Wikipedia:Oops Defense

Oops Defense

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 24-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. Follows up with a long statement on the talk page, pouring their guts out about how they are sick and tired of the excessive wp:or in many edits that don't adhere to wp:v and several other wp:POL 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 wp:OOPS

Example 3

You have a username that keeps causing 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 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 voila, 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 to return a few hours later to a snippy little message explaining that while the template may have worked for you, its now broken for everybody else. At times like this there is but one option available to you: Oops.

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 article A. 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 Googled 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 shut down Wikipedia. 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, Clue Bot has already gotten there, a split second before you did. You revert the ClueBot 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.

Example Infinity

(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 a huge pile of shit the middle of nowhere.)

Example (n + 1)

Whenever D'oh! excuse is innappropreate; 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.

Concluding Remarks

If the perp, victim, obviously mean-spirited editor bitches complains that you've been abusing your admin tools and/or are too aggressive, you should always follow-up the great Oops Defense, by the vicious counter-attack. Apologies are for the weak.