cruft, spam, and other unencyclopedic information.
88. Andjam's fifth law of bad faith: A user asking for a photo to accompany Harlequin type ichthyosis is more likely to be a fan of Ogrish.com than an expert in congenital disorders. (For previous laws, see Andjam/Andjam's laws)
89. OpenToppedBus's first law: Over time, the average quality of Wikipedia articles rises, but Wikipedians' standards rise more quickly. Thus, a three-paragraph article on a minor topic, which two years ago might have been considered perfectly adequate, is likely today to be marked as a stub, even if it has now expanded to five paragraphs with a photo and references.

    Corollary: The higher the standards that Wikipedia aims for, the more that Wikipedia will appear sub-standard to the outside world.

90. Common sense is surprisingly uncommon.
91. Archer's Adage: People who name laws, axioms, and principles after themselves are pompous asses.
92. (Nevertheless,) Outriggr's first law: as the encyclopedic value of the topic of a Featured Article Candidate approaches Zero, the probability of its defender saying "your objection is not actionable" approaches One.
93. Cnriaczoy42's Assumpition : If God didn't like Wikipedia, he would have nominated it for delition.
    1. HereToHelp's corollary: If God didn't like typos, he would have nominated them for "delition".
94. The Bread's law - The more you hate a user, the more likely you are to come in contact with them

[edit] Raul's Brick 'O Common Sense

The rarest, most sought after award on Wikipedia is Raul's Brick of Common Sense. It's like the Nobel Prize of Wikipedia Dynamics.

Awarded to	Comment(s) deserving of recognition
Calton	00:56, December 29, 2005 01:01, December 29, 2005 06:10, December 29, 2005	Trying to impart common sense into the clueless is a tough job, one which you do particularly well. As such, you get the very first of Raul's common sense bricks.
Radiant!	January 27, 2006	For imparting common sense into the clueless, I hearby award you this very rare wiki-award: Raul's brick of common sense.
Charles Matthews	February 11, 2006	"Regarding your [mailing list comment] - I'm giving you a double-rare award. First, I am giving you your own entry in Raul's laws - one I wish desperately I had thought of. I'm also giving you only the third-ever of Raul's Bricks of Common sense, for the same."
1/2 to Mikkalai and 1/2 67.20.18.127	18:15, March 29, 2006 and 19:37, March 29, 2006	For a biting deconstruction of the logical shell game used to support parapsychology
JzG	May 18, 2006	For a clear explanation to a vandal how the allocation of power works here
Bishonen	May 21, 2006	A mighty reply to a fairwell message
Zoe	20:50, July 15, 2006 20:13, July 16, 2006 20:40, July 16, 2006	For biting commentary on the Village pump