It is with a heavy heart that I've decided to no longer contribute to the Wikipedia project.
Why?
Well, it's a long story, but I'll strive for brevity where I can.
The trouble began a short time ago, when I noticed that an article I had visited had been "redirected"- placed onto a very long page with a host of other characters, and the things that one wouldn't commonly know about had been removed (since the "redirect" reduced the entire article down to the space of a single, small paragraph). Over the course of several hours, I attempted to talk to the guy doing it, to try to see if something could be worked out. But, instead of a "You know, I can see how you might feel even though I disagree with you, let's try to come to an agreement", or anything of the sort, I got "read the guidelines!" repeated to everything I said (which guidelines I had, of course, already read). During this period of time, a few reverts happened between us- nothing that violated the 3RR, just disagreements on the page. After realizing over the course of the evening that trying to talk about it to the guy was only resulting in frustration, I did one last futile revert and went to bed (about 9:30am or so- I work nights, so I tend to edit when I'm up). I figured that, since the page version I was keeping had been upheld by other editors, and because prior editors had worked hard on it, that maybe, just maybe, the user I had a disagreement with might see if things could be worked out with those users. I figured that, if the guy didn't seek them out, maybe a few of the other editors that disagreed with him would try and seek a request for consensus, and that by the time I got up, things would have been resolved and worked out by those more clearheaded than I.
Unfortunately, that's not what happened.
An administrator decided to jump into the fray. While admins are, of course, free to edit Wikipedia, perform blocks and such at will, the events that occurred over the next day shocked me. This administrator, instead of trying to help the users come to an agreement, decided to engage in the revert war [1], [2], [3], then laid a personal attack on me [4], and THEN, after all this- he decided to enact a "block" on my account [5]. Bear in mind, I can deal with disagreements (even conflicts) with other editors- I've had my share of runins in the past. But what this administrator did, well that shocked me to my core. The appeal I made for an unblock was dismissed, unread (with a terse single sentence reply of "edit warring is a no-no" no less), so I was left to ponder what to do.
Another user encouraged me to file an RFC. "What this admin did was a clear conflict of interest and needed to be dealt with", he said. I thought about it.
And then I realized something- something that made me a bit sad, too. You see, my current job is an extremely stressful one, nothing like the one I held at Nintendo in 2001. I deal with situations these days, where the plight of the homeless, the drug addicts, and other such whom society by and large ignores, presents itself here each and every day. The worries and stress of it led me to Wikipedia about a year ago- here was a place where I could try and relax, edit articles about subjects I knew here and there, and enjoy a little bit of escape. Since my prior line of work involved games (and I knew a lot about the really old ones, like the Microvision), most of my edits tended to gravitate around those. But the ones I'm really proud of had nothing to do with Nintendo, and some not even with games. I've listed a few of those I really had fun doing below.
But what I realized, after seeing what this administrator did, was that I just wasn't having fun anymore. Arguments, RFCs, and all this stopped making Wikipedia an enjoyable place, turning it into one where I dreaded whatever would come next. What's the point of trying to escape into a world that just tosses more stress at your doorstep?
I just hope the people who continue editing here (and yeah, there are a lot of them) can try to take as much love and care of these following articles as I tried to do. I wish I could say it's been fun.
Articles I enjoyed working on (or created, in some cases)
Lake Union Dry Dock Company edit
Oh, here's one I had so much fun with. I created this one- I managed to find out a bunch of history about this place, and even took this really nifty picture of the whole thing, which I used in the article. It's a really important historical landmark in Seattle, since it's one of the last (the last?) completely all-wooden docks in the city, and has been around since about 1919 or so.
Haniwa edit
Didn't create this article, but I added a really nifty picture of a Haniwa that I had painted from scratch. It took me a really long time to make, and I was pretty happy with the results.
Game Boy line edit
Besides working on this article, I contributed a collage of all the various GameBoys that had been created, organizing them from oldest (the original) to newest. There's even a little Wikipedia logo on the screens.
PlayStation Analog Joystick Another article I created. Since then, it's really developed, with a little bit of history in it. Since it was one of the more unknown pieces of Sony history (a modern analog joystick in 1995!), I'm happy that it's had people take care of the article.
An honorable mention would of course go to the actual Playstation article (and some of the related such), since I had so much fun working with the history section of it, utilizing David Scheff's book "Game Over", and the book "The Ultimate History of Video Games" as reference guides.
So there's just a little bit of who I am on Wikipedia (or rather, was). I never got a chance to do a lot of extensive editing on things I had really meant to such as nuclear proliferation and such. I had kept telling myself, "self, you should start editing some really serious articles". I guess it'll never happen. I hope anyone who's slogged through and read this whole thing doesn't go through the same troubles I have. May you all live well, and have fun in life.
Sincerely, an Ex-Nintendo employee.