User:Raul654/Raul's laws

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It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it 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.

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Raul's Laws of Wikipedia

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.

Counterpoint - Content may be overseen by a core group but contributed by a larger, more anonymous set.[1]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'"
As time goes on, the rules and informal policies on Wikipedia tend to become less and less plastic and harder and harder to change.
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".
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.
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 of 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
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.
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.
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.
Given a communication forum with a sufficiently high concentration of trolls, the trolls will do a superb job of discrediting themselves.
The cabalness of a user is directly proportional to the number of private Wiki{p/m}edia mailing lists (s)he is subscribed to.

Wikipedia law of complaints: "The volunteer secretary at my first church used to receive a lot of complaints about things; the bulletin print was too small, too large, too fancy, too plain, the church newsletter came on Tuesday and was thrown out because Tuesday is 'junk mail day' and it was overlooked, the new letterhead was too white, too ivory, too expensive. Then, one day, I heard her tell a member: 'Please feel free to tell me everything you don't like about things. Do, however, be prepared for the fact that doing so will make it your job; if you don't like the way I do it, you can do it. Now, what was it that was the problem?'" - Sent to Raul654 by a user who shall remain anonymous

Laws by others

0. The zeroeth law of Wikipedia - The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work.

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.
    - Anon's sub-sub-corollary - And also proportional to the number of characters in his/her signature.
    - 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.
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.[2]
  - Daniel's sub-corollary - In addition, the longer an AFD page, the higher the probability that the article in question will be kept.
    - Zginder's sub-sub-corollary The longer the AFD lasts the higher the probability that the article in question will be kept.
- 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.
Netoholic's law - As a wiki discussion grows longer, the probability of an accusation by one user of another acting unilaterally approaches one. [3]
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..... ;)
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.
Adam Bishop's law - Anytime people organize together to present one POV, it's going to end up badly
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.
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. [4]
Essjay's third law - The first person to demand the unilateral desysopping of the admin they are complaining about loses. Always.
Dino's Corollary: Unless the first person to demand the unilateral desysopping of the admin they are complaining about is named Jimmy Wales. Then the admin loses. Always.

