On 10/01/07, Christopher Thieme cdthieme@gmail.com wrote:
I'd love to see some psychology-oriented individual do a case study on what kind of people are attracted to editing on Wikipedia. What psychological defects lurk behind the computer screens and the keyboards. Why do I ask? Because in the last month (including right now), I've gotten in spats, edit wars, content disputes, with people who would be poster children for narcissitic personality disorder and one of several temporal lobe disorders, respectively.
Something like that would probably explain a lot about the bitterness, control issues, the incessant desire to be "right", etc. that some people have when approaching the subject of editing.
There's an interesting article on the BBC website about "psychopathic traits" in the workplace, that seems to have jumped up their most e-mailed list today despite being from 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3579402.stm