Anthere wrote: Some readers of this list may be confused as to why some people consider this to be such a big deal. Perhaps some background on Perl would help. Perl is a user who has been obssessed with sysopship and other forms of status since shortly after he joined Wikipedia. He makes many good contributions under one name, and applies for sysopship, and then when his bad reputation starts catching up with him, he switches names and tries again. So far he has done this 4 times. He has contributed as Aplank, Greenmountainboy, Sennheiser, NASA and Perl. When confronted as a new identity with allegations that he is another Alex Plank reincarnation, he strongly denies it, but when evidence is presented, he admits it and expresses remorse. For some of us, these expressions of remorse seem shallow, considering the number of times he has repeated his behaviour. However Perl does have his supporters. People point out that his most recent reincarnation has done lots of good work, and that perhaps we should forgive. Despite this, his most recent request for adminship on en was easily voted down: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship… The root cause of Perl's bad reputation is the actions he performed as his initial identity, Aplank/Alexandros. He removed adverse comments about himself, he did something controversial at Mother Theresa which offended some people (not sure what exactly), and he "vandalised" Adam Carr's user page. Personally I have found his behaviour rash and impulsive, so I wouldn't trust him with sysop access. Here are some of his previous sysopship applications. Note that during the course of the Greenmountainboy and Sennheiser applications, his identity was exposed, and some refactoring occurred. As Aplank/Alexandros: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship… http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship… http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship… http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship… http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship… There was also one on the French Wikipedia: http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikip%C3%A9dia:Administrateur&am… As Greenmountainboy: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship… As Sennheiser: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship… As Perl: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship… http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship… The Perl identity was exposed before the first adminship request. Perl requested sysop access on the inactive Maori Wikipedia, which I happily granted him, not knowing at that time who he was. Then he requested developer access. I received a tip-off, checked the logs, and, in a very angry state, posted the result to IRC. At Angela's request, I didn't desysop him. Anyway, it suprised some of us when Perl requested sysop access on Wikibooks, and it was approved with two people supporting (Mav and Theresa) and none against. But it's only wikibooks, it's no big deal. Then Mav gave him sysop access on meta. While stricly speaking this is allowed by policy, it seems to be against the majority opinion, at least on the English Wikipedia. I'd like to request that Perl be desysopped on meta, and that the policy be changed to require more stringent controls on who becomes a sysop there. -- Tim Starling