User:Khazar2/leaving

Though I'd been thinking about leaving Wikipedia for some time--a month's wikibreak in October, and plenty of grumbling to the Mrs.--I didn't do a good job handling my departure yesterday, and given the volume of e-mail I've been getting, I realize I unintentionally left some questions behind.

The main problem I've had with Wikipedia for a while now is a lack of a civility policy, though this is supposed to be a pillar. We have a few bright lines (you can't call somebody a "cunt" most of the time), but they don't come close to capturing the spirit of the pillar's language: "Respect your fellow Wikipedians, even when you disagree." Wikipedians who openly scoff at a statement like this, much less actually follow it, continue to operate with little restraint, and threads about them at AN/I are met with derision.

A turning point for me was a few months back when I happened to see User:Eric Corbett refer to another user on his page, without any provocation or "baiting", as a "functional cretin at best", which is a personal attack by any definition. This page is watched by several admins, but no one said anything, of course. And I'll admit I didn't report it myself, because I knew nothing would come it. I would simply be laughed at by Eric and mocked by his friends, and the AN/I thread would be closed out of hand with the usual statement of "we hear about Eric all the time, and have granted him immunity". This had become the standard for Wikipedia discourse. And if the admins had decreed dealing with Eric and those like him was the price for using Wikipedia, for a long time I was willing to pay it.

I should emphasize that Eric is far from the only user like this. It wouldn't make much difference if he was blocked tomorrow unless admins as a whole started to care about this pillar again. I'm tired of working in a place where hostility and belittling others is increasingly the norm, and no longer interested in loading in onto my computer screen each morning. Yesterday it happened to be Eric who was the last straw for me, but it could just as easily been any of a dozen users. I decided it was my last day here, and treated myself to finally posting to Eric about his behavior. Nothing will come of it, of course, but it was a nice catharsis.

I really have had a good time here on the balance, but all good things must come to an end, etc. For now, I'm interested in expanding my for-profit online editing business and exploring other forms of digital volunteering for a while. Thanks to everyone reading this for all you do to make this a better place to work.