Wikipedia:No episcopal threats

"WP:NOGOD" redirects here. For the project dedicated to articles about atheism, see WP:ATHEISM.

Johann Otto von Gemmingen, Prince-Bishop of Augsburg in Bavaria (1591–1598). Aside from being dead for several centuries, he's not going to help you with any disputes on Wikipedia.

When editing Wikipedia, it is inevitable: a change you make gets reverted, a piece of content you've added is contested, or really any mishap involving your contributions happens. In any case, it's of paramount importance that you stay cool, be civil, and conduct yourself properly in order to resolve the issue in the right fashion. Among the ways to bungle this orderly process are by making personal attacks, casting aspersions, and being just tone-deaf to the consensus.

There is one course of action of misconduct that takes the cake from anything else. It is wholly unacceptable on the English Wikipedia (and on Mulberry Street, to think that you'd see it there) to get the bishops involved. For goodness sakes', if the bishops get involved, the world may implode. The apocalypse is liable to start. McDonald's ice cream machines may start functioning properly. Dr. Doofenshmirtz may finally take over the tri-state AREA!!!!!!!

The mere thought of getting the bishops involved is just too much to bear.

List

There are a few ways that bishops may serve as a detriment to Wikipedia when unduly called upon, so in a flagrant middle-finger to Wikipedia:Don't stuff beans up your nose, a list is provided below which details the many ways that getting the bishops involved on Wikipedia can (and will) go wrong.

• Contacting the bishop of a Wikipedia editor who happens to be a member of the clergy, in order to rat them out for nominating your favorite YouTuber's article for deletion. This is like to just make the YouTuber look bad, and will end you up banned from their Twitch chat when they livestream.
• The bishops are called as artillery offences to support an AfD vote. (keep that weird, maybe-notable-if-we-did-a-Google-search article out of sight from the internet-connected anglosphere!)
• A new Keanu Reeves movie has come out, and you've caught your Wikipedia editor-niece editing his page. Disapproving of his violent action franchise, you have enlisted a bishop and their diocese to mediate her activities on-wiki. This is only going to waste the church's time and make your niece hate you.
• Ric Flair has had his umpteenth "final match". Vandals are drawn by the media attention and are vandalising his page. You decide to enlist an eparchy led by a bishop to bless Flair's page. This is not like to actually help any vandalism-combative efforts—this blessing may actually be misdirected at the vandals, and we don't want that. If this happens, even if unintentionally; the user, the bishop and his participating unit will be sentenced to 57 slaps with a wet trout each, and an evening in the village stocks.

No bishops acting as Howitzers, no bishops advocating against violence in film, and no bishops blessing pro wrestlers. For the latter, keep that activity off-wiki.

• Your garage band has somehow qualified for a Wikipedia article. You enlist a group of bishops to create phony redirect after phony redirect in a bid to someday surpass Coldplay's daily pageviews.
• Union busting advocates add fringe theories to your employer's Wikipedia page in order to defame your workers' union. Asking for a legion of padres to intervene in this plight won't solve a thing.
• Invoke a misapplication of Occam's Razor in a discussion about a rouge Admin. This is a contradictory statement, as the list of epithets a rogue Admin may be called is longer the the Mighty Mississipp'. Intervention by a bishop during this point of instability in the space-time continuum may cause the atmosphere to ignite, further proving that Cillian Murphy's Academy Award for Best Actor and Christopher Nolan's Academy Award for Best Director were both well-deserved.
• A Wikipedia editor has decided to create a shrine to Bob Ross on their user page, not realising that the article's infobox image they ripped was not a free-use image. An attempt to gain input from a bishop will be futile, as Reverends are known to consistently fail to grasp the concept of non-free content.
• Dan Povenmire's Wikipedia page is vandalised fixed for the umpteenth time to read that he is the creator of the Minions. If a bishop intervenes, the trouble with the non-believers of Dan Povenmire's magnum opus will be spread all over Facebook, known across the lands as the notorious origin of all Minion memes.

Other direct nuisances

• No bishops acting as meatpuppets of an editor who is on the losing side of a discussion. Deus videt peccata tua (no relation to Hawk Tuah).
• No bishops are to be summoned to weigh in on incidents involving members of their parish at the Administrators' noticeboard. That constitutes a conflict of interest.
• No bishops are to register on Wikipedia for the sole purpose of removing white spaces at the end of paragraphs in articles.
• No bishops are to aid POV-pushers on articles such as Jesus cloth and Freddy's. They must not especially go near the article for the place with the steakburgers.
• No bishops are to act as snipers, especially from atop the Reichstag.
• No bishops (of the clergy or chess) are allowed to tilt the reception rection for DC Studios' latest film to unduly reflect opinions held by disenfranchised fans of the SnyderVerse.
• No bishops may attempt to copyedit each section of Ohio's Wikipedia page so it reads each word from right-to-left.
• No bishops may use the magic word {{!}} to escape a vertical bar character "|" in wikitext markup, in any article which was created on the date Friday the 13th of any year.

Cautionary note

St Nicholas preferring the argument of force to the force of argument

The story of St Nicholas punching Arius' lights out at the First Council of Nicaea is generally thought to be apocryphal and may not be used as precedent.

See also

• The thread at ANI that inspired the creation of this essay

External links

• "The Bishop" (Monty Python sketch)