At 12:18 PM 11/8/2004 +0000, Charles Matthews wrote:
Making popularity a high priority is a charmless policy, in my opinion. It is also the 'wrong end of the telescope'; most people respond to a good community atmosphere by becoming good wikizens, and scapegoating a few who don't is a policy of last resort. If Wiki-en has had 100000 signed-in users, it will have attracted quite a number of 1-in-1000 Internet antisocials. Enough to give the 'problem user' prominence, certainly in discussion on this list.
Kicking off 0.1% of Wikipedia's users isn't going to significantly reduce the pool of editors, and would reduce the stress for a significant portion of the 99.9% who remain. I don't see what these 1-in-1000 antisocials are contributing to Wikipedia that is worth it to endure the bad atmosphere they generate for everyone else.