llywrch's observation - No matter how clued or respected a user is, mistakes can recoil causing that user great damage. It's always best to 'fess up to your mistakes and take your lumps as soon as possible.
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.
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. [5]
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.
brian0918's law: the larger Wikipedia becomes, the more emphasis will be placed on voting to make decisions.
David Gerard's law - On Wikipedia, the reward for a job well done is another three jobs. [6]
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.
SigPig's Godwinized Corollary: Once the language debate has commenced, the odds are 2ⁿ:1 (where n is the number of comments currently entered in the debate) that a user will accuse another user of linguistic imperialism.
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.
I thought immediatism was measured by immedi-chlorians...--Here T oHelp 13:32, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
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.
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. [7]
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 vandalism and the revert.
Lubaf's law: Sanity is in finite supply on Wikipedia; thus, the more contributors exist, the more likely any given user is insane.
- Chrisd87's corollary: The sum total of the sanity on wikipedia is approximately constant; the population is growing.
Rob Church's first law: There is no smoke without fire. There is no cry of unilateralism without an action rooted in common sense.
Geogre's law: Any biographical article with a minuscule last name is already in trouble.
- Kwsn's Corollary: more so if the first letter of the last name isn't capitalized.
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.
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.
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).
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)
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".
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. JDoorj a m Talk 19:15, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Snowspinner's law: All methods of dispute resolution, given time, will trend towards becoming useless or becoming the arbcom.
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.
Deckiller's Second Law: The amount of fancruft articles on Wikipedia is equal to the amount of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.
Alhutch's law: Editing Wikipedia is a privilege, not a right. [8]
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."
Ryan's law: "All change, no matter how insignificant, unthreatening, or wholly beneficial, will generate controversy from somewhere."
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. [9]
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.
Zero and Tony Sidaway's law: The encyclopedia comes first. Always. [10]
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.
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.
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.
Running a large wiki is like cooking a small fish. Adapted from the Tao by Septentrionalis 20:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
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.
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.
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.
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.
the wub's third law: Respect for others is more important than respect for the rules.
Bhadani’s First Law: The truth does not depend on a consensus of opinion.
Corrollery: Truth without consensus is opinion, unless you're an all knowing god or Jimbo Wales. Dkriegls 08:03, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
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.
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."
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.)
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.
HereToHelp's Fifth Law: Wikipedia users have way too much time on their hands...they just don't spend most of it writing articles.
HereToHelp's Sixth Law: Because Wikipedia attracts fanboys then experts on "traditional" subjects, general, important articles are worse off then cruft articles that meet notability.
HereToHelp's Seventh Law: You can tell whether an addition is worth keeping by whether it contains the second person.
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?
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.
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.
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.)
Knucmo2's third law of Wikipedia - Attempts to change POV articles to NPOV invariably result from a different POV.
Corollary: The Wrong Version
Sceptre's law: only admins and vandals ever use policy.
Alkivar's law: as the number of users in #wikipedia increases... the closer to #GNAA it becomes
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.
Knucmo2's fourth law of Wikipedia: Biography pages on Wikipedia tend to receive most contributions from either their greatest advocates or greatest detractors.
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
Ellywa's law : Ellywa's law is a variation 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.
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
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.
Durova's corrolary: by this definition all vandals are male.
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)
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)
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)
^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.
Tearlach's First 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)
Tearlach's Second Law. The quality of articles on regional politics is inversely proportional to the number of local editors editing from IP addresses. Tearlach 21:06, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
