jayjg wrote:
Anyway, part of maintaining the goodwill of the
volunteer community is
protecting them when they are attacked as a result of their volunteer
work on behalf of Wikipedia. Or at least empathizing with them, rather
than saying "oops, you seem to be too much trouble now, get lost".
Certainly. The problem comes when that has to be balanced with the needs
of other editors and with the health of the project as a whole. For
example, if we were to change the no personal attacks policy so that any
violation would result in an automatic permanent ban, it might make the
remaining editors better "protected" but it would probably be bad
overall for the encyclopedia.
I am capable of empathizing with someone while at the same time pointing
out that I consider their actions to be futile and possibly causing more
harm than good (though in this case SlimVirgin herself doesn't seem to
be involved in any of this public drama). Empathy with someone doesn't
require unconditional support of whatever that person does.
BTW, the "get lost" option doesn't necessarily mean "go away." As
other
posters have pointed out, one of SlimVirgin's options is to switch to a
new pseudonym. She could continue to contribute while hopefully ditching
all this crazy baggage that's accumulated.