you're failing to recognize the possibility of alternative explanations that place the whole thing in a

much

different light. That was a key mistake I made. You're making it too.

Well, that's a very valid possibilty. I would like to point out two critical differences though: 1. I'm not accusing you or anyone else of bad faith-- merely poor judgement. !! was suspected of actually trying to subvert it. The wpinvestigations-l sleuths are merely suspected of exhibiting poor judgment. Nobody is suspecting you of subversion, we're just suspecting you guys of inadvertantly causing more harm than good. ****** Remember, that list didn't exist yet. See above.

2. I'm not trying to ban anybody. I'm just saying-- administrators of this project obviously rendered judgments on your evidence-- we should be able to see those judgments, so we can better assess how to help those individuals better contribute to the project. Worst case scenario, they have to return to the community and ask if they are still trusted. ****** Point well taken about you not trying to ban anybody. As for the rest, as I've said before, these were individuals who were missing the same piece of evidence I was missing. I'm sure any of them would have discarded the hypothesis immediately if any of them had it. Also bear in mind that I was the investigator, and that I was attempting to build upon a part of some work that had been very successful in the Burntsauce and Dannycali investigations. The Burntsauce investigation was far more extensive than this one and had numerous smoking guns. Dannycali was also a much clearer instance, although someone else acted while my evidence was at earlier stages. And no, that person isn't someone who saw the bad report I later wrote. There could very well have been a general respect for my successful report on Alkivar (which had many smoking guns) and Eyrian's own reaction when I blocked his sock spoke more than any evidence I could have mustered. And I want to emphasize, this really was a much weaker report than the kind of thing I usually do.

The onsite discussion got too heated to hold any real discussion of "Durova, what were you thinking?" Well I'd been pretty successful at what I had been doing and wanted to systematize it. The long term sockpuppets I'd successfully found had been working in concert with other editors who were either banned or gaming the system very seriously. And remember I had tried to ban Burntsauce half a year before, and I had been absolutely right, and he had done a lot of damage since then. When I returned in the fall and really looked into it closely, I regretted having waited so long because so much damage had occurred. In fact, I'll give a barnstar to anyone who restores the damage to ten articles he harmed.

I really wanted to find a way that would address the problem more proactively. And remember, JB196 has driven people to frustration until they quit the project. Curse of Fenric was a good editor, and others had come to me for advice when they were on the fence about leaving too. SirFozzie knew the JB196 case even better than I, but he had distanced himself from it. It was just too cumbersome. So I was the person who had by far the most experience in this particular area. So I tried to distill the common points between Burntsauce and Dannycali and some other accounts I'd been watching quite closely but not acted upon, and I selected a test case that raised my antenna a little and I hadn't examined before. I thought I was being impartial and objective, and I was surprised to see that the correlations lined up. Eureka! The moment of hubris.

So yeah, the people who read that report all knew I had been on a roll and had some background on why I thought this kind of thing was worth attempting. Don't lay it on their shoulders. It was a bad report, not up to the level of my usual work, and it was attempting a new kind of approach I hadn't tried before. With no disrespect for the real human being who didn't deserve the hassle my mistake caused, I'm like the pitcher who threw a wild curveball and got a drubbing in the sports pages. You don't fire the catcher and the first baseman for that.