User:BrainyBroad

January 29, 2006

My Wikipedia experience is pretty much over. I dabbled around here for several months, amassing thousands of edits (not that edit counts should matter, but just to show I spent hour upon hour here). No more.

Where it all went wrong
Responding to a plea for help to clear up a massive backlog, I worked on stub sorting. After much work, the entire category (at least 30 pages worth) was depopulated. But then I noticed dozens more articles being added daily. That's when I saw how self-defeating the Wikipedia experiment is. In short, Wikipedia encourages the addition of garbage, with no premium placed on constructive additions. "Anyone can edit" – including those with no demonstrable knowledge of proper English, or an interest in following Wikipedia conventions.

Too much trouble to properly categorize your new article? We have people who exist solely to clean up after lazy slobs like you--categorizing, formatting, and fixing your typos, all for the good of the cause. (All Hail Jimbo! Amen.)

Too lazy to write more than a single sentence sub-stub, with no intention of ever fleshing the article out? That's okay, that's a valid "contribution". And while we're at it, here's your gold star for managing not to stab yourself with your safety scissors.

A look on the bright side
DYK surfing. Highlight the best new articles. Hundreds of new "articles" daily. But are they non-stubs? No. Are they interesting? Hardly, unless you like reading the description of a generic high school in BFE. At best, after a couple of hours of sorting through articles, I found maybe 3 or 4 that were worthy of DYK status.

Deletions
Unfortunately for the health of the project, there's one type of clean-up activity that is frowned upon, and that is nominating articles for deletion. I used to surf around Wikipedia via the random article button. And boy did I find crap. Stuff that should not be allowed to appear on monitors if Wikipedia is to be taken seriously. But nominating articles for deletion will get you beat up faster than walking through Watts carrying a Confederate flag.

If you don't like this article, clean it up instead of deleting it. Screw you. I don't give a @#$*&! about Antipodean Butt Lickers (band). Just because a 10 year-old (or a 43 year-old living in Mommy's basement) thinks they're important doesn't mean I have to. The burden of proof should be on the article's creator, but sadly that is very rarely so.

Recent activity as a "vandal"
a.k.a. How Vandal Fighting is the Only Useful Activity at Wikipedia

I stopped signing in because the "you've got new message(s)" banner brought nothing but grief. Any edits I've made recently have been done anonymously. And, after a grand total of 4 innocuous edits (that I would have had no problem making while signed in), my IP address got hit with a "cease and desist being a vandal" warning. Not even a nice, preliminary "your test worked, please don't do it again" notice. I looked up the person who sent me the notice (noting that the coward did not bother to sign it) and found a user page that actually solicits compliments, presumably for being a "vandal fighter." And the sad thing is that, in the Wikipedia universe, fighting vandals is the easiest and fastest way to win copious praise and administrator status. Writing good quality content is waaaaay down on the list of admired activities around here, and is, in fact, totally negligible to the Wikipedia experience.

Future
I plan to continue abstaining from logging in, except to check my watchlist. I regrettably did contribute some articles to Wikipedia. I now wish I could remove them totally from the database, but my sole recourse is to monitor them to ensure they remain credible.