Zoney,
Don't make me read you poetry. ;)
Navou
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Zoney Sent: Monday, September 17, 2007 6:33 AM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Block appeals--just don't follow the instructions? Huh?
On 16/09/2007, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
Blocks are NOT easily appealable when you have a hostile and petty blocking administrator and a policy that requires you to contact him first. And when you don't realize that you're not required to contact him first in spite of the blocking message which tells you that.
And, when you're a new contributor to Wikipedia and you get blocked and you don't know your way around, it is NOT CLEAR that the instructions are not meant to be followed.
And this gets tiresome being told that the instructions are not meant to be followed and everybody knows their way around them, as if I'm stupid for not realizing that the instructions don't mean what they say, and I shouldn't be following them but some other set of guidelines.
I am getting the idea ingrained into my head, though, from a couple of past conversations with administrators, that I AM a total idiot for trying to follow instructions on Wikipedia.
It's not an issue of just you, it's an issue of the system being set up in a way that is hostile to the average user. Instructions that shouldn't be followed. Experienced users dismissing the confusion of inexperienced users by saying, "oh blocks are easily appealable," when the inexerienced user points out they are not. If you already know everything, you probably don't even know what the instructions say. But if you don't already know everything, you can't possibly know that it's easy to do as long as you don't bother with the instructions.
It is very frustrating when Wikipedia is treated as a closed club of those who already know everything (blocks are easily appealed) excluding those who are just here to edit and don't know the easy way to do things that don't appear in the instructions.
The blocking message still says the same thing it did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Blockedtext
KP
I've come to the conclusion recently, based on the plethora of conflicting, ambiguous, and ever-changing policy/guideline pages and the general state of them, and the various inane templates and messages used as editorial notices in article content, that Wikipedia is now controlled by the Vogons.
Except that with the Vogons, you can probably eventually find out the correct archaic sequence to follow for any procedure.
Zoney