Dante Alighieri wrote:
Our good friend at 68.x is certainly engaged in vandalism, I had to revert quite a few instances from random pages (nothing to do with Israel, penis for example).
First of all, we don't know that this is the same 68.120.*.*. In fact, in my opinion, they're probably not the same person. The 68.120.20?.* IPs, which had the argument with JtdIRL, are dynamically assigned dialup connections from Pleasanton CA, while the 68.120.71.* IP, the vandal that you and Jiang blocked, is a DNS connection from Irvine CA, almost 400 miles away. If there's any connection, then it's a 400-mile distant "friend", and the 68.120.*.* relationship (PacBell) is nothing but a coincidence. My guess is no relationship at all, however; the threat seems empty.
Now, I /absolutely/ agree that the 68.120.71.* IP blocked by you and Jiang was certainly a vandal and should have been blocked just as it was. And if JtdIRL thought that they were the same people when he blocked his IPs, then he could be forgiven for that. However, JtdIRL blocked the 68.120.204.* IP 16 hours /before/ any vandalism from 68.*.*.* ever appeared. So I'm afraid that this doesn't lessen my extreme disturbance.
But let us suppose that they are the same person, or at least friends. The fact remains (if the available records are complete) that JtdIRL blocked an IP that had made no edits but a POV edit war -- a rather managable 4 posts of the same 3 paragraphs over 6 hours -- and 2 reasonable edits (no "baboons" or threats) to the talk page. In particular, the IP committed no vandalism, yet that was the reason given. It's little comfort to learn that users of incorrectly blocked IPs may later turn to vandalism /after/ being falsely accused of it.
There was also an odd note suggesting that the person had been blocked before, yet there is no record of any other block that seems to be relevant. So I'm still hoping that there is past history here that JtdIRL just didn't explain in the mailing list post, but which would show why an apparent newbie was treated this way.
-- Toby