IronCrow

IronCrow was an American Wikipedia user for three years until his departure in July of 2008. His primary expertise was music, science, theology, and video games. He was a member of various WikiProjects and is currently an active member of Wikia Gaming.

Departure

I departed from Wikipedia on July 7, 2008 after complications with various Wikipedia users, stating that Wikipedia had become "a huge bowl of editors gaming the system, contradicting other articles, and original research." The conflict, however, began some time back when my old account was vandalized constantly, to which I made a new account and hoped I could get away from it. After this, I remarked that it was never the same again and was able to see the arguements that plagued Wikipedia. I apologized to those editors who really tried to improve articles, and eventually departed.

Anti-Wikipedia Stance

After leaving Wikipedia, I spoke with various people who themselves had a distaste for Wikipedia, not because of it's goal, but because of the community. My opinion is that Wikipedia has a lack of scholarly material, a hounding community, and an ease of manipulation. Wikipedians (on the macro level), are biased but can seemingly deal with opinions that differ from their own. On the micro level, each individual has a wrose bias that creates malformation of truth. They skew it towards a certain agenda (whether or not this is intended does not matter). I later began to show interest in critics of Wikipedia, such as Jason Scott Sadofsky and Larry Sanger.

I thought about coming back...

Currently, I am not watching Wikipedia anymore. I do not use Wikipedia anymore. I have better things to do, really, than do my research on this website. It's too much trouble. They say it's a good starting point but that got me thinking... shouldn't our research already have a starting point? Makes you think, though... our literacy rate is dropping, if I remember correctly. Maybe it's because we've forgotten how to research or do things on our own. It's not that I hate Wikipedia (well, I guess I kind of do), it's more along the lines of me knowing how easy it is to game the system, how easy it is to make things disappear. If you happen to Google reasons to hate Wikipedia and find this page, then stop. Make an account, contribute, and see how Wikipedia can be. You'll learn eventually, and if you haven't learned, maybe you're just like a lot of the Wikipedians I rant about. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't. I'll definitely come back and view some more articles, just not as an editor.