In my experience, Wikipedia has a pervasive cultural of false balance, and it does not surprise me at all that this attitude extends to the founder of the site. Despite their many policies dictating otherwise, in my experience adjudicators often end up weighing authoritative academic sources equally with outdated or lower quality references. Looking through the talk page, it sounds like there was already an extensive RFC for the wording of the lede. Policy was already applied correctly in this case - the system worked as it was supposed to - and it’s incredibly inappropriate for Wales to pull rank, reopen discussion when there has been no notable change in circumstance, and advocate for this exact kind of behaviour.
In my experience, Wikipedia has a pervasive cultural of false balance, and it does not surprise me at all that this attitude extends to the founder of the site. Despite their many policies dictating otherwise, in my experience adjudicators often end up weighing authoritative academic sources equally with outdated or lower quality references. Looking through the talk page, it sounds like there was already an extensive RFC for the wording of the lede. Policy was already applied correctly in this case - the system worked as it was supposed to - and it’s incredibly inappropriate for Wales to pull rank, reopen discussion when there has been no notable change in circumstance, and advocate for this exact kind of behaviour.