Wikipedia:Oops Defense

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.

Shortcuts

The Oops Defense is sometimes, if rarely, used by administrators or users to try to escape from a particularly unsavory situation. Since this page is very helpful and straightforward, we will now give some examples.

Example 1

For example, let's say you're an over-stressed and very enthusiastic administrator on-the-hunt for vandals. Ah ha! There's one now, removing a perfectly good paragraph from the Jesus article. Being the expert hunter you are, you pounce on the prey, rip its head off with a 31-block and then drain its blood with the infamous Indef-Block proposal. You tilt back your head and bay at the moon and then engage in a deep chortling laughter at the menace you've just single-handedly destroyed.

The next morning the sun rises on a beautiful day. You're full of joy and charge onto your Wiki-account where you are greeted by: "The person you blocked was not deleting the paragraph. If you check the article history, they were moving it from one section to another."

You of course are crestfallen, you're dismayed, shocked, saddened, and heart-broken. There is only one possible exit. Yes, the great Oops Defense.

Example 2

User:1 is working on article a and removes a completely logical, notable, and even verifiable contribution that User:2 has made. They then follow up with a long statement on the talk page, pouring their guts out about how they are sick and tired of the excessive original research in many edits that don't adhere to verifiability and several other policy violations that some users slap on to their personal Wikipedia article about a (can anyone say WP:OWN?) only to realize that, once they are done writing their dramatic post on the talk page, the other editor has undone the revision and posted some darn good references. So great, that even User:1 has to admit that they feel enlightened and better educated about the subject of the article. User:1 would thus benefit from the use of an Oops Defense.

Example 3

You have a username that causes a frequently used template to break. Make that several frequently used templates. And the number is growing. But you've had this username for years and are NOT interested in changing it. So, after hours of studying WikiCode you determine that a specific clause in a specific sub-template is to blame for all of your troubles and that all you have to do is replace that clause with another, much older, much more respected bit of code and voilà, template works. So, you post a request to make that change and a week and half later, having seen no objections, you follow through with it. You leave Wikipedia for the afternoon feeling very pleased with yourself. Only later do you learn that while the template may have worked for you, it's now broken for everybody else. At times like this there is but one option available to you: Oops! (Note the blue links, hint hint.)

Example 4

The page keeps changing, even after I make changes, and they aren't all the changes I made. (Pause). Found IRC, talked with more "editors", still my page keeps changing... Why does my page keep changing? Admin: "Even if you stop editing your page it may be changed." (Lock/GL) Please remove my lock... NVM created another account. Still my page keeps changing. Admin: "You haven't learned lock yet." (Lock/Delete) Why won't you let me say what I want? Admin: "This is an encyclopedia, not an ad service for your opinions." (Delete/Lock/Delete) etc... etc... etc... This is what helpers deal with every day. Thank them as often as you can when they help you.

Example 5

You stumbled upon an article. The article is a Class B, just on the verge of being a good article. On the talk page, people are saying that they only need one more picture to make the article a good article. So, you google a picture of A from a site that looks kind of "shady" to you. (As in, a site that looks like a Pandora's box of trojans, worms, and other computer viruses waiting to open and destroy [insert popular site's name here] as we know it). You uploaded the picture to Wikipedia anyway. Little did you know, the site is owned and operated by none other than the Willy on Wheels! The picture contains an insidious virus! Upon downloading, the virus shuts down Wikipedia. Well done!... I mean Oops!

Example 6

You are monitoring Recent Changes and you come across an article with an edit summary reading, "Blanked the Page." As a good editor, you quickly go to that page to revert the edit. However, the almighty ClueBot NG has already gotten there, a split second before you did. You revert the CBNG edit without intending to. The page is a featured article, and just as you realize your mistake, your computer crashes. Oops!

Example 7

You are again monitoring Special:RecentChanges using Twinkle this time. You find an edit that replaces vandalism with lesser vandalism. The vandalising IPs look very similar, so you use the rollback [VANDAL] option. As soon as you realise your mistake, you have been blocked. Oops!

Example 8

You are patrolling the Special:NewPagesFeed, and you stumble upon a blatant advertisement. You immediately slap a CSD on it, and you patiently wait for it to be deleted. A few minutes later, the CSD mysteriously vanishes. You ponder upon it, checking the edit history, and, infuriatingly, the editor who made the article removed it himself, claiming that he could 'make it better'. Before you have time to revert his edit, however, another editor does it for you, and you go back to editing somewhere else. You check on it about 15 minutes later, and it seems that a mini edit war has taken place in your absence. You sigh, then put a message on the talk page telling the creator to address his complaint there. You drift off into another article.

You check on it again, after another half-hour, and the creator hasn't replied back on the talk page. You do find, however, that on the CSD template, a message pops up telling you that someone has placed a message on the talk page that should be considered before deleting. You are immensely confused, as there is not....oh. Your message. You face-palm, cursing yourself as you realize that the admin deleting it will detour to the talk page, wasting their time with your message, and you quickly bury yourself in a WikiProject, hoping that no one sees it. Oops!

