Why do you think it is more likely that a given obsessive editor is a good-faith Wikipedian who cares about an unbiased and comprehensive encylopedia than an agenda-pusher? My proposal was implicitly based on the opposite assumption, namely, that removing obsessive editors will reduce the agenda-pushing set much more than it will the unbiased encyclopedist set. I think that, considering the real world, this is reasonable: we clearly see many more people dedicating an extreme amount of resources, up to and including their lives, to political causes than to abstract values such as objectivity and the accuracy of the historical record. The example that spawned this discussion certainly seems to involve a highly active editor being driven by a political agenda (do you dispute this?), and this is the case for almost all other instances I am aware of (though of course there is a selection bias here). Do you actually contend that the subject of the opening post has no agenda to push, or do you count him as a force for an unbiased and comprehensive Wikipedia because you think that his agenda is correct?
> My proposal was implicitly based on the opposite assumption, namely, that removing obsessive editors will reduce the agenda-pushing set much more than it will the unbiased encyclopedist set.
Which is the exact opposite of what would happen. It’s trivial to get an internet brigade of trolls to push one particular agenda. It’s easy to incite the Internet outrage machine into an angry mob. And the people who do this don’t play fair; they disappear and reappear under new pseudonyms and IPs, spurn accountability, and burn identities. Making it harder for someone to build a record they can stand behind is the wrong direction.
> we clearly see many more people dedicating an extreme amount of resources, up to and including their lives, to political causes than to abstract values such as objectivity and the accuracy of the historical record
Which is why allowing these mobs to brigade against the rare person who is committed to the unbiased truth is the wrong move.
> The example that spawned this discussion certainly seems to involve a highly active editor being driven by a political agenda (do you dispute this?), and this is the case for almost all other instances I am aware of (though of course there is a selection bias here). Do you actually contend that the subject of the opening post has no agenda to push, or do you count him as a force for an unbiased and comprehensive Wikipedia because you think that his agenda is correct?
I did some research on Phillip Cross above and beyond simply reading OP, because OP is an obvious hit piece and the group of fringe political figures who have seemingly declared war on this guy seem to be vaguely aligned with Russian propaganda operations, and this guy’s edit history, from what I’ve seen, seems to be largely in the direction of removing random vandalism and Russian propaganda from Wikipedia. The only seemingly factual criticism I’ve seen is that this guy seems a little obsessive, which is a fair point if you’re worried about this guy having a well-rounded and fulfilling life, but I trust you’ll understand if I don’t think these people who are butthurt about some obsessive Wikipedia editor deleting their propaganda from Wikipedia are genuinely concerned about his well-being.
