[WikiEN-l] intimidation on wikipedia editing

[luke.leighton]

folks hi,

i am a long-time wikipedia user and long-time and low-volume editor,
and a significant contributor to the strategic roadmap of wikipedia
which occurred a few years ago.  i returned to edit a page and found
that the IP address of the HTTP proxy that i use had been blocked.  i
was reminded of an extreme intimidation incident which clearly
violated the spirit of trusting people to contribute to wikipedia, so
thought it best to alert you of this.

the editing last year was carried out - accidentally - anonymously and
using my usual style of making several incremental edits in rapid
succession so as not to lose track of the information being added.  i
was unpleasantly surprised to find that in the middle of the editing
the *entire* set of edits had been reverted.  i had encountered the
user who carried out the blanket reversion before (when logged in) and
he's what one might call a "wiki nazi": very experienced at "the
rules", and uses them to bullying effect rather than works *with* a
less-experienced contributor, usually by doing total-revert in a
highly disruptive manner.

things escalated and a number of idiots piled in, citing the anonymity
as a means to "attack" wikipedia, whereas in fact it was purely
accidental, but the bullying and the lack of trust shown was the
reason why i chose to *remain* anonymous.

the article in question i refuse to name publicly because it will
identify me instantly to the bullies from whom i still wish to remain
anonymous.

it was a corner-case technical article full of technically inaccurate
technically unsubstantiated and speculative "wishful thinking" on the
part of former editors.  i.e. former editors *wish* that the
technology would be successful, but are unfortunately dreadfully
misinformed on basic maths and physics.  the problem is: the lack of
success of anyone to create a commercially successful version of this
technology in over 100 years makes it very difficult to provide any
kind of "wikipedia-acceptable" citations as to why there are no
commercially successful versions of this technology.

the article therefore continues to mis-inform people rather badly.  a
quick check shows that the page has since been updated, but the core
concerns remain as the page is completely lacking basic math and
physics references, as well as having since been marked as requiring
citations.

so there are several things that need to be resolved - bear in mind
that i am *not* prepared to help publicly resolve this unless the
people who carried out the intimidation are taken to task first:

1) the people who carried out the intimidation and accusations need to
be reminded of the spirit of wikipedia to *trust* contributors rather
than automatically assume that they have malicious intent

2) the IP address of my HTTP proxy is to be removed.  it's utterly
pointless to block IP addresses based on an *individual's* assessment,
when there are things such as "Tor" and other truly anonymous proxies.
 anyone wishing to truly vandalise wikipedia could do so with extreme
prejudice in an automated fashion, and they would certainly not use an
HTTP proxy where a simple reverse-DNS lookup would quickly identify
them.

once these