I don't think anyone engaged in an edit war is ever feted as a hero.
I've seen it. You're wrong.
And, in fact, many editors did compliment me on my persistence in keeping our articles from being ruined.
Also, I don't believe anyone is suggesting you are not acting in good faith. It just sounds like your way of going about your business is possibly a little confrontational...
That is a false impression created by the way these arguments were portrayed. I was dealing with this "editor" for almost a year, and went through every community channel available to try to deal with his patterns of destruction. This is all explained in my appeal. People (many more than just me) resorted to reverting him because he was immune to argument and further discussion, and would just create new sockpuppet accounts to continue it.
People who don't revert others' changes without discussing them on the talk pages are second-class editors? I wish we could banish first class.
Again, this is ripping it out of context. An editor who is following me around and reverting all my edits does not to be talked with on every page he reverts, to explain in detail why I made each edit he probably hadn't even looked at. That is obvious.
I clearly was always responsible in using the talk pages. This too is well-documented. But there are obvious cases such as vandalism where no one bothers to go to talk, for again obvious reasons. And when a person goes on a rampage blanking large sections of articles and making the same discredited edit to a dozen articles that we've already discussed twenty times over the last year, it's clear the option of dialogue has been exhausted. Look at how many archived talk pages there are on [[Khmer Rouge]] going in circles with someone who is clearly just here to push an agenda and not interested in the facts.
At the end of the day, anyone with a particular agenda they're trying to push (whether valid or not), has to tread carefully. If there are people bent on denying that particular agenda, then doubly so. Being right isn't all that matters, after all. What else needs to be said?
It's not just a matter of being "right". There are legitimate content disputes and illegitimate ones. Writing, "bobby is gay", on the George Bush article is not legitimate and does not warrant a discussion. Call that an "agenda" if you wish. Similarly, erasing volumes of sourced material is not legitimate. If one's agenda is a devotion to accuracy and neutrality, there is no issue.
VV