Wookieepedia:Don't seek power

As Wookieepedia grows in publicity and usership, people continue to make obvious, unsubtle, and generally un-classy attempts to get what they perceive as a promotion or a status symbol.

This thinking is inherently wrong and stupid.

Having rollback, being an administrator, or joining the Inquisitorius or Agricorps is not a privilege. It's a responsibility. It's an unpaid part-time job.

And getting one of those positions isn't like getting a cookie. It is the result of the community recognizing your readiness to accept greater responsibilities, based on your efforts to maintain and improve the quality of Wookieepedia. The quality of Wookieepedia as an encyclopedia, not as MyWookieeSpace.

In short: you don't seek power on Wookieepedia, power seeks you.

Here's a short list of rules for getting ahead:
 * 1) If you ask for an elected position, you're not going to get it. There was a time when that kind of behavior could fly, and it ended around 2006.
 * 2) If you try to promote yourself by deprecating others, it won't work. You'll turn people against you and possibly end up banned.
 * 3) If you're already an admin at another site, WE DON'T CARE. In fact, depending on which site you're an admin on, it may make Wookieepedians prejudge you as immature and/or dumb. If you've ever been prominently associated with other low-quality wikis, then unless you're spectacularly productive and well behaved here, you'll be better off doing your best to keep that fact a secret for as long as possible. You may want to start a whole new account, even if that means you have to wait a year.
 * 4) If you try to produce a large quantity of edits without being particularly concerned about quality, this won't win you any points, and eventually people may get so fed up with your crap output that you'll get banned. This is also called the "Nebulax Rule."
 * 5) Even if you're an established or semi-established user, don't try to fight change. As Admiral Ackbar might say, a wise man swims with the tide. Unless you really, passionately believe that the direction something is headed is very wrong, and you feel secure enough in your current position to do something about it, learn to live with the fact that change is the only constant in the Wookieeverse. Fighting for the status quo just because it is the status quo, or because you fear change, can ruin you. This is also called the "Other Nebulax Rule."
 * 6) If someone calls you out on the quality of your edits / uploads / what-have-you, don't whine. Improve your output or leave. This is also called the "JustinGann Rule."
 * 7) If you've been around a while but have few contributions, your "tenure" won't do you any good.
 * 8) If your combined total of edits in the User:, User talk:, and Forum: namespaces outnumbers your total edits in just the main content namespace (or possibly also the File: namespace if you've established yourself as an uploading or categorizing machine), you're not ready for any elected position.
 * 9) If you've ever done anything to get permabanned under another name, it will eventually get out, and you will probably be run out of town on a rail. You don't get a second chance to make a first impression. That's just life.
 * 10) Flouncers never win. Unless they own obscure crap that generally doesn't even exist in America. This is also called the "Jaymach Rule."
 * 11) Playing politics can get you shunned and blackballed much more quickly and easily than it can get you promoted, particularly if you work with outside groups. WP:NOT 2.3 is a rule to live and die by.
 * 12) If you're in regular communication or are otherwise connected with anyone who breaks any of the above rules, you may be disqualified by association.
 * 13) If you blame racism / sexism / ageism / cronyism / any other -ism for your failure to advance, you've just disqualified yourself.
 * 14) If you think think there's any higher authority than the Wookieepedia administration that you can appeal to to be unbanned from Wookieepedia or IRC, you will never be an admin. Admins don't whine to mommy.
 * 15) If you're the kind of person who whines about being bullied by the administration, whines about "selective enforcement" of the rules, whines about conspiracies against you, you will NEVER get ahead in the world, let alone on Wookieepedia. Even if you ARE being pushed around, deal with it. In the 80s, we didn't call it bullying, we called it "life." Amazingly, people were less messed up then than they are now. Society fails when people stop building character and start building excuses.
 * 16) If you think any of these guidelines are "unfair" and you say so before getting elected, you've disqualified yourself. I didn't make the rules, they evolved on their own.

People think Wookieepedia is a democratic community, or worse, a socialist one. These are both wrong. Wookieepedia is a meritocracy. Do not assume that everyone is equal. Do not assume that everyone deserves respect. Do not assume that anyone is entitled to anything. If you ass-u-me any of these things, it will make "me" laugh my "ass" off at "u."