QUOTE(One @ Wed 9th September 2009, 11:01pm)
QUOTE(everyking @ Wed 9th September 2009, 9:36pm)
Surely anyone can accept that there's enough reasonable doubt to unblock 172 now.
I'm sorry, did this become a criminal conviction? If anything, I think it's now
more likely that 172's account was compromised, which is a pretty good reason to keep it blocked until he emerges to say otherwise.
Well, the "compromised account" 172 writes just as well about the same topics, such as George F. Kennan and the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, so I suppose a cloned 172 is as good as the original.
Anyway, when are we postulating that this account could have been compromised? It's very, very hard for me to believe
this edit on 8 June 2009 was actually made by Cognition and not the original 172. After making that edit, 172 disappeared for nearly a month before making
this edit on 6 July, which constitutes a revert to the same version that the account previously reverted to on 8 June; it also a features a very similar edit summary. Subsequently the account works steadily until 17 July, at which point it disappeared again, except for two edits on 1 August, in which it leaves a friendly comment on Slrubenstein's talk page.
So how far do these IP records go back? Are we saying that the account was possibly hijacked before 8 June, or was it sometime after 17 July?
QUOTE(No one of consequence @ Wed 9th September 2009, 11:05pm)
No, but there is good reason to listen to 172's explanation if and when he returns. For now, the evidence is very strong that, no matter who the accounts used to be controlled by, they are currently controlled by one person.
Let's say he never comes back and never even finds out about all this. In that case, his entire editorial history and massive volunteer contributions, made over the course of six or seven years, are forever tarnished by a tag on his user page that connects him to a sockpuppeting account that was used to spread extreme political views that are generally deemed either laughable or dangerous. Do you think that's OK?