Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Editor Retention/Retention and return team Soliloquies

This project page is a collection of Soliloquies created by editors that have chosen to retire. WER has challenged itself to be an active participant in the Early Retirement of Editors problem. This page is created In an effort to understand the problem byway of researching the reasons given for retiring.

Petrarchan47

Retrieved from User Petrarchan47's Talk page – In an effort to re-juvenate the WER/R and R team

Thank you for the heart you put into this project as well as the kind words of support for me. Briefly, I am willing to help with the BP page on one condition: that we can also give the BP oil spill page the same treatment. FYI, BP is this very week in court defending itself against possible charges of gross negligence. BP has in the past used this Wiki article in trial! (Link to this is at top of the article's talk page) Recently scrubbed from the article are two Al Jazeera refs which talk about human health effects from the spill. Editor A and Editor B (who has never worked on the article previously) removed the mention of people dying as well as perfectly good, supportive RS. This is just one example of what is happening at that article and its spin-off articles. When I try to remedy what has been scrubbed, the result is that more (pro-BP) editors come in and together will delete other stuff for dubious reasons. It's a very immature game and those seeking information about the largest environmental disaster in US history are the ones loosing out. I am no longer effective as an editor there as Editor A has declared war against me, as is evidenced by her edits, comments and arguments. I don't call other editors for help in arguing my (guideline-supported) points because I don't know any. But the team on the 'other side' has a seemingly endless supply of folks to argue and fight for the pro-BP, pro-Big Oil, and pro-Official Government versions.

After seeing the reaction of the Wiki community and the Jimbo talk page to the news that BP's article contained words straight from BP's PR dept, I can tell you that I no longer have faith in this project overall. And that breaks my heart to say to you. Until I witnessed the reaction from the Higher Ups, I was under the impression that Wikipedia, regardless of who founded it, did not belong to and was not swayed by any particular Ego. I thought it belonged to me, and to you and to millions of individuals who want unadulterated information, sans commercials, not normally found in corporate-funded mainstream media.

I thought that surely if there was someone, or a group of someones, in charge of making sure Wiki was running as intended, they would immediately act on behalf of NPOV, Truth, Science if shown that these things are being hurt by (in this case) corporate influence. I further thought that 'nobody' editors like me would be supported by this same group. But what I witnessed was ridiculous, over-the-top displays of adoration and support for all-things-BP. I saw broken promises to "analyze" the added content for spin, missing info, etc., as well as the editors who approved of and submitted content. In one case we have Editor C - the sole 'reviewer' and submitter of the last BP PR draft. Was his editing behaviour appropriate? I think an analysis remains in order. I would look at the fact that Editor C never showed any interest in the article itself prior to this addition and has not been seen at the BP talk page since the initial frenzy.

Wiki rules allow for this type of activity, and the High Ups apparently see nothing wrong with this, but rather with those who call attention to it. The only follow-up to the promised analysis was to badmouth one of the whistle-blowers as "sufficiently biased" whose work doesn't deserve a second look. IMO, this reaction has the emotional maturity level of a dysfunctional 9 year-old. Unless and until Wikipedia is truly handed over to 'us', the little people, I'm afraid I just don't see how it can be free of the ingrained and deeply-rooted corruption I am witnessing. I mentioned in my SlimVirgin response that it felt as if Wikipedia didn't have my back when I was pointing out corporate spin. I was told in no uncertain terms, by the aforementioned talk page activity, that I was exactly right (unless I'm BP).

So yes, I'm willing to point out things on both the BP and BP oil spill pages in the same way a COI editor is encouraged to do: show inaccuracies, spin, and supply supportive refs, and missing facts. Hopefully I would have some fraction of the support and love from the community for my efforts that is shown to a BP employee, but I sure don't expect it. As for returning to help Wikipedia as an enthusiastic editor, no. Not until things have changed. Wikipedia is most absolutely and massively slanted towards special interests. Spin is allowed in their favor, but not the other direction (and shouldn't be allowed at all). So this means all our hard work is wasted time, as Editor D recently noted - we can spend hundreds of hours on an article and it can be scrubbed/changed/spun in an instant. That fact that this behaviour was given a very public thumbs-up recently has only compounded the problem (at least at the BP oil spill page).

Picture this: the tar sands ("Canadian oil sands") section written by a Greenpeace PR team, presented at the BP talk page and approved/added word-for-word to the BP article. Imagine if their first reference is to a 12-page brochure on the Greenpeace website about tar sands. Imagine this brochure quotes science that has the greenhouse gas emissions (tar sands' biggest problem) estimated at 56% instead of the accepted science from Stanford of a 23%increase. Imagine if this was pointed out to the Higher Ups, posted to Jimbo's talk page and the result was an overwhelming "Oh well". This is conversely the exact thing that happened. Presently the tar sands section is straight from BP PR and uses as its first ref. a nice shiny PDF from BP's website about tar sands which quotes a greenhouse gas emissions figure nearly 20% less than what is accepted by the scientific community. I showed this and that the BP version is indeed sanitized to the point of being useless and less informative than the previous (non-BP) version. If it's BP doing it, the community trips over itself defending the company and practices that allowed this. But what if it had been an environmental group instead? I can imagine the response would be dramatically different. Such a realization should stop us in our tracks and make us question: what is going on behind the scenes? Wikipedia purports to be interested in NPOV but when this claim is held up to the light, what emerges is a disturbing amount of personal attacks and obfuscation. Sometimes what used to feel like a community of exceedingly sharp minds (Wikipedia) feels more like MySpace. I just don't see how that can change until the High Ups who behave like this acknowledge their limitations & step down for the good of the Project. petrarchan47tc 02:49, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

DYK

See [1]

Gerda, many prolific contributors and reviewers have left DYK over the years for various unrelated reasons. This is to be taken philosophically; I wish they return, and some do (e.g. Calmer Waters). I do believe that the solution is to reform a collaborative group of DYK editors, as it was in the past - it was never perfect, but it was friendly and constructive. Thus my message to those who feel frustrated, let us stay together and collaborate. Regulars, like me :), who shift to other tasks, please do take this seriously, for either, we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. Materialscientist (talk) 07:30, 31 July 2011 (UTC) My feeling from the "good old past" was the attitude, namely.

• Contributors: play straight - use reliable sources and avoid close paraphrasing. Do declare issues which you are unsure of when submitting the nom - reviewers might actually help there (with interpreting sources, providing new ones, assessing image copyrights, whatever). Remember that slipping problematic noms through the review may bring real problems when those problems are noticed later (and be sure, someone will notice). Personal trust has been an important part of the system, and those who intentionally misused that trust were just banned and/or blocked.
• Reviewers: aim at improving the article and hook, not at completing the review ASAP. Be polite and constructive - we all make trivial mistakes; propose solutions when you see them. I do believe that almost any nom can be rescued within a few days (with a few exceptions like duplicate article, article is already at 50k and expansion would violate WP:LENGTH, article was featured ITN, maybe some other cases) and thus almost never use the orange tick.
• Prep composers and hook editors: contact the nominator when significantly changing their hook. When you see something odd and are not sure about it (e.g. suspicious image copyright, hook phrasing, etc.), don't rely on ticks and don't rush. Leave a note at T:TDYK or WT:DYK and scroll to other noms.
• All parties: think of long-term goals, your reputation and the project in general. Be prepared to sacrifice a nom with a smile (e.g. if notability or sources are dubious and there is no easy way out, etc.). Materialscientist (talk) 10:10, 31 July 2011 (UTC)