On October 26, 2007, I made one (1) edit to [[Talk:Something Awful]]. Some background: the main [[Something Awful]] article was under contention, and most of this came from the debate over whether Something Awful's former illegal subforums for distributing copyrighted material (viz.: "BTB", or "The BitTorrent Backyard", for popular films; "NMP3s", or "No MP3s", for commercial music; and "DPPH", or "Don't Post Pornography Here", for paysite pornography dumps) should be mentioned in the [[Something Awful]] entry, and if so, how.

Reading the discussion on [[Talk:Something Awful]], I saw that administrator [[User:Wafulz]] was trying to steer the argument about mentioning the file forums in [[Something Awful]], and leaning a little heavily on semi-protection and such to do so. (The edit histories for [[Something Awful]] et al confirm this.) As such I felt it both germane and necessary to point out for the benefit of other users that [[User:Wafulz]] is an administrator of the spun-off file-sharing forum "HPJ" (a.k.a. "Horse Porn Junction", http://hpj.cc/Login.html being its location; "HPJ" is run by former members of S.A.'s file-sharing subforums), and that as such he may not be bringing a Neutral Point of View to the discussion.

My only edit to [[Talk:Something Awful]] (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Something_Awful&oldid=167...) was a paragraph explaining some of the above. Shortly afterward, [[User:Wafulz]] edited the page to deny what I had said, and anonymous [[User:70.112.72.54]] then denied [[User:Wafulz]]'s denial. So far, fair play.

However, I noticed later that completely unrelated prior edits to my user page, and 50+ other unrelated edits I've made on Wikipedia from March 2005 onwards, have mysteriously vanished. (My edit count was formerly well into the triple digits, and is now 44.) After I made my edit, administrator [[User:John Reaves]] blocked my user account and deleted my user page. (Hence I assume (but cannot verify) that he is also responsible for the retroactive deletions of my former contributions to Wikipedia's main article namespace.)

As near as I can tell, this has been done because I've supposedly used sockpuppets to argue about the file forums on [[Talk:Something Awful]]. I have not; the single edit I described above is the only edit I've made to the page in months. [[User talk:70.112.72.54]] suggests that my supposed sockpuppets are 70.112.72.54 and 68.36.190.76; Googling these suggests that they're not proxies, in which case what are the supposed means by which I made sockpuppet edits from those addresses? I see only this frankly paltry evidence for my being blocked and deleted, and hence I can only infer that the sockpuppetry accusation is a pretext for one or two administrators in particular to eliminate edits of mine with which they disagree. (As such I would have liked to have taken this matter up with [[User:Wafulz]] and [[User:John Reaves]] personally without involving the mailing list, but (for obvious reasons) cannot do so.)

So I now have a question: is this level of evidence generally considered a sufficient basis to instigate a block on a user and delete their edits? If so: doesn't this make it rather easy for administrators with chips on their shoulder to abuse their powers? If not: why was there no safeguard in this case to prevent [[User:Wafulz]] and [[User:John Reaves]] from arbitrarily deploying a block and user deletion, and what can be done to remedy this and prevent it from happening to others in future?

-- Cole DeShawn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rolloffle