[WikiEN-l] Why has everything gone to hell?

[Alex Schenck]

It's about friggin' time that something was done about wheel warring.

I notice that Wikipedia goes through various "stages" in which the community
will focus on one specific issue. A few months ago it was the term
"fuckwit". Not all that long ago it was pedophilia (looks like it's back).
Then it was the ever-lasting accusations of cabalism. Now it's wheel
warring.

Alright, look. I came back from a two-week break to witness the explosion of
the wheel warring crap. From what Jimbo has said to me, he is very tired of
the lack of cooperation that used to exist. What ever happened to that sense
of respect for each other, when people actually understood that Jimbo's word
was final, that the ArbCom is in fact the judicary body that knew what they
were talking about, and people would respect time on the project? I mean,
come on. When people start giving out USER WARNINGS to people such as David
Gerard, you can tell that the times have definitely changed, and some
oldy-moldy (or at least somewhat oldy-moldy editors such as myself) are not
liking what we see.

Mindspillage and I are on the same wavelength (I'll let her speak for
herself beyond that): we miss the old community that was focused more on
writing an encyclopedia instead of focusing on user pages and userboxes.
What ever happened to writing FEATURED ARTICLES? Instead, we have people
more focused on userboxes ("this user rebelled against the great userbox
purge of 2006 [redirect to RFC:kelly martin] and would do it again"... wtf!)
and arguing with others.

At this point, I'm afraid desysopping people would be like placing a
band-aid on an artery wound. Why has the community changed instead of
adapted? We're not myspace, we're Wikipedia. Can we keep it that way?

Here ends my long and horrible rant.

--Alex, aka Linuxbeak