Alecmconroy

THIS USER IS: BURNOUT VICTIM It's been a great decade, but it's time to go. Or at least, time to hibernate. I've done all I can here.

The Inevitable EnWP Burnout...

Acute Causes

The May 2010 image deletions really shook my confidence in some leaders.
The lack of engagement and discussion in June 2011 elections shook my faith in the global movement.
The admission from a 'trusted insider' that my communications are ineffective and largely ignored shook my faith in my ability to productively improve the large-scale movement.
A dispute about deletion of fair use material shook my faith in our project's ability to embrace 'openness' to the extent needed.

Chronic Causes

Any deletion of good-faith contributions is demoralizing and a little 'un-wiki'.
Instruction creep and an increase in 'because we said so' logic
In content disputes, the best revision doesn't win-- the most passionate faction's revision wins. Quality doesn't always improve over time.
Substantial edits involve Too much 'BS' time (edit disputes, etc) not enough 'authoring' time.

Insight and Predictions

Radical innovation is required to solve these problems.
WMF doesn't innovate rapidly or well.
Non-WMF services will outpace our own projects.
The cutting edge be distributed-wikis or cloud-wikis.
WMF will be forced to play technological 'catch up' for the foreseeable futurs.

Positions

I continue to strongly support the Wikimedia Foundation, the Wiki Movement, and EnWP and wish the organizations the best. I will continue to support their values in the future. Wikimedia is a good thing, worthy of our support. But the stress has outstripped the payoff-- money and code I'll donate-- donating large chucks of time just isn't worth the hassles.

On Burnout

Last nail of EnWP

I uploaded a couple images. They're "free content" as I use the term. Their distribution is 100% legal already, but especially under fair use.
The images were later deleted. This was a highly demoralizing event.
Similar "demoralizing deletions' were already under heated discussion. I added my comments.
My words were met with personal attacks, bogus block threats, and outright lies from deleters.
A small cadre of like-minded users endorsed these anti-social comments or even joined in the attacks.

Ramifications

I have concluded that with EnWp's growth & age have produced a semi-dysfunctional, unpredictable, and highly hostile editing environment.
I can no longer predict whether a good-faith contribution will be welcomed or merely deleted.
No one can donate substantial time to a project that may not even value the contribution.

Bye

I won't be missed. I write more code than content. Mature projects need gnomes, and I'm not a gnome.
"I'm getting too old for this shit" When people get to my age, they don't edit WP, they publish signed articles and books. At some point, people just want to write, they don't want to have fight for the chance. Edit wars are a game for the young, and I haven't been young for a long time.
I still support the project, the movement, and the foundation. I will continue to donate my code and my currency to support this effort-- but donating time to EnWP is no longer a good use of time for me.

Rationale

If you burnout after 8 years, you owe people an explaination so they can learn from you. So, learn what you will.

other

This user was known as alecmconrory during activity period 2-aug-06 - 2-aug-11
This user name has (or will be) been scrambled to a random string to signify it's 'out of use'.
Thus user has been (or will be) indefinitely blocked at their own request.

The last last word

Requested an indef block, request denied. I could 'earn' one, I suppose, but I'll enact my own.

My old email address is now disabled. Passwords to it and this account have been set to randomly generated strings that I remained blind to. This creates a de facto indefinite ban.

With my last edit, I'd request you 'vanish' me to the extent that seems reasonable. User:Alecmconroy is now a misnomer, as I am no longer a user.