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[edit] GOODBYE CRUEL WIKIPEDIA:
A VALEDICTORY ADDRESS

I'm Louis Epstein,and I own a computer whose fixed IP address has for years been 12.144.5.2.See the User Contributions link below for the thousands of edits I've made to Wikipedia.

In 2003 I stumbled onto a nonexistent Wikipedia article and after some misgivings about the baleful warning about whatever I wrote being mercilessly edited and redistributed,decided to create a bare-bones biographical entry for a well-known writer.I went on to create and write numerous articles on a variety of subjects.In recent weeks it became impossible for someone who does not register for an account to create articles.

Account registration runs counter to my philosophy of web use;I do not care to provide information about myself to other people's databases,and I believe in keeping my computer completely free of cookies.

Since I started editing Wikipedia experience has taught me that it is a mistake to do so,and I will no longer do so and will discourage everyone I can from doing so.Wikipedia is riddled with clique-building fanatics determined to deify the lowest common denominator and convinced that sufficient repetition that Wikipedia's flaws are virtues will make it so.

"Copyleft" is fundamentally a Bad Thing when it comes to written prose material,and we face here an informational equivalent of the "Tragedy of the Commons".Whatever one contributes,one must also concede total carte blanche for everyone else to trash whatever one writes,and I have had it with this!

The "personal appeal for donations from founder Jimmy Wales" expresses the difference in philosophy I have here.What writer or scholar would attach value to work he abandons to be used by anyone without asking permission?And surely by now it's clear Wikipedia will never stop asking for more and more money,rather than accept any limitation to live within its existing means.If people felt it was worth subsidizing they wouldn't have to be asked.

The Wikipedia community has compiled a substantial record of driving out thoughtful people while retaining those who are better at feuding and making connections.Those who have left before me include two who befriended me even as they signed on to the popular prejudice against my preference to avoid spacing after punctuation marks...one of them actually created a registered account for me once.(Since the 12.144.5.2 machine's strict cookie-free diet demands that I only use the account from another machine,and I wanted all my contributions together,I never used the account except to move articles).

I am not without experience in editing reference books...I was the Assistant Editor of the 1990 edition of EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS,and Columbia University Press hired me to do comprehensive error reports on The Columbia Encyclopedia (5th edition) and Concise Columbia Encyclopedia.(My punctuation preferences were never once mentioned by the people who paid me).I never encountered the arrogance exhibited here.

The straw that has broken the camel's back here is the issue of two particular articles among the many I have created from nothing while still permitted to do so...and one of them was created as an effort to remove inappropriate material from the other to put it in a better context than desired by thoughtless editors of the first.These articles pertain to a subject where I am internationally known as an expert.(I am not going to link to or identify them because the forms and formats they take when infested with the fruits of Wikipedia consensus is beneath contempt).I felt it important to exclude excess material and avoidable formatting conceits and impose uniform standards for what was to be included.

I have certainly not been attempting to impose my preferences all over Wikipedia,which would be a fulltime job were I fool enough to try (I consider the use of pinyin transliteration an unconscionable kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party,and no reference work I ever ran would tolerate it,for one example!).But two particular articles that would not have existed but for me,I thought,it would not be too much to ask for my preferences in content and format to be respected,after numerous appeals on talk pages that were never refuted with anything but appeals to the popularity of doing it a worse way.

No,I was told,anything at all is too much to ask for...I must ask for absolutely nothing or be banned.

Kipling wrote,give or take a syllable or two,

• • • If you can bear to hear the truths you've spoken
    • twisted by knaves into a trap for fools;
    • Or see the things you gave your life to,broken,
    • and stoop and build them up with worn-out tools;

but this is Wikipedia,where if you try to rebuild what's been twisted they take your tools away.

So...I leave behind this self-aggrandizing gathering with its absurd overemphasis on contemporary popular culture.Its incessant turning of every name on a list where the bare presence of the name on the list represents the whole of the name's encyclopedic noteworthiness,into a link for a new article.And its vicious treatment of those who don't give up theirselves to its diseased whole.

My knowledge and expertise,on whatever subject,will no longer be contributed to this bloated monster.

I'm well aware that this farewell can be turned into anything that any reader of it wants,with my offending the precious conceits of many I don't hold out hope that it will be treated with the respect I feel has been denied me heretofore.

But it's a New Year,and my resolution to have nothing further to do with Wikipedia commences at this moment.

Obviously,any response to this must be directed to me by email,at le@put.com.