Josen's Law: People called Willy should not use that as their username ON WHEELS!
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)
Kitia's law: Micronations rule!
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.
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)
That's not vague at all; it's absolutely correct. Many of us deal with that on a daily basis.--Here T oHelp 22:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
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)
GangstaEB's law---Even though it isn't all that hard to become an administrator, you are still in a very powerful spot. Gang sta EB (sliding logs~dive logs) 12:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
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. Gang sta EB (sliding logs~dive logs) 16:45, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
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).
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.
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.
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.
Corollary: Straightforward vandals are excepted. Good users drive those away all the time and give each other high-fives.
JDG's First Law - There are Waves or Generations of Wikipedia Editors, with a Generation time exactly equal to the human gestation period.
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".}
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 [11]
Sagredo's Corollary: The ability of an editor is proportional to the degree to which the editor has been trolled.
Voice of All's law: the level of the subjectivity 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
Teke's law: The participation turnout for an Article for Deletion is often proportional to the amount of edit-warring in said article.
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.
Luigi30's Corollary: If an AFD comment is titled Don't delete, this law also applies. Luigi30 (Taλk) 13:15, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

JFW's corollary: The same for speedy keep (unless it's the first vote because the nominator is mistaken)
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.
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)
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.
Common sense is surprisingly uncommon.
Archer's Adage: People who name laws, axioms, and principles after themselves are pompous asses.
(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.
Cnriaczoy42's Assumption : If God didn't like Wikipedia, he would have nominated it for deletion.
HereToHelp's corollary: If God didn't like typos, he would have nominated them for "delition".
SigPig's Observation: God did nominate typos for "delition", but could not achieve "concensus".
The Bread's law - The more you hate a user, the more likely you are to come in contact with them
Titoxd's laws:
- First law: No matter what you do, someone out there, somewhere, will hate it.
- Second law: If the person who hates it is not called Jimbo or Brion, then it probably wasn't as bad.
- Third law: Telling others how to stop wasting their time is a good way to waste yours.
Durova's first law: any editor who makes an assertion that is simultaneously wrong on three or more levels is a person who is immune to reason.
Durova's second law: armchair conspiracy theorizing is easy, quick, and pleasant; actual gumshoe work is difficult, slow, and painful. Therefore, within a pool of volunteer labor, crank theorists will always outnumber genuine detectives.
Durova's third law: the greater the quantity of crank theorists, the harder it becomes for a genuine detective to get a fair hearing when one cracks a complex case.
Durova's fourth law: small organizations run on relationships. Formal policies emerge when the organization becomes too large to operate on that basis. Policies continue to grow in both quantity and complexity in proportion to organizational growth until the policies no longer work, at which point the policies remain in place while the organization reverts to running on relationships.
Durova's fifth law: given problem A and potential solution B (where B is flawed and has met with repeated rejection), if an editor proposes a new solution C which bears superficial similarity to B but eliminates B's pitfalls then 35% or more of respondants will mistake C for B and reject it on sight.
Humus sapiens' first law: Attempts to refute a conspiracy theory become part of the plot.
Humus sapiens' second law: Radical users tend to radicalize others and polarize the atmosphere.
Mailer Diablo's Forth Law : Thou who seek office to the degree with an agenda, shall be inversely proportional to one's success.
RobertG's Wikipedian Grammar. Irregular verb: I am contributing in agreement with consensus, you are soapboxing in favour of a point of view with which I disagree, he/she is disrupting Wikipedia to make a point.
i4's Law of Frequency: The number of entries a contributor makes & the willingness of that contributor to return and add more work is directly proportional to the Arcane Index,(AI=O x N). (Arcane Index = Obscurity of the subject x Number of linkages to a current event in the news.) The number of other subject entries, after a rise in the Arcane Index, will follow a Bell Curve that is inversely proportional to the number of users who view the Arcane Indexed entry as a result of it's prominence in the public's awareness. The inverse proportionality will climb as the number of users viewing the entry increases and fade as the subject matter of the entry fades from public awareness.
i4's Law of Frequency Corollary #1: The total number of posts will rise proportionate to the number of edits as the originating contributor attempts to defend and edit additions or subtractions from the entry and begin a hyperbolic downward curve as the contributor's "Patience With Fools", (PWF) evaporates. {Still working on the PWF formula}

