I've been following a number of these disputes, where somebody objects either to the very fact of Wikipedia having an article on them, or to the content of the article, or to the fact that they don't have absolute veto power over it, or to basic aspects of the structure of Wikipedia (e.g., that anybody can come in and edit any article, and sometimes they may insert nasty, unjustified comments which stick around until somebody else removes them, and could be indexed or cached by search engines or scraped by mirror sites in the meantime). While these people may have some philosophical points worth consideration, their method of pursuing them, by coming in and vandalizing their own article, making unreasonable demands that go against Wikipedia policy, and making legal threats, understandably leads to antagonistic battles.
Through all of this, our Fearless Leader Jimbo has taken a consistent position of being friendly and reasonable with all of these people, even if they don't act the same way to us. He aims to convince them that their goals and ours are not irreconcilable, and we can all be better off with cooperation instead of warfare. He's a better man than I; my emotional reaction to each of these cases has always been to feel like, "If that guy wants war, then war is what he should get!", and to want to get my adrenaline up and fight back as fiercely as the other guy, or fiercer.
With some reflection, once I'm calmed down, I see that Jimbo's position is actually not just good for his own karma; it really does work. If you look over the articles involved in such controversies, they are almost without exception better off now than they were before the fighting started. The assertions made in the articles are carefully sourced and referenced, the NPOV policy is scrupulously followed, and the articles are vigorously patrolled for vandalism, whether by the article subject and his/her friends, or by malicious enemies. All of this is consistent with what Jimbo urges we all do with such articles; actually, it's what we should do with *all* articles, but it's urged in a particularly strong way for disputed ones such as these. And, once people here get tired of feuding over the articles and get to work improving them, the result is a better encyclopedia.
But beyond this, in at least some of the cases, this method of dealing with them has actually brought the controversy to an end. I observe at least one of the formerly hostile article subjects participating constructively in Wikipedia since his last block was lifted. True, he's sometimes editing his own article, something generally frowned upon, but the edits have been reasonable, consisting of adding or modifying a source reference for greater accuracy. He's no longer trying to delete all criticism or insert unsourced grandiose claims of his own feats, or to get the article deleted, or threatening legal action. Hence, there seems to be a win- win situation there; we've got a better article and one fewer people fighting us, while he's got a better article about himself that he is apparently satisfied with.
Some of the other cases don't have as satisfactory a resolution; some of their subjects remain blocked or banned for their activity, and/or are continuing to agitate against Wikipedia on outside sites. However, as far as I am aware, none of their legal threats has resulted in any actual legal action (perhaps Jimbo can correct me on this if I'm wrong), and all the articles seem reasonable and often quite favorable to their subjects, even if the subjects themselves still aren't happy about them.
So we seem to be doing something right; we should all try to stay calm and follow Jimbo's example.
There *are* some genuine legal, moral, and philosophical issues raised by these disputes; if something truly harmful (libel, slander, defamation, invasion of privacy) got into an article (perhaps by a vandal) and caused actual harm to somebody (not just the mostly hypothetical scenarios which tend to be spun by our attackers), then who, if anybody, would be held responsible? How would such a thing be dealt with, without changing our site's very nature?