 | 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: Focus on improving content, and not on trying to police other editors' harmless actions outside of mainspace. |
Wikipedia ultimately exists for our readers. The prime responsibility of the editing community is to make our content useful and interesting for those readers, not to fuss over things that readers never see and do not care about. To some extent, editing is a serious business, one that calls for a certain amount of professionalism.
But being an editor is also being a part of a community. And unless your username ends in something like "WMF", editing Wikipedia is your hobby. It's not your job. One of the main features of a hobby is that you do it for your own enjoyment. If it's not enjoyable, it's not a hobby any more. You will stop doing it, if not immediately, then just as soon as the habit of doing it wears off. And it will inevitably wear off if you're no longer enjoying the effort it takes to do it. Wikipedia loses an editor each day that happens.
Unfortunately, some editors become self-appointed Fun Police. They spend little time creating or improving content, and instead devote themselves to tidying up things that are invisible to readers, trying to impose order where it's not needed, disdaining anything that they don't think is funny, and enforcing rules for rules' sake. They may mean well, but they are actually engaging in a kind of disruptive conduct.
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