Wikipedia:Don't be a dork

Most Wikipedians are nerds. This is a fact, not an insult. The author of this essay is himself a proud nerd. Being a dork, however, is nothing to be proud of. A dork is an annoying nerd. They can disrupt Wikipedia by engaging in contentious disputes over minor, petty issues, usually involving one or both sides engaged in fanboyism.

This happens more frequently than you might think, like over Sony vs. Nintendo, with fanboys on both sides. Trying to "win one for the team," whether it involves POV pushing on the Wii or PlayStation 3, or accusing people of being "Debian activists" on the Swiftfox web site, [1] both sides just end up looking silly. You see this stuff on Microsoft vs. Linux, too.

The justification appears to be fear of Wikipedia being propaganda. However, it's important to note: Propaganda can only have influence if people care. They don't. Most people L33t nerds that are aware of these minor contentious issues are so educated and intelligent that they aren't going to read the article on Wii and suddenly think it has a superior GPU to the PS3 just because Wikipedia says so. In fact, the average person probably didn't research gaming consoles before buying them. On the contrary, the average person probably bought a Wii because it looks shiny and has a TV remote for a controller. And even if most average people did research consoles instead of making impulsive and ignorant purchases, you can't save such people from themselves, since even if you succeed in saving the Wii article, that's not going to stop Sony or Microsoft's marketing teams from funding advertisements that will equally fool these people into foolish purchases.

A while back, the author of this essay got into a vicious argument with User:Sceptre over whether to allow any mention of the firing of Jeff Gerstmann on GameSpot and other related articles. The author argued with Sceptre on this for a while, even reporting him for wikiquette violations. But you know what? He let it go. It's not worth being blocked over.

If you ignore this, even if you think you're stopping "Microsoft's paid team of anti-Firefox propagandists" from vandalizing Wikipedia, you will be blocked for edit-warring. For nerds who collect comic books, here is proof. Both users were blocked from editing the article on John Buscema for 30 days and they could've avoided that fate had they either tried to compromise or let it go. It's not worth being blocked over. You're a nerd. You're smarter than this. You're supposed to be superior to the average user. OMGWTF, D00D!

In conclusion: Don't be a dork. On political, racial, and religious issues, it's nearly impossible to let go of our positions. However, when it comes to things like the above topics, it's not difficult to take a step back and say, "You know. This is silly. I'm not going to edit-war and get blocked over this. I'm going to edit something else." Chances are, someone else will come along in your stead, then both of them will get blocked, in which case you can come back to fix things, nyahahahaha!! *snort*.