i4's Law of Frequency Corollary #2: The number of contributions will decrease as the originating contributor finds an increase in the number of edits that differ from the originating contributor's knowledge base and slowly increase in direct proportion to the number of people the originating contributor forgets disagreed with his/her knowledge.
Durova's sixth law: a problem editor who really deserves to be banned will demonstrate the need for banning conclusively at the end of an arbitration or investigation.
Durova's seventh law: one of the most difficult things to demand of a person is that they do the right thing when the right thing is unpleasant and the person's actions will probably be interpreted in bad faith. This is the standard expectation that problem users have of administrators.
Durova's eighth law: the real stakes of Wikipedia disputes seldom amount to much.
Durova's ninth law: judicious humor is invaluable.
Picaroon's first law: The length of a thread relating to an interpersonal dispute on the administrator's noticeboard is inversely proportional to the likelihood something useful is going to be said.
Picaroon's second law: There isn't any point in debating the legitimacy of an otherwise sound action just because it's illegitimate.
LordAmeth's Koan: As in reality, so in Wikipedia.
Corollary: Those who seek to obscure the Truth in reality, as well as those to whom the Truth has been obscured, shall perpetuate such obfuscation on Wikipedia.

Corollary: The educated and informed shall always be greatly outnumbered by those who are not.
J.S.'s first law: The first editor to throw a user conduct policy at another is likely to be the one who would benefit the most from reading it.
J.S.'s second law: Show me an admin who has never been called a nazi and I'll show you an admin who is not doing their job.
Aervanath's Meta-Law on Raul's Laws: As the number of laws increases, the probability of some moron making a law about Raul's Laws approaces unity.
Fyslee's first law: "Collaboration trumps all other policies." ..elaborated here.
Wikitruth's law: "If you tell Wikipedians to trim some fingernails, the nature of the Wikipedia environment is that someone will start chopping off hands. And after you go 'Hey, slow down, Tex, that's gone too far', they'll switch to just chopping off fingers and everyone's happy at the compromise." [12]
wizardrydragon's first law of Wikipedia: In a dispute between developers and anyone else about features, the developer always wins.
- Essjay's exception: Where "anyone else" = Jimbo Wales, the developer never wins. (Same where "Anyone else" = The Board of Trustees.)
Ohnoitsjamie's Law of External Links: The more vociferous and lengthy a user's argument that an external link they've added belongs in an article, the less likely is it that it actually belongs. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 00:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
JoeSmack's first, second and third law of major contributions: reliable sources, reliable sources, reliable sources! JoeSmack ^Talk 17:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
SigPig's Postulate: The truth is out there...but has been speedy deleted (G1).
SigPig's Definition: A List is a priceless resource for researchers and casual users alike: an ordered, itemized collection of related data of tremendous encyclopaedic value, which amplifies and expands each item in the list with insightful information, and complements the information in related articles in a manner that cannot be achieved through the use of the lowly Category.
Exception: Unless it's about a subject I have no interest in, in which case it's cruft.
Carptrash's Law #1. If you see someone write "the fact is, the truth is, in reality, obviously, in the final analysis, I know, everyone knows, common sense will tell you, always, actually, everyone agrees, of course, clearly, without a doubt, correct me if I'm wrong, certainly, it can't be argued, unquestionably, according to unbiased observers", or "technically", then you are about to read that person's opinion.
HereToHelp's corollary: If you instead see a phrase that denotes an opinion, the fact is, you will still find an opinion.--Here T oHelp 11:53, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Jreferee's corollary: If their statement contains three or more adverbs ending in -ly (e.g. obviously, actually, clearly, certainly, unquestionably, technically), then you are about to read that person's biased opinion.
Carptrash's Law #2: The more #1 Hits on Google an editor gets the better s/he feels and the less likely the articles are to be of universal interest.
Arritt's First Axiom: Any complaint that includes reference to "censorship" or similar wording can safely be disregarded.
Arritt's Second Axiom: Any complaint that includes reference to "admin abuse" or similar wording should be taken seriously, as it is likely to provide evidence that an admin is indeed being abused.
Scepia's Law: As The Number Of Capitalized Words Increases, The Frequency Of Grammatical Errors Decreases.
Carptrash's Tangent: Unless the posting is ALL in capitols, in which case grammar usually flies out the window.

