Wiki Suicide

What the Wiki collective experiences as a WikiMindWipe is to the individual a WikiSuicide. See WikiMindWipeDiscussion, which is really about an early case of WikiSuicide.

We are represented here as words. Destroy those words and you destroy all that you are on wiki.

An individual destroys himself and his works as a way of getting back at the society that doesn't understand him and hasn't afforded him a place.

When someone commits suicide, it also hurts everyone around them. As we are seeing, we don't just lose one person when this happens. We lose all the links to that one person.

We should strive to avoid anyone else being so thoroughly alienated.

-- EricBennett

As I said elsewhere, there can be more rational reasons for deleting your own contributions than just "getting back at the society".

Imagine, for example, that a person felt most participants on Wiki were unfairly biased against his opinions, and he wanted to get out. Such a person might not want to leave his contributions to the mercy of a community he probably doesn't trust anymore, where they could be taken out of context and shot down as undefended strawmen.

This is a view I might not share, but which I could understand and respect. -- FalkBruegmann

In that case that person wouldn't have added too much contribution anyway, since such a closed community would repel his thoughts from the start. More likely, a WikiMindWipe would be a revenge of this individual against this so closed or biased community. -- LkRaider?

I think under these circumstances, if I wanted to extricate myself from this wiki, I would wipe 90% of my comments on the wiki and selectively leave the best ten percent that I felt were somehow adding to the discussion. -- JonGrover [See also: CollectingSeashells]

Every few months I do that anyway. FixYourWiki. -- SunirShah

I would think that eventually any comments which weren't adding to the discussion would be wiped by more relevant edits. As far as ThreadMode additions or Discussions go, I've found that even on Forums and BBSes, people tend to back off when the person has left... that is assuming they left because they were tired of "crap from the community". I have seen people leave some communities in disgrace, however, after having been justifiably attacked by other members. An example would be design and art communities which are particularly vicious towards plagiarists.

I can agree with a lot of what EricBennett is saying. I also think that, in saying so, he is defining the term. So in JonGrovers? case... it would not be suicide, because, in a sense, by removing contributions that you feel do not contribute... you are actually contributing. -- AndrewStandfield