Arno M wrote:
"He even contacted me directly, begging me to apologize, presumably so that he wouldn't lose face for backing off his ultimatum. (What person using a pseudonym worries about reputation? It was very weird.)"
I will observe that 172 wasn't anonymous, unless the name that he used on wikien-l , Abe Sokolov, was an alias.
It is an alias; as his page confirms, "the name I was using in my Wikipedia email account was not my own".
Stan