Half a year or so ago, I said (in relation to the immediatist/deletionist tendency's silly attitudes):

the horde of people currently dominating the project whose main aim for it seems to be to avoid negative publicity will leap into action.

The Bang Bang Affair makes it quite clear that this problem is far worse than I had thought. There are people for whom "protect Wikipedia from criticism" has become the only goal.

It's actually very simple.

1. Make a good encyclopedia.
2. Let people judge it for themselves, by whatever criteria they choose.
3. There is no Step 3.

We have no control over Step 2, so we need to concentrate on Step 1. Secret mailing lists and banning of all discussion of Ungoodthink really aren't the way to go. Some people really need to look at whether what they're doing really helps the project, or whether they've got locked into a pathological cycle of being convinced that what they're doing is right, and therefore that anything that helps them do what they're doing is justified.

Right now, we have a cabal whose sole purpose seems to be to squish people who think there's a cabal. That's just messed up.

Sort yourselves out, people.