Being both impossibly funny yet infinitely disgusting, I am inclined to dismiss the whole matter as being no more than the display of the true power of a Wiki. What it managed to do was take twenty pages of information, and over the course of two days, convert it into no fewer than ninety pages. It was sometime in the afternoon today that I realized this, initially paying no mind to it, thinking that it was merely a great reflection on the effort that had been put into it. But ever so slowly, doubts have started creeping in - and people tell me there is no way anyone is going to sift through so many words and not have something to say about it. "One can't be punished for too much work" has been replaced by "Alright, so that's 20% off, what's next?"!

No doubt whichever poor soul comes across this report will initially be repulsed in horror - if not, then I am equally confident that someone higher up will ask to see it, with the pre-conceived notion that this is some sort of "statement" by my group, a deliberate attention-seeking mechanism; which, of course, means that it is pretty much required that we be shot down. I don't know if I can actually blame them, really. If I asked for twenty pages but were given ninety, I might be sympathetic, but "Ah, if you want to know the truth it's that people they..."

I place the blame squarely on the Wiki, of course - sure, there are four of us, but did we really write ninety pages? Editing individual documents in isolation gave the illusion of something that in its gory, expanded form would struggle to top forty, but here we find ourselves with this behemoth in front of us, threatening to crush us all!

I actually won't be all that fussed if I am accused of being a poor software manager, by which I mean I will still get upset, but as a criticism it will not be all that biting. My response would surely have to be that what I have been doing is not managing, it's whatever's required to get through. I don't think anyone would accept this statement, but that's unfortunate, really. It again leads me to wonder how I get into these tangles where I have to go defend myself to usually indifferent arbiters, where I feel like everything can be solved if everyone just listened and became rational...but I've concluded that it's wasted time wishing for things like this.

But hey, this is all great! Very much in the vein of this post from last year, eh? Like I said, it really is impossibly funny on some level, if you're sufficiently detached from the situation. The consolation is that the other unfortunate members of my group don't seem to be as worried as I am by half; which would make it all the worse if things were to go bad due to my own incompetence (funny word to describe this, but true, isn't it?!).

Yes, I know, deep breaths and all that, but I'm getting too old for this nonsense.

Update: Hey now! Things panned out in a way no-one expected - no penalty for length (or so we think), but it seems like the darn thing might have gone unread! Ah well, my fireplace could use some paper anyway.