By Gregory Kohs

A masquerade mask uploaded by Russavia

Wikipedia was in a bit of chaos last week, as some of its administrators and its Arbitration Committee sought to wipe away any mention of the real name of a user who goes by the nickname “Russavia”. One popular and prolific editor of military history articles has been indefinitely blocked for “outing” Russavia. And an administrator with nearly five years under his belt who sought to unblock the history buff was defrocked of his admin toolkit in the early hours of March 5th. Alas, the people who built Wikipedia have developed an accompanying set of rules that are so extreme, heavy-handed, and (not surprisingly) unevenly enforced, it’s not hard to believe that fewer and fewer people have the courage to edit the wiki encyclopedia any more.

What is especially perplexing is the fact that “Russavia” has identified himself as Australian web merchant Scott Bibby in numerous places across the internet, but because he has never sought to identify himself on Wikipedia, no other Wikipedia editor is ever allowed to identify him by his real name. Furthermore, Russavia’s account on Wikipedia has been blocked since April 2012, so this entire kerfuffle has been fought over the identity of someone who was already kicked off of the site.

The puzzling affair began with a blog post on Wikipediocracy. The post explained in clear detail how Russavia is one of the most prolific and intractable contributors of photos to Wikimedia Commons (the photo album cousin of Wikipedia), how he so offends opponents that he got blocked for a year from Wikipedia, and how his name is without a doubt Scott Bibby. The post also described a moment on Wikipedia when a female editor complained to

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