It is very tempting to be a dramaqueen and post long rants blaming the work and its wales for running me off Wikipedia, but that'd be untrue. Besides someone would rightly quote this at me.

The truth is that wikipedia is a time-sucking drug. And that's fine, if you are having fun and/or you can still fool yourself with the Jimbofluff of making the world a better place. But it ceased to be fun for me a while ago, and my only consolation was that I might indeed be making the world a better place by helping to sort out, or at least reduce, Wikipedia's unacceptable collateral damage. But I can no longer kid myself on that score. So, can I have my life back please?

I am not cynical about Wikipedia. It is a brilliant idea, and whoever came up with it should be given full credit. It contains a host of excellent reference articles on everything from history and medicine to (yes) Pokemon. Sure, it will never be 100% reliable - but so what?

I salute the founder. And I salute the earlier pioneers who thought round corners and a developed this excellent system - flexible creative thinking. But they made one fatal mistake. They failed to leave Wikipedia with a decision making process that would allow "constitutional change" when new problems arose. And so the flexible creative thinking is not now in evidence. And they left a veto with any vocal minority who wanted to oppose anything.

I firmly believe that the majority of people who have studied it seriously, recognise at least aspects of the "BLP problem". But Wikipedia isn't governed by the thoughtful or the informed - it is governed by anyone who turns up. There are a small core of people who like playing wiki as an inhouse role-playing game and simply deny real-world consequences that might limit their freedom of action. There are a larger group who are too immature or lazy to think straight. And then there are all those who recognise "something must be done", but perpetually oppose the something that's being proposed in favour of a "better idea". The mechanism is rather like using a chatshow phone-in to manage the intricacies of a federal budget - it does not work for issues that need time, thought, responsibility and attention. I doubt this problem can be fixed - since it needs structural change to decision making - which is impossible for precisely the same reasons.

Of course the initial decision making process has a Godking as a safety valve. Alas, Olympus is now distant and probably impotent anyway.

I'm tempted to predict the apocalyptic demise of Wikipedia - that would be a great parting shot. But I think that's actually unlikely. It will plod on. Good people (like Brad - so leave him alone please) will eventually find some ways of tweeking the system to make it a little better. But radical change will take extreme outside pressure (lawsuits, media demands or some tragedy) and I really can't predict what that will be - it may be years off.

Anyway, I've had enough. I'm away to read some books (real ones with pages - and without "lol u suck"{{citation needed}} found at random places). No doubt I'll lurk awhile as well, no point in pretending otherwise.

I probably should have posted this to my wikipedia userpage, but I was in a hurry to leave and scramble my account. Maybe someone (who's not banned) would copy it there.