I have been a Wikipedian since 2001 and a MediaWiki developer since
2002. I was Chief Research Officer of the Foundation from May to
August 2005. I initiated two of Wikimedia's projects, Wikinews and the
Wikimedia Commons, and have made vital contributions to both. I have
made roughly 15,000 edits to the English Wikipedia, and uploaded about
15,000 files to Wikimedia Commons. A list of my overall contributions
can be found at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence
and the linked to pages; this does not include my numerous
international activities such as conference speeches, as well as my
book and articles about Wikipedia. I have never been blocked before,
nor have I ever been subject to an Arbitration Committee ruling (in
fact, I was one of Jimmy's original suggestions for the first ArbCom,
and one of the people who proposed that very committee).
I have just been indefinitely blocked from the English Wikipedia, and
desysopped, by user Danny, under the new nickname "Dannyisme", as an
"Office Action" for alleged "reckless endangerment" which was not
specified further. I have called Danny on the phone, but he said that
he was not willing to discuss the issue, and that I should instead
talk to the Foundation attorney instead. To my knowledge, this is the
first time office authority has been used to indefinitely block and
desysop a user.
What happened?
Yesterday, Danny radically shortened and protected two pages,
[[
Newsmax.com]] and [[Christopher Ruddy]]. The protection summary was
"POV qualms" (nothing else), and there was only the following brief
comment on
Talk:NewsMax.com:
"This article has been stubbed and protected pending resolution of POV
issues. Danny 19:26, 17 April 2006 (UTC)"
There was no mention of WP:OFFICE in the edit summary or on the talk
page. Danny did not apply the special Office template, {{office}}, nor
did he use the "Dannyisme" account that he created for Foundation
purposes, nor did he list the page on WP:OFFICE. Instead, he applied
the regular {{protected}} template.
Given that Danny has now more explicitly emphasized this distinction
between his role as a Foundation employee and a regular wiki user, I
assumed he was acting here as a normal sysop and editor, and
unprotected the two pages, with a brief reference to the protection
policy. I also asked Danny, on [[Talk:NewsMax.com]], to make it
explicit whether the protection was under WP:OFFICE. I would not have
reprotected, of course, if he had simply said that they were, and left
it at that.
I apologize if this action was perceived as "reckless", but I must
emphasize that I was acting in good faith, and that I would much
appreciate it if all office actions would be labeled as such. I was
under the impression that this was the case given past actions. In any
case, I think that the indefinite block and desysopping is very much
an overreaction, and would like to hereby publicly appeal to Danny,
the community and the Board (since Danny's authority is above the
ArbCom) to restore my editing privileges as well as my sysop status. I
pledge to be more careful in these matters in the future.
Thanks for reading,
Erik