Jimmy Wales wrote:
The problem here is ironic. We let trolls go on a bit
too much. Then
someone like Wik sticks his neck out to fight them, but *also* in the
process makes himself extremely annoying to other users. If we had
already gotten rid of the original problem users, then maybe Wik
wouldn't have felt compelled to behave badly.
Wik would be great if he were the only person working on Wikipedia. But
he seems unable to distinguish between trolling and good-faith editing;
if you disagree with him on *anything*, it must be because you're a troll
or a moron or both. As you can now see from his user page, if you get rid
of everyone that Wik deems a problem user, you'll end up with a
much-shrunken list of contributors.
Wiki editing requires an atmosphere of basic mutual trust; anybody
who insists on poisoning that, either by doing untrustworthy things
(trolling, sock puppetry, etc), or by distrusting everybody else
indiscriminately (Wik), has to be excluded for the sake of everybody
else.
Stan