User blog:Ursuul/My Mistakes — A Rant

I like politics too much
I have no shame in this. Politics is one of my favorite subjects, & I’m a poli-sci major. Politics will always be my biggest passion, & I firmly adhere to Plato’s belief that “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors,” & that those who ignore politics deserve to be ruled by the despots they do nothing to stop. Nevertheless, I feel I need to exercise more tact when it comes to politics, & tone it down as it were, & generally drop topics that people do not want to broach.

I need to respect other people’s beliefs
Again, I have no shame in this at all. I believe that no belief is off limits, & that ALL beliefs, even that which I am currently espousing right now, should be thrust under the harsh weight of criticism & held there until they either harden...or crack. THAT is how a Free Market of ideas should work, & how bad ideas should to be challenged & ultimately obliterated, through rigorous debate. Nonetheless, there are certain individuals who tie their entire identities into their beliefs, & so an attack on their beliefs, to them, feels like an attack on their person, their identity, & their very way of life. This I can understand, & though to me being offended is no excuse at all for failing to defend your beliefs when called to the task, I again will attempt to exercise some tact, & ease off when people want to take the easy way out. That is their choice after all, & I should honor it, for it harms no one but themselves.

I need to stop trying to start debates
Debating is what you do in Poli Sci. As I’ve said before, there are some very bad beliefs that I feel are in desperate need of critique, ESPECIALLY if there is a societal force to try & protect said beliefs from criticism & to silence those who would do so. Nevertheless, individuals are not societal forces, so I should not attempt to challenge everyone who disagrees with me; that’s just impractical, & also rude. I still believe that a refusal to defend your beliefs denotes a fundamental lack of ideological rigor, & that attempting to avoid defending them betrays their weakness, but the world is not obligated to engage me in debate; that is a dangerously self centered thing for me to think, & so I should not judge people simply because they don’t have the time for little old me, & I should not always attempt to coerce them into doing so anyway, as that is wrong & egotistical.

Rights Hoarding
I’m a bureaucrat on 9 Wikis, & an Admin on four others. Half of ’em I barely visit at all, which is fine because I was usually invited there temporarily, but some of the bigger ones, like the Sword of Truth Wiki & the Dresden Files Wiki, I’m just not as active on as I am obligated to be. Then there’s the Night Angel, LBS, & RotM Wikis which I really like, but don’t have the time to put love into. I’m worried about staying active on each Wiki to prevent them from becoming eligible from adoption (& thus giving potential adoptees the chance to remove my rights), but I’ve come to realize that Bureaucrat rights aren’t all about ruling; they’re about caring for that which you rule, & protecting it so that it can flourish under your guidance & continuous contributions. I just don’t have the time to put the editing care into all of those Wikis as I can into this one, & even on here I am beginning to lag in main namespace edits. I think I fundamentally misunderstood what Bureaucrat rights are about, & instead greedily acquired as much power as I possibly could. Even my hopes of joining Community Council, though absolutely genuine, are fueled in part for my greed for yet another title to place under my belt. I feel I must re-evaluate what it means to rule, & decide if what rights I intend to maintain, & which ones I intend to relinquish, if any.

Obsession with Wikia
In my oft regretted & infamous Resignation Letter, I bemoaned that Wikia was absorbing too much of my actual life, & I was being absolutely honest when I said it was. That vacation was one of the happier times I’ve had since joining Wikia in full force, & I feel that I should spend less time here. However, even on days that I segment away purely so that I can ignore everything form Wikia & just go to Earth Treks, occasionally I’ll find myself checking my emails, & then I’m answering one, & then another, & the next thing I know I’m latched to my computer again & in no time the day is wasted. I feel that if I took more time off of Wikia & focused more on life (for crying out loud I was here on Christmas Day), then a lot of things would be smoother, & maybe my recent relationship wouldn’t be so off-&-on as it has been, & would be more stable.

Micromanagement
I tried to force myself to back away, & let mods handle things on their own as much as possible, but...here I find myself not a day ago making more Rules to segment them into boxes, dependent on my dictates & presence. I set out to make the perfect machine, one that I could walk away from for a month & come back to in perfect order, but instead I feel (& feel free to call me a self-centered prick for saying this) like the machine I created relies on a massive central cog to function properly, me, & would fall into disarray if left alone for too long. No, this isn’t entirely my hubris, because this is exactly what happened when I went on Vacation for two weeks, & it took a month & a half to fully bring things back into a semblance of order. I need my mods to be more autonomous, but the more power I give, the less I hold, & my power-hoarding self begins to resist it, so I sink back into the disastrous habit of micromanagement. I’ve done a fairly good job in delegating power to SR, & he’s done a good job of taking it up, but the more I give, the more I want to take away, & still I fear that simply placing power in one other person will just create two central cogs, rather than creating a machine that can lose any single cog & keep functioning flawlessly. I need to figure out a solution & fast, else the chaos of my vacation is bound to happen again; it’s lurking just beneath the thin sheen of order.

Arrogance & Hypocrisy
Often I have taken my position as a leader as a pass to do what I wanted, & to delegate what privileges I wanted to my friends; like a damned cronyist. From the bottom, cronyism looks despotic & evil, because it is, but from here it feels as natural as breathing, & I must work harder to hold myself to the exact same standards that I hold all others to.

Extreme Cynicism
I usually have more than one goal in mind when I do things, even if they aren’t very well thought out (I can & do make mistakes; quite often in fact), there’s usually at least two or three goals in mind when I do something. Usually the secondary & tertiary goals aren’t as well fulfilled as the primary goal, but they nonetheless exist. Beyond that, I see most people as liabilities & assets instead of as people, & I have a tendency to create rules that are self serving, since I see most people as willing to bend my rules against me at the first inclination (this is partially informed by personal experience but still), so to counter this I make rules that are entirely open to MY interpretations & as far away from legalism as Collectivism is from Individualism. I feel this is a flaw, but also a functional asset, so I’m not sure how best to tackle this problem.

Longwindedness
Tbh this whole blog is ridiculously long & most people won’t read it. I feel like I’ve been combating this issue by using TL;DRs as much as possible when I write rules n such, so that people can just read the short version & then stop, but though I’m good at condensing, I’m not good at being concise, which is something I need to work a little on.

Pride
I’d like to think that, if I am proven to be wrong, I will change my beliefs to suit the new information. I also like to think that if I do something wrong, I will admit that it was a wrong, take responsibility for it, & try to right it. This is something I usually succeed at, but it is very difficult, even painful at times, & I occasionally fail. This has caused me to become strident in my opinions, & I have occasionally drawn dangerously close to pride & egotism, which is something I have to constantly keep in check, though I fail too often than I’d like to admit. More on how Ursuul is the worst human being on earth to be followed, stay tuned for more :D