User:172
From Academic Kids
Thanks to everyone for the really nice comments on my talk page over the past few months... I still cannot imagine returning as a regular contributor until some major changes are seen on Wikipedia. But do expect me to make occasional edits to fix problems that would probably go unchecked otherwise. 172 13:37, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
Also, I might be online for the next few days, tying up some loose ends on some Cold War-related articles. (I have written one article since leaving as a regular contributor (George F. Kennan, and I am feeling the urge to write just one more (a rewrite of Cold War). 172 07:55, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
March 2005
I am an historian specializing in international political economy, which allowed me to work on a diverse range of time and place on this site. I was a Wikipedia contributor from late 2002 to February 2005, and an administrator from May 2003 to February 2005.
Over the past couple of years, I was using a pseudonymous account, and the name I was using in my Wikipedia email account was not my own. Given Wikipedia's sketchy reputation in some circles, I wanted to avoid any possible negative consequences in the "real world"; and I did not want the less-than-friendly environment on Wikipedia to come back to haunt me off-line. Unfortunately, when the community knows you as 'just a number,' you don't tend to be treated so well.
I will no longer contribute to Wikipedia. The project is no longer workable. There are no signs of Wikipedia developing an authoritative public review process. The absence of one fosters a total disregard for expertise in this community; whether or not you are taken seriously depends not on the merit of your work but rather how many friends you have made with the users who dominate the mailing list, IRC, and the administrative pages.
Instead, we have a dispute resolution process fetishizing increasingly rigid (and idiosyncratic) community norms and customs without reference to who's writing encyclopedic material and who's not. As a result, far too much power and status is given to people who are frankly nothing more than trolls, as long as they're good at gaming the system. The admins are increasingly obsessive of process, disregarding the public credibility of the project. Far too many seem to get off on "patrolling" conflicts between other users that they do not understand, an aspect of Wikipedia that is poisoning the atmosphere.
Thus, in recent months I was spending more time dealing with users with no intention of writing encyclopedic content, who were spending many hours a day feeding off conflict between other users or were dumping sheer nonsense in as many articles as possible. I no longer have the patience to deal with this. I will return, however, if there are any changes allowing me to become a more efficacious user in the future.
172 14:44, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Users I will miss (incomplete list-- just the names I can think of at the moment):
AndyL, A. Shetsen, Cecropia, Danny, El C, Everyking, Improv, IZAK, JamesMLane, Jiang, John Kenney, Jtdirl, Mikkalai, Mydogategodshat, Mirv, Piotrus, Radicalsubsersive, RK, Rd232, Slrubenstein, Stirling Newberry, Tannin, TDC, Viajero
