Follow-up letter I have emailed to the editor of The Spectator:
Sir,
An appeal to Rod Liddle’s better nature was indeed a long shot; he is after all paid to dispense laddish rudeness. Your salaried jester of a columnist has been given an opportunity to retract his fanciful account of what he sees (no doubt) as an amusing prank. The logic of the situation is that he continues to maintain that he committed a series of malicious actions on Wikipedia, while a number of those who have looked into the matter see no vestige of those edits.
Doubtless Liddle kept enough details to substantiate his side of this important slab of investigative journalism: the simple provision of dates, times and titles of the articles he defaced would be a convincing proof that the story contained no element of fabrication. Certainly the alarming news that he was thwarted in improving the article “Rod Liddle” would snap into focus if we could see how he attempted to remedy its deficiencies, and who prevented him from so doing.
The spat over this matter could therefore be resolved simply enough, if he could support vague assertions that he went to the site and did this and that, from his well-kept notes; with the added benefit that the harm he has done could be checked and corrected. This is what I meant in writing before about “professional courtesy”. It happens that Liddle’s manners and credibility are bound up together in this matter.
Charles