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