User:Peter M Dodge

If you have come here to offer your support, it is appreciated, but please also take the time to also help Elaragirl, and Kyoko who are enduring much harder times than I right now.

I came to Wikipedia to try to contribute to a positive environment, and for a while it was (more or less) a pretty great place to go. I contributed because I enjoyed doing so and because these contributions were appreciated. I tried to help out with articles and wikignoming, and eventually got involved the spam-fighting effort, directly dealing with Jimbo and Danny - both people I enjoyed working with - to help curb the level of spam on wikipedia, something I got razzed for a lot when people's non-notable Myspace blogs got nuked. (Aww, muffin, you can't spam, poor dear!)

I first met Essjay some time before this, on the Vandalism Control Network, where I worked to fight vandalism on Wikipedia. He was always helpful, and always very kind. I asked him how I could help him out and he suggested I help at Requests for CheckUser. For some time I tried to lend a hand there as much as I could, and on the 22nd of December I was appointed by Essjay as a CheckUser clerk. I helped out there for a while. Eventually it came to pass that CHU was getting backlogged to the point where Essjay requested the RFCU clerks help out there as well, so we did.

Not only that, but there is now a lynching of Essjay, because he apparently lied about his credentials. If I had a dollar for every person - editor, sysop, bureaucrat, or arbitrator, even, that's lied or exaggerated his or her credentials I wouldn't have to work ever again. That the community is lynching one of it's kindest and most productive users is simply unforgivable.

I cannot have faith in a community that repays two years of diligent service to it by dragging their name through the mud. I contribute because I enjoy it, and in light of that fact, I cannot enjoy contributing here nor can I feel comfortable with contributing. As such I am taking a indefinite and probably permanent break from Wikipedia. Godspeed essjay, and keep your chin up, you have little to be ashamed of.