Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
We all know about "POV warriors." I'm fortunate or wimpy enough not to have been involved in articles with serious long-standing POV wars, but my impression is that _for the most part_ these things seem to stay under reasonable control.
On the other hand, I think we are developing "topic warriors" who feel that a specific subject area deserves very detailed coverage, systematically watch VfD for any cases where articles on their pet topic are nominated for deletion, and oppose deletion of _any_ article on their topic on principle, regardless of the quality of the article.
If you're talking about Wikiprojects, better get the asbestos underwear ready... However, I've also seen many articles on AfD improve immensely and end up being kept simply because someone knowledgable on the subject of the article came along and improved to the point where it was no longer suitable to delete the article.
Unlike POV, a relatively small number of topic warriors CAN effectively achieve their goal. (And, of course, they are assisted by Wikipedians who do _not_ accept the premise that "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information.")
It should be noted that many of these "topic warriors" feel that "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" - merely that Wikipedia lacks decent articles in certain areas.
NOTE NOTE NOTE ---> topic wars are FAR, FAR less damaging to Wikipedia and FAR less of a concern than POV wars.
Glad to hear it...
Some Wikipedians undoubtedly feel that topic wars do not damage Wikipedia at all. My feeling is that they do, because they deliberately _create_ systemic bias, and create an area in which the average quality of the articles is lower than the rest of Wikipedia.
Hence we have a Wikiproject to counter systematic bias; also, the more topics which *are* covered, the less that are *not*.
They certainly damage the Wikipedia community by factionalizing it, creating an "us versus them" mentality, and, in some cases, publicly gloating over their "success."
If you mean inclusionists, yes. I still call for the public execution of the Associations of Inclusionist and Deletionist Wikipedians, and imposing mentorships upon all editors who still claim to be editors at the time that these projects are shut down. They are the primary cause of the angst associated with AfD.