I recently ran across this little gem:
QUOTE
The editor is just out of their yet another topic ban and back home to pattern of WP:DE. While in topic ban the editor did not produce any significant contribution to the project. The editor disregards civility and engaged in slow motion WP:EW denying WP:Consensus and WP:BRD as appropriate WP:DR procedure, which might appear as WP:GAMING. The disruption which spells WP:IDHT is across multiple articles in I/P topic area ...
Sub-cultures such as criminal gangs develop their own argot to foil snooping by legitimate authorities. I am less interested in the topic the original post concerns (
here, if you must) than the use of these extreme forms of this "thieves' cant" on Wikipedia.
Is this:
- Signalling -- demonstrating that one is a member of the elite? or
- Exclusionary coding -- deliberately trying to exclude interlopers? or
- Misdirection -- saying one thing but implying another (e.g. the difference between actual consensus and "WP:CONSENSUS")? or
- something else altogether, or a combination of the above?
It really is hilarious. Perhaps those who dip into the Talk pages on Wikipedia more frequently are less surprised by this.
Trying to ban other editors, which this is blatantly attempting to do, should be the fast track to getting banned. Fair is fair. But, unfortunately, the community is quite like a mob with pitchforks, quite ready to ban, so it relishes any opportunity presented.
Yeah, POV-pusher (any expert is a POV-pusher if they tell you what they think).
EW, Edit warrior (reverted me and my friends when we reverted him)
SPA, COI (experts are frequently narrowly focused and are often employed in their field)
DE, Disruptive editing (disagrees with me and my friends and edits accordingly)
IDHT, "I didn't hear that" (disagrees with me and my friends)
ArbComm values short requests, so there is a motive to use the acronyms to speedily make piles of accusations. Evidence? Often not required at AE. What will happen is that a pile of admins will look at the behavior alleged, and if it looks bad to even one of them, the editor is toast. Defense is regarded as proof of disruption. Why doesn't the editor go and edit nice obscure articles on coal mines or cotton fields?
I saw this with many editors, and tried to do something about it, before they finally came for me. They didn't like anyone doing something about it.
I suspect it's a combination of signalling and exclusionary coding. People, especially wannabee admins, will go out of their way to post gobbledygook like this where it will be seen by others, to demonstrate their wikirudition. Demonstrating a clear working knowledge of wikijargon is essential to any bid for adminship, and is widely regarded as increasing the weight of one's statements (even if this isn't actually the case).
Wikijargon, especially when being used to refer to behavior, is generally used to conceal meaning: either to mask that a statement has no meaning at all, or to mask the meaning of the statement from the uninitiated. The above statement could have been made with hyperlinked plain language (e.g. using [[edit war|WP:EW]] instead of [[WP:EW]]), and been just as effective (in fact, more so) in communicating its meaning. I suspect that the main reason was to intimidate, with a subreason of demonstrating that the speaker is a bona fide Wikimunchkin and thus can be taken on face value.
I think most Wikipediots internalize the shortcuts as proxies for whatever concept the shortcut stands for; the shortcut is the "best mental handle" they have for whatever concept is being discussed. In some cases (notably, WP:CONSENSUS) the shortcut enables equivocation, as well, but I don't see that going on in this instance specifically.