[WikiEN-l] Quitting Wikipedia and wanted you to know why.

[Draicone]

To be honest, I fully agree with you. There are too many editors, not
just sysops, who feel they are better than the rest. There are too
many sysops, then, taking the wrong decisions and not worrying about
it. And there are too many people following along, taking their word
for it and assuming nothing has gone wrong.

Wikipedia is, as you say, broken.

However, I too am leaving as of today, for a different reason. Process
is broken. Notably, AfD, RfA and DRV. These were excellent procedures,
but after some close analysis on IRC with fellow editors, I can
conclude that they have degraded over time. The importance of AfD and
RfA is such that we cannot afford to allow them to degrade, yet we
have.

For example, in the current RfA of Rory096, we have a clear case of
where the process has fallen apart. I have no doubt that the closing
bureaucrat could easily justify granting Rory096 sysop. In fact, I
think he should. But with the way RfA is going, it is no longer the
'discuss and reach consensus' system that it was intended to be. It is
a raw vote that can lose all meaning. We have editors visiting once a
week and voting on every RfA. But what if the situation changes? What
if an interesting diff warranting their attention is brought to light?

In this case, their vote would remain the same, as they would not
revisit the RfA till it was over. Which presents an interesting point
of view. The one week length of an RfA should be a time for an editor
to come under the scrutiny of the community, giving fellow editors a
chance to determine the worth of the candidate as a sysop. But no, RfA
is a straw poll. Based on pure numbers. Numbers which could, in the
case of certain RfAs (not unlike Rory's for instance), mean nothing.

My point is not to discount the votes of certain users, rather to
point out the worth of a vote from a user who has analysed a users
contributions, checked their edits in certain namespaces, concluded
their familiarity with policy; as opposed to a user who has spent a
matter of seconds reviewing their edit count and the length of their
time on enwp and then voting accordingly.

The problem we have is that while there can be no difference in the
worth of these votes, it is obvious that one should place more
weighting on the one from the user who has taken the time to think
before they vote. Naturally, this is impossible for the closing
bureaucrat. Therefore, the only options are to either a) keep the
current broken system of straw polls, or b) fix it and move to a
system that aims for community based consensus to be achieved.
(Alternatively, adopt karynn's proposal at
http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/2006/10/proposal-for-adminship-on-english.html
- however, I don't fully agree with this and it seems a little too
radical for enwp)

As you can imagine, I would err towards option (b). Some fellow
editors have attempted to keep me from leaving, but unless anyone has
a convincing argument as to why I should remain, or something is done
about these policies, I cannot give myself enough justification to
stay. Goodbye, Phaedriel, Buickid, AmiDaniel.

--Draicone