On 5/26/06, Nick Booth nick9999@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:

Because my IP is blocked I cant create a new user name or request a user name change for createaccount - so for one dumb decision I'm permanently excluded from contributing.

It may also help you to know that I had some edits reverted because one of the administrators was concerned that I including to many links to my own site - which is www.podnosh.com. In every case I was confident that I was adding links to relevant information. If you check you should be able to see that my IP has been used for constructive contributions and I would like a chance to keep doing that.

Hi Nick, Thanks for coming to the list and explaining this...definitely the right attitude. I can't help you with the unblock, but I can explain that we have so many unhelpful contributors that someone who turns up with a silly username, and immediately adds what looks like spam is probably not going to be given the immediate benefit of the doubt. Admins just don't have the time to look into every contribution and determine whether a link is relevant or not.

Hopefully you'll be unblocked. It'd then be good if you could refrain from adding links to your site, at least for a while. Perhaps they're relevant, perhaps they're not - but they'll certainly make people uneasy, because they *look* like spam.

Thanks, Steve

G'day Nick,

<snip/>

"Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by "Createaccount". The reason given for Createaccount's block is: "Username block"." when requesting an unblock as an administrator can not help you without that information, they might also need your IP address (82.36.106.161), so give that too if possible."

Because my IP is blocked I cant create a new user name or request a user name change for createaccount - so for one dumb decision I'm permanently excluded from contributing.

I have undone the autoblock. Please let me know if you have any further trouble creating an account.

It may also help you to know that I had some edits reverted because one of the administrators was concerned that I including to many links to my own site - which is www.podnosh.com. In every case I was confident that I was adding links to relevant information. If you check you should be able to see that my IP has been used for constructive contributions and I would like a chance to keep doing that.

The block had nothing to do with the links you were adding, so that's no problem. If you'll mind a word ... external links on Wikipedia are added to make our articles more useful to readers. That's the essential test. We don't care the a website deserves to be on the list, or is sufficiently relevant, or is popular, or whatever: we care if the article it's placed on is improved as a result.

It may be that your website does this (having not looked closely at it, I'm certainly not about to argue otherwise). If so, well, that's great. Just please remember this metric: does it improve the *article* it's in?

Happy editing!