On 30 Sep 2007 at 19:59:00 +0100, "Thomas Dalton" thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:

I'm not claiming there is no cabal, that would be nonsense. Of course there is a cabal. The key thing that people miss is that there is more than one. The other common name is "groups of friends". There are lots

That's why I generally prefer the term "clique" over "cabal".

of groups of friends on Wikipedia. Some of them contain quite powerful Wikipedians, and work to help their members. However, and most importantly, they do not all work together, and no one of them is all powerful. If one group of friends crosses the line, other groups and individuals will step in to stop them. A good example of this is MONGO

• he had a strong group of friends that defended him at every turn,

but once it got too bad, other people stepped in and stopped it. MONGO was eventually desysopped.

...but he still has his large group (clique) of friends, who still to this day sometimes air sour grapes about his desysopping, and act to help him suppress any and all further criticism.