Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Fri, 14 Jul 2006 18:43:09 +0100, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Oh, and what do you think makes them so determined? Could it be something they genuinely perceive as a wrong? Could it be that they are trying to be genuinely productive, and that from their point of view it is the admins who were "starting a fight"?
I have no idea. I had a problem today with someone who was absolutely determined to add a load of innuendo to a WP:BLP. He flatly refused to engage in Talk, removed questions and attempts at dialogue from his Talk page as "trolling", asserted that it was *his* talk page to do with as he pleased, and even after a short block he went straight back and picked up the edit war again.
I notice that many of these admin's accounts of such events look very similar. Is it very hard for you to imagine that the other side of the story looks different? You say he was "absolutely determined to add [...]" - well, maybe he thought he was adding "the truth" or "encyclopedic information"? You say he "flatly refused to engage in talk" - well, maybe he was new and didn't know about talk pages, or thought you were referring to this User-talk page? --- And what about all the stuff that you left out of your account, such as the wording of your messages to him, or the edit summary of the reverts? I don't know about your specific case, but many admins use words like "vandalism" or "POV-pushing" very liberally and pretend like it's perfectly within their rights to do so and to ban anyone who doesn't like it.
I think people are used to forums and Usenet where proof by assertion is a valid technique and where saying the same thing only louder will very often work.
Admins get away with that all the time.
"Admin XYZ called me names and insulted me, he needs his admin powers revoked!" - XYZ: "Ah, but you violated [[WP:3RR]] and [[WP:TLA]] and [[WP:YHNCTSMYT]], get lost, EOD."
The idea of sitting down and talking calmly about it often does not appear to occur to these people.
Do you think the user's impression of the blocking admin is that of someone who likes to sit down and talk calmly about it?
There are very few genuinely productive editors with a significant history of blocks.
That's a tautology. Someone who is blocked hardly has any chance to be (and, in most cases, any interest in being) at all productive. What percentage of people that are blocked and never return, would have been genuinely productive if they hadn't been blocked? How can you tell?
SPUI.
There you go, so examples do exist. However, SPUI became well-known on Wikipedia. I'm sure there are hundreds if not thousands of unknown users who would have become productive contributors if they hadn't been blocked on their very first day. I wouldn't be surprised if 99% of the users that are blocked on their first day decide to never edit Wikipedia again, and consequently are never even noticed.
Maybe I think this way because I was treated that way on my very first day. Although admittedly I didn't get blocked or anything, I did make a good-faith contribution which was, within minutes, deleted (the correct action would have been to turn it into a redirect). Not knowing that someone consciously deleted it (there was nothing to indicate this, and to this day there still isn't anything to indicate this to newbies, so the first impression is a technical glitch), I recreated it and subsequently received a warning of sorts.
Timwi