Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/Discovered reasons given for leaving Wikipedia

Wikipedia is no longer about who is right or wrong. It's not about discussing, referencing and accepting one was wrong. It's about blocks, personal attacks and lies. |ANON (Pre-2012)
It's better to stop editing when getting one (Note:Editor is referring to a Block), because no one is going to take you seriously. You're branded. Admins will ignore you, make offensive remarks and will reward the ones who provoke you. You're an outcast, no matter how good and well-sourced your edits are. I refuse to accept that. I've loved editing Wikipedia. With over 8500 edits, dozens of articles and media to show for it, but enough is enough. I demand to be treated as a human being and I will not lower myself anymore. Enough is enough. I'm leaving Wikipedia, standing by every edit I ever made here wether on an article or on a talk page, and denying the admins the pleasure of banning me. |ANON (Pre-2012)
In my short time here, I believe I've done much good, but I've also twice been falsely accused of being a sock, banned from interacting with an unstable individual who stalked my edits and banned from even talking about the idea of making blanked slightly more neutral. Entirely by "coincidence", before the blanked ban could expire so I could launch an RfC, many of the same people who have opposed my edits all along managed to pile on to an AN/I report to have my ban broadened to the entire site and extended indefinitely. And, of course, it's now a certainty that any number of people who, in the future, support some of the changes I've made will be falsely identified as my sock and permanently blocked.I'm told that it would be easy to get the indefinite block removed: all I'd have to do is lie. I would need to play a particular role, where I'm contrite, admit guilt, and promise never to sin again. I should throw myself at the feet of the lynch mob and beg them to take me back, accepting onerous conditions that would prevent me from actually doing anything upon my return. I think it should be very clear why that would require undermining my own integrity and would be entirely unacceptable.Wikipedia gets the editors it deserves. I'll leave it at that. |ANON (Pre-2012)
Blanked. Nice to hear from you. Looks like you'll be able to revert everything I've done, if you wish. Just like blanked has been doing for more than a year. Arbs have decided I'm not able to work with people when there's a disagreement. We know they're wrong, but don't say anything. If you do, you might just get blocked for refusing to accept those who actually arbitrate content, by deleting editors who provide what they want to censor. It would seem that Wikipedia also upholds the right of arbitrators and admins to threaten or implement blocks on people who criticise them, but will not address personal attacks on mere editors. Chill out man! That's the law around here. You'll do a fine job without me, what did I ever contribute anyway? |ANON (2008)
I will not be returning to wikipedia as I have become disgusted with some of the ridiculous policies of the project and the unresponsiveness of some of the blanked which I have encountered. Specifically, my account was autoblocked, and I was prevented from editing for 24 hours because of the conduct of another malicious editor who, it was claimed by the blocking administrator, was operating from the same IP address as me (see below). I tried to appeal my block, but my request was declined by another blanked administrator. I am using a computer at the Name of a College library, so I have no control over what somebody else who may access wikipedia from one of these computers may do. They have got to come up with a better system on wikipedia so that innocent editors like me (who, by choice, wish to remain anonymous) won't get blocked because of the vandalism of others! As you can see by checking my contribution logs, I was making many positive and helpful additions to many wikipedia articles. However, I have decided to permanently retire from wikipedia, as I no longer care to share my knowledge and editing expertise with people who don’t really appreciate my hard work. |ANON IP (2007)
It has definitely taken me all too long to arrive at an inevitable conclusion: this amazing project is also home to a community that belittles and harasses its own members for the most idiotic and childish reasons (e.g. grudges, boredom, amusement, sport, dirty politics).The problem here, is not with the WMF, site rules, or individual editors, but with the contagious witch-hunt mentality of the community. I know, it's easy, and perhaps even fun to ostracize and single an editor out, seduce the masses with promises of drama, and freely harass and attack that poor soul without fear of retribution. During such times, and even in general, we have a tendency to focus on the negative and overlook the positive; stellar contributions are rewarded with silence, and mistakes, regardless of how minute or well-intentioned, are met with aggressive complaints and/or trips to AN/ANI. The thing most people fail to understand is that there is a real person reading all these insults on the other side. Throughout my tenure here, I have seen countless editors, from IPs to Admins, to Arbs, say things or insult others in ways that they would dare not in real life. Given the current state of things, I believe that Wikipedia is going to destroy itself through mob-mentality and infighting. This project is ill, very ill, and I fear for its future. I've decided to retire now, because down the road, when I look back, I wish to remember editing Wikipedia as positive experience, lest any more negative experiences I might encounter should outweigh the good. When I joined Wikipedia back in 2008, the atmosphere was so much more welcoming and collegial. I can only hope, for the benefit of the encyclopedia, that we will one day make a return to the open, relaxed, and supportive environment that was once an integral part of Wikipedia. |ANON (Pre-2012)
Largely inactive nowadays. Wikipedia doesn't seem to be much fun anymore. |ANON (2007)
Consider me, essentially, an ex-editor. If I'm seen in edit histories anymore, understand only that I have changed something during my normal usage of Wikipedia. I have no further interest in regularly contributing to Wikipedia or its related projects. The whole nonsense surrounding the deletion of Esperanza upset me enough to distance myself from things. I quite firmly state that Wikipedia has become quite a bit too bureaucratic these days...and I suppose that Wikipedia will reap what it sows, sadly enough. 1 Times have found me disassociated from the Wikipedia as it now exists, and although I remain an admin, I never really made a mark. Though my greatest wishes for this project included a greater sense of community, Wikipedia no longer requires my continued participation, so I should now be considered only a passerby. |ANON (2012)
I am (expletive deleted) tired of arguing on this site. |ANON (2008)
I now doubt the wisdom of any kind of edit dispute, no matter how strongly I feel on the subject, or how right or wrong I may be. Is this really how I want to spend my time, by disputing with maniacs who clearly love to fight, but if that's what Wikipedia editing is all about to some people, even if they're in the minority, then I want no part of it. |ANON (2012)
(I may occasionally edit, but have neither time nor interest to engage with the complex edifice Wikipedia has developed in the past three or four years.) |ANON (2012)
I know some people will question the validity of this retirement, given the fact that it is not my first one, but I have decided to leave for several reasons: 1) I want to prove that I can, 2) my enjoyment of Wikipedia has been severely depleted, if not wiped out entirely, 3) the Wikimedia Foundation has made it clear that they want to modernize the encyclopedia, editor retention notwithstanding (many of the changes will likely create more problems than they solve, but I no longer consider the fight to be worthwhile), 4) the recent kerfuffle at AN has been disheartening and once again demonstrates the dysfunction that plagues the community. Over the past few days, I have not edited at nearly as active of a level as I usually do. Furthermore, I haven't missed anything. Frankly, I don't think I'm going to miss anything when I'm gone. I doubt you will believe me when I say I am leaving, but you will when I don't come back. |ANON (2013)
I've stopped editing here because I no longer have much faith in Wikipedia as an open editing environment, populated by peers in rational discourse, with encyclopedic goals. Wikipedia is now effectively and increasingly under the thumb of agenda-pushing, tin-pot dictatorial politicians abusing adminship as a caste system, as a puerile, venal popularity contest, and even as a means to a censorious and propagandistic end, all to the detriment of Wikipedia's mission.
In broad terms}}, I've not been editing, for much of any reason, since April 2013, and may leave permanently except as a decreasingly trusting reader. I've put Wikipedia at arm's length because of "cult of personality"-based, systemic abuses by "entitled" admins, and associated issues of "good ol' boy" cronyism, me-too-ism, and diffuse but stifling fear of challenging these pushy, censorious, charismatic admin "personalities", who have usurped ArbCom's authority and purpose, and turned WP:AE, WP:ANI and related administrative noticeboards into an above-the-law regime of make-it-up-as-you-go-along, arbitrary (in the negative sense), selective, even abusive and vindictive enforcement, with no checks and balances. From this Lord of the Flies-reminiscent kangaroo court, there is no appeal or recourse except to itself at WP:AE, or to a bureaucratic morass at WP:RFARB, where ArbCom generally declines to contradict admins, and not punish bad-acting ones even when the evidence can't be ignored, simply because they have a "badge".

