User:Dominic/Essay

The foremost weapon of those who seek to thwart Wikipedia's mission in order to promote their own point of view over the neutral one, their own social and political experiments over the encyclopedia, or their downright harmful intentions is to use our own community, divided and incited, against itself. Imagine spending your time arguing countless hours, blood pressure rising, with your fellow good faith, established editors, over some trifle caught up in your own moralistic furor. Imagine actually finding yourself or others resorting to incivility, assumptions of bad faith, polluting the community and corroding the spirit of collaboration and mutual goodwill that hold the place together. No, I'm not (just) talking about userpage advocacy: imagine one of finest, most respected, and most invaluable contributors reveals that his true identity is not the credentialed one he had previously claimed. In the flood of high-flown rhetoric, outright nastiness, and pitchfork-wielding witch-huntery over a small set of comments made in years of exemplary service, dredged up by vindictive stalkers and trolls upset at his efforts to curb their onslaught, the one word I'd have most expected to see from the forgiving, practical-minded, radically open, and refreshingly charitable community I had come to know and believe in was in fact the one word most missing: mistake.

My sadness is not about the inevitable vandals and miscreants that swarm in at the sight of drama, but the disgraceful and repulsive handling of this situation by the community, from the bottom to the top: the hounding out of a treasured community member without a second thought, followed by self-congratulatory philosophizing flagrantly missing the most obvious cancer of this community. All out for blood, and not out for the villains' blood, but one of our own. Willful disregard for common decency and leniency, for a transgression with no immediate bearing on the encyclopedia whatsoever by one of the core community members, betrays how very far the community has strayed in the years since I joined. I can't help but felt shocked into cynicism. Essjay was not uncivil, did not edit in bad faith, it repulses me to even consider making such defenses; he never sought to do anything more than contribute to Wikimedia's noble goal. And he did it better than most. Perhaps there are some upstanding "community" members proud of their role in this matter; there are even more ignorant editors, who threw compassion and tolerance to the wind for the mere whiff of intrigue and expurgation. Unfortunately, in the last few days I can't help but feel guilty, after clicking that edit button, for wanting to expend any more effort on this community, which is clearly not the same one I thought it was a week ago. Those of you who know me understand that I am not easily affected, disillusioned, or offended.

I still feel deeply compelled by the idea of creating free knowledge, but not the culture that comes along with this particular project at the moment. I'm frankly embarrassed by it. This is not a goodbye statement; I'm replacing the text of my userpage with this because nothing else feels appropriate.

Also, I'm just some college student. Sorry about that. I came here because the idea of the place inspires me. Uncredentialed me arrived where I am now, much like Essjay, after years of service and participation, emotional investment, pride, and, yes, friendship. That is what I had in mind when I suggested Essjay to Jimbo as a replacement for myself. My only regret in that regard is that the community could have so terribly let him down, and that his new position of my own doing put him in that position; I do not regret placing him, one of those with that innate grasp of wiki matters, in that position of trust. Believe me, the irony that Essjay was one of the kindest ones is not lost on me. I wonder when you will notice.

I'll be at wikt:User:Dmcdevit for now.