I am very sorry this happened. We are open to all the world and folks do log on who are unable due to lack of maturity (not always due to being a child) are unable to immediately catch on to what is expected of them. In the case of children, they can, of course, eventually learn if you are patient with them, but that is not always readily apparent. Our policy is to be courteous to all users and to "not bite the newbies".
Please accept this apology on behalf of Wikipedia.
I will forward this email to Danny.
If he does not unblock you, please correspond with me and I will, after checking into exactly what happened.
Fred Bauder
On Nov 13, 2005, at 9:24 PM, Jacob Kingston wrote:
Dear Wikipedia Administrators,
I do not appreciate the comments made towards my son earlier this evening while he was trying to create a new page on your site. He is doing a project for his fifth grade art class and wanted to put some of his information on your website. I am not entirely sure what happened because one of your administrators blocked our computers e-mail address and said my son was being a "pain in the ass". This language is far from acceptable, especially since the boy is so young. I could not create a profile, as that was what I was prompted to do, I assume because of the block placed on our "IP address". I would however like this "danny" to at least apologize to my son, the block can stay if it was placed for a reason, but certainly there is no acceptable reasoning behind calling a fifth grader a pain in the ass. I expect to hear from your staff promptly on this matter.
Sincerely,
Jacob Kingston
PS Here is part of what my screen showed my son:
Your user name or IP address has been blocked by Danny. The reason given is: pain in the ass You can email Danny or one of the other administrators to discuss the block. You may also edit your user talk page if you wish. If you believe that our blocking policy was violated, you may discuss the block publicly on the WikiEN-l mailing list. Note that you may not use the "email this user" feature unless you have a Wikipedia account and a valid email address registered in your user preferences.
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