QUOTE(Zoloft @ Tue 27th April 2010, 7:22am)
ColScott, this is an example of why beating up on individual Wikipedia editors rapidly disintegrates into a farce with you playing the stereotypical mustachioed villain. Once details of their life emerge, they become human.
Quite a choice: Continue to harangue the Erik Kraft who increasingly looks like he deserved none of this treatment (Once this is confirmed, perhaps a nice apology and some chocolates?), or yell at the deaf guy.
Avoid this trap. Go after the big, faceless, irresponsible WMF. Hit them in public perception. Get their URL put into Websense filters all over the place.
Yeah, I've got to agree with Zoloft here. It's difficult to pin down the exact order of events, as they spanned multiple pages, but against my better judgment I spent enough time working out that, apart from a couple of missteps that can be explained through sheer panic, User:Erik didn't do anything to warrant this level of attention:
1. Erik, who has recently added a few pictures of filmmakers to Wikipedia articles, finds an image of Don, which has already been uploaded at Commons with an, at that point, seemingly-valid copyright tag.
2. He crops it to show just Don, adds it to the article. A few people complain, including SharkJumper (Don?) who makes a legal threat. A by-the-book guy, Erik reports Sharkjumper, who is subsequently blocked. In the meantime, discussion takes place on the Don Murphy article talk page about the suitability of the image. Erik agrees that it should be removed, and takes it out himself.
3. Based on a digression at AN/I about Murphy's notability, User:Erik makes a colossal mistake and decides to build up the article. As far as I can see, he ignored any disparaging stuff to include only neutral commentary (though I completely understand that Don doesn't even want that in there).
4. Meanwhile, Don has posted his "Find Erik" message on his forum (after User:Erik added the image, but before he expanded the article). Nothing illegal about that, but a minion finds Erik Kraft, based on the name Erik, and the university User:Erik said he went to. This last point may or may not have been a lie by User:Erik to avoid being targeted, but even if that's the case, there's nothing to suggest User:Erik targeted Erik Kraft deliberately. He could have chosen almost any university and the minion would have been able to find an Erik who went there. Try it.
5. User:Erik doesn't outright confirm or deny anything about his identity; an understandable misstep, in hindsight. Born of panic, especially if he's aware of what happened to HighInBC.
6. User:Erik does the only thing open to him: thinks "fuck it" and retires. I don't think he'll be coming back.
So I just don't get it. Step 2 should have been an end to the matter. The initial attempt to find him, any proposed legal action... it's a massive overreaction. User:Erik's contributions show he hasn't got a vendetta against Don. He voted "keep" in the original AfD, but so did a lot of people. So did I. Yet if an AfD went ahead today, I'd put a reasonably strong argument forward for deletion. The image thing was resolved almost before Don got involved. All User:Erik seems to have done "wrong" is to not tell anyone who he is. Again, the HighInBC thing tells me that was a wise choice.
I'm totally on board with legitimate complaints to be made against Wikipedia, especially when it comes to BLPs, and editors so ideologically warped that they'll even defend an admitted pedophile's right to openly contribute. User:Erik was not one of these guys; he didn't get involved in controversial issues, he stuck to improving Wikipedia's coverage of films, he refused the admin bit on several occasions. Even if there were a basis for legal action (there isn't, as the minion found Erik Kraft; User:Erik was under no legal obligation to confirm or deny his identity), surely there are bigger fish to fry?