[WikiEN-l] Re: Broken dispute resolution mechanisms (was Reithy is a problem)

Mon Nov 8 17:08:08 UTC 2004

Tim Starling wrote:
> Wik's point of view was more important to him than the integrity of 
> Wikipedia. This was demonstrated by the fact that when he was finally 
> frustrated, he wrote a script to vandalise Wikipedia and meta. He spent 
> about a week in an arms race with me and the other developers.
> 
> I'm thinking of a site where NPOV is valued, rather than just word 
> count. If that's different to the type of site you're thinking of, then 
> so be it.

I agree with this completely.

It's interesting to note that Wik's vandalism spree was a great relief
to me in some ways, but it may have short-cutted some advances in our
policies to deal with problematic editors.

It was a relief because he was causing a deep rift in the community:
he did some good work, and sometimes - as difficult as he was -- he
was right on the issue at hand.  He fought badly with some really
annoying pov warriors, and so forth.  There was no consensus as to
what to do about him.  But when he vandalized the site with a script,
the path became clear to everyone: this was just beyond the pale.

Even so, it relieved us of the need to figure out what to do better in
cases like that.

--Jimbo