On Wednesday 27 June 2007 18:28, Kurt Maxwell Weber wrote: *>> I'm not OK with us being the first thing on him his future employers *> Why should the fact that he's "one of our own" entitle him to special It doesn't entitle him to special consideration, Kurt. Wikipedia is becoming increasingly sensitive towards all human beings of borderline notability, whose lives may be adversely affected by the existence of a Wikipedia article about them. I don't think there's anyone who is arguing in favour of deletion who would not argue in favour of deleting a similar article about a non-Wikipedian of similar borderline notability. Certainly Phil Sandifer didn't argue that Essjay deserves special consideration because he's "one of our own"; you read it into his words. 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. Obviously it was wrong, but it wasn't a scheming, calculating, plan to gain positions of trust. As far as I know, he gained those positions by being friendly and helpful, not by saying that he had two doctorates. Like Phil, I'm uncomfortable with having an article that puts Essjay's real name at or near the top of Google. A mention of the event in the article on [[Criticism of Wikipedia]] shows that we're not sweeping it under the carpet. Essjay is only notable (and not even particularly so) because of a single event, and the tendency at Wikipedia is to discourage articles about non-notable people who became notable from being in the news over a single event. I wonder how many people on this mailing list never told lies between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-four. What Essjay did was wrong, but it seems that his punishment is out of proportion.