User:SMcCandlish/Logs/FMC vs. OWN

I'm starting a log of cases of mistaking "first major contributor" guidelines – MOS:FMC, MOS:ENGVAR (specifically MOS:RETAIN), MOS:DATEVAR, and WP:CITEVAR – as excuses to WP:OWN articles, sections, style, or entire topic areas, to WP:BITE new editors, and to defy WP:CONLEVEL policy. As far as I can tell, these are the only four places in all of WP that seem to some users to create WP:VESTED editors. In reality they do not; they are nothing more than descriptions of what to do when consensus cannot otherwise be reached: Default to what was done (note the past tense) by the first major contributor. Not out of deference, but simply as an arbitrary cut-off point. But it is broadly being mistaken for deference, tenure, and control. The silliest of these misperceptions is that the first major contributor has continuing and extended "say" over an article. The most confused of these misperceptions is that consensus cannot overturn what the first major contributor originally did (even though all four of these guidelines say otherwise). And the most dangerous of these misperceptions is that such retention-by-default generalizes to a "whichever editors have spent more time on an page have more voting rights over its content, style, and scope than anyone else" set of special "first-class editor" entitlements. None of these weird assumptions are true at all, but these mistakes are being propagated and compounded, and will continue to be, until something is done about the language in these guidelines.

Why "FMC fetishism" is wrong: Every single article (etc.) on WP equally "belongs" to all editors; everyone may edit whatever topics interest them at any given moment, whatever their inspiration for doing so, and others editors do not have any magical right to deny others the ability to edit "their" topics.

I have more examples of this in a text file somewhere, but should just start logging it on-wiki so others can contribute to the list (feel free to do so), and build a strong enough case to revise this wording significantly.

• Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, August 2015: Mistaking MOS:RETAIN, MOS:DATERET, etc., as an excuse to denigrate participation at pre-existing articles by incoming editors: [1] [2]