Is Iridescent dead?

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Iridescent hasn't editted since 19th February.

There's no indication he was planning a break or left due to an obvious issue.

An unanswered talk page message suggests he is not responding to emails.

Although he has 400,000+ edits and more articles created than many editors have edits, his edit history is a wild ride of isolated periods of compete immersion separated by longer periods of general disinterest. But he has always maintained a certain level of interest.

While he does take a month off now and again, you have to go all the way back to Nov/Dec/Jan 2011/2 to find the only other time he has ever taken more than a month in a row off. He hasn't done any significant editing since the a!most 100k edits he registered in 2020 alone, his best year yet, by a wide margin.

Perhaps he wrecked himself in that epic effort, because he hasn't even hit 1,300 edits in totality since, and nothing to articles.

Something is definitely up.

Dead, or finally cut the cord. In which case, he is dead to them now!

As obituaries go, this was a beaut.....

https://www.john-clarke.co.uk/wiki-analysis1.html

[ericbarbour]

Iridescent has had a love-hate relationship with WP since the early days. He was suspected of the 2011 Arbcom mailing list leak, and many insiders now distrust him. So he's prone to dropping off the radar for years at a time.

Would anyone like to see an old photo of Eric Corbett abusing Aidan "Iridescent" Merritt at a 2012 WP meetup in Manchester?

I know you do! Filthy perverts!

800px-Manchester_Wikimeet_Feb_2012-5.jpg (76.25 KiB) Viewed 1412 times

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... he's prone to dropping off the radar for years at a time.

That's just it, he isn't, certainly not years.

His disengaged mode still sees him editing months at a time at a level of tens of the low hundreds of edits a month.

His previous driest spell was August 2011 to July 2012 inclusive, and he still made 28 edits, spread very thinly.

It makes for interesting reading.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... &limit=500

He had just finished getting his vanity press article promoted to FA, Eric was needling him about the leaks, and the Civility Wars were in full swing.

All good reasons he would want to disengage after a period of activity where he was making make anywhere between 500 and 5,000 edits a month, itself already down from the highs of 2007-9 (which still included the odd month off).

But as seen in that year long dry spell, even when disengaged, he still clearly checks in.

Amusingly, in it he twice hints at being dead ("beyond the grave") when checking in, and Risker (thanks to Eric's pestering) is forced to disclose....

Iridescent has periodically communicated with members of the committee, and the absence is due to non-Wikipedia factors; I understand this has happened from time to time in the past, and the two situations are not related. Risker (talk) 18:37, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Those factors are most likely the legal issues that later saw Brad preventing the FA from being a TFA, to everyone's confusion.

It's a fantastic period in Wikipedia history, with NewYorkBrad in full Hey Guys I'm One Of You Really But If You Disobey Me I Will Destroy You mode, in that TFA matter, the leaks, and no doubt other episodes.

No wonder someone leaked the ArbCom mailing list, since at the time it would have been full of Cabal goodness.

What I previously thought was a three month period and we had already passed that, it actually saw him make zero edits from 6 October to 18 February (135 days), so we aren't there yet (122 days and counting).

Hilariously, his back with a bang post of 18th February was a half assed attempt to make the case before ArbCom that sometimes it can be acceptable for a Wikipedia editor to "belittle" another editor.

It's a good thing that Wikipedia managed to get past these lame efforts by Team Asshole to use linguistic tricks to nullify the Fourth Pillar. It's a bad thing that they settled on just ignoring it entirely.

So back then there were reasons why went away, and reasons why he would come back, clearly. Now, not so much.

That's the difference. Ether he's not seeing anything that interests him, or he is only seeing stuff that truly depresses him about the state of Wikipedia, or, well, he really has gone to his grave. He is radio silent.

I really do hope he is dead.

It is a fitting end for someome who stood for election to ArbCom to, in their own words, achieve....

enhanced status for proven contributors without giving a blank check for vested contributors to bully other users

No wonder Eric was mad at him for not having fulfilled his promise.

Bullying should not be tolerated, period.

There should be zero tolerance, and that logically begins with firmly enforcing Wikipedia's (still extant but widely ignored) declaration that......

Stated simply, editors should always treat each other with consideration and respect.

....

Wikipedia's civility expectations apply to all editors during all interactions on Wikipedia.

No mention there of enhanced status for proven contributors.

We all know it exists however.

Christ, further down, a legacy of Iridescent and company, all the bullshit such as this.....

when given a choice between several ways of dealing with a problem, pick the one that generates the least drama

.....is not so coded language to communicate the unwritten policy: DON'T EVER BLOCK POPULAR USERS FOR ETTIQUETTE BREACHES.

Assholes.

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138 days.

We are officially in uncharted territory.

It at times like this you come to realise editing Wikipedia is like owning a cat.

[Bbb23sucks]

It at times like this you come to realise editing Wikipedia is like owning a cat.

In what way?

[Boink Boink]

It at times like this you come to realise editing Wikipedia is like owning a cat.

In what way?

It eats your face after you die.

[ChaosMeRee]

The bad news is Iridescent is not dead....

just got an email from Iri saying they’re fine, just “insanely busy”, and that they’ll post here in a while when they get a chance and can find their login info. —Floquenbeam (talk) 02:24, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

The good news is that he is most definitely done with Wikipedia.