User:HereToHelp's corollary: Capitals affect only grammar, not spelling. Something can be written in sentence case and still be misspelled.--Here T oHelp 01:03, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Durova's tenth law: A significant proportion of the sneaky vandals who eventually get caught bring themselves to the attention of Wikipedia's sysops by either making frivolous allegations against a productive editor or by overreacting to a legitimate request for investigation.
Durova's eleventh law: An unknown number of sneaky vandals continue to subvert Wikipedia because they keep a low profile.
Durova's twelfth law: Vandals attack Wikipedia for three reasons: for kicks, for ideology, or for profit. Only the first of those reasons is easy to dissuade.
Gracenotes' observation: If someone contributes a lot, but his/her usere page has never grown beyond a redirect page or page with little or no text, it is more likely that this account is not their first.
Durova's thirteenth law: Editor X has a strong ideology and comes to Wikipedia to promote it, sidestepping various policies along the way. Editors Y and Z object, so Editor X presumes Y and Z are conspirators for the opposing ideology. When Y and Z point to X's policy violations, X wikilawyers to accuse Y and Z of similar policy violations. Run any ideology through that grinder and it produces the same sausage.
Durova's fourteenth law: An editor who uses logical fallacies habitually will continue to use them even when the result is counterproductive. If someone else takes the time to identify specific instances and link to the relevant fallacies' latin names, the pseudologician will generate a countercharge of fallacious reasoning and the countercharge will satisfy the definitions of both tu quoque and proof by assertion.
Durova's fifteenth law: All the obvious methods to manipulate Wikipedia content have already been tried. The seductive thing about them is that sometimes they appear to work, but only just long enough to become major embarrassments for their perpetrators when their edits become generally known.
Yamamoto Ichiro's law: More obscene/obvious vandalism such as "wikipedia sucks", page blanking or adding vulgar images are reverted faster than the vandalism of something less obvious, such as inserting "[Insert a common name] was here" vandalism. The rate which less obvious vandalism gets reverted is proportional to the page's popularity, amount of RC patrols/editors who could potentially reconize the vandalism, and the obscureness of the vandalism.
Bhadani's Second Law: When a building is on fire, a leader will not survey everyone to see what the consensus is about a response. It is time for action.
Deckiller's Third Law: The quality of a Featured Article Candidate's prose is inversely proportional to the quality of the referencing.
Corollary: Except in the situations where reviewers don't treat FAC like RfA.
Deckiller's Fourth Law: The amount of redundancies in an article is directly proportional to the amount of time the article's writer spends in law classes.
dkriegls' First Law: The number of personal attacks made by an editor is inversely correlated to the number of reference used to defend their position.
dkriegls' Second Law: The number of personal attacks made by an editor is positively correlated to the number of useless quotes provided to defend their position.
ConMan's First Law of AfD: When an article falls flat on its face with regards to all possible standards in the appropriate notability guideline and gets nominated for deletion, that's when its creator will shout "but it's only a guideline!"
ConMan's Second Law of AfD: 95% of the time, if a comment in an AFD is prefixed with "Do Not Delete" rather than "Keep", it can be safely ignored.
Sceptre's fourth law: The amount of complaints an administrator gets is directly proportional to the quality of the job they are doing.
Haemo's Principle: The introduction of trivia into articles commences a circular process. Trivia expands to become trivia sections, which become trivia articles, which become AfD's about trivia articles, which end with merging the original trivia back into the article. Process repeats ad inf.
Sceptre's fifth law: (a variant of Godwin's Law) - As any discussion of any social science lengthens, the probability of an editor accusing another of being "nationalist" becomes one. If this happens, the accuser automatically loses the argument.
MariusM's law: Any newbie who is using the word "sockpuppet" is a sockpuppet.
Amarkov's first law: Those who most vehemently insist on following a rule are the most likely to ignore that rule when it contradicts their opinion.
Amarkov's second law: The number of complaints that one is not a sockpuppet is directly proportional to the probability that one is in fact a sockpuppet.
Amarkov's third law: No comment is so direct that it will not be misquoted out of context to support a stupid opinion. -Amarkov moo! 01:11, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Woodrow Wilson's law: I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:45, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Gizza's first law: Those who believe that WP:NPOV refers to equal respect towards all verifiable perspectives are Wikipedians. Those who think that NPOV means equal coverage of all verifiable perspectives are trolls.
Zeibura's law: Any page listed on Special:Newpages accompanied by an edit summary which begins with "Created page with '{{hangon}}..." can be safely deleted.
Andy's Law reads: There is greater than 50% probability that I am a bigger jerk than any other user who I think is a jerk.
Talshiarr's first observation (derived from Murphy's law): Those who can complain, eventually will.
Corollary: Those who haven't complained yet merely haven't read or contributed enough to find something to complain about.
Gizza's second law: It takes two (or more) to edit war.
Picaroon's contradiction: You sure about that?
Seraphimblade's law: The more talk-page posts containing profanity an admin has on his or her talk page, the better of a job that admin is doing. Bonus points if any posts are in ALL CAPS or bolded. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 07:54, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Kizor's Corollary: Excepting posts made by that admin.

