Revision 243824 of "Don't be dense" on testwiki

{{essay|specifiedcategory=Essays related to Wikimedia}}

'''Don't be dense'''. If people abided by this, other policies would flow naturally and be intuitive.

When you've been proven wrong, give it up.  Don't get your back up and continue arguing, get another line of argument or concede.  

"Don't be dense" is the basic underlying message of every editorial and meta-policy in a social space. All rules are an attempt to define the boundaries of density.

Although there is a vast amount of space on the Wikimedia servers, it is still insufficient to provide a detailed accounting of density and its various flavours (stupidity, obstinacy, [[Don't be a dick|dickery]], utter lunacy).

The nature of density is such that the dense are rarely aware of their density, and so it is probably more helpful, albeit more frustrating, to explain the specific problem to a dense user rather than simply citing this policy and assuming they'll figure it out. Unfortunately there is an imperfect but strongly positive correlation between certitude and density. Thus even when density is pointed out to the dense, their natural assumption is that they are right and you just don't get it.

Remember: "Assume good faith" is a nicer restatement of [[wikipedia:Hanlon's razor|"Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice."]] Try not to be stupid either.

"Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain."  (Schiller) 

[[Category:Community]]