He hasn't made a single edit now for 268 days.

Arguably he only sent that email to Floquenbeam because people had noticed what I had noticed and were starting to genuinely wonder, is the man actually worm food?

This is the first time they've gone six months without editing since 2006, before which they'd only recorded one edit with this account. I hope it's just real life getting in the way. Graham87 16:53, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

He has been gone so long, he has had his AWB access removed. He was a prolific user of that tool back in the day, being that rare thing of a gnome and FA machine.

He has ignored not one but two opportunities raised on his talk page to get involved in matters directly affecting his own beloved Featured Articles, Charles Domery and the London Necropolis Railway. The latter is is his absolute favourite work, yet the chance to once again engage in novel copyright arguments to save one of its locally hosted pictures, was ignored. A long standing hater of Commons, it is fitting that it is his own people who are drawing his last few pints of blood. As if in tribute, former friends gathered to try and emulate his passion, but it is but a ghostly shadow of the man himself. And the outcome the same, deletion.

I think it is a dead cert that Iridescent won't find a compelling reason to "find their login info" (lol) this side of the Festivus period. And sad bastard he may be, I can't see him wanting to distract himself from the tedium of the Twixmas week by firing up his Windows XP Desktop and reviewing a bazillion watchlist entries.

And as we can see, his talk page has hardly been a hive of activity since he has been AFK, and there is hardly anything that one would call a captivating read in his most recent talk page archive, so he would probably have to seek out any interesting meta debates of an informal Village Pump nature elsewhere, if he wanted to partake in that former favourite way to while away his life.

I am curious as to why he is "insanely busy". The only logical conclusion is that he has fallen on hard times and is desperately trying to stay afloat and/or dig himself out of a hole. That doesn't really leave you in the right mindset for Wikipedia editing or even goofing off as the Unofficial God King, even if he were to have a spare hour here or there. The poor guy is probably exhausted, dead on his feet.

It's morbidly fascinating to ponder how the community is going to react when Iridescent's now ghostly talk page is in receipt of the mandatory notification on 1 January 2024 telling him that if he doesn't make an edit within a month, he will lose his Admin rights on 1 February 2024.

Can they leave a man in peace to end his days on Earth?

I know I can't. But that's just the vulture in me.

Last we forget, if it weren't for people like Iridescent, Wikipedia would not be what it is today.

It is little comfort that Wikipedia didn't remotely develop the way he has hoped.

He more than most personified the warped distortion of Jimmy Wales' noble vision, where Wikipedia was not a broadly useful general reference work full of comprehensive, neutral and accurate articles that summarise topic. A primer to anyone who might want to then do a deeper dive into the detailed sources written by the actual experts.

As he bizarrely proudly admitted in his RfA and proved time and again since, most famously with the Necropolis stuff, he viewed Wikipedia more as a means for the obsessive collection of every little scrap of detail one could find about some niche topic, so that its Wikipedia article became the single most comprehensive and indeed authoritative accounting of it. It would allow editors to get "as close to investigative journalism as it's possible to get in the tertiary-source model".

A freak's paradise. A haven for every talentless fuck who before Wikipedia could never have even dreamed of having the awesome power of publishing unless they self published, and therefore have their dreams of being an expert without earning it, crushed.

All of Wikipedia's higher level content related problems stem from this original sin. This is the Wikipedia that no marks like Tim Davenport and Hemiauchenia love to defend and hail as a success, unable to see the perversity in comparing a Britannica article to a Wikipedia article these days, when the two diverged in terms of purpose and readership several years ago. One caters for freakshow editors, their vanity, arrognace, pomposity, the other for readers seeking a summary of generally useful topics.

Where did Jess Wade get the idea that it is Wikipedia's role to be the unearther and broadcaster of hidden women's achievements using nothing but snippets obtained from first hand non-independent sources? Pulling the trigger on their Who's Who entry before even Who's Who has heard of them? Where did Wikipedians get the idea it is Wikipedia's role to list all the destinations served by an airport? The list of utter fuckwittery goes on an on.

It is no comfort to me that Iridescent's bastard children did not follow in his footsteps and slavishly devote themselves to quality, not quantity. Neither a Wade or Hemiauchenia ever could or ever would produce a Featured Article. It is arguably the efforts of freaks like Iridescent, dominating and indeed overhweming the Featured Article collection with topics of little use to man or beast, that meant Wikipedia soon happily forgot that it's original aim was to be a collection of FAs, not the vaste sea of excrement it is now.

Death is too good for these pricks. Their crimes against humanity too vast.

[badmachine]

The good news is that he is most definitely done with Wikipedia.

hopefully he has found a more fulfilling hobby. :^)

[ChaosMeRee]

Is this almost more funny than if he were actually dead?

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1190169126

One edit, made at 9.46am on a Saturday, solely to remove his entry from Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians.

And then he promptly vanished again. It's surely not in any normal person's weekend to do list....

* Let those sad bastards I used to be friends with know I'm not "missing".

No new messages on his talk page yet. Perhaps nobody noticed? It has only been a day.

Athough even if you had, what are you meant to say in such circumstances? Other than, hey dude, glad you're not dead.

I wonder if they're getting the cold shoulder for having just upped and left like that? No note, no flowers, he never called, nothing.