andrewjho

You're strawmanning my argument. I did not say, as you imply, that active user growth should continue indefinitely.

Take a look at this graph: https://www.gwern.net/images/2012-henkvd-activewikipedians.p...

First, one would typically expect the number of active users to keep increasing but for the rate of increase to gradually decline, not for the number of active users to actually start decreasing gradually after multiple years of very rapid increase.

Second, if you don't see something wrong with that graph, get your eyes checked out.

I'll break this down into easy-to-understand parts for you.

> It's pretty clear that you are confused about what Wikipedia is (not your personal cloud server) vs what you think it ought to be (your personal cloud server).

Nice "clever response," but you would realize -- if you had read and comprehended my article & comments -- that I have no such confusion.

> Getting angry about your clearly-against-the-rules behavior being stopped and using that as a reason to go on a rant about Wikipedia dying of incivility is ridiculous.

"Ridiculous" is not a counterargument.

> Wikipedia may or may not have a problematic culture.

Meaningless statement. Waste of space.

> You were still obviously in the wrong

A factual restatement of what the rules are does not even come close to constituting a reply to the linked post, let alone a counterargument.

> and no one owes you their time to go into a gentle negotiation about it.

Normative statement. It's also incoherent. My position is that it is consequentially better for administrators to act otherwise. If you can't reply on consequential grounds and without making appeals to what people "should" or "shouldn't" do, then just don't reply, please.

You seem to have completely missed the argument of the linked article. (Also, saying that something "isn't about X" doesn't magically make it not about X.)

You also seem to be mixing up what "is" with what "ought to be". Feel free to read more about this common fallacy here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

I'll charitably assume that you're arguing from a position of ignorance, not malice. Read before writing: https://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism

(1) The metric that matters, active user growth, has been declining since 2007.

(2) Right, the 1 MB of bandwidth I took up and 5 KB of storage space I consumed with userspace pages outweighs the hundreds of minor corrections I've submitted over the course of a decade. By the way, Wikipedia does have a shortage of editors relative to its popularity and potential.

(3) Deletionism destroys more information than it protects. This is easy to establish. Educate yourself.

(4) You are circularly using the status quo to justify itself without having explored alternatives and without having performed any research into the historical evolution of Wikipedia and Wikipedian culture. Again, educate yourself before posting.

Your argument is completely logically incoherent. It amounts to saying that the status quo is circularly self-justifying because... because... just because.

Have you considered, for instance, the possibility that relaxing the moderation (and -- yes -- allowing some real abusers to slip through the cracks) but dealing humanely with those who the admins can interact with would be better for Wikipedia on the whole? (Probably not.)

You're justifying the administrator's actions based on a priori notions of what Wikipedia is or was "meant" to be.

This allows you to ignore the actual consequences of actions.

What's the point of a rule if it doesn't lead to positive consequences?

Sure. Arguing over what the True and Canonical Purpose of Wikipedia is will go nowhere.

The only relevant fact is that it was consequentially better for the administrator to behave otherwise. Even if we assume that the user was 100% in error and that the pages should be removed, the administrator's actions still served to objectively harm Wikipedia (in net).

Have you seen what the typical Wikipedia userpage looks like? E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ser_Amantio_di_Nicolao.

People pretty much DO use them as personal websites -- the differential enforcement seems to come mainly from how established a user is.