This cancer of self-serving, aggressive, autocratic admins taking over dispute resolution process and perverting it to some kind of Judge Dredd/Dirty Harry bad-wiki-cop fantasy game, is compounded by:
1. failure of the WP:AE/WP:ANI sub-community of admins to fulfill its role properly, with the result that it is effectively sanctioning, even egging on, the pillorying of productive editors, while encouraging the frivolous, exploitative "career troublemaking" of inveterate PoV-pushers, trolls and nutcases;
2. failure of arbitrators to fulfill promises to clarify and resolve serious problems in the wording and enforcement of discretionary sanctions;
3. failure of Jimmy Wales to institute the adminship reforms that he promised (vaguely as to detail, concretely as to timeline) would be in place by the first quarter of this year;
4. and failure of the community more broadly to do much of anything about the increasing usurpation of the system of agenda-driven "civil PoV-pushers" who are seeking and uncritically gaining and keeping administrator authority, by which Wikipedia's coverage, tone and very nature are slowly being warped to reflect particular world-views, and increasingly limit the breadth and depth of the encyclopedia's base of contributors.
This is perhaps not surprising, given that (depending on whose stats and definitions you prefer) *en.wiki.x.io is one of the top-3 to top-5 most used websites in the world. Wikipedia's latent power on the human stage has staggering potential, but is mostly unguarded, with very few barriers to concerted, planned abuse and subversion. That's the surprising part, and the underlying impetus of my effective resignation as an editor here.

