"Durova, I greatly respect your work on this, but slashdot is not a minor venue. I highly regret such a posting appeared there, but it did."

You're right; Slashdot itself isn't minor. I was referring to the publications the Slashdot conversation was based upon. Jimbo had lost some credibility from his initial support of Essjay last spring, so when I saw the inevitable comparisons I put together a set of links and diffs to demonstrate how baseless the accusations really were. If anyone cares to check up on it I had been among the first to call for Essjay's resignation (if not the very first).

The main thing, I thought, was to put forward enough verifiable information that no legitimate journalist would touch the story. This was a weird conspiracy theory, one of many such things on the Internet, and it really didn't hold together.

-Durova