Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Missed Opportunities to have avoided the Durova Case With due respect to everyone posting here, the facts are well laid out in the Evidence section of the RFAR, and very few of them are in dispute.

Jimmy, the reason people are up in arms right now is not that Durova screwed up, it is that ANY admin in this project could have considered any of this to be acceptable. When I wrote the other day that I thought long and hard about deleting unsourced, clearly erroneous, speculative, and potentially damaging information in a biographical article about a professional wrestler, I was serious. Very serious.

The fact that ANY administrator believed that a pre-emptive block of a possible sockpuppet was acceptable behaviour is the problem. It is a systemic issue and there is absolutely no reason to believe that Durova is the only administrator who thought that way; in fact, there seem to be administrators posting in this thread who feel that such actions are perfectly acceptable. And it is this systemic issue that is causing the continued churning of this issue. Durova is not the problem. It is the culture that nurtured her belief that this level of sleuthing was beneficial to the project. The community is trying to find ways to make it clear that this is not acceptable to them.

Dozens of well respected editors have edited in the past and in some cases continue to edit with alternate accounts. If we turned every admin into a checkuser tomorrow, it still wouldn't be sufficient to root out every alternate account on Wikipedia. So it is time to get back to basics here. It is the quality of the information contained in the encyclopedia that is of importance, not the identity of the editor who wrote any particular passage or article. That's what it says on the front page. Risker ****** Risker, your post to the RFC was articulate and well chosen. I had been addressing that at ANI until the thread became too chaotic and I was addressing that at my candidate questions. I would have addressed that at RFC if that had lasted a normal duration and I was prioritizing that at arbitration until, a day later, five arbitrators had voted before half my evidence had been posted. Some aspects of your worries probably remained unaddressed, which is why I posted links to that evidence at your user talk and offered to discuss it further with you. I realize that evidence probably doesn't address every angle, but please weigh the circumstances here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Durova&diff=17417460...

I haven't been given the normal dispute resolution option to respond adequately, and it's very tiring and unproductive to find your concerns expanded upon here at this forum instead of directly to me, where I could explain what else I've done and maybe find new and better ways to address them.

Think of me as the pitcher who had a tired arm and threw a wild curve ball.

-Durova