Kwsn's Corollary: userpage vandalism counts too.
Kwsn's law: half the time that something gets deleted under WP:CRYSTAL, it comes back. Kwsn^(Ni!) 14:28, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Seraphimblade's corollary: That means half of what's deleted by WP:CRYSTAL never actually materializes. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:00, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Kizor's law of humility: Better an editor who's often wrong and knows it than an editor who's very seldom wrong and knows it.
Anchoress's law: By the time it becomes obvious to the general editing population that an individual editor's wagon is careening towards the gulch, all attempts to head them off at the pass will merely serve to hasten their departure.
Eye's first law of AfD debate: the less notable the article, the more ferociously it will be defended by its creator.
Corollary: As the notability of a subject approaches zero, the likelihood of Google-hits being cited as proof of notability approaches one.
Eye's second law of AfD debate: the less well-sourced the article, the more linkspam it contains.
Corollary: As the number of reliable sources in an article approaches zero, the likelihood of it containing external links to Bebo and MySpace approaches one.
szyslak's first law: If one editor quotes a policy page, and another editor counters by quoting elsewhere from the same policy page, chances are that one or both editors is engaging in wikilawyering.
szyslak's second law: Any time a section titled "Criticism" begins with the word "Some", chances are the article is not feature quality.
Kmarinas86's First motion of Law^iki - An article will remain at its current length unless acted upon by stress is applied over its area.
Kmarinas86's Second motion of Law^iki - The amount of stress applied over an article's area is proportional to the number of sections and the severity of edits there in.
Kmarinas86's Third motion of Law^iki - The positive stress on the article is equal to, but opposite of, the negative stress on its editors.
Kmarinas86's Archwiki principle - Any article will encounter progress equal to, but in an opposite sense, to the weight of important subjects it displaces.
Kmarinas86's Eye amapeersecond In^g-Law^iki - The stress applied to each unit area of the article as a result of the peer review process is proprotional to the product of the nominator's diligence and the diligence of the reviewer(s) and the sum of enlightments the each recieves from one another.
Kmarinas86's Law of Toll - It is logical to invalidate an event by invalidating its effects, but it is illogical to invalidate an event by invalidating its causes.
Omniferous's Law of Deep Thought- One who is willing to read enough of the rules so as to reach this far on the list must have, in some part of them, an urge to conform and therefore obey the rules, seeing as they wish for a better understanding of the mechanics of this community.
Ben's Revolting Realization - everyone who comes across Raul's laws eventually adds one of their own.
Mathmo's contradiction: I have not added one of my own.... oh.... oops!
Avi's first rule: In the mind of each and every editor there exists an equal and opposite opposing cabal.
szyslak's third law: If you accuse a large group of editors of "improper reverts", odds are you're the one making unhelpful reverts.
szyslak's fourth law: If an accusation of "vandalism" is misspelled, typed in all capitals or defined as "removeing true informatoin!!!!!!", the truth value of said accusation approaches zero.
Durova's umpteenth law: WP:AGF has one legitimate exception. When writing any site policy, guideline, or procedure assume the worst faith imaginable in as many permutations as possible. Whatever it is, once the thing becomes official the wikilawyers will search for loopholes.
- Kwsn's corollary: Said wikilawyers will exploit said loopholes until someone gets hurt.
Kizor's Law of Roulette: Once an article becomes controversial, that article is condemned and survives only until it can be hammered enough to give.
Corollary: Wikipedia's coverage on nonessential topics depends on what their opponents have not bothered to destroy yet.
szyslak's fifth law: In any discussion on WP:AN or WP:ANI about how someone is an evil/abusive/corrupt/immoral sysop, the odds that the admin in question is indeed evil, abusive, corrupt or immoral are about 1 in 100,000.
Bfigura's Law of Lost Causes: Arguing with a user who thinks Wikipedia would be better off if it didn't have policies is a hopeless endeavor. The best solution is to wait for the onset of: Please be a giant dick, so we can ban you.
TKD's Law of Speedy Deletion: All other things equal, the probability that a new page is speedily deletable is proportional to the number of first- and second-person pronouns and imperative sentences.
Phoenix 15's law: all rules and guidelines add up to this; Respect!
Pharos's Law of Caveats: Given sufficient research, it is impossible to make an unqualified statement on any subject.
Pharos's Law of Geocities: Given a POV of arbitrary craziness, there will always be at least one website found purporting to represent an "international society" supporting such a POV.
I do not exist's First Law: Articles concerning some particular minority will be closely watched by said minority, to ensure conformance with the public image the minority wishes to present.
I do not exist's Second Law: Members of a minority, who are nonetheless able to remain objective with respect to the minority, do not edit articles relating thereto.
I do not exist's Third Law: Every minority will claim immunity for its articles, categories, userboxes and user categories, invariably claiming, should the need to include such content be questioned, that the user who did so is obviously an agent of the oppressive majority.
Jehochman's First Epigram: A troll's job is being dickish in novel ways.
Jehochman's Second Epigram: Children are miniature trolls.
Obligatory Calvin and Hobbes quote: "A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day."
Corollary: Assumptions that a person or group is not worth respectful treatment are strongly self-fulfilling.

Second corollary: A polite explanation is often what separates a seemingly arbitrary action from a well-reasoned one. One consisting only of an [[WP:ACRONYM]] or "cruft" often feels like a slap to the face. Both doubly so when talking to casual anons, rather than WP geeks.
Amarkov's Fourth Law: The probability of Wikidrama increasing further is directly proportional to the amount of Wikidrama already existing.
Coren's first law: The probability of an article being spam or advocacy is exponentially proportional to the author's conviction of its topic's importance.
- Corollary: The most egregious spam and advocacy will be the most vigorously defended.
  - Amarkov's extension: In general, vigor of defense is inversely correlated to the probability that the thing being defended is good. -Amarkov moo! 00:15, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

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	Reason
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 hereby 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 farewell message
Zoe	20:50, July 15, 2006 20:13, July 16, 2006 20:40, July 16, 2006	For biting commentary on the Village pump
David Gerard	February 21, 2007	For drawing insightful parallels to past situations (15:14, 21 February 2007 . . David Gerard (Talk - contribs - block) (Protected Wikipedia:Pedophiles: um, no. The pedophile wheel war is not meant to be an annual derby. [edit=sysop:move=sysop])
Chairboy	14:30, 5 June 2007