An Open Letter to Mr. Wales - WikiEN-l

15 Mar 2007


      Dear Mr. Wales.
I don't know if you will read this. I don't even know if you care what goes
on in "your" encyclopedia, but I feel I must at least try to reach you.
My wikipedia username was "One Elephant went out to play...". I chose this
username because my young cousins have really liked the tapes that my
parents made for me of the Nickelodeon television show "elephant show",
which I had been a fan of, and I wanted to bring that mentality - one which
delights in learning, which delights in getting along with people - when I
edited. Logging in with the first line of the song reminded me of that.
When I started editing, I had two troubles. At first, I did not understand
the logging in system, and I created a second account before realizing that
I did not need to wait for a confirmation email before I could log in.
Someone named Betacommand blocked the username as well claiming it was a
violation of your username policies, which I contested and Mike Rosoft
agreed with me and allowed me to start editing. I never wound up using the
second account, and as far as I know it has been deleted.
I edited on a number of articles, sometimes finding things I was interested
in and sometimes clicking randomly. I learned about and tried to read the
policy pages, I asked for help when I could not figure things out.
A couple weeks later, I saw something I thought was wrong. User Bastique had
reverted the "National Council of La Raza" page, where I had previously left
a note asking users to calm down and not edit war, and then locked it to his
own preferred version. I thought this was wrong, so I left him a note
explaining why I was reverting it back. He started attacking and threatening
me from that point forward, and I reported him to the WP:ANI page, only to
be continually attacked by more of his friends it seems as they constantly
violated WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA guidelines, I assume trying to provoke me into
doing likewise.
I brought the question to this mailing list, and was given some better
responses, and I was half convinced to return to Wikipedia by that point.
Some users on Wikipedia had left me messages and email requesting I give
Wikipedia a second chance, even a couple users I had not entirely agreed
with, and remembering my earlier situation when people had been helpful, I
wanted to give the project the benefit of the doubt.
Today, however, I was called a "troll" by someone on this list, and then my
account was set back to moderation. This proved to me that there is
something wrong on wikipedia, and I resolved to leave. I set my user page in
order, left one final help request to set my goodbye message properly (which
A Train kindly assisted with), and began leaving notes so that those I had
interacted with would know not to expect responses from me.
When I tried to leave a note for Mike Rosoft in thanks for his kind
assistance in the past, I found myself banned entirely from the project by
user JzG, who called me a "troll." I saw him going around removing my
goodbye notes as well.
I requested assistance in a help template, and user Steel359 who had been
one of Bastique's earlier incivil supporters not only removed it but locked
my talk page as a blank, removing my goodbye message. He then left a lie on
my user page, claiming I am someone named runedchozo that I have never even
heard of before.
Sir, if this is how your administrators behave then it is no wonder the
project no matter how noble its goals is failing.
Goodbye.