Last month the crisis took hold. Wales’s utopian dream of shared knowledge – built on the idea that none of us is as smart as all of us – seemed to be unravelling. The headlines stank. Miley Cyrus, Oprah Winfrey and Steve Jobs had all been declared dead and Margaret Thatcher’s entry claimed she was a fictitious character. Then the “Kennedy moment” occurred

The article basically says that the upcoming flagged revisions will give the clique of Wikipedia insiders more control over what happens in the site, and that Jimbo thinks that's a good thing. But people here on WR are strongly in favor of flagged revisions AND tend to strongly dislike Wikipedia being controlled by a clique of insiders, and strongly dislike anything Jimbo wants. Reconcile THAT!

For what it's worth, I find Giano's creation of that article much more troubling than the edit summary. It looks like an article written just to ridicule the subject for his negative opinion on Wikipedia. BLP issues, to put it mildly. Cool Hand Luke 21:32, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

For readers new to this latest drama, I've worked-up a little timeline of the major events. Popcorn recommended; times are UTC, date is Sunday February 8th.

(1) The online edition of the Sunday Times publishes an interview with Jimbo by hack Giles Hattersley. First appears late-morning/very early afternoon? Near the bottom, Hattersley mentions certain vandalisms of his own "entry", one of which is "libellous".

(2) Strangely, Hattersley did not, in fact, appear to have ever had a Wiki article up to this point in time.

(3) Giano, apparently incensed that Hattersley lied about the existence (or otherwise) of his article decided to create one (a stub). The time of the article's creation seems to have been expunged (at least from Giano's contribs list) but he first mentions it (at 15:56) in this note to the Admin's Noticeboard. Others, apparently, work on expanding the stub.

(4) DuncanHill alerts Jimbo about the Sunday Times article at 16:37

(5) Jimbo blocks Giano at 20:33

(6) Jimbo deletes the article at 20:53, leaving only the talk page.

(7) Jimbo unblocks Giano at 21:49.

(8) Much drama ensues on Giano's talkpage throughout all of this.

(9) Jimbo publishes an explanation from Hattersley. It seems that his original claim regarding his Wiki article was the result of some kind of editing mistake. Heh!

(10) Giano blanks his talkpage and resigns from Wikipedia. Again.

CHLuke writes:

This is known as BIO-punishment. Criticize WP in the open, and they write a BLP on you which they never watch as carefully as Jimbo's is. Dirty treaks and ugly leaks and bad, bad publicity for YOU.

And then there's BIO-pleasurement . See the fix on the Rachel Marsden article after she managed to erm, seduce the site.

IOW, the normal goings-on for any institution where people hold power. Reminds me of congressional news.