 | This is anessay oncivility. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one ofWikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not beenthoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: With over 49.8 million Wikipedia editors, expect a wide range of reactions. Thefight-or-flight response is good advice, to beware potential user confrontations. |
This essay,No angry mastodons just madmen, is a March 2009 follow-up to the prior essay ("No angry mastodons"), begun in 2006.[a] Thefight-or-flight response developed by our pre-human ancestors may have helped them escape fromangrymastodons, but it wasn't considered constructive in an online encyclopedia, well at least until millions of people joined. Thesize of Wikipedia has become almost unimaginably vast, with over 7 million articles, more than 49.8 million registered users, and over 6,500people joining every day.
| English articles | 7,079,899 |
|---|---|
| Average revisions | 20.43 |
| Total wiki pages | 64,322,613 |
| Total admins | 828 |
| Total users | 49,860,629 |
| Users per day | 6715 per day, computed hourly (hour as 22). |
| UTC time | 22:13 on 2025-Oct-24 |
The actual size of theEnglish Wikipedia and the user base is as follows:
The count of users is as unique user ids.
In fact, the size of Wikipedia is so vast that it is also impossible to face the numerous troublesome users. Over half the user base (for years) had been teenagers, with no guarantees of maturity level. If only 1 user in 1,000 were trouble, that's still over 49,000 troublesome users. However, Wikipedia's goal is to write the encyclopedia, not provide therapy or "attitude adjustments" formadmen. Trying to arbitrate "peace in the valley" and devote sincere time, with just one person a day, 365 per year, would require almost 137 years of dedicated attention to address thebehavior of each.
Beware potential troublemakers, and decide whether to "fight for justice" or just "flee and live to fight another day".
Some Wikipedia users have become entangled in personal disputes and have spent months in arbitration to settle user conflicts. That can sometimes be avoided: remember, there are over 11 million potential articles (including redlinks), so there may be no need to fight over any particular set of articles. It may be very easy to just drop the conflicts, early, before escalating a confrontation into a situation where someone is wiki-stalking to change every article after it is edited. That level of confrontation typically requires formal arbitration, or else changing wiki-username to disappear back into the masses of other users.
The fight-or-flight response isexactly what must be considered when facing the growing crowd of over 49.8 million other users. Consider how much time you could really afford to deal with endless quarrels.