[Wikipedia-l] Edit Wars

[lcrocker at nupedia.com]

> "24" was interested in establishing community processes that
> would be compatible or attractive to people who could help
> fill in gaps in those areas.

Frankly, I don't care what he was interested in or what his
intentions were.  Intentions don't matter--results do.  The
result of his presence was that lots of intelligent, hard-working
authors were spending more time cleaning up his nonsense than
writing good articles--and 90% of stuff was genuine, grade A,
nonsense. And worst of all, he /actively opposed/ any attempts
at moderation or working with the community.  And lastly, he
simply refused to act like a civilized, adult human being.  I
for one don't have time to waste on the likes of him.  

I don't remember you like that at all.  I reverted your change
to software engineering because you replaced a long, useful
article with a short polemic about a minority point of view--an
educated, experienced one, but a minority one nonetheless.  We
then took your suggestions seriously and made changes. To me,
that's an example of the system working exactly as it should.
That's why I made you a sysop.

Another good example is Ed Poor.  He is pretty much diametrically
opposed to everything I stand for--he's a Moonie, a creationist,
homophobic, and a few other things I don't care for.  We had a few
content wars when he first showed up too.  But if he asked me to
make him a sysop, I would with no problem, because he's proved
that he actually cares about the project and he works with other
people to make articles better.

It's not about agendas, it about the project.  Either you're an
asset to the project, helping to create an encyclopedia, or you're
a detriment to the project, getting in the way.  Some people just
simply get in the way of making an encyclopedia, and we simply
shouldn't let them.  It's not that they're bad people, or that
their points of view don't matter--it's just that they have
different goals, and they should be free to pursue those goals
on their own time, with their own resources; they just shouldn't
get it /our/ way.