There is a long history here, and if you are looking at just the WikiProject and the community ban discussion, you are missing a Hell of a lot. Very short background: Larry Sanger left Wikipedia in 2003. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Diff/707321 Sanger went on to set up Citizendium, a wiki encyclopaedia project organized the way that xe thought one should be organized, with an extensive rulebase and 'consta…
Oh no. It's not like a fairly large swathe of admins (and their clingers on) haven't been credibly accused of speed running their contributions just to try to get admin/bureaucrat status. My own Wikipedia history has dozens and dozens of "No" votes on people who either had a serious chance of, or were, elected, who had a contribution history of 80%+ in the WP: namespace, rather than, as you say "than writing an encyclopedia".