User:Voceditenore/A handy guide to fooling Wikipedians about your age

Image of a typical adult
(Don't let this happen to you!)

This page is designed to help you achieve and maintain your chosen age identity as "early adolescence" (regardless of your chronological age). You will no longer need tiresome, high-maintenance user page banners like... This user is 13 years, 4 months, and 3 days old. The oldsters here don't believe 'em anyway. For all they know, you could actually be 53 years, 4 months, and 3 days old, a fate worse than death. The oldsters are like Saint Thomas. They want to see you behaving like a 13 year old. Fortunately, this will be easy to accomplish if you follow the simple guidelines below.

First things first

Whatever you do, do not start off on Wikipedia by writing an article or adding content to one. Get your priorities straight. Start decorating your user pages.

• Firstly and most importantly, add this to your user page:

This user is not a Wikipedia administrator, but would like to be one someday.

• Follow this with installing a nice big edit-counter and make sure you update it every 10 minutes.

• Get yourself a signature that screams Look! at!! ME!!! There are loads of colours and fonts to choose from. Whatever you do, though, do not emulate Mies van der Rohe.

Once you've got your user and user talk pages set up, preferably with lavish use of colour and plentiful icons, you can start on the next important steps to establishing your cred. (No, it's not by writing your first article. Get your priorities straight.)

• Start a "secret page" and an "autograph page". These are valuable additions to Wikipedia, and they have the added bonus that adults (in the broadest sense of the word) think they're silly.
• Award barnstars to anyone who visits them, including yourself.
• Make sure people know about these offers, though. Leave messages about them on the talk pages of everyone you know, and people you don't know too.

Next steps

Typical Wikipedia administrator

It's now time to really get yourself noticed. (No, it's not by writing your first article. Get your priorities straight.)

• Ask every admin you know for two very important awards. No, not this or this. You want Huggle and Rollback. Getting these will really show you've got what it takes. They have the added bonus in that you can misuse them, drive everybody nuts, and get them taken away. You'll also get a lot of visits to your talk page from admins and irate editors muttering about "teenagers".
• Show how well you understand Wikipedia by simultaneously adopting 5 new users, getting 5 new users to adopt you, starting a cabal, and nominating yourself for adminship (one of the most prestigious awards available on Wikipedia). It's important that you do all this as soon as possible after joining Wikipedia. If you wait until you have more experience, people might think you're an adult. Don't let this happen to you!
• Start interacting on Wikipedia talk pages. Participate in as many AfD discussions as you can, and as fast as you can. Speed is important. Aim for opining on the fate of 5 articles on subjects you know nothing about in no more than 6 minutes. This will make a big impression at your own RfA. Participate in loads of other people's RfAs too. But remember, a concise thoughtful contribution in those discussions is anathema. You'll want to liberally pepper the discussion with petulant comments. If at all possible, get into a few flame wars there. This is where your customized signature will really come into its own. People will notice you, and best of all, admins and irate editors will start muttering about "teenagers" again.
• After getting a lot of adults (and adult-like people) to notice you, blank your user pages and slap on one of these. But make sure you leave it there for no longer than 24 hours. You can repeat this process until you have achieved the desired effect.

Mission accomplished

Your work is pretty much complete. Your birth certificate may say you were born in 1948, but Wikipedians are now positive that you're actually one of these....

Typical teenagers

No complacency!

The weapon of choice for new page patrolling

It will be a constant temptation to rest on your laurels at this point. Beware of backsliding, or you'll lose your carefully crafted image.

• If you get tempted to write an article, make sure you plagiarise it from a copyrighted web site and get caught. If anyone reproves you for it, especially an adult (or worse, one of your peers acting in an adult-like fashion), retire again. This will both teach them a lesson and help maintain your chosen age identity.
• Never lose sight of the fact that reverting vandalism is a contest, not a routine task that may occasionally require some thought and the ability to spell.
• The same applies to new page patrolling. Make sure you wait no longer than 2 minutes after a page is created before slapping on a speedy delete tag. Otherwise, someone else might beat you to it. There's an extra bonus for tagging articles on a topic widely familar to educated adults on the grounds that you've never heard of it.
• Make sure that irrelevant personal chat (preferably consisting of context-free one-liners) predominates on your talk page. If a thread about editing an actual article appears, archive it immediately and quickly add more chat. Search your friends' talk pages for ideas.

You can also perform routine maintenance tasks.

• Always spell "editor" and "contributor" as "editer and "contributer".
• Include plenty of profanity in your talk page comments. This one works in a variety of subtle ways. Since adult-like editors rarely swear on talk pages, people will assume that you are trying act like a grown-up but are clueless as to how to go about it, i.e. that you're a kid. Alternatively, it may indicate that you read Catcher in the Rye, but completely missed the point, i.e. that you're a kid. Either way, you win. Note also that having a sense of proportion is strongly associated with adult-like people. Therefore, to maximize the effect of your swearing, focus its use on very minor issues to show how deeply upset you are by them.
• Periodically announce that you're taking a wikibreak because you have to write a "book report". Avoid the use of "term paper". It muddies the waters because college students also write them. "Essay" is no good either. Many of them have been written by people who were notoriously adult, e.g. Francis Bacon, Michel de Montaigne, etc. etc.

Confusions to watch

These words and phrases may look similar, but confusing them can be disastrous for maintaining your chosen age identity.

dramatic creation – a bad thing, creating something like Hamlet or Don Giovanni is normally considered an adult-like activity.

drama creation – a good thing, especially if you can do it simultaneously on several talk pages and in the main theatre.

nuance – a bad thing, avoid nuanced discourse at all costs, it's normally considered an adult-like skill.

nuisance – a good thing, especially if you are perceived as one by adult-like Wikipedians.

wine expert – a bad thing, as it strongly implies you're old enough to buy the stuff.

whine expert – a good thing, especially in response to criticism from adult-like people.

self-aware – a bad thing, normally associated with adult-like behaviour.

self-absorbed – a good thing, remember Wikipedia is all about you.

Beethoven, age 13, another faux teenager

Role Models to avoid

Why? First of all, none of these people even achieved rollbacker status, let alone adminship. Secondly, adults took them seriously. Thus, they were faux teenagers.

• Mozart who composed Symphony No. 10 in G major at 14. Note that Mozart has also let down the side for pre-teens by composing several other symphonies, four piano concertos, and an opera before he was 12.
• Maxim Vengerov who made his international debut as a violinist when he was 13 and gave his first master class at 15.
• William Cullen Bryant who published his first book, a satire on Thomas Jefferson, when he was 13.
• Freddy Adu who made his professional debut in Major League Soccer at the age of 14.
• Blaise Pascal who wrote a major mathematical theorem when he was 16.
• Pablo Picasso who painted this self-portrait when he was 14. Note how disturbingly adult-like it is, not an image you should cultivate.