The proximal "straw that broke the camel's back" for me}} is the fact that two admins (one now resigned under a cloud after narrowly escaping forced-desysoping by ArbCom, the other still active) went on a two-months-long campaign of direct personal harassment of me and abuse of administrative power and processes to hound me, with virtually no response in check from the community – much less from its collective administration in particular, despite that being their "job". The other admin of the pair (who has previously made proven-false accusations against me and refused to retract them), even un-recused himself – after admitting that many others had raised concerns that he was too involved, being party to a still-unresolved discretionary-sanctions dispute with me, and thus agreeing to recuse himself – just so he could get to be the one to personally close a WP:AE case, in a manner that censored me with an unjustified and unjustifiable topic ban for a month. I've thought about pursuing a WP:RFARB case about the matter, and many have encouraged me to do so, a few publicly but (fearing repercussions) most privately. While I think I would win such a case on its merits, and I know of at least 5 others who would join as additional "plaintiffs", I feel I have better things to do with my time. Life is short, and I would rather do something pleasant and meaningful than put up with being conspiratorially attacked by inimical, petty power-brokers in a project that seems to be running off the rails, with no recourse but to engage a witheringly time-consuming and nit-picky, pseudo-legalistic, pretentious and slow-moving bureaucracy that is clearly stacked against non-admins. I also observe that one Arb recently resigned their post for reasons that indicate ArbCom is acting in the interests of its own collective public image, not the interests of the editing community, so I am skeptical that such an RFARB case would be decided on its merits, rather than expediency and authoritarianism. Even a couple of admins who have seemed relatively neutral toward me appear to express similar doubts. All these temporal specifics said, this particular back-breaking straw really is just one problem among many that together indicate serious institutional malaise. Being raked over the coals by an admin tag-team gang just happened to piss me off too much to let it slide.

Conclusion: Until I see at least some marginal progress on these worsening problems, I remain unconvinced that this project is worth any more of my time, since it is being incrementally but inexorably co-opted, while neither its most valuable contributors nor even its founder and chairman seem to care enough to speak up and take action about it. I don't even bother fixing typos any more; "Wikipedia doesn't need me", right? I've been in the top few hundred most-active editors for years. I've even spent several thousands of dollars obtaining hard-to-find paper sources for articles that badly need work (not to mention donating money directly to the project), but at this point I may just write my own well-researched pieces about these topics, and publish them elsewhere. This project certainly has no natural right to my continued massive amount of consistently productive labor, nor any entitlement to it even on moral suasion grounds, if it will not defend itself from rotting from the inside out. ANON (2013)
I quit Wikipedia some time ago, after a good number of content edits. I was going to type here before, but did not get a chance. So here are my key points:
1. Fear of attrition: The community at large has a high level of "fear of editor attrition" to the point that they defend unproductive and at times mentally unstable editors for long. That results in the loss of good editors who get fed up with long debates and walk away. Raul got it right long ago.

2. Rough neighborhood: There are a number of polite and civil editors on Wikipedia, but as a whole the environment tolerates incivility and has since become a web site where roughnecks and lumberjacks thrive. Why a respectable academic should tolerate this environment is beyond me. In my entire life (and I mean that) I have NEVER encountered so much profanity as on this "encyclopedia". Most of it was not even directed at me, but just reading it is distasteful. In many cases, only roughnecks and lumberjacks may put up with this level of contention as they "donate" effort to the website. Donations of knowledge should not be met with contention.

