User:Unfocused

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I, morphh, hereby award you this star for your thousands of contributions to Wikipedia, including your unique apology work on Roy Walford.

[edit] Where's the joy of editing?

Petty authoritarians are ruining the experience. This place used to be so enjoyable. I'd originally left for the same reason; after being back only a short time, it's my observation that it is far worse than before. It is so much easier to destroy the efforts of another and then claim "look Ma, I'm an editor!" that "assume good faith" was once considered a vital and necessary component of the project. Putting that in the project was an act of inspired genius. Unfortunately, it's almost completely lost from the culture of administrators added since 2005. The best administrators used to function as a kindness check on the editing population at large, and instill AGF into the new users. Now, "AGF" is mostly used as a personal excuse for extreme behavior rather than a guideline for being nice to each other.

[edit] My Recent and Continuing Long Absences

I've considered Wikipedia to be a good hobby for quite a while, and I expect to continue.

However, I've come to the conclusion that Wikipedia in its current state cannot live up to its highest goals, nor do I see a way to change it so that it can. Overall, it's still an excellent project, worthy of effort and contribution, but an order of magnitude less than I'd originally hoped it would be.

In other words, I've woken from my overly idealistic dream about what Wikipedia could be. I'm still here, but my enthusiasm has been damped by the realization that Wikipedia pursues neutrality in policy, but at best achieves populism in action.

This is a large part of why my activity here has fallen off so precipitously.

It is only fair to note that I've also added a baby boy to my family, and started another hobby as well, so this isn't all about Wikipedia's shortcomings.

[edit] Regarding Anonymous Posting

I would estimate that I have made many thousands of minor edits, a couple hundred major edits, and contributed at least four full articles anonymously.

I had been posting anonymously because I feel it is more in keeping with the nature of Wikipedia: edits stand or fall on their own merits and the quality of the sources cited, rather than on the reputation of the poster.

[edit] Problems With Deletion

I think I've figured out why some deletions are STILL bothering me.

1. The text of the deletion notice is hostile to new users, and the policy document linked is downright unfriendly and bureaucratic.
2. Rapid deletion is hostile to new users. New users who put up a simple starting page are being threatened to have their work deleted just as they first see their efforts displayed on screen.
3. Deletion is still being used as a "cleanup on demand" tag. This is not a legitimate use.
4. Deletion is still being used as an "delete and recreate from scratch" decree. Deletion should be applied only where an article has NO PLACE in Wikipedia. If a poor article has a place in Wikipedia, it should be cleaned up, or edited down to a bare stub, rather than eliminated. Leaving a stub acknowledges the utility of the article.
5. There are still some overly aggressive "Recent Changes" patrollers.

[edit] Tolerance Before Deletion

Jimbo Wales's comment re: tolerance of trivial articles on Wikipedia This comment is especially relevant to an encyclopedia that never runs out of paper.

[edit] Half baked thoughts

There are recent articles nominated for deletion that prove beyond a doubt to anyone interested that the requirement to have an account to create articles has NOT changed AfD's volume, but instead put more articles of quality in line for deletion and thereby alienated far more editors than ever before. As I suspected would be the case, it seems to me that those who think it is their mission to delete content will not be satisfied with less than a full slate of activity, regardless of the quality of content that they need to delete to stay busy.

[edit] Useful tool

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