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A similar story about Betrand Meyer:

http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?BertrandMeyerAndWikipedia

Personally, I think Wikipedia (if you can refer to such a collection of volunteers as if it had one mind) is in the right in both these situations.

One thing I think people forget, is that if you make a rule it has to apply to everyone, not just the people you (dis)like.

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I completely agree. I equate it to coding standards. Whether I indent with two spaces or four doesn't really matter until both get mixed into the same code base. The point is not that these rules are arbitrary, but that they are standardized. The same goes for the color of code samples in Wikipedia articles: no matter what article you are looking at, the code will look the same.

"A committee is the only known form of life with a hundred bellies and no brain." Lazarus Long

Wikis aren't committees, but while in some ways they are better, in others they are worse, it's a toss up.

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