First rule of Wikipedia Fight Club The st rule is Dont tell newcomers WP is a fight club nd rule Wikipedia is a fight club and newcomers do not know that so they come here and edit for awhile before they get into a fight Sue Gardner has a valid point that newcomers are needed to sustain editing often as cannon fodder in disputes because there are nofew moderators to ensure civility and even when a admin tries to ensure civility they often overstep and force content decisions such as we cannot write that student was suspended x from school despite sources that parents confirmed suspensions because an admin says not to write that So newcomers burn out and more newcomers are needed for editing People could hope that a moderator would be appointed who was Albert Einstein as clever about the issues however a moderator is also likely to be Francis Bacon stuffing a chicken with snow to preserve it Unfortunately moderator judges need to have good judgment and typically that would be assured by a tedious precertification process Unless prescreened to keep them out then poor judges would be difficult to remove so perhaps a term limit could automatically kick them out Meanwhile more progress seems to be made by balancing freedom and control where control would typically grow stronger to lock out most changes and most improvements unless counterbalanced by freedom to allow some changes Yes it can be disgusting when careful researched text is reverted or axed by people but more often the text is allowed to remain Perhaps people who continue as IP editors are less likely to be targeted for fights because they do not have a memorable name to slur or do not have a stable talkpage for complaints and when they rotate to other IP numbers they cannot be easily stalked for wpWikihounding However imposing a system of moderators presupposes that moderators would not alienate more people than trolls have but even some admins are more dangerous than trolls because they are easily duped into blocking the good editors while the trolls continue to foster sneerreviewed articles Trying to control the mobocracy has been difficult Yet many people have survived the fight club activities here even though other people are driven away