Regression

Just when I thought I've got the blogging business all figured it out, turns out I was somewhat wrong... err... again.

Regression has hit me this time round, not possible you say? Usually I hesitate to take a stroll back memory lane and browse through all of my past posts. And you know what? Each and every single blog post back then is 10 or 20 times better than the ones that I'm typing now.

Thinking about it, back then what I had was passion and just one heck of an urge to express it out. I could've definitely produced more blog posts when I had the urge but apathy and laziness struck again. And this time I've lapsed back worse into what I am now before all of this blogging started. "Emotionally void" is indeed true.

Now my mind is just one messy pile of thoughts with no way of straighting it out, and straightening just usually leads to "political correctness", and that's just plain stiff to begin with. I've always thought I was looking forward to progression and self-improvement, but in reality what I didn't manage to handle or cover properly lead me to regression instead.

Eh, I've always thought sometimes short blog posts would be good, you know, short so that you wouldn't have to waste your time looking through all of it. But what I've found out is that it basically means yeilding yourself to commercialism, making yourself to be even more materialistic in the attempt to get more readers to stop by and boosting traffic in the end. This just feels plain wrong. Quality and quantity (interlinked) shouldn't ever be sacrificed for any good reason. What I've previously thought to be correct turns out to be utterly wrong, irony at it's finest. I'm scrapping all preconceptions and misconceptions from now on.

Commercialism? It isn't really supposed to be a good thing. It just hit me that the idea that some websites, blogs and various other stuff that reek of commercialism in essence really do turn me off, and what I'd done subconciously or not, was unacceptable.


This part of this blog post is dedicated to Jin, who I am now keeping my promise to deliver you this piece of information to complete the puzzle. =)

I've been keeping part of my internet life under wraps, and part of that internet life would be hanging around Wikipedia. It's an obsession that I know, but it wasn't until an encounter with another Wikipedian that made me thinking about ejecting myself from the encyclopedia.

You see, even though with its semi-fool-proof policies, as in having a neutral point-of-view, treating other members of Wikipedia with respect and accepting their edits as in good faith, sadly during an immersed discussion these policies would buckle at times under provocation, disagreements and arguements. Yeah, you have those policy so that you can keep a reign on the members, but you certainly can't expect to control their attitude or point-of-view, can't you?

First of all, there is the ego factor. During disagreements basically it means that one party would not admit his or her mistake due to the person's inflated ego. "You're always wrong, I'm always right and I can back up that statement!!!" If it's black and white cases the admins could certainly know whose the offender and deal the appropriate measures or punishment to the offender. Though if the person is a slippery eel or perhaps an admin him/herself, it's getting away scot-free, baby.

Next is the personal attitude of other Wikipedians. Now I've met other nice and welcoming members of the encyclopedia and they've certainly opened up their arms and forgiveness, but sadly people can change over time, and so my perception of them has also changed. I've had disputes before during those course of disputes, I was involved due being blinded by pettyness, and not seeing the tree instead of the forest. If you know me, any problems that I encounter usually can be fixed (because of its simpleness), but the problems that I can't fix are the problems that even the technical experts would have a tough time solving. An example being my computer (rewind back to November and December 2004 archives please).

Anyways, pettyness led me to two seperate disputes on the renouned encyclopedia. Both involving a single word, can you even believe it??? Neither do I actually, in most cases I would most likely close an eyelid and let most edits pass under my watch. But somehow I can't be sure what came over me, the most likely explanation is that I've been inciting those discussion before I had my nap – the time when I'd most likely be twitchy. I do remember myself almost dragging myself into deep shit one time because of my twitchyness, thankfully I accidentally clicked the close button and erased my whole page of accusations and evidence. Man, and I used to thought I was self-controlling but apparently I'm not, again.

Okay, latest incident was involving the dispute with a local Wikipedian. So this person made some edits which I disagreed with, and I promptly sent a message in this person's talk page. I had a nagging feeling with this one actually, and an earlier observation about another person leads me to believe that sometimes I can't get along well with some kinds of people. Probably the ones that seem to rub your fur the wrong way and vice-versa. My problem here is that my comment had an opening which the person could certainly exploit and take advantage of if he had the capability to, and he did.

Now, the course of the discussion itself was alright, but I seemed to notice that we were getting nowhere actually. This person had excuses for every single thing he edited, and evidence to back up with! It's the equilavent of killing a person in cold blood and having a good excuse to to back it up! What I think is that a humbler person would say "I might be wrong, but..." but a person with tons of excuses would say "I might be right". And to talk about going nowhere, the important issues that needed to be ironed out was not settled at all. Seems that this person was more intent on having a debate about the person rather than the person's edits.

That didn't go down well with me, and on seeing the turmulous episodes and adventures that some have went through on the encyclopedia that might even bent or drive a person stark raving mad, I'm now making my decision to leave Wikipedia for the time being. I'm by definition on a "Wikiholiday" as mentioned in my user page, but I might or might not be returning to the encyclopedia to help out anymore. I'm far more statisfied starting and editing articles with me as the main editor as opposed to seeing the pain and suffering that one has to go through during harsh edit conflicts and debates that surround the article.

I've felt humiliated, though I didn't mention this to anyone at all. There isn't really a need to do so. I mean, there were some good times that I had while going through Wikipedia, but I never reached the levels that those considered to be excellent, and in short the bad times didn't really eclipsed the good times, but it sure left a bad feeling inside my mouth for a long time.

You know, I even think that quitting the encyclopedia would do me good. I guess I could've been constricted by the policy of Wikipedia in using the neutral point-of-view policy that led to the "voidness" you've seen around recently in this blog. There's no smoke without fire. Yes, it's all related in one way or another. I'm not confirming myself to their policy anymore (except while editing on their site), and though I keep seeing Wikipedia's growth and expantion of publicity of the encyclopedia on news articles, I hope that every person new to the idea of the encyclopedia to not to be turned off by this blog post. Through some policy updating, streamlining and some attitude adjustment of some members, the concept of an open-encyclopedia is definitely a feasible idea but apparently I've lost the fizzle to keep myself going on it anymore.

Gah, it's now 2:55 in the morning and my fingers are starting to ache now from all of that typing. Will be going to bed now, somewhat satisfied from this immensely long blog post that's been keeping up inside me for a long time, sigh... Goodnight.



[Edit]: I noticed there's many typos in this post, I can't get the spell checker to work correctly, and I don't think I'd like to be an ultra-perfectionist, so I'm closing an eye and letting this one slide through again.