In the past Mardetanha was mentioned on the
Signpost, repeatedly, but only in passing as a "trusted steward". Never as the subject of a scandal or other "bad news". Similar results on noticeboards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:S ... V%22&ns0=1
See now? THIS is how you play the Wikipedians. It takes years and years. And one little fuck-up, and they turn on you like (censorious) mad dogs. Assuming there was an actual fuck-up, and they didn't turn on him for insane/no reason. Note that the report about Iranian government meetings with WP insiders was first published in 2019. Something else,
that we don't know about, must have happened more recently. But no one's talking.
I've dug thru Meta and various other WMF wikis, and I still have no clue why he was "globally b&". Beginning to suspect some diffs were oversighted. Sure could use the help of a Farsi speaker here. Digging thru
fa-WP's noticeboards is fruitless. (Look at the
latest archive of the "Coffeehouse". Some bitching and moaning about the bias reports from years ago, nothing substantial. I bet fa-WP is even more heavily censored than en-WP. Scroll down to "They tied up the lonely man", where they talk about the Mardetanha banning. THEY don't know what happened either!)
And now I wonder if the real story will turn up on the next issue of the
Signpost, which should be dropping any day. Unlikely. It's what they do: deny and deny, until OOPS WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING.