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This is a humorous essay.
It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors and is made to be humorous. This page is not 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 essay isn't meant to be taken seriously. |
 | This page in a nutshell: If you tell people not to do something, your advice may backfire and instead tempt them to do it. In fact, they might have not even thought of doing it until you told them not to do it. See also WP:NEEDTOKNOW for a more in-depth presentation of this maxim. |
As an old story goes:
The little boy's mother was going off to the market. She worried about her son, who was always up to some mischief. She sternly admonished him, "Be good. Don't get into trouble. Don't eat all the chocolate. Don't spill all the milk. Don't throw stones at the cow. Don't fall down the well." The boy had done all of these things on previous market days. Hoping to head off new trouble, she added, "And don't stuff beans up your nose!" This was a new idea for the boy, who promptly tried it out.
In our zeal to head off others' unwise actions, we may put forth ideas they have not entertained before. It may be wise not to caution against such possibilities. Prophylactic admonition may trigger novel mischief. As the popular saying goes, "don't give 'em any ideas". In other words, don't give examples of how to cause disruption (e.g., don't go to this link or you will crash Wikipedia) because this may will actually tempt people to do it.[Note 1] So, the boy's mother could have considered saying the following instead:
Keep your nose clean![Note 2]
Throughout the 19 years this essay has existed, it has adopted a different meaning than the above text suggests. There are many areas of the encyclopedia that rely on, or benefit from, some level of security through obscurity, such as WP:SPI. For this reason — citing this essay — details of cases and abuse mitigation are often left undiscussed on-wiki. An essay explaining this more in-depth is Wikipedia:There's a reason you don't know.
