Mike wrote:
- Wikipedians don't respond well to critism from outsiders.
Nahh, Wikipedians are pretty relaxed on that score. Just look at this thread: there have only been 20 followups, in over two hours. If Wikipedians were really touchy about this sort of thing, there would have been hundreds.
Seriously, though several of those observations are apposite, you don't need to look to cults or Trotskyist groups for the explanation. It's all adequately explained, I think, in [[Clay Shirky]]'s essay "A Group is its Own Worst Enemy", which ought to be required reading for anybody participating on this list.