QUOTE(mbz1 @ Mon 26th December 2011, 6:03am)
I meant neither vandals nor trolls.
I meant only good faith editors.
For example, let's say Malleus who wrote many good articles has a dispute with jd turk whose only contributions is reverting vandalism.
If Malleus is banned, or even simply gets upset over a short block and leaves, it will be a loss for wikipedia.
If jd turk is banned or is driven away by Malleus, it would not be so much of a loss because there are many other users who could revert vandalism.
It will be very unfair to treat the users differently, but on the other hand to let Malleus go could be unfair towards wikipedia readers.
Of course - the value that admins contribute is low-skill, low-value labour, because it is plentiful and in high supply. Writing good quality articles is not in high supply. I'm not sure about whether this is 'fair' or 'unfair'. It is simply a practical point that if you want to supply a good product, you reward the high-value contributors more than the low-value one. Except on Wikipedia but, as I have pointed out many times, there is no market incentive for Wikipedia to supply quality product. That is not Wikipedia's model.