I, for one, am glad to see him gone. He was a real blight on Wikipedia, especially in the area of modern politics. He acted like he knew everything, but he constantly made basic errors in reasoning, and seemed completely incapable of distinguishing between "facts" and "opinions".
I remember him saying, sincerely, that if 80% of the mainstream corporate media has the same opinion about a political issue, that opinion should be regarded as an objective fact on par with scientific consensus.
Anyone that pushed back against his elementary school-level reasoning was accused of being "right-wing", "Russian", or "anti-Semitic". I have never seen someone on Wikipedia assert their editorial opinions so aggressively on a topic they knew almost nothing about. The hubris was so overwhelming that it was almost impressive on some level.
Although I will not miss Andrevan, and his absence is a net positive for Wikipedia, it doesn't sit right with me that ArbCom can permanently ban a prominent, 10-15+ year Wikipedian, with absolutely no explanation whatsoever. I'm sure there are many precedents for this, but still. They should have to publicly disclose *something* about their decision-making process, in my opinion.
Maybe they figured out that he was editing on behalf of US intelligence? I'm 90% joking, 10% serious. I once said that, even if Andrevan isn't editing for the CIA, his editorial stances are indistinguishable from what a CIA plant would write, so there's substantively no difference.
In fact, from the US intel perspective, a non-affiliated editor that sincerely believes and disseminates CIA propaganda is even more useful than a paid CIA editor - they work for free, and they give the agency plausible deniability. I think the term is "useful idiot". That is how I will remember Andrevan.
Anyway, does anyone have any information on why he was banned?
