Forwarded to the list on behalf of a non-member. As per usual, I have no opinion on the matter; just forwarding it on.

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Seventy Nine ip791819231@gmail.com Date: Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 5:00 AM Subject: Kafkaesque story on the English Wikipedia To: foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org

Hello,

I am sending this letter to this mailing list after several failed attempts to address administrators in the "Arbitration Committee" and the "Unblock mailing list". Apparently this is a Kafkaesque story which no one wishes to handle.

I have recently started to edit on the English Wikipedia. I wished to remain anonymous, which, to my best knowledge, is legitimate on the English Wikipedia, therefore I contributed under my IP address. Later on, and after several pleas on behalf of other editors, I opened an account. In order to keep my edits under the same attribution, I called the account "User:KnownAs-79-181-9-231" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:KnownAs-79-181-9-231). My edits on the article "Golan Heights" were reverted. I was asked to explain them, and so I did, in details, on the "Talk Page" affiliated with the article. This explanations were contested in a lengthy discussions. Some of the comments were good, and I addressed them. Some, especially from two users whose aliases I won't mention in this message, offered comments which seemed to be politically motivated. One of these users posted questions on my personal "Talk Page", which included threats (not "real life" threats, but threats to act against me within the English Wikipedia editors' community). I refused to answer his personal questions.

Then, one morning, and without any previous notice, I found myself banned for being a "sock puppet" of some editor. The person who submitted the request to ban me (a request which I found after searching many administrative pages), is one of the two aforementioned users who objected my edits. The editor who posted threats on my personal "Talk Page" second him. The "evidences" were my edits, which, according to them, resembled the edits of another editor who had been previously banned for one reason or another. Apparently, my ban was sweeping, i.e. I couldn't comment on the allegations against me, nor post a request to overturn the ban. I sent a letter to the "Arbitration Committee" with copy to the "Unblock mailing list". I asked to revoke the ban immediately, as it was based on sheer speculations. The committee can ask me questions if it deemed it necessary, but their first task is to lift a ban which was imposed without due process.

I received an outrageous response, suggesting my ban was legitimate until I could prove otherwise. How exactly can I disprove far-fetched speculations? Furthermore, after searching the administrative pages a bit more thoroughly, I found out that the two users who asked my ban, where banned themselves several times for making problematic edits on articles related to Middle East issues. This makes the allegations against me even more peculiar.

Thank you very much for your attention.