[Foundation-l] Fwd: Kafkaesque story on the English Wikipedia

[Ryan Lomonaco]

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 at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 5:00 AM
Subject: Kafkaesque story on the English Wikipedia
To: foundation-l-owner at 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.