David Boothroyd in Wikipedia sockpuppeting brouhaha

From Dizzy Thinks:

David Boothroyd has had to resign from the “Wikipedia Supreme Court”. David Boothroyd is a Labour councillor in Westminster who comments on a number of right wing blogs including this one. He has an anally retentive insistent on this blog of referring to me by my full name for some reason.

I mentioned this simply because he’s had to resign after admitting to have multiple identities on Wikipedia and spending most of his time editing David Cameron’s page. He also used his multiple identities to get himself elected to the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee it seems.

With more detail in The Register:

A Labour councillor for London’s City of Westminster resigned from Wikipedia’s supreme court at the weekend, after admitting he gained election to the site’s ruling body using a false name.

David Boothroyd – councillor for Westminster’s Westbourne ward – was elected to Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee in December 2007 under the name Sam Blacketer and has edited the overly-egalitarian online encyclopedia under at least three other names…

Elected by the Wikipedia community at large, the Arbitration Committee resolves site disputes and serves as the final word on site policy. In the wake of Boothroyd’s resignation, the community is discussing whether it should review the 18 months of Wikicourtcases in which Boothroyd cast a vote.

Looking at the details on Wikipedia, it’s clear that controversy has surrounded some of these aliases for several years, with one being stripped of its powers for “extensive abuse of admin tools”.