Tim Starling wrote:
I don't really want to diverge into a dicussion of
the personality
traits of particular users, but Wik was more than just unpopular. He
refused discussion and conducted numerous edit wars. According to this
mailing list post:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-May/027321.html
he was responsible for the departure of at least two users.
There are more important things than the number of words written on
Wikipedia. It also matters that the text written is accurate and
written in a neutral point of view. NPOV is acheived through rational
discussion and compromise, two things that Wik was extremely bad at.
Another thing that is more important than word count is the mental
health of our contributors. Editors should be able to contribute to
the site without constant anger and frustration. They shouldn't have
to put up with personal attacks.
Wik's point of view was more important to him than the integrity of
Wikipedia. This was demonstrated by the fact that when he was finally
frustrated, he wrote a script to vandalise Wikipedia and meta. He
spent about a week in an arms race with me and the other developers.
I guess there's not a whole lot to say except that I completely disagree
with this assessment. In my opinion, Wik was on the correct side in
around 95% of the edit wars in which he was involved, and tirelessly
pursued a NPOV policy in the face of numerous POV-pushing edit warriors
who, in frustration at his relentless opposition, kept resorting to
trying to ban him when they couldn't get people to agree with their
actual arguments. It's true that in 5% or so of the cases Wik was
indeed in the wrong, but this pales in comparison to the amount of
POV-pushing he kept at bay.
I'd have to say that I agree with Wik and Adam Carr that in many cases,
discussion is simply not worth it. There are too many POV pushers with
too much free time on their hands to engage them all in endless
discussion. If people are arguing over points that reasonable people
can disagree on, fine, but if they're espousing ridiculous views and
trying to push some overtly nationalist message, just revert 'em and be
done with it.
Certainly Wik wasn't a model citizen, but his opponents are a far bigger
problem than he ever was.
-Mark