Cabal or "Wikiyakuza"

There is a rumor on certain large Wikipedias that there is the Cabal. On English Wikipedia this rumor appears periodically. There is even a document named "Cabal" on meta which describes this rumor. On Japanese project the situation is similar; it is not obviously referred on Wikipedia with some exceptions, but frequently referred on other net communities like Slashdot or 2ch.net, an anonymous bulletin board famous or sometimes notorious in japanese using sites. According to the typical rumor the cabal on Japanese Wikipedia is nested on an irc channel #ja.wikipedia hosted by freenode.com. It is believed some important decisions and negotiations have been done on the irc. And frequent visitors or "lurkers" of irc promote their favorites to adminstrators. Shortly the rumor on Japanese Wikipedia is similar to ones on other projects; ridiculous, merely based on what they want to believe in, but uneasily gone away. On Japanese Wikipedia even a sysop accused another sysop on Request for Comment as for the cabalism: the accused sysop made a cabal with his irc friends, and the accusing sysop prouded his effort which had been effective to fight the influence of that cabal; honestly I can't support such a view. Perhaps such a belief is a fate of every Wikipedia over a certain size.....