jayjg wrote:
Anyway, part of maintaining the goodwill of the volunteer community is protecting them when they are attacked as a result of their volunteer work on behalf of Wikipedia. Or at least empathizing with them, rather than saying "oops, you seem to be too much trouble now, get lost".
Certainly. The problem comes when that has to be balanced with the needs of other editors and with the health of the project as a whole. For example, if we were to change the no personal attacks policy so that any violation would result in an automatic permanent ban, it might make the remaining editors better "protected" but it would probably be bad overall for the encyclopedia.
I am capable of empathizing with someone while at the same time pointing out that I consider their actions to be futile and possibly causing more harm than good (though in this case SlimVirgin herself doesn't seem to be involved in any of this public drama). Empathy with someone doesn't require unconditional support of whatever that person does.
BTW, the "get lost" option doesn't necessarily mean "go away." As other posters have pointed out, one of SlimVirgin's options is to switch to a new pseudonym. She could continue to contribute while hopefully ditching all this crazy baggage that's accumulated.