 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it 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 page in a nutshell: The Wikimedia Foundation outranks you. Period. |
On complex, community-oriented websites like the WMF projects, power users are accustomed to many social perks. They receive respect and honor from other members. Their knowledge of the technology wins them accolades and thanks from less adept users. Their knowledge of the community's standards and its Byzantine bureaucratic procedures results in them winning most disputes and easily avoiding lost causes. From the perspective of some of the less collegial ones, participation in the community can be largely a series of ego-stroking and self-esteem-enhancing interactions with lesser beings, punctuated by the occasional struggle among power users to identify their places in the community's dominance hierarchy. Eventually, many power users decide that they are entitled to this preferential treatment.
Narcissistic injury is the emotional damage that these power users incur when they discover, as they inevitably do, that their top place in the community's social hierarchy does not actually mean that they are in control of the website. The inescapable fact is that you don't own Wikipedia: the Wikimedia Foundation outranks the community.
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