The reward complex

The problem from the point of view of a new editor, though, is that Pumpie remained autopatrolled until he was finally banned. The only people reviewing his articles were those who made it their business to try to do something about him, and only after he'd splashed his ineptitude all over areas they cared about.

What % of objectionable newbies are actually worse than he was? Yet everyone makes it their business to review newbies, and too many use terms like "new editor" as a synonymn for "incompetent."

From a newbie's POV, maybe the rules applied to newbies should be applied to everyone. After all, at least some of the existing frequent editors are clearly incompetent. Or maybe evidence of competence should be accepted in lieu of enormous edit counts, to get one treated like a useful contributor. _Including_ in Rfa discussions, which sure seems unlikely to happen ;-)

Likewise, perhaps evidence of moderate incompetence should lead to downgrades - admin -> autopatrolled -> ordinary "newb," depending on the extent of the ineptitude. With spot checks, such as perhaps some % of privileged actions going to automatic review, perhaps mixed in with actions of the non-privileged.

But of course this implies a rules oriented group, rather than a social connection oriented group. Wiki editors ought to be more rules oriented than most groups, because of the proportion of nerds and geeks (complimentary terms in my lexicon, since they tend to be honest, hard working, and logical). But I doubt that exempts wikipedia from the clique problems common in mature organizations - even geeks aren't saints, and not all wiki editors or admins are geeks.