Tony Sidaway wrote:
The account of administrator User:Robdurbar on English
Wikipedia went
rogue in the early hours of this morning. Rob had made a friendly
goodbye message about six weeks ago and hadn't been active since then.
Between 0957 and 1014 UTC, the account deleted the main page as well
as several articles: "History", "Cheese", "Esteban Huertas,
"Pita,
Guinea", "Balham railway station" and "Mardi Gras Mystery". It
also
vandalized the main page and blocked several prominent editors
including User:Jimbo Wales.
Overall, this incident was handled very promptly and efficiently.
Well done and I think a word of appreciation is due to all the
volunteers involved.
The worst damage here was the loss of the main page for about fifteen
minutes, and the accompanying scrabbling between Robdurbar deleting it
and other administrators restoring it.
Presumably this person had already run the gauntlet to become an admin.
Thus, being able to do that is no guarantee that a person will not turn
rogue. It also shows that when it does happen the community has
effective and efficient techniques for coping with this. It's something
that the supporters of the current RfA system should keep in mind.
Ec