Danny

Erik Moeller eloquence at gmail.com

Wed Apr 19 18:56:58 UTC 2006

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

In response to the above: Danny had _explicitly_ labeled this page as a regular protected page, and _explicitly_ removed the "office" template. This is why I believed it was his point that it was _not_ a WP:OFFICE action, but one of his many ongoing contributions to Wikipedia as an editor and admin (over 30,000 edits on en.wp, only a tiny, tiny fraction of which are office-related). Please note that I assumed good faith on Danny's part, which is why I did not revert the "stubbification" itself. I trusted him, as an editor, on the content issue, but I objected to the act of protecting the article, if taken as a regular administrative action. I would _never_ revert a WP:OFFICE action that is labeled as such, but again, here the opposite was the case; it was labeled as a non-office action.

Apparently (I'm still not sure), the protection was a _sensitive_ Office Action which is not meant to be publicized as such. That idea did not occur to me. I'm not sure if this approach is at all viable (if anything, this episode may show that it is not), and I am not very fond of the idea of mixing regular editorial/sysop tasks with Office Actions which cannot be clearly distinguished, and whose reversal is, effectively, treated with the Wikipedia equivalent of the Usenet Death Penalty. However, please understand that I will from now on remain largely silent on this issue, and will wait for the Board to clarify things.

Again, I apologize if my actions were rash, but I believed them to be justified based on the information available to me. As of this point in time, I am banned for 48 hours; this is a punishment I can accept. I am also still indefinitely blocked on Meta and desysopped. I would like to kindly request that the remaining indefinite block and the desysopping will be reversed. Again, I will do my best to follow policy, even if the policy is that "Anything Danny does is unusual and should be treated differently from what regular admins/editors do". However, I do believe it needs to be clear _exactly_ what the situation is.

Thanks,

Erik