How I survive Wikipedia edit
I've been thinking about putting these notes down for a while, but I finally decided to do it when I read these notes by Rjgibb, who recently nominated Wormshill at FAC. I don't find FAC a hostile environment myself, so I thought I would post some comments about why I write FAs and how I survive FAC (and Wikipedia in general).
A year ago I knew almost nothing about Anglo-Saxon history. I'd read two good introductory books, but I'd retained so little information that I was very unsatisfied. I enjoy reading non-fiction, but I found it frustrating that reading the books was such an inefficient way of making me better informed. For Christmas 2006 I received a copy of Asser's Alfred the Great, and when I finally read it a couple of months later I decided to write a Wikipedia article about Asser, to help me be sure that I'd absorbed all the information on him. I'd written one FA before this, so it was an easy decision to take the article to FA once it passed GA.
Writing the article to FA standards required some research and made me think about the material critically, in order to organize it. I discovered I knew more about Asser than about any of the other Anglo-Saxon topics I'd read about. Since then, I've been working on other Anglo-Saxon topics with the goal of treating Wikipedia's FA process as a classroom for myself. I can learn about a subject I like, and benefit Wikipedia at the same time. Forcing myself to take the articles to FA means that I have to spend enough time on the material that I genuinely learn it. Writing the article is like writing a paper for a professor; FAC is rather like getting a grade. When the paper gets an A, I start work on another paper, and keep learning.
So for me, Wikipedia is a big classroom. I used to get involved in AfDs, RfAs, and other similar processes, but after a while I realized that there was an infinite amount of work to do there, and without some goal I would simply burn out. I still admire the people who do that work, but I don't have the motivation. I would rather spend my time writing content.
I've been sad to see people who I admire get stressed and leave. I have seen people advise stressed editors to focus solely on writing content, as content-writers get less stressed, and I think that's good advice. FAC does seem to stress editors, though, so I'll add one more comment. The reason I don't get upset at FAC when someone posts a silly oppose, or asks for MOSDASH fixes, or an infobox I don't think should be there, is that to me that would be like getting mad with the professor who tells you to change something in a paper you've written. I just try to have faith that the FAC process will work, and comply with (almost) all the requests I get at FAC. Usually I find it really does make the article better.
I try to avoid getting involved with non-content work, though I haven't always been able to stick to that. I also have started doing more reviewing of others work, which seems only fair, as many people have reviewed my articles. I've also written some FAs on topics I like, just for pleasure. Other than that, I've stuck to my approach for about nine months now, and I'm still enjoying my time here, and still learning more about the Anglo-Saxons.