John Bradley (john@ontobus.co.uk) [050423 00:50]:
I think it is everyone who cares about Wikipedia as an encyclopedia rather than a social club stepped forward and be counted.
Personal attacks toward other editors are not tolerated because they drive other volunteers away from editing. This is bad for Wikipedia.
Really. I pretty much don't care how much of an expert a given editor is - if they're acting like an arsehole and making editing an unpleasant experience for others, we don't need them. There are PLENTY of really quite high-grade experts editing Wikipedia who don't in fact act like arseholes.
(This does, however, require a more than usual tolerance for and patience with stupid fellow volunteers amongst the experts in question, and occasional annoying having to prove things from first principles on talk pages when the well-meaning idjit doesn't get it. This is quite a bit less than ideal, and we need ways to deal with it, but it still isn't an excuse for personal attacks.)
Note that Irate, the user in question, has not shown even this level of justification for his streams of personal attacks.
- d.