Example 9

You find an edit war occurring on a talk page, with the main antagonist being a user you have never met before. You decide to make an attempt at restoring sanity among the arguers by ruthlessly combatting the antagonist. They persist in their argument. The two of you continue to bicker, unaware that you have now become the life and soul of the edit war. After a few minutes of this, you suddenly realize that the antagonist was actually right in their statements (only, you didn't realize this, as they persisted in writing in a language you were not very familiar with), and, before you can apologize, you have been blocked. Oops!

Example 10

You have asked an administrator for rollback rights, and they will begin evaluating your contributions. To impress them you decide to do a lot more edits on reverting vandalism. An IP address pops up with a tag saying blanking. You check and see that they got rid of some information, and to you it looks unconstructive. You undo it, leading to a mini edit war. You have given about 3 warnings and all but before you decide to give the 4th one you ask why they are acting like this and if you have done something wrong. You check the history of the page and see that their original edit was removing info that wasn't even mentioned in the source, and now the administrator has started looking into your contributions. Oops!

User-Created Examples

Please feel free to add your own example here. However, if it is not at least slightly humorous, you will be immediately indefinitely blocked, fired, expelled, and banished to a very small, desert island in the middle of a huge ocean of shit. Which will soon flood the island due to Global Warming.

Example 11: Use the Oops! Defense whenever the D'oh! Excuse is inappropriate (which is always, since the D'oh! Excuse makes you look stupid,) for example, whenever you direct somebody to a link which has nothing to do with the subject at hand. Oops!
Example 12: Use the D'oh! Defense whenever the Oops Excuse is inappropriate (only regarding spelling errors, which make you look stupid,) for example, when you direct somebody to a link with a spelling error. D'oh!
Example 13: You're patrolling the Recent Changes list, when you see a username that's incredibly long and gibberish. You then go to the talk page of this user, pulling up Twinkle so that you can post a single-use warning for usernames. You post this warning, only to find that, not only has CluebotNG posted a vandalism revert warning on their talk page, but the user has been blocked for their name. Oops!
Example 14: You stumble upon a United States related article and see that the usage of "U.S." in the article is not compatible with MOS:US. You decide it's a good idea to change all the U.S.'s in the article to US's, not aware of the raging shitstorm of endless debates that has been going on for over a decade on this topic (don't worry, there's more where that came from). It's also likely there's another discussion about it in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style or Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). As a result, you accidentally start the 10th Crusade between manual of style advocates, resulting in the destruction of human civilization. Oops!
Example 15: You confirm that the user whom you just blocked for a year for serious violations is guilty of sockpuppetry and create an SPI investigation. The next morning, you find out that the socks were operated by real socks, not the user whom you just blocked. You're saddened at this mishap. Oops!
Example 16: You find an actual advertisement and request it for speedy deletion. The next day, you find that the deletion tag got removed, and most information got either replaced with unbiased and sourced information, or turned out to have independent sources, and not be biased at all. You're very sad at this very mishap. Oops!
Example 17: You find out that real socks aren't alive and therefore can't operate sockpuppets, (cf. Example 15,) meaning you must redo the 1-year block, but you can't as you're not an admin anymore. Oops!
Example 18: You find a page that neither has enough information, nor a long history. You mark it a substub. You haven't noticed that someone else, in the meantime, added too much information to the page to make it a substub, and you simply forgot to refresh the page. Oops!
Example 19 (This example may or may not be based on a true story.): You, after some time spamming the random page button, find a page that's been clearly refbombed in an attempt to cover up its lack of notability. You nominate it for AfD and leave the debate to others. After a few days, you check your watchlist and see that others have managed to delete irrelevant sources, find reliable sources on the subject, and significantly improve the article. There is a comment left on the AfD chastising the nominator (you) for not even trying to find sources (or lack thereof) to prove lack of notability. You feel very embarrassed about this and want to dig a hole to hide in. Oops!
Example 20: You put so much information into a page that the servers collapsed into a black hole. By making those edits, you committed omnicide. Oops!
Example 21: You clicked on the Random Article button so much you got Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. As you drive to your doctor’s appointment, you hit an innocent bunny! Oops!
Example 22: You argue with a large number of moderators over a tiny addition you want to make, and now you’ve been blocked from editing. You decide to call out these moderators on your talk page, only to realise they were completely right and now you’ve been warned. Oops!
Example 23: You just tried to edit the Oops! Defense page and absolutely obliterated the entire page. Now you have to scramble to fix it! Oops!
Example 24: You're an administrator, and you're bored. So, you click random article to see what edits you can make. Unfortunately, your browser is very slow, so you have to reload. When the reload finishes, you think your browser is fine, but the page is blank! You quickly race to the page history, and revert the previous edit, which was by an IP and unfortunately only seconds ago. You don't even look at the edit summary, which says "Added a heavily referenced paragraph", and those are some real good sources. You march right over to that IP after reverting the edit, and hit it with the indef-block and leave a custom message on their talk page, because the templates are too nice. At that point, you try to block an actual vandal, and find that your administator rights have been removed. OOPS!

Concluding Remarks

If an obviously mean-spirited ~~bitch~~ ~~schmuck~~ editor complains that you've been abusing your admin tools and/or are being too aggressive, you should always follow-up with the great Oops! Defense, then with a vicious counterattack. Apologies are for the weak.