Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-09-05/Everyking desysopped

After a post on Wikipedia criticism site "Wikipedia Review", in which he discussed offering deleted article revisions containing personal information to an indefinitely blocked user, long-time contributor Everyking was desysopped on Sunday.

WordBomb, a Wikipedia Review contributor blocked from this site, posted a thread inquiring about the article on Gary Weiss, which was semi-protected on August 29, along with the deletion of several article revisions. In response, Everyking posted "I looked for you, but when you look at deleted revisions it doesn't show you the changes (or if so I don't know how to access them). I guess I could just post the full text and you could work out the differences yourself."

In a post on the administrators' noticeboard, arbitrator Dmcdevit stated: "Recently it was brought to the attention of the Arbitration Committee that administrator Everyking has posted to an external site in the process of trying to determine the contents of inappropriate material, sensitive personal information, deleted from an article. Everyking looked up the deleted material using his administrator privileges, and offered to post the deleted content publicly...We view this as a serious misjudgment and a betrayal of the trust the community has given him in adminship. As such, Everyking has been immediately desysopped."

Everyking responded almost immediately, saying "This is shocking and I call for it to be overturned. I didn't actually post anything (being worried that SlimVirgin might get pissed) and even if I did I don't see how it could be a betrayal of anything." When Dmcdevit mentioned his willingness to post personal information as a "liability", Everyking replied, "Personal information? I didn't even know what the content was. I still don't know. I sure as hell would never post anybody's personal information."

Debate
Significant debate ensued on the noticeboard, with many users supporting the desysopping, and others questioning it. Tony Sidaway said: "This was a gross and obvious violation of Administrator trust. Let us all remember that we have the power to do great harm, and we must resist the temptation to do so at all times. Private information is not ours to disclose; we only have administrator powers for one purpose: to improve Wikipedia. We cannot usually do that by publicly compromising private information."

In defense of Everyking, Phil Sandifer said: "I will say, given the clearly stated suspicion on the page that the subject was a Wikipedia editor, some more care might have been in order. But honestly, I'm skeptical that this is in and of itself grounds for an emergency desysopping. It seems more like a case of the arbcom seeing an opportunity to justify a penalty they've wanted to put out for quite a while."

Everyking is allowed to attempt to regain adminship by community request according to this message sent out by Sam Korn.