DISQUS

Guy Chapman That's one way of putting it. Of course, I don't recall making any false claims against good faith users, and I certainly recall people like Charles Ainsworth making some blatantly false claims against me. I've been a Wikipedia user since 2004, so I'm not sure if I'm genuinely a "new generation". I do know that most of the criticisms against me have been by justly banned abusers of the project like Jonathan Barber (user JB196). As a paid up card-carrying depressive I do of course get down from time to time, but I have given thousands of hours of my time to the project and made many thousands of edits to articles. The refusal to accept that admins are devoted to the project as well was, in fact, a core part of the problem. And another core part was the refusal of some people to acknowledge that harassment of Wikipedia users is a problem at all. Perhaps they would change their minds if they were the ones being called at home.

I note that the word collegiate is used. Giano, held up as a model of probity, is, in point of fact, one of the least collegiate people on the project. Most of his work is done one article at a time, with mostly him doing the work. He, like me, is prone to being rude, bullheaded and obnoxious. Neither of us is perfect, but there is no doubt in my mind of his commitment to the project. He, on the other hand, thinks I should be hounded out. This is emblematic of this particular teapot tempest: admins are evil, "contributors" are being done down. Only, most admins are contributors too. And if I was not committed to Wikipedia I hardly think I'd have put up with the kind of shit that's been sent my way over the last couple of years, since well before I was an admin, almost all of it from people who Wikipedia needs slightly less than it needs to be sued by a disgruntled article subject. The first time I was savaged by a website for a Wikipedia action it was for removing defamatory and false text from an article on a living individual, written by a tiny group of people who consider the individual concerned to be some kind of ogre. I was far less hard on them than others were, and they are all now banned from the project as being constitutionally unable to be anywhere close to neutral.

Like it or not, Wikipedia is now a big target for people pushing an agenda. The old days when nobody cared, we could take time to fix things, and every newcomer was probably an OK guy at heart, are past. Every single article on a politician, fringe science subject, controversial individual, group, band or anything else that inspires strong passions, is at risk of being hijacked by zealots. And many of these zealots have to be shown the door, which was always the case. There are more articles, the profile is higher, there are more zealots. If you feel the existing admins are doing a poor job of dealing with them, then you are free to stand for adminship - it's no big deal. The more the merrier.