Some more statistics...
All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles.
I had a quick look at the contributions using the link kindly provided by gtc and that statistic seems to be completely bunk.
I wouldn't consider this kind of pages as "articles" (and they comprise the vast majority):
Talk:Scientific opinion on climate change
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard
Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009/Feedback
User talk:Glenfarclas
And as of "created or rewrote", I have edited wikipedia articles and know what an edit is. Just to be clear, adding a comma is also an edit. Of the pages that aren't talk pages, I had a look at one at random to see what kind of edits he does (Climate change on 14 of December 2009).
His last "rewrite" are 3 edits in succession. The first one changes
(see [[global warming]]). For information on temperature measurements over various periods, and the data sources available, see [[temperature record]]. For attribution of climate change over the past century, see [[attribution of recent climate change]]
into
It may be qualified as [[anthropogenic]] climate change, more generally known as [[global warming]].
It seems to be a simplification of the article, and a good one at that. Refers to the same topic with much more elegance. You don't need to refer on the definition to articles of temperature records and the presumed cause. His edit improves the article.
The second edit:
Factors that can shape climate are often called [[climate forcing]]s.
into
Factors that can shape climate are [[climate forcing]]s
A style correction that does not change the meaning.
And the third edit changes this
The former is similar to solar variations in that there is a change to the power input from the sun to the Earth system. The latter is due to how the orbital variations affect when and where sunlight is received by the Earth.
into
There is very little change to the area-averaged annually-averaged sunshine; but there can be strong changes in the geographical and seasonal distrubution.
That also seems to me more of a style correction than content correction.
So, if you look at the revisions:
Something between 10 and 20% seem to be for real articles, the rest for discussion pages.
He makes quick edits of a couple of words, adds links and reverses vandalism often, adding to that number. He does not change all the things he wants to change in an article at the same time, so that number greatly overestimates the number of articles "rewritten" (those 3 edits would count as 3, instead of only one, even if done the same day to the same article in a 15 minute period)
On the real articles rewritten, most changes seem make the article more readable instead of changing the content. I'm sure he has changed the content at some point, but I couldn't find an example in a superficial look.
So it seems to me that the number is completely bunk.
Some more statistics...
over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions.
After seeing how the created and rewrote claim fared, I would actually need some kind of proof before assuming those contributors were not vandals or spammers (the main causes of being blocked from Wikipedia).
When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand.
Again, after seeing how the created and rewrote claim fared, I would like some example before assuming the articles removed were genuine articles that followed the policy of Wikipedia. I would think inappropriate long titles, too specific subjects (a person not well known, for example) or things like that cannot be considered censure. I haven't found a single instance of request from deletion, so he doesn't seem to make a habit out of it.
And by the way, after seeing his contributions, it seems to me that he is a valuable Wikipedia contributor, that he is more or less courteous but enters heated discussions and that he seems to be arguing on the talk pages much more than modifying articles. Seeing that, I actually fail to be outraged by him. An specific example instead of vague claims of his perfidy would actually work wonders.
