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.