1) Almost all hierarchical organizations exert their control with “consent” in some sense – you can leave your church, quit your job, resign your appointment, even move out of countries. But it’s misleading to pretend this is somehow unusual at that level.
I mean, one rarely sees “The New York Times exerts its control of the national discourse only with the absolute consent of the readers. This is a crucial distinction. Nobody is forced to read the _Times_. And other organizations can start another national newspaper, and some have”.

2) Sure, people could fork Wikipedia – but that’s sort of besides the point. People have forked religions too. The Catholic Church is still a hierarchical organization even if the Bible is open-source (literally).

3) Your “questions” are like “The people talking about a housing bubble aren’t interested in asking whether 1) a house is a shelter (it is) 2) It’s the American dream (it is) 3) real estate is finite (it is).” – that is, it’s a marketing brochure.

By the way, I think it’s relevant to disclose that the company is selling wikis.

The people who complain about “trolls” on Wikipedia have a legitimate complaint. Trolls can easily create a lot of time-consuming annoyances, and they can exploit the slow admin mechanism to reveal private information. Some appeals to admins over privacy issues are never answered, and a Wikipedia user has to keep checking and following the trail of the pest since they can leave remarks all over the system and slip in privacy attacks. I have a problem right now where a troll is posting fake complaints about me in order to slip in speculations about my personal life.

Another issue is what seems to be the use of video game strategies to “win” at wikipedia. Here are some strategies that I’ve seen. On several occasions, I’ve made an unpopular edit on one article, and then my “opponent” tracked down edits I’d made to other articles to make “revenge” edits. For instance, I complained a corporate logo constituted POV and possibly an ad. My opponent (an admin!) then promptly found an image I had placed on another article and listed it for deletion. Another problem is ganging up when an editor seems to be alone. If I seem to be the only one editing an article, and a troll is out to harass me, he or she will go recruit other Wikipedians so they can revert my edits as a gang: I can’t defend them by myself without being blocked for making too many reversions. And yet another problem is vandalizing my talk page, where the troll replaces my words or otherwise modifies the page: in theory Wikipedians should be able to get their personal talk pages protected from this. In practice, it’s hard to get help unless an admin is specifically in your corner. God help you if your on the wrong side of the admin’s editorial pov.

I recently attempted to invoke my “right to vanish” on Wikipedia because I have a troll who has been vigorously creating work for me. He wreaked havoc under someone else’s ID, and now he’s raging after everyone who tried to stand up for the victim. Wikipedia admins have done nothing to help. In fact some have taken advantage of the situation to get the upper hand in editorial disputes. For instance, when I invoked my “right to vanish”, an admin protected the main article I work on to make sure that no anonymous or new users could work on it. In other words, they are giving me the choice between enduring harassment and continuing to work on the article. This is abuse of admin power. Most people would leave at this point. Since I’m the main consumer advocate editing the article, I’m not sure what I will do.

Obviously I’m still organizing my thoughts on all this, but I do think it’s important that this problem be publicized. I think part of the problem is that when people way “Wikipedia troll”, people who don’t use Wikipedia think it’s just someone taking advantage of online anonamous IDs to spout cuss words. The real issue is that Wikipedia can be played like a video game, and the people who are playing this game can easily make it so it’s too difficult and time-consuming for people with, say, a full time job, to contribute. When you add the slow admin reaction to threats to privacy on top of that, you have a guarantee that Wikipedia will eventually be populated by nothing but shark-brained gamers.

I’m not anti-Wikipedia. I find it particularly useful for looking up pop culture information. That’s why I hope you will take the complaint seriously and give Wikipedians a streamlined way to deal with harassment – especially when it’s geared toward winning editorial disputes or used as a method to drive people with a dissenting opinion out of the system.