QUOTE(Abd @ Sun 6th November 2011, 10:24pm)
Raul654 took a relatively harmless global warming critic and smashed him to smithereens, and each shard regenerated, creating the largest sock farm ever, such that Raul was blocking large swathes of the internet to prevent this guy from making characteristic edits about cow farts, easily reverted.
Now, what Raul654 et al did ''not'' do.
They did not educate users like Scibaby as to how to effectively advocate for fair coverage of their point of view, seeking consensus, following policies and guidelines, and they did not do that because they were not, themselves, neutral, so they seized on whatever errors the new editor made in order to ban them, and, later, identified everyone who made edits resembling those of the banned editor as being a sock, or, best argument of all, "meat puppet."
The effect: a ban of POV, or, at least, heavy administrative review of any editor expressing similar POV, resulting in participation bias. When an admin protected
Global warming because of revert warring, William M. Connoley unprotected it, saying that it was being watched by multiple administrators. It sure was. The cabal. And they tag-team reverted any interlopers. I actually support their point of view on global warming, personally, and I attempted to edit that article for a time, and I found that, consistently, edits backed by reliable source, hewing closer to the sources than what was being permitted by the cabal, were reverted, with whatever excuse could be found, and sometimes no excuse. The talk FAQ was controlled by these editors, instead of what should really be the opposite: minority factions should have full access to the FAQ, to explain to newcomers why the article doesn't necessarily reflect their POV, explaining how to proceed in a way consistent with policies and guidelines. Instead the FAQ basically said to newcomers: Tough. Go away if you don't support our position, we are in charge.
ArbComm, with Cold fusion, suggested refactoring the Talk pages to explain, clearly and concisely, why the article was the way it was. There was only one editor interested in that task. They banned him because he talked too much about the article and the topic. It made them uncomfortable, and their comfort is far more important to them than neutrality.