Len Stirling is a well known former politician in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. He was leader of the Liberal Party in the province in the 1980s and, as such, served as Leader of the Opposition in the Newfoundland legislature.

I was surprised, therefore, to find that there was no article on him in Wikipedia and even more surprised that to find that there used to be an article but it was deleted without so much as an AfD by JzG. His rationale?

"G10: Attack page or negative unsourced BLP: No sources, disparaging of another living individual, no evidence of actual notability."

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...=edit&redlink=1

Fortunately, there's a mirror of the article here: http://dictionary.sensagent.com/len+stirling/en-en/

Now JzG appears to be right that the article requires sources (but wrong in claiming there were none) but that's easily fixed. But he's dead wrong when he says it was an "attack page", there is no personal attack on the subject in it and absolutely wrong when he says there is "no evidence of actual notability". Stirling was the leader of the opposition for heaven's sake.

Does JzG just go around deleting perfectly fixable articles on a whim or is he a vandal?

Closer to the first. JzG has whim. Acts. Then defends it to the end. You could try asking him to undelete the page or userfy it.

He might even do it. But I do suggest not holding your breath. You could also go to DRV. It works, normally. JzG's actions do not stand up to scrutiny, but mostly he's able to avoid any sort of neutral scrutiny. That's what I just took to ArbComm, JzG activity in banning editors, and they first moved the request from Clarification to Amendment (it wasn't an amendment request), then it was deleted, with no sign that any arb actually read it. Yeah, apparently, deleted, responses and all. Not archived to case Talk as is normal.

Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.

(The request should have been copied to the talk page for the case)

I think I'll fix it. I like fixing things. I'll report back what happens.

Okay, did it, and self-reverted. Let's see who finds this first. While, if someone is afraid that I didn't copy exactly, consider this: it would totally wreck my plan if I monkey with content, either with a self-reversion or with what I did in the edit. I'd be punishing those who cooperate with me (i.e., someone who accepts the edit by reverting it back in). It's easy to check that this was accurate, but probably not worth the effort, my advice.

While I might make a mistake, so too can an arbitration clerk, as obviously happened here.

An editor's noticed this thread and has brought it up with JzG whose response is predictably obtuse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JzG#Len_Stirling

I'll disagree, though maybe I'm considering later responses from JzG. His ultimate response was fine. If this was the limit of his obtuseness, I'd think him brilliant. He offered to userfy, that's highly cooperative.

Unfortunately, it's not the limit. But that's another story.

His initial response was obtuse. The other editor was low-key enough to nudge JzG towards a grudging compromise but I suspect a more direct challenge to his authori-tay would have seen him dig in.

Perhaps. Isn't this a rather normal human trait, though?

Wikipedia happens to be particularly vulnerable to this trait. I'm engaged in massive confrontation of Authority, while carefully refraining from actual disruption. I.e., the only "disruption" is the fact that I'm ignoring blocks and bans, the actual edits, themselves, wouldn't even raise an eyebrow, they are rigorously respective of policy, guidelines, and consensus -- all except for an alleged consensus to block or ban me.

Basically, this is natural consequences for the administrative core of the community, I'm treating the core as if it were a child. As can be expected, the initial response is to throw a tantrum, maybe break some things. But eventually the kid gets it, if the parent is steady-on. The only offense is Defiance of Authority.

Look, I did this in high school, which was well over fifty years ago.... I have some experience with it, eh?

Arrogant? Sure. But I'm old enough to be the parent of most of the editors involved, easily. If anyone thinks I'm making a mess, my talk page is open at Wikiversity, as is the Talk page attached to where I'm documenting all that I'm doing. It's transparent, except for a portion of it that's temporarily covert, but rigorously harmless. Except, of course, for block evasion.

If the community didn't want to see a demonstration of how easy it is to evade blocks, well, they sure went about it in a stupid way. They've done that many times with many editors, motivating the creation of massive sock farms, a huge waste of time, by unnecessary blocking and banning. I'm just unusual in that I'm documenting everything, instead of trying to push a POV by covert socking. Take a look at the edits of Abd sock (T-C-L-K-R-D) . This is what they punish.

The priority for most of the "senior admins" is playing whack-o-mole with people evading bans or blocks - even if the blocks were unwarranted and even if their target is non-disruptive let alone productive. Actually building an encyclopedia isn't as important as blind Javert like enforcement. This means that enforcer-admins who aren't otherwise productive or blunder around doing damage by acting arbitrarily. like our friend JzG are hard to get rid of and a productive editor can be shot on sight if they are the reincarnation of someone who was caught in a net years ago.

Anyway, in a healthy environment, one would be able to point out the JzG that he messed up by arbitrarily deleting an article without checking with anyone first or just reverse his mistake and ask him not to do it again but because this is Wikipedia and JzG is an admin who seems to have some protection he must be approached on tippy toes with gentle words soothing his ego so that his screw-up can be mitigated. Utter madness.