I've been blocked from Wikipedia for a week over the most absurd nonsense. I've had a lot of problems with Wikipedia -- IRC sysops abusing their powers, respected editors (and admins) in the IRC threatening to frame me for policy violations, admins on ANI being useless, article edits being wiped out by trolls, and with few people -- trolls or non-trolls alike -- willing and able to actually engage in meaningful discussion.
All of this stuff I could establish with diffs, but it would take quite a long time and I think I would be preaching to the choir.
In the meantime, though, I'd like to share the diffs which led to me being blocked for a week. First, I was blocked indefinitely by Krimpet for "disruptive editing." (Diff)
The block was clear bullshit, hence the community argued over it and I was unblocked.
At this time, I was a bit angry and upset, so I decided to reveal some privy information that I had said I would not reveal. Roughly a week before the FY 2007 financial report was released, I noticed a number of facts which suggested Wikimedia was in financial trouble -- not that they were going broke, just that they were mismanaging funds. Kim Bruning accidentally blurted out on Skype, "Well, yes, the numbers are bad..." then said, "Oh wait, I wasn't supposed to tell you that!"
He's a friend, so I said I wouldn't tell anyone. After being indef-blocked, though, I flipped out and decided, "Screw this. I'm going to tell the community." So then I posted this thread on WP:VP. (diff)
A short while later, I realized that I was angry and irrational when I did that, so I tried to remove the thread with the summary, "I was angry when I made this. Deleting it." A user reverted my removal, then blocked me for a week -- for what reason? For making the thread that they restored and for removing information.
In the notification that I was blocked, the admin actually called me a fool. He later crossed that out and apologized... I said, "I forgive you, can you forgive me?" Apparently not. The block stayed up.So anyway, this block, too, was clearly bullshit. The community argued over it and, again, I was unblocked.
Now the third block: I tried to help out a new user with a quiz of theirs (diff). Somehow, unfathomably, this was regarded as "trolling" by Nakon. A quote from that post:
QUOTE
You could re-post this question anywhere you like and if anyone tells you, "This question doesn't belong here," or "This is against the rules," don't worry about it. Those folks can be especially annoying if they tell you what you ''can't'' do, but don't tell you what you ''can'' do or help you actually achieve what you're trying to achieve.
The person that reverted that edit did not help the person, the person that blocked me did not help the person, even when I went into IRC to ask for help, they didn't help the person, and when I told this to Kim Bruning, he said:
*The user's quiz was dumb
*The community is going into "auto-revert" mode of my edits
*This "auto-revert" mode is my fault and not them assuming bad faith
In the WP:ANI discussion about this, one user actually said that I violated "the sanctity of Jimbo's talkpage."
Now, it gets worse... I decided to go over to meta, thinking I could find a quiet little corner to myself, to publish essays on Wikipedia philosophy and policy. But no!
See:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Zenwhat
I uploaded several essays and a user then nominated every page I created for deletion.
It gets even more silly, though... I fixed a broken link on meta. Diff Within under a minute, that was reverted by Aphaia who said, "Do not modify the source wrongly. It is intended to work well when put on the wmf website."
I explained how my edit would in fact work on the WMF website. My comments were later wiped, with the summary "removing trolling."
Another user, SpaceBirdy, then came along and threatened to block me for "disrupting their work with redundant edits and redundant discussions." He didn't of course directly say "block," because that's too honest. Instead, it was just the subtle threat, "You were warned, if You continue there will be no further warning, thanks."
I tried to explain to him, too, how my edit made sense and he ignored me. Again, talkpage comments wiped.
Later, Birdy has the nerve to come back to my page with this comment:
QUOTE
Hi Zenwhat, I saw Your comment in the rfd and would like to suggest kindly to stick around a bit and geting to know Meta better before posting rfds, imho this would reduce the tensions. You will see that Meta is a nice place to be and the people here are good. It troubles me to see such harsh comments as on this page.
Please also let me say few thoughts about the word troll, which is often said too easily imho, a troll, Icelandic tröll, is a creature living in mountains and caves, causing earthquakes, vulcanic eruptions etc. (which is dangerous) but not because it is an evil creature or does something malicious intentionally, but because it is somehow clumsy. So that might just be something happening to someone new to a project, he means to do good but it turnes out not to be so good after all. Best regards,
Please also let me say few thoughts about the word troll, which is often said too easily imho, a troll, Icelandic tröll, is a creature living in mountains and caves, causing earthquakes, vulcanic eruptions etc. (which is dangerous) but not because it is an evil creature or does something malicious intentionally, but because it is somehow clumsy. So that might just be something happening to someone new to a project, he means to do good but it turnes out not to be so good after all. Best regards,
So, yes, I am a troll... I am not necessarily evil or intentionally malicious. I am just clumsy.
His capitalization of You and Your also gives me the creeps.
Anyway, I'm a bit too lazy to dig through all these diffs and so on, and the MediaWiki software is horribly designed, such that it is very, very difficult and tedious to pour through diffs. If anybody here disputes my claims, yeah, that will motivate me to go back through and get the diffs... But for now, it'd be a lot of work and those who'd need it probably wouldn't listen anyway.
