Wikipedia:Assume faith

This is a humorous essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors and is made to be humorous. This page is not 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. This essay isn't meant to be taken seriously.

This page in a nutshell: Unless there is clear evidence to the contrary, assume that your fellow editors do in fact exist and are indeed making edits.

On Wikipedia, users do, indeed, exist, and if they are editing the encyclopedia, you can safely assume that they do in fact exist and are editing the encyclopedia. Although existence may be considered by some to be an implicit requirement for editing, as it is assumed that a person behind an account exists to be communicated with, it is not explicitly required by policy that a user exist in order to edit. It is generally difficult to read and edit Wikipedia if one does not in fact exist, and users editing without existence may fall afoul of other requirements for productive editing that presume the existence of a person making decisions. For this reason, proposed policies to prohibit user non-existence have not gained consensus.

Users should not be presumed to not exist unless it can be demonstrated that they do not in fact exist, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it is generally best to assume faith in their existence. Accusing your fellow editors of non-existence without good cause is detrimental to the collaborative environment necessary to build an encyclopedia, and may in some circumstances constitute a personal attack. Even if users do in fact demonstrably not exist, the nonexistent user should be left alone if their nonexistence is not disrupting the encyclopedia.