QUOTE(MBisanz @ Fri 18th September 2009, 10:06am)
This is one of the long running trends I have seen. Basically there is an unreasonable editor pushing a POV or some other wiki-crime. But the other side facing them wants so complete a POV victory and lacks the range of skills of debate required to show the POV pusher is wrong, that they resort to the heavy handed tactics documented in so many cases (Cold Fusion, WMC-Abd, JzG-Abd, Homeopathy, etc).
Right. Alternative explanation: The "House" is wrong, i.e., the minority view is better supported in the sources. And to resolve this (which is it?) takes actually finding consensus, it can't be fixed by right/wrong judgments, blocks and bans. One of the most pernicious concepts invented is "Civil POV-pusher," because it leads to sanctions for proper behavior, based on an alleged "agenda." ArbComm has fallen into this trap a number of times, and I've only reviewed relatively few cases. People with a POV can be expected to "push" it, and if they are experts, it's normal that they will push hard, because experts tend to have a strong POV, they didn't invest years in study and developing experience for nothing! An editor who actually researches an article, becoming very knowledgeable on a topic (though perhaps still being short of "expert,"), has made a decision that the topic is worth the time, and that points to one of two likely motives: passionate opposition or passionate support, the "I just like being knowledgeable" position is more rare and haphazard.
What happens is that someone who becomes passionate on the minority side gets banned, much more rarely someone on the majority side, it's natural to the politics of it. Minor misbehavior on one side results in blocks and bans, it takes truly spectacular misbehavior on the majority side to end up with the same. That creates a serious systemic bias. Majority POV-pushing, which can generally be accomplished without blatant rule violations, is, in the end, more dangerous to neutrality than minority POV-pushing, because the latter is much more easily restrained.