User:Dmetric

The "D" stands for "Detroit" and the "metric" for the metric system.

My final log-in was November 12, 2008. GFDL still applies to articles I started and images I uploaded. They're all out of my hands now. I had no problem with what I wrote being reworded by someone else, or expanded or updated. But to have something I wrote just be deleted with a dishonest edit summary by someone who arrogantly acts as if Wikipedia was his own property to do with as he pleases, that is a different matter. That is an attitude held by some users who've been granted a lot of power on this site; they can duckspeak a WP: rule when it's violated by someone else but engage the doubletalk when they themselves break that rule.

I wish I could count on my contributions to continue to be improved upon after my final log-in, but if they just stagnate that would be just as well. Just because I don't now, nor have I, ever claimed ownership, doesn't mean that I ever intentionally wrote anything that was false or incorrect. Quite the contrary, everything I wrote was true and correct at the time I wrote it, and whatever little detail may be technically false can probably be corrected by the addition or removal of a single word. At first I didn't give citations, but citations can be found easily enough at a library. On my last two days I was very sloppy on citations, but I'm confident they can be cleaned up to any citation format easily enough. There certainly remain many things which I wrote and were true but will become false in the future and will thus need to be updated.

But I can't worry about that anymore; looking back it's amazing that I was able to devote as much time as I did: a few edits each month, which is not a lot by some standards, but it is a lot for my schedule. Though I did devote a lot of time my last two days, hoping to remember all the loose ends. I think I got a good 99% of the loose ends. Come next year I won't be able to devote any time to Wikipedia whatsoever. I might still read Wikipedia once in a blue moon for something trivial which is neither life-critical nor job-critical. But for the life-critical and/or the job-critical, there is the library.

It is one thing to be treated with indifference and quite another to be treated like a vandal, a criminal. When you do something expecting nothing in return, you literally expect "nothing" in return. You don't expect praise, prizes and appreciation, but also you don't expect harassment, accusations and punishment either. I've known some regular Wikipedia users who've been nice, and a few admins who don't let their power go to their heads in their giddily selective enforcement of rules, who don't relish punishing others and expressing their power. For me to continue at Wikipedia would require great masochism on my part. To devote a fraction of my little free time and receive only negative consequences in return is not worthwhile.

So I replaced my password with 30 characters' worth of alphanumeric gibberish, though it does contain a 5-letter English word in all caps. I typed that up in a Notepad file, copied it twice into the password field, saved the preference in the Wikipedia account but closed the Notepad file without saving it.