[WikiEN-l] EssJay situation

[Jimmy Wales]

I have just posted this on my talk page:

I have blanked my entire talk page to make sure this statement gets 
adequate attention.  Hopefully someone more clueful than me :-) can 
archive things properly.

I have been for several days in a remote part of India with little or no 
Internet access.  I only learned this morning that EssJay used his false 
credentials in content disputes.  I understood this to be primarily the 
matter of a pseudonymous identity (something very mild and completely 
understandable given the personal dangers possible on the Internet) and 
not a matter of violation of people's trust.  I want to make it 
perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully 
based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on.  Even now, I 
have not been able to check diffs, etc.

I have asked EssJay to resign his positions of trust within the 
community.  In terms of the full parameters of what happens next, I 
advise (as usual) that we take a calm, loving, and reasonable approach. 
  From the moment this whole thing became known, EssJay has been 
contrite and apologetic.  People who characterize him as being "proud" 
of it or "bragging" are badly mistaken.

On a personal level, EssJay has apologized to me, and I have accepted 
his apology on a personal level, and I think this is the right thing to 
do.  If anyone else feels that they need or want a personal apology, 
please ask him for it.  And if you find it to be sincere, then I hope 
you will accept it too, but each person must make their own judgments. 
Despite my personal forgiveness, I hope that he will accept my 
resignation request, because forgiveness or not, these positions are not 
appropriate for him now.

I still have limited net access... for a couple of hours here I will be 
online, and then I am offline until I am in Japan tomorrow morning.  I 
beleive I will have a fast and stable Internet connection at that time, 
and I will deal with this further at that time.

Wikipedia is built on (among other things) twin pillars of trust and 
tolerance.  The integrity of the project depends on the core community 
being passionate about quality and integrity, so that we can trust each 
other.  The harmony of our work depends on human understanding and 
forgiveness of errors.

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