For the past week or so I've been involved in a small-scale but rather
frustrating and depressing dispute with another user. He's a long-time
contributor who I've bumped into a few times before; he tends to focus
his attention on a particular group of articles that receives higher
than average amounts of spam and other bad editing and is quite vigorous
about keeping them clean. Perhaps too vigorous, IMO, but in the past
things have usually worked out okay in the end.
Problem is, I think he's been getting worse. This time around he removed
something that looked reasonable to me, or at least debatable, and when
I argued that it might be good to keep he instantly became very
aggressive and appears to have concluded that my disagreement with him
indicated that I must be pushing an agenda. The same seems to apply to
everyone else who's disagreed subsequently - they're either pushing an
agenda, "stalking" him, or are otherwise biased or meat-puppets called
in specifically to load the debate against him. I think that he's spent
so much time fighting vandals and POV-pushers that he no longer
recognizes that anyone not completely on "his side" isn't necessarily
one themselves. Since he's taking such an absolutist approach in his
interpretation of the guideline in question it doesn't leave much, and
it's made him thoroughly entrenched against any consideration that he
might be incorrect.
I'm not looking to go into the specifics of the debate here, I'm just
trying to figure out what I should do if it continues to prove
impossible to get through to him that I'm not his mortal enemy. I've
been pondering arbitration, since IMO his editing style has become
problematic due to his absolute refusal to brook any debate or dispute,
but it also seems like that would only be another step toward cementing
his negative view of any people who disagree with him. For now at least
he's still engaged in discussion. But I'm not optimistic about it ending
well this time and I'm hoping that someone might have some advice.