Although I have played for a few months, I still consider myself quite green.
I do not know the underlying rifts or the basis for this argument in its entirety either. I can only guess from what I infer in reading the posts.
Wildeyes, to be honest, is a mixed bag to me. Although she did go nuke happy on my countries, she did help me out a lot in my first real war. In retrospect, even being nuke happy on my country taught me a few things: 1) This is a game. Players are here to enjoy it (albeit within the confines of the ToS) and the owners need to make some sort of money to continue. 2) There is no such thing as a peaceful world. Anyone is allowed to start a war against anyone. Larger and more experienced players can band together to deter these incidents, but they cannot remove them completely from the game.
In the end, I'm grateful for what Wildeyes (and many others, you know who you are, but this is focused on Wildeyes) did to me and for me. I'll remain ignorant on the other issues (ie - GM - customer satisfaction etc) for now. But to say Wildeyes drives away new players, I think is oversimplifing or generalizing the situation.
When I signed up on the old interface, there used to be disclaimers that not all worlds were peaceful. Old and new players should have taken heed of that warning. I joined LU and was wrongly told that IF I was an economic player and peaceful, I wouldn't be attacked nor would I have to attack. I took that premise to heart although there is NO basis or support for such a statement. Nowhere in the manual, nowhere in the ToS, etc. After the fall of SNA, I was nuked. I had taken the game too seriously and believed all the words of economic player = peaceful and wouldn't be attacked.
Now, I look at Wild's initial actions upon me and all beginning players as sifting through wheat. The players who have intentions of remaining and willingness to learn and who do not take the game extremely serious are the seeds that will pass through. The players who leave after any hardships and who would probably leave anyway after they comprehend that the game engine is quite complicated are the chaff. All players should understand that there is a war game element to this game. Deluding them is not the answer.
As someone suggested before, if these actions are not to be tolerated (the attacks on new players), create a peaceful server where only wars can be declared on c3 or mutual declaration.
This is not a competition to see who's most helpful and who isn't or who's more powerful and who isn't. What I see is this: "Might makes right is wrong, don't pick on weak people." and contrast to this: "I have helped more people than any others so my arguments have more basis." Is that not a twist on the "might makes right"?
Take my words worth the pennies they are. I, and a group of friends, also run an online game that we bought from the original owners who were doing something similar to what the current owners of simcountry were doing. Population declined. As soon as ownership changed and we included input from the community (albeit saying that we had final decision :P), our customer base has grown several fold. I think we grew from a 70 playerbase to over 700 right now in less than a year. It could still be the "newness" factor that has boosted the playerbase. But I like to think it's more of including the community's input.