User talk:Shalom Yechiel

Shalom also means "goodbye"

I am leaving English Wikipedia and all Wikimedia projects. After I relocate in August, I will create a new username.

Wikipedia is causing me more stress than it's worth. After discussing my options by email correspondence with three administrators this week, I have decided to leave.

I created a rant about 60 kilobytes long on my computer to complain about how unfairly the community treated me. I will not post it. That's not how I wish to be remembered.

I'd like you to read one article I've written or improved during the last two and a half years. Pick any article from my list or the toolserver's list. That's how I wish to be remembered.

Shalom also means "goodbye." I offer best wishes to everyone who made editing here such a pleasant and fulfilling experience. Yechiel (Shalom) 15:34, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Epilogue

I am writing to say goodbye to those of you who still watchlist my talk page, and to offer a chance for you to wish me well. One of the hardest things about moving on from a relationship is forgetting the painful memories and the lost hopes associated with that relationship. I accomplished many achievements here, but I never helped the project as an administrator (though I performed administrative tasks without the tool-set); I never submitted a featured article (though I did submit a good article at Talk:Endgame tablebase); and I never completed coverage of towns and villages in Israel (though I did create more than 100 articles about these places). I am proud of what I did, broadly speaking, and for my mistakes and failures, I am trying to retain whatever lessons I can apply to life outside the four walls of Wikipedia.

Last year I spent an extraordinary amount of time on Wikipedia. Without revealing too much personal information, I'll explain that I was working freelance part-time but I had most of my waking hours to spend at my discretion, and I donated that time to the project. Two months ago I relocated and began graduate school in the chemistry department of a major research university on the east coast of the United States. (You can read my admission essay at User:Shalom Yechiel/Drafts and archives/Wikipedia got me into graduate school.) My teaching and learning responsibilities do not permit anything more than a cursory interest in Wikipedia, and sometimes not even that. Last month I created an anonymous user account for editing and creating articles related to chemistry.

I wish to leave my thoughts on various issues that I expect will engage the community's attention during the next months and years.

Honesty is the best policy

Wikipedia:Honesty is marked as an essay, not even a guideline. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Honesty where someone had the gumption to suggest Wikipedians should abide by such a basic ethical principle. "Honesty is the best policy," according to a popular saying, and honesty should be required of all users on Wikipedia. Making baseless accusations against another user is unacceptable. Misrepresenting your real-world credentials is unacceptable. Misrepresenting the content or intent of sources is unacceptable. Wikipedia:Honesty should be at least a behavioral guideline on par with Wikipedia:Civility.

RFA reform

I support the efforts of Gazimoff and others in the RFA review. I have spent many hours thinking about what might discourage users from engaging in the false statements, assumptions of bad faith, and borderline personal attacks that pushed my temper over the edge in July. I prefer not to discuss my particular case anymore, but I recognize it as a wider problem. I perceive that RFA has become a toxic environment, one where false statements, assumptions of bad faith, and borderline personal attacks are tolerated as the price of vetting candidates for the stressful situations that some administrators may face. Standards of conduct from RFA commenters need to improve: users who can maintain neutrality in a particular RFA discussion should watch for comments that cross the line and not be shy about challenging them, and if necessary, asking a bureaucrat to remove or disregard them.

Administrator accountability

I support the proposal for bureaucrats to remove adminship after suitable discussion. I don't understand all the details, but the delays in recent arbitrations cases have shown clearly that the community needs a functioning process for removing administrators by a vote of no confidence. In the C68-FM-SV arbitration case, 16 users (including me) supported a proposal to desysop one of the parties, while only four opposed and one was ambivalent: by RFA standards this counts as consensus, yet not a single arbitrator submitted the desysop proposal for consideration. (It's possible that the commenters at the ArbCom workshop were biased, but I don't think so: most of them were not significantly involved in the case except as observers.) The community logically holds the power to remove admins as it does to promote them; it should be able to exercise that power if needed. The benefits would be a streamlined process, lasting one to two weeks instead of four months, and a confidence that adminship will again be not such a big deal because anyone can be demoted almost as easily as they were promoted.

Jimbo's role

I would like User:Jimbo Wales to resign or limit his special powers to ban or unban, promote or desysop, appoint or remove from ArbCom, etc. I never granted him these powers, and I do not think he has used them wisely enough to justify retaining them. I support Sarcasticidealist's effort to clarify the role of Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia. Just recently Jimbo wrote on the page for preparing the 2008 ArbCom elections that he would retain the power to appoint any candidate who receives 50% or more of the vote, even to promote a candidate at 51% and reject another candidate at 80%. There is no justification for one man to veto the wishes of hundreds of voters. Wikipedia is not a democracy, but when it pretends to be one, the pretense should be legitimately founded. I won't resign in protest if Jimbo appoints the wrong candidates to ArbCom, but I can voice my displeasure in advance, and I am doing that now.

I should note in passing that Hebrew Wikipedia, where I participated in community affairs for a short time, functions just fine without an absentee figurehead deciding critical issues once or a few times every year. Other large Wikipedias and sister projects also function as well or better without Jimbo or even an Arbitration Committee. English Wikipedia really does need the Arbitration Committee, but it does not need Jimbo's role.