Turn, turn, turn...

Seeing as though I have just embarked on what I suspect will be a long break from Wikimedia, it's likely that non-Wikimedia topics will tend to dominate this blog for a while. I don't intend to say a lot about why I'm leaving Wikimedia alone for a while, but I am not going to be silent on it, either.

I left Wikipedia, and Wikimedia, for several different, interrelated reasons.

The first is that my prominence in the community and the broad distrust and antagonism held by significant (or at least loud) segments of the community has made it impossible for me to "move quietly" to deal with the "special situations" that I used to take care of for Danny and Brad, and more generally meant that everything I might do on Wikipedia was under extremely close scrutiny. I got tired of living under the microscope all the time.

The second is that there is a large political fight brewing on the English Wikipedia, and if I had stayed there I would have been in the middle of it. I don't really like politics that much.

The third is that I'm, quite simply, tired. I'm getting older, and because of the meds I take I'm not that energetic a person anymore. Wikipedia has been increasing my stress levels and interfering with getting enough sleep.

The fourth reason, which only relates to Wikimedia, has to do with the Board elections. The results have not yet been announced, but as a former member of the Communications Committee, I got to see the results a few hours early. I certainly won't announce the winner here, but from where I sit I can't see that this person's election will do Wikimedia any good at all. In fact, I expect a truly nasty power struggle starting any day now. As I noted above, I don't really like politics that much, and especially the sort of kindergarten politics that tends to go on in Wikimedia. I don't want to be around that mess as it explodes. I am putting my faith in the sane people (the few of them that are left) to pick up the bloody pieces after all the infighting is over and create the next generation of the Wikimedia Foundation. Either that, or I'll end up joining some fork created by those who are pissed off enough at the Foundation to start a new project.

So my plan is to spend the next few months catching up on my reading list and spending time with the people in my life, something which I hadn't been doing as much as while being so active in Wikipedia/Wikimedia. (I have a long reading list right now: several novels, John Dean's recent book, and the Jared Diamond books, at the very least. I am presently finishing the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, after which I intend to read the Game of Thrones series up to current. I think that's three books, but might be four.) So my posts for the next few months probably won't have a lot to do with Wikipedia or Wikimedia. If you were reading this blog for that, sorry.

I've set myself nomail on all of the Wikipedia/Wikimedia related mailing lists I was on (I think; if I missed one I'll fix it when I find it), except for the ArbCom and Oversight lists, which I've unsubscribed from entirely. My mailbox is really quiet now, which is the strangest thing. Kinda nice, actually.