Editing Don't delete the main page

{{short description|Humorous Wikipedia essay}}
{{Humorous essay|WP:DDMP|WP:IDIOT}}
{{nutshell|There are jokes, and then there are "oh, hell no" situations.}}
[[File:Bomba atomica.gif|thumb|200px|[http://movie-sounds.org/war-movie-sound-clips/sound-clips-from-dr-strangelove-1964/as-you-know-the-premier-loves-surprises Just the fact that you ''can'' push the button doesn't mean you ''should''.] ]]

[[Wikipedia:Village stocks#Maxim for the "Doesn't do anything anyway" award|One admin]] was discussing the '''deletion of the [[Main Page|main page]]''' in [[WP:IRC|IRC]] and asked if the technical ability to delete pages with over 5,000 revisions, like the main page, had ever been re-enabled. Another admin (jokingly) commented that he had tested it and found that the main page still couldn't be deleted. The first admin thought he would test it for himself. The main page got deleted.<ref>[[Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive363#I deleted the Main Page|"I deleted the Main Page"]]. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive363. Retrieved 21 February 2010.</ref>{{efn|This was not, by a long stretch, the first time the Main Page was deleted. See its {{URL|1=https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=Main+Page&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&subtype=delete|2=deletion log entry.}} Some resulted from the involved administrators' accounts being compromised. For example, the deletion as of 05:08, December 8, 2007 – which resulted in a {{URL|1=https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=&user=&page=User%3AEye_of_the_Mind%40enwiki&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&hide_tag_log=1&hide_thanks_log=1|2=desysopping}} – was apparently the account being used by a relative after the admin failed to log off, and the incident as of May 7, 2007 was the result of a password hack.}}

You might think you are having a laugh, but sometimes, the joke is missed. If you find yourself having to say "jokes do not come across well here", you are best off having avoided the joke in the first place.

In other words, do not even joke about causing disruption – someone may miss that it was meant in humor or sarcasm and act on it.

== Historical context ==
As honored in the [[Wikipedia:Village stocks#Maxim for the "Doesn't do anything anyway" award|village stocks]], this succeeds the admin who [[Wikipedia:Village stocks#Scientizzle for the Baby and Bathwater award|locked the servers for half an hour by deleting]] the [[WP:SAND|Sandbox]], necessitating the [[WP:BIGDELETE|restriction of deletions for pages with over 5,000 edits]].  It is followed by the editor who [[Wikipedia:Village stocks#east718 and Betacommand for the "It seemed like a good idea at the time..." award|used a bot to add 1,200 useless edits to the Main Page]], hoping to bring it up to the 5000-edit level where it would not be deletable. Fortunately, the English Wikipedia Main Page now enjoys a ''[[sui generis]]'' immunity to deletion in the software.<ref>[http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2008-February/089554.html Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages] Tim Starling, WikiEN-l Mailing List, February 4, 2008.</ref><ref>[https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/source/mediawiki-config/browse/master/wmf-config/CommonSettings.php;14aaa8d1fa8401ddb52f7e248bdc816fa1a2aa91$1829-1845 The code that implements the protection]</ref>

== See also ==
[[File:Try to delete the main page.png|450px|thumb|Following this incident, the vulnerability was addressed. If a person tries now, they ''should'' receive the message shown above: "you can't delete or move the main page." This is '''not''' an excuse to try to delete the Main Page. It might work! (We mean the deletion might work{{mdashb}}not the excuse.)]]
* <span class="plainlinks">[{{fullurl:Special:Log|page=Main_Page}} Main Page log]</span>
* [[Wikipedia:Silly things/Template:Uw-delmain1]]
* [[Wikipedia:Don't stuff beans up your nose]]
* [[Wikipedia:Bad Idea Machine]]
* [[Wikipedia:Village stocks]] – other very bad ideas that have been tried
* [[Wikipedia:April fools/April Fools' Day 2004/Delete the main page]]

==Notes==
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== References ==
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{{Main Page topics|state=collapsed}}
[[Category:Wikipedia essays]]
[[Category:Main Page]]
[[Category:Wikipedia deletion]]