I can recognize when I am no longer welcome. I didn't really believe I ever was welcome to begin with, but I was willing to try. I've always been optimistic. I assume that, since the self-appointed silencers among you are apparently operating with impunity, I could not possibly continue to press my case here without continuing to cause an uproar among them. So I will stop. Those who wanted to silence me have done so successfully, just as your fearless leader did on [[User talk:Jimmy Wales]]. On the issue of whether I am entitled to speak out here, I did want to make two points. First, whether or not it really is, Wikipedia (like Citizendium and other similar projects) ought to be democratic, open, and devoted to free speech in a certain sense. The sense is that, as long as a person is generally abiding by the rules of the community, he has a right to speak out in public forums, even if others find it "annoying." If a mob of others are outraged at what he says, they have the right to try to refute him (under the same reasonable rules); but they do not have the right to demand that he be silenced. As soon as they gain such authority, the mob is de facto making the rules, which is fine for people who love mobs, but absolutely terrible for most of humanity and for anybody who cares about justice and other things that cannot be made into silly acronyms. Second, virtually all of the arguments of those claiming that I lack the right to air my concerns on this list work as arguments that I should not have been allowed to post in the first place. Surely the moderators were right to allow me to post, and I was grateful to them for letting me do so. Nevertheless, since first posting, all I have been doing is defending the relevance, or significance, of my open letter to Jimmy Wales, or my right to make it--not really discussing its content at all. That's a pretty sad state of affairs, I think. I actually think that a large majority of Wikipedians probably sympathize with my letter, but that they are intimidated by those on this list who have the ability to make up arguments justifying censorship of someone with a serious, well-justified complaint about one of the most important leaders of the project. As to the attacks on Citizendium, I'm not going to bother replying. Those who are inclined to be sympathetic toward us will find out about us from more reliable sources, or from their own observation. Suffice it to say that the people who are lobbing the most vicious attacks either know nothing about the project, or are deeply philosophically opposed to it, and in either case, their opinion is not worth very much, as far as I'm concerned. As to those who might be inclined to sympathize with us, but who are intimidated into silence here on this list, and by mobs in general, let's just say that you're very welcome to join us. I do want to say one last thing to the more reasonable people in the community, who I know have been following this, and who stick things out in the face of what looks like a brainless mob: while I long ago decided I couldn't join you, I do admire and sympathize with your situation. Wikipedia is great--it's hard to abandon. There are a lot of very smart and decent people on Wikipedia, and if I have harsh words about the Wikipedia community from time to time, I hope you'll understand I'm not talking about you. --Larry (I'll be unsubscribing right after sending this) P.S. Apropos of nothing but a throwaway remark by someone on the list: I have never, ever, not even once, used any account on Wikipedia (or Citizendium) other than User:Larry Sanger.