(Photo by David)

Early Monday morning, Wikipedia blocked Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans for the third time for making continuous changes to his own Wikipedia page.

“Just blocked User: Evansjack1, who appears to have been a problematic editor more or less since the start,” writes a Wikipedia administrator who goes by the username GorillaWarfare on an admin page for the site. “He seems to lack the basic competency to interact productively with the editing community, and he seems to be here mostly to scrub his Wikipedia article. Bringing this for review because of the potentially high-profile subject (although I’m not sure his identity was ever actually confirmed).”

In fact, his identity was confirmed: back in 2014, Washington City Paper obtained emails through a Freedom of Information Act request that showed Jack Evans was behind the Evansjack1 Wikipedia account. He’d been blocked from the site twice that year for continuously editing his own page even after Wikipedia administrators warned him not to.

Conflict of interest rules on Wikipedia hold that editors should avoid editing pages they’re closely affiliated with, instead bringing any concerns to their talk page, where unbiased editors can help approve changes.

Evansjack1—who has always openly told Wikipedia editors that he is Jack Evans, referring to the Jack Evans Wiki as “my page” and referencing Evans’ record as a councilmember as his own—was apparently unhappy with that state of affairs.

According to user Swarm, an administrator and veteran Wikipedia editor, the user had voiced concerns about the Evans Wiki page to administrators, but eventually resorted to “edit warring,” or continuing to change edits made by other editors. The block log says that the user was blocked indefinitely for “disruptive editing,” which appears to mean the user is just making it hard to edit a page constructively. The move was flagged on Reddit.

This turns out not to be unusual behavior for Evans. Back in 2014, he was blocked twice for edit warring, once for 60 hours and once for 48 hours, after deleting large swaths of unflattering information from the Evans Wikipedia page, including controversy over potential conflicts of interest and information about his 2014 mayoral campaign.

As Washington City Paper reported at the time, the user appeared particularly unhappy with the use of City Paper articles as a source for the Jack Evans Wikipedia page. “Relying on the City Paper which is a satire paper for references is insane,” he wrote. “Stop it and help me get this right. Jack.”

Evans apparently continues to harbor that grievance.

“I have repeatedly ask for a group of editors to rewrite my Wikipedia page,” he wrote on the Evansjack1 talk page this August. “It is largely made up of gossip sourced to the City Paper. I hope this is being discussed. Thanks. Jack.”

After what appears to have been a four-year-long break, Evans recently started editing his Wikipedia page again just this August. He has made 11 edits since August 3 of this year. Evans tried to delete references to his failed mayoral bids, an ethics investigation into his dealings with Digi Media Communications (a company that would have benefitted from legislation that he proposed), the name of his second ex-wife, and his positions on a federal takeover of Metro (you can see a comprehensive history of all the user’s edits here).

Wikipedia editors, as evidenced on the Jack Evans talk page, have sometimes agreed with the changes he has requested to his own page. There used to be random references to his nanny, which have been taken out, as well as mention of his attendance at President Donald Trump’s inauguration (two other councilmembers also attended the inauguration). His name was also apparently briefly changed, and then changed back. And Swarm, who later weighed in in favor of Evans’ blocking, also jumped in to say his concerns about the Digi Media ethics controversy should be taken seriously.

“As of now, information on the ‘ethics controversy’ is taking up nearly a third of the ‘political career’ section, despite having little information of substance,” Swarm wrote on the Jack Evans talk page. “As an uninvolved observer, this appears to be undue weight, with unnecessarily frivolous details (what the subject is describing as ‘gossip’) that seem to imply that ethical violations did indeed take place, when there is no indication that such allegations are credible and are in fact under an open investigation.” The section was later pared down.

Some of the responses to Evans also appear to carry some animus toward him as a councilmember.

“I realize that its [sic] far too great of an ask for you to stop accepting corporate or LLC donations. But why don’t you renounce outside employment? The six figure salary is more than adequate for most of your colleagues. Doing so might make your claims to be working in the public interest somewhat plausible, or at least not laughable,” wrote a user called Bangabandhu in response to one of Evans’ complaints.

“This is Jack Evans. I cannot believe that Bang is still editing my page,” Evans writes at one point on his talk page. “As usual, he tries to make me look bad. Why? Because he lives in my Ward and doesn’t like me.”

Regardless, Evans’ insistence on changes to his page appear to have eventually tired out administrators. Unlike the last two times he was blocked, this time it’s unclear if he’ll ever get his editing permissions back.

Jack Evans’ office did not return requests for comment.