Wikipedia:No get out of jail free cards
 | This is an essay on the Blocking policy. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article or a Wikipedia policy, as it has not been reviewed by the community. |
 | This page in a nutshell: There are no 'get out of jail free' cards on Wikipedia. Being an established user or an admin does not exempt you from investigation. |
In the game of Monopoly, one of the cards that you can get by landing on 'Chance' or 'Community Chest' is 'Get out of jail free'. This does exactly what it says on the tin: if you are sent to jail in the game, you can use the card to 'escape' immediately and without having to choose between paying the $50 cost to be freed, rolling doubles during your turn in order to be freed, or be freed after spending your next three turns in jail (as mandated by the official rules).
There are no automatic 'let-out' clauses like this on Wikipedia. Your tenure, experience, number of edits, areas of contributions, creations of high-quality articles, or granted user permissions — are completely irrelevant. Just because:
- You are an established editor
- You have created/helped to create FAs, GAs, or FLs
- You are a recent changes/new-page patroller
- You are an administrator
- You are a bot operator or developer
- You are a functionary or a current sitting member of the Arbitration Committee
does not mean that you are exempt from blocks, having your conduct discussed at WP:ANI, having a request for arbitration opened about you, or being subject to editing restrictions, bans, or other sanctions and repercussions.
A prompt apology and recognition of any failures, mistakes, and lack of appropriate care or judgment can certainly mitigate an incident – especially if what happened was a genuine mistake on your part. However, there is ultimately nothing at all that will grant you with complete immunity from being sanctioned like anybody else. As stated within many of Wikipedia's various policy and guideline pages: by principle, you should be treated exactly the same as any other editor who engages in the same behavior or conduct, violations of Wikipedia policies, or disruptive editing that you did.