Hi, I've just received a block from Wikipedia of "indefinite duration" by the user Essjay. I was blocked for trolling on the user Cool Cat's talk page[1] by leaving a joke userbox and then making a mildly offensive comment as he proceeded to "feed the troll". In this comment I admitted to trolling and user Essjay saw this as grounds enough to ban me immediately for an indefinite period.
Essjay left a comment[2] on my talk page stating that he had blocked me "in line with the Arbitration Committee's ruling that simple vandals and others who engage in overt, easily demonstrable vandalism can be blocked immediately."
I accept that I did wrong by trolling on Cool Cat's page but what I did was not vandalism but a very minor personal attack, which is, according to Wikipedia's policy, to be treated in an entirely different manner. In fact, it states clearly under on [[Wikipedia:Vandalism]], under the "What vandalism is not" heading that personal attacks are not vandalism. The Wikipedia Blocking Policy itself states that for personal attacks should only be considered in "extreme cases" and goes on to note that the practice is always controversial.
The Blocking Policy itself goes on to say: "Logged-in users that do essentially nothing but vandalism may also be blocked for the same time periods. However, user accounts that perform a mixture of valid edits and vandalism should not be blocked in this manner.
Blocks should not be used against isolated incidents of vandalism."
I have had my Wikipeda account since early 2004 and have since made over 1200 edits[3], and my edits to Cool Cat's talk page are the first which can possibly be considered as misconduct.
Considering all of the above I am very disappointed that I have been treated this way by Essjay. It seems to me as though he has acted in gross violation of the Wikipedia policies as far as my ban is concerned. I should like it to be revoked or be given a reason why it should remain there rather than the alternate avenues of resolution, as suggested at WP:NPA, be explored.
Regards, Kevin Mulligan
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Cool_Cat/Archive/2006/01#New_user_box [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AKevin_Mulligan&dif... [3] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~kate/cgi-bin/count_edits?user=Kevin+Mulligan&...