The OP was not familiar with the Wikipedia convention that editors talk to one another by editing one another’s talk pages.
Instead, he followed the instructions on the automated email that Wikipedia sent him, which said “To contact the editor, visit [the editor’s page]”. His reward for following those instructions was a box telling him that actually, that page isn’t the venue for sending a message. The box told him to “use” the talk page instead. You and I know that user talk pages are “used” by just editing them, but he didn’t, and nothing above the fold on that page told him what he should have been doing.
I just don't buy it. There are some dumb, dumb, dumb people thoroughly ensconced in Wikipedia and its processes; clearly it's not that hard to figure out that to talk to an admin, you can just edit their page.
I think Danny Sullivan is being disingenuous. Mediawiki is an obtuse piece of software; he knows that, and we know that, and he's using it as a fig leaf to conceal the fact that he wasn't able to push his friend's article onto the encyclopedia. I'm only able to say that because I don't know anything about Sullivan; he's just an abstraction to me. I certainly don't mean for him to take this personally. But I do not believe him.
Dumb, dumb, dumb people can learn to follow all sorts of rituals, if they’re sufficiently motivated. That fact does not, in and of itself, justify the rituals.
It's not especially edifying to discuss your perceptions of Danny's hidden motives, when the intended topic of discussion is what Danny actually wrote.
What Danny Sullivan did write appears to be disingenuous: he didn't want to read a noisy web page in order to override a community vote on Wikipedia, scribbled on a page he wasn't supposed to edit, had his scribbling carefully preserved by another Wikipedian, and then started yelling.
Instead, he followed the instructions on the automated email that Wikipedia sent him, which said “To contact the editor, visit [the editor’s page]”. His reward for following those instructions was a box telling him that actually, that page isn’t the venue for sending a message. The box told him to “use” the talk page instead. You and I know that user talk pages are “used” by just editing them, but he didn’t, and nothing above the fold on that page told him what he should have been doing.