Of course, the question is "respected by whom"? And is that respect actually worth anything? I'm seeing a lot of RfC and AN/I cases where people weigh in with comments along the lines of "X is a highly respected editor", implying "and therefore can do no wrong." Meanwhile, on the "attack sites" issue we seem to have two (for lack of a better word) camps whose members don't necessarily have a lot of respect for each other (or maybe they do, but it isn't figuring in the argument), but within each camp there is a lot of respect among the members.