User:Durova/Recusal

9/11 is a big deal. My uncle was having a morning meeting on the seventy-second floor of the north tower when the plane struck. Most of the people from his office didn't survive. Wikipedia's 9/11 article is small potatoes, as is nearly everything else on this site.

Hot buttons

Wikipedia maintains a group of policies to convey one simple message: don't push your own hot buttons. People used to say that religion and politics were taboo subjects because those conversations often turn into quarrels. Wikipedia does have articles about religions and politics and a myriad of other topics which, for certain people, constitute issues. Whatever your issues are, be honest with yourself. Back away from the ones where you can't be objective.

The wisest decision I ever made as a Wikipedian was to stay away from 9/11 and World Trade Center. My nearest relative was one of the last people to escape that disaster alive: I joined the armed forces and went to war because of it. Obviously I know a lot about those topics yet I never edit those articles. Elsewhere I've shared some of that knowledge for the good of mankind. Here I edit and administrate an encyclopedia. Civilization might be collapsing because of misunderstandings that surround those events, but it wouldn't collapse any less if I rushed into a vortex of edit warring.

Micronations

Nearly every day I encounter Wikipedians who've wasted weeks or months over far less important matters. A micronation? A rock band? Granted, when it's your micronation it seems like a big deal. Trust me on the definition of a big deal: a big deal is when your uncle watches his boss die because a 767 slammed into the building; a big deal is when you survive on three hours' sleep a night for a week because that's how long it takes your ship to save the lives of 112 Ecuadorian refugees whose boat broke down 300 miles off the coast of Guatemala.

Big deals

Sometimes big deal + enough time = okay to edit. Another big deal I faced a bit farther back happened when I took my father to the hospital and they discovered a tumor the diameter of a Coke can inside of his brain. I created and unofficially dedicated the featured page List of notable brain tumor patients in his memory.

So usually, when editors try to explain how significant their side of a dispute is at some Wikipedia page, I just smile and think - if that can seem so important - how fortunate their lives must be.