[WikiEN-l] Administrator "Wafulz" instigating retroactive edit deletions on dubious pretext

[Cole DeShawn]

On October 26, 2007, I made one (1) edit to [[Talk:Something Awful]].
Some background: the main [[Something Awful]] article was under
contention, and most of this came from the debate over whether
Something Awful's former illegal subforums for distributing
copyrighted material (viz.: "BTB", or "The BitTorrent Backyard", for
popular films; "NMP3s", or "No MP3s", for commercial music; and
"DPPH", or "Don't Post Pornography Here", for paysite pornography
dumps) should be mentioned in the [[Something Awful]] entry, and if
so, how.

Reading the discussion on [[Talk:Something Awful]], I saw that
administrator [[User:Wafulz]] was trying to steer the argument about
mentioning the file forums in [[Something Awful]], and leaning a
little heavily on semi-protection and such to do so. (The edit
histories for [[Something Awful]] et al confirm this.) As such I felt
it both germane and necessary to point out for the benefit of other
users that [[User:Wafulz]] is an administrator of the spun-off
file-sharing forum "HPJ" (a.k.a. "Horse Porn Junction",
http://hpj.cc/Login.html being its location; "HPJ" is run by former
members of S.A.'s file-sharing subforums), and that as such he may not
be bringing a Neutral Point of View to the discussion.

My only edit to [[Talk:Something Awful]]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Something_Awful&oldid=167299083)
was a paragraph explaining some of the above. Shortly afterward,
[[User:Wafulz]] edited the page to deny what I had said, and anonymous
[[User:70.112.72.54]] then denied [[User:Wafulz]]'s denial. So far,
fair play.

However, I noticed later that completely unrelated prior edits to my
user page, and 50+ other unrelated edits I've made on Wikipedia from
March 2005 onwards, have mysteriously vanished. (My edit count was
formerly well into the triple digits, and is now 44.) After I made my
edit, administrator [[User:John Reaves]] blocked my user account and
deleted my user page. (Hence I assume (but cannot verify) that he is
also responsible for the retroactive deletions of my former
contributions to Wikipedia's main article namespace.)

As near as I can tell, this has been done because I've supposedly used
sockpuppets to argue about the file forums on [[Talk:Something
Awful]]. I have not; the single edit I described above is the only
edit I've made to the page in months. [[User talk:70.112.72.54]]
suggests that my supposed sockpuppets are 70.112.72.54 and
68.36.190.76; Googling these suggests that they're not proxies, in
which case what are the supposed means by which I made sockpuppet
edits from those addresses? I see only this frankly paltry evidence
for my being blocked and deleted, and hence I can only infer that the
sockpuppetry accusation is a pretext for one or two administrators in
particular to eliminate edits of mine with which they disagree. (As
such I would have liked to have taken this matter up with
[[User:Wafulz]] and [[User:John Reaves]] personally without involving
the mailing list, but (for obvious reasons) cannot do so.)

So I now have a question: is this level of evidence generally
considered a sufficient basis to instigate a block on a user and
delete their edits? If so: doesn't this make it rather easy for
administrators with chips on their shoulder to abuse their powers? If
not: why was there no safeguard in this case to prevent
[[User:Wafulz]] and [[User:John Reaves]] from arbitrarily deploying a
block and user deletion, and what can be done to remedy this and
prevent it from happening to others in future?

--
Cole DeShawn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rolloffle