QUOTE(RMHED @ Tue 26th May 2009, 3:34pm)
QUOTE(Shalom @ Tue 26th May 2009, 8:02pm)
QUOTE(RMHED @ Tue 26th May 2009, 2:49pm)
QUOTE(Shalom @ Tue 26th May 2009, 7:31pm)
This scandal is wonderful. I'm so happy it happened. Thanks, tarantino, for making me laugh in celebration.
People who screw around with community trust do get their comeuppance. It's a victory for honest folks everywhere.
Pure schadenfreude Shalom.
There is no such thing as a Wikipedia community, it's more of a gang culture. I've yet to meet any honest folk, just ones who haven't been caught out yet.
I could have quit "Shalom" and become an admin several times over. I could have not told anybody about what I had done secretly in 2007. I came clean. I later regretted it. Seeing what happened to Sam Blacketer, I feel comfortable knowing that I'm a lot better off than he is. Hey, my name is not in the register. (My username is, but Cade didn't think of checking the page history, and it's RTV-deleted now.) So I acted dishonestly in 2007, but I've acted honestly since then, and I'm not sorry I did. Yes, that's schadenfreude. Yes, it's not nice. If you don't want to get caught lying, don't lie.
Your confession of guilt probably just reveals a deep seated need you had to be punished.
When your confession and subsequent contrition weren't met with loving kindness and understanding, bitterness took hold of you.
Now you take pleasure in the discomfort of other Wikipedians as this somehow validates your position and maybe temporarily lessens your emotional pain.
Shalom, vindication is not coming your way, you need to accept the actuality of your situation and move on. IT'S JUST A SODDING WEBSITE!
Actually, I agree with everything you say. I felt terrible for what I had done, especially the secretive manner in which I had done it. I felt the most appropriate remedy, since the deed had already been done and rectified months earlier, was to apologize to every individual that I could find on Wikipedia -- and I did this. I sent about forty messages to every editor who dealt with my undisclosed vandalism. I felt that any vandal, upon realizing the severity of his offence, ought to respond similarly. I've returned to the dark side lately, but in late 2007 I was seeking forgiveness.
There's a curious link between punishment and forgiveness in my religious tradition. I can't explain it fully here, but briefly, when God causes you suffering, you may perceive it as a process of cleansing your guilt. My religious perceptions of sin and forgiveness influenced my actual response more than anyone may know. If I had no concept of respecting a High Authority who demands honesty, I would have not felt the need to seek forgiveness by apologizing specifically for vandalism months later. Put yourself in my shoes (and RMHED, this does actually apply to you). You vandalized many months ago. It's been fixed long ago. What do you do now? Do you apologize, or do you just let it go? I apologized. I felt it was the right thing to do. (As for my more recent vandalism, I was almost literally going insane, and I'm not going to reach out to people on a website where I am not otherwise active to apologize again.)
Bitterness took hold of me because I thought people would recognize my apology as being sincere. I know that in light of my returning to my old ways nobody will believe me now, but it was sincere, and it will always have been sincere at the time. If you read through my comments at my self-RFC (a wiki-suicide, in retrospect) you will see that I expected my honesty would be rewarded with honesty from the Wikipedia community. I got none. I attributed that betrayal, among other things, to the fact that folks on Wikipedia aren't really your friends. They're just helping the project for their own reasons, like you do for your own reasons, but they don't personally care about you.