Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-03-21/Top admin leaves

One of the most popular admins on Wikipedia, Ta bu shi da yu, decided last week to leave the project. He left on his user page a picture of Elvis together with the caption, "Ta bu shi da yu has left the building."

The departure was first noticed by Mark Dingemanse, who saw on Recentchanges that Ta bu shi da yu had blanked his user page (Elvis was added later). Ta bu shi da yu explained that he wasn't leaving due to any dissatisfaction or frustrations with Wikipedia, but simply because he wanted to focus on other aspects of his life. Among other things Ta bu shi da yu, one of Wikipedia's Christian editors, said he needed to "spend more time with God and the Bible."

Ta bu shi da yu asked Angela as a steward to remove his admin status in connection with his departure. He then left a parting message for Jimbo Wales thanking him for helping to create "the most amazing software project I've ever worked on."

As news of his departure spread, Ta bu shi da yu received an outpouring of appreciative comments on his talk page for his participation in the project. Still hanging around somewhat, he took the time to reply personally to each of these comments. He also joined in the widespread support of SlimVirgin's adminship nomination (which passed 77-1, one of the highest support/oppose ratios ever), saying, "Impossible for me to leave without some loose ends to tie up."

Replying to expressions of dismay on the Administrators' noticeboard at the news of his leaving, Ta bu shi da yu stated, "I have a great deal of confidence that you'll be fair and reasonable to everyone, and countermand a decision (with politeness, of course) when you see someone make a bad judgement call." dab also made a tongue-in-cheek request there for approval to move the WWTBSDYD graphic (below) from his user space into template space.

Perhaps best known as creator of Exploding whale, one of Wikipedia's quirkiest featured articles, Ta bu shi da yu's contributions also included starting the Administrators' noticeboard.