Throughout my ArbCom candidacy and every interaction I have had on the policy side, I have denigrated "personalities." I realize that it's not necessarily easy to understand what I mean by something like that, and I have realized, over the past few weeks, that it's actually a somewhat subtle distinction that applies to nearly everyone on Wikipedia.
Are you here as a personality?
Are you personally invested in Wikipedia, so that your screen name is any part of your identity? If your screen name were called a "troll" or a "liar" or something similar, would you respond because you had been attacked or because it was untrue? Is it yourself that you would be defending or Truth? If an article you were principal editor on gets an award, do you feel that you have been personally praised, or has the work been praised? If you keep a list of articles, do you do this to show people how clever you are or to show them the areas where you might be a good consultant?
I have noticed, repeatedly, that there are people who want their actions on Wikipedia to transparently refer to themselves. If you call an online he a she, or an online elder person a child, or call a sentence fragment a ridiculous mistake, the person being referred to goes absolutely berserk. They respond as if they themselves as a self were involved, as if words made it so. They care very deeply about their online "avatars" and cultivate them with more attention than a bonsai master. They argue not about articles, but, inevitably, about themselves as projected into the web.
The impersonal editor
Now me, I don't much mind. Call me a girl, and I'll laugh. Call me a kiddie, and I'll laugh some more. Call me a liar, and I'll shake my head sadly. Tell me that Oroonoko is "the first novel written by a woman in the English language," and I'll get ticked off. I have some part of myself in the work that I do, in the articles I write, and in the policies I draft, but I have no part of it, or next to none, in the social interactions of the site. I am here for the articles and to bow a knee to Truth again.
This is not to say that I care nothing about my image. Of course I like praise, but I say "I'm not here" for a reason. I put my self in my work, as we all do, and my work is in articles and policies, not in managing people or perceptions. Praise my work, and I'll smile. Praise me, and I'll think you're deluded.
Starving and drowning, we lay waste our peers
The world is unfair, blind, and unmerciful. It runs on prejudice and cruelty. Online, as they say, "no one knows you're a dog," and we have a chance to start over, to appear simply as our sentiments and thoughts. That is attractive, and it can go from alluring to seductive. The reason that I, personally, don't care much, the reason why I'm an eunuch in the harem of online personhood, is that I've been there, done that. Virtual friendships are like diet foods. If you're starving because of adolescence or persecution and you begin gobbling down those diet entrees, you are eating, but you're probably not going to do yourself any real good.
Where your treasure is, there shall your heart be
Subtitle: Friendster vs. Britannica
As Jesus said, your life is where your treasure is. If the joy you get from Wikipedia is in social fulfillment, then you will invisibly, imperceptibly, and inevitably invest your self in those interactions. Then, when someone votes against your RFA or your ArbCom run, you will get offended. How dare they? When someone calls you a troll, you will grow furious. How dare they? Soon enough, you will be climbing the Reichstags or, much worse, compiling a list of "good" and "bad" people on Wikipedia...as if the people mattered.
The moment you feel the temptation to make a list of enemies, you have gone straight over from the encyclopedia side to the Friendster side. The moment you find yourself giving an hour to the design of your page instead of writing up your favorite band or hotdog stand or novel, you will have given over to MySpace instead of the encyclopedia. The moment you discover that your IRC logs are longer than your contributions list, you will know that you have given in to Facebook and left the encyclopedia.
If you need a reason to ignore people....
Everyone at Wikipedia is new all the time. No one has heard of you. Seriously. You beaver away at some corner of the project, and the other people in that corner know your signature and predict and expect certain things attached to it, and they write to you on your talk page, and you write to them on their talk pages. Then, you go to WP:AN or WP:AN/I or WP:DRV or to Commons or enter an RFC or get arbitrated as a witness or plaintiff, and you find that no one has heard of you! That's because they haven't. It's true. Everyone here is new. You can cultivate "friends" and "enemies," if you want, but there is a very strong chance that they're going to leave before you do, or that you will before they do, or that you'll grow uncomfortable with their expectations. The point is that any investment you make, any treasure you pile up, on social interactions is fixing the mercury. The articles remain when the people do not. The articles influence the world. The people pretty much do not. Be wise with your investments, therefore.
Battle cry
I will not join Friendster, MySpace, or Facebook while I am at Wikipedia. I will work on the encyclopedia, not the community, and names will never have the force of sticks and stones.