User:RileyBugz/On retirement

So, retirement. I'm not talking about the kind of retirement where you go to live in a nice house in Florida or something, no no no. I am talking about retirement from Wikipedia and other online communities. In general, I think that there are 2 causes of retirement (at least for me). These are: retirement due to commitment and retirement due to dissolution.

Retirement due to commitment is when one, for whatever reason, does not come back to a community (generally after a short break) due to the fact that one has too many commitments in a community. For example, if one just dropped out of a community after taking a short break, when one holds a high-level position, that would most likely be retirement due to commitment. I feel that the main cause of this type of retirement is guilt, as one does not want to get flack when one returns, especially from those one once considered internet friends.

Next, retirement due to dissolution is when one drops out of a community because the primary subcommunity (think of a group in a game or something where you develop many internet friends and where you primarily focus your attention on) that one belongs to is dissolved or because one gets kicked out of that subcommunity. I suspect that this is related to retirement due to commitment, as both have the problem of one getting too involved.

I think that the solutions to these problems involve a few things. One (on Wikipedia, at least), editing a broad range of articles and interacting with many editors is a good way to prevent retirement due to dissolution. Next, retirement due to commitment can likely be resolved by not being involved in things that the community expects one to finish, unless one knows that one can finish it. These may not seem like good pieces of advice, and they may not be, but these things are good for editors like me.