While I agree with the article that WP is in trouble, I disagree entirely as to what the problem is. WP is not too bad at the low-level policing part, to do wi

While I agree with the article that WP is in trouble, I disagree entirely as to what the problem is. WP is not too bad at the low-level policing part, to do with stopping vandalism, enforcing its biography of living persons policy, &c. It has mostly failed at the higher-level policing mission, of ensuring that those editors who are trying to write articles that are soundly sourced and informative are able to get on with this task without being harassed by people pushing agendas. The more value a resource Wikipedia becomes, the more valuable it is to such agenda pushers: cranks, lobbyists, corporate PR, &c, who often can devote considerable energy to this task. For example, the editor FT2, who earned money through his NLP practice, pushed pseudoscientific doctrines on many Wikipedia pages. he was expert at playing Wikipedia politics, and rose to become a member of Arbcom, and only came unstuck when he abused this position to punish editor Orangemarlin, an editor who campaigned against pseudoscience and who was a nuisance to FT2. The way WP now works is that the enforcement of the low-level policing is done at the expense of the higher-level issue of neutrality. By playing the politics well, as FT2 did, agenda pushers can use the WP rules to waste the time and wear down the patience of good content editors. I left WP following the fiasco of the Arbcom ruling against Peter Damian. Ed Buckner wrote an excellent summary of the problem with agenda pushers in Skeptica Adsversaria (apologies: the formatting in this copy is awful 400px left and right margin hard coded into every paragraph: OK if you have a very wide screen or can overide the margin somehow): http://www.btinternet.com/~musicweaver/wikipedia-by-ed-buckner-ASKE.htm http://www.btinternet.com/~musicweaver/wikipedia-by-ed-buckn...