On 6/28/07, ElinorD elinordf@gmail.com wrote:
What age was Essjay when he joined? Twenty? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? Many people would consider that he *was* a kid.
Did he invent that persona with the intention of becoming an an administrator, a bureaucrat, a checkuser, an oversighter? I doubt it very much. I doubt if he even knew there were such things when he started.
It sounds to me like an immature kid, just out of his teens, finding it fun, as an insignificant new user, to tell a few whoppers about being a Professor of Theology, then, as a result of some genuinely good qualities, becoming popular on Wikipedia, becoming an administrator, rising still higher, and finding himself trapped in the lies that he had started as before he ever suspected that he was going to rise to power.
Nice story would play okeyish with most juries. Misses a significant fact. He didn't stop.
Remember his statement on wikia? That appears not have been true either:
http://www.kctcs.net/todaysnews/index.cfm?tn_date=2007-03-06#9315