3. Everyone has a voice: This was a major issue for me. It does not matter if someone has developed serious content or signed up 12 minutes ago, they still get the same say in policy debates. And this builds on items 1 and 2 as the pundits with no content history defend useless editors for long on WP:RFC/U discussions, Pending changes debates, etc. driving away the better users. This was no environment for my continued involvement.
...and I've probably wasted far too much of my life on this farcical exercise in bureaucratic pseudo-usefulness, and should find something else to Grump about. Wikipedia will never be more trustworthy than the balance of power with in allows - and while it entrusts (entrusts? yeah, right...) such powers to the admin-cultists, more concerned with accumulating personal woo than actually giving a toss about anything else, it will remain the dogs-breakfast of POV-pushing, special-interest-group-promoting, racist-canard-propagating heap of turds it is.
Oh, and one final observation regarding 'reliable sources'. As far as I'm concerned, the less of these cited, the more likely an article is to actually say anything useful. An article on 'Jewish Nobel laureates' can contain multiple citations, and still utterly refuse to actually tell us how you define a 'Jewish Nobel laureate', whereas an article on Bluetooth protocols, lacking any sources whatsoever, actually describes the subject. Go figure...

I Grumped, therefore I was. I'm off looking for fresh fields to Grump on. Thanks to all those who gave a toss, and good riddance to the admin-trolls. |ANON (2014)
After over seven years of editing - over one year of active editing - I am throwing in the towel. Of my edits, 50% of the 11,000+ were to the mainspace. I worked, hard, to balance the POV on gun-control related pages. Ditto for porn coverage. (I wasn't very successful at either.) I was just getting started on some feminism and sexism pages. I also worked hard to see civility improved in the editing environment, to align with the civility policy. The gun-control and civility discussions were some of the most aggressive, uncivil "discussions" that I have experienced in my nearly 40 years as an adult and as a professional communicator. I sure hope Wikipedia becomes more welcoming and diverse before my granddaughters grow up. There are a lot of men here, and some women too, who have their heads in the sand regarding how the aggressive, uncivil editing environment on Wikipedia effects not only the makeup of the editorial body, but also the quality of the encyclopedia's content. |ANON woman editor (Late 2014)
User talk:Guillaume2303/Archive 15#Why is Guillaume2303 retiring?
I had a good time here for quite a while, but it's become apparent to me that the project is broken. When you lost hold of the primacy of good writing, moved over towards being a social media site, and (especially) when the value of the FA process was lost, you lost me. So many of the policies now seem meaningless or even counterproductive; the one that I think sticks is this one. Randy from Boise is now running the site unchallenged, and the articles suffer in consequence. So it goes. |ANON (early 2019)
I started editing on wikipedia in 2005 and during my time here, it was decent for the most part (except a few edit wars I've personally experienced), now, it has gone downhill with certain "big men" on the platform given tyrannical powers, which they threaten to block you or ban you from editing, if you dare challenge their point of view or not providing numerous sources. Even with that, they are not satisfied. In addition, they claim not to have a particular point of view, but this statement is not true either. I was considering coming back after leaving a few years ago, but seeing what I've seen recently, this is a big NOPE. Not to mention having large banners begging for money. I wouldn't be surprised if in a matter of years, this platform will require its users to pay to have full access. YouTube did this by ad bombardment in videos. Seriously, nobody has a voice here anymore. I would highly recommend sticking with an old school encyclopedia or consider alternatives to Wikipedia. If you're not careful, this platform will drain your soul and your life. | Former Wikipedia editor who will go anonymous (2005-2019).
Every other week, Wikipedia has a banner up at the top explaining that the site is on the brink on lack of donations and editors, only barely scraping by each time with the next month always looking a little bit more dire. And assholes like Blanked are a perfectly self-demonstrating reason why. A user history with nothing but destructive, borderline vandalism revert-spamming, and a front page filled to the brim with self-congratulatory bullshit - and rewarded with page control functions such as locking out anyone they disagree with without even bothering to explain themselves. And this guy is one of the more mellow ones. Wikipedia deserves all of its problems. | Former Wikipedia editor who will go anonymous (2024).

Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/Discovered reasons given for leaving Wikipedia

See also