"And you men and half of Terminus as well are just as bad. We sit here, considering the Encyclopedia the all-in-all. We consider the greatest end of science is the classification of past data. It is important, but is there no further work to be done? We're receding and forgetting, don't you see?"
Salvor Hardin
from
Foundation ("The Encyclopedists", Part 5) by
Isaac Asimov
Wikipedia is a lot like the United Nations. Everyone is given equal representation, including the morons, the trolls and the blatantly wrong. It's full of long-winded bureaucracy and processes that amount to nothing because the enforcement is toothless. Those who care about playing by the rules are slowly worn down by those who can easily circumvent them.
That's the worst problem. There are plenty of others.
Like how 99% of the edits to Wikipedia are making articles worse, not better. People just have to have their grubby fingerprints all over articles, whether or not it actually makes sense to have templates featuring the history and demographics of New York City on the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit article. If people would stop and think seriously about whether or not they're actually improving articles or just padding their edit count, they would be appalled at how useless most of their edits actually are. Or perhaps not. And that's the problem.
So, I quit.
Frankly, it's just not worth my time anymore. The arguing, the fighting, the nonstop reverting, the morons, the trolls, the vandals, the out-and-out begging of someone to do something, anything, about the problems other than create another process for it. In the end, it just became another job. If I were being paid $50,000/year to put up with crap, I might fight through it. And in the end, Wikipedia contributors earn nothing but...what? Derision? User page vandalism? A farking barnstar?
Bleh. It's not worth it anymore. If someone were to actually address the underlying problems, maybe the Missing Wikipedians list wouldn't be so long. But no one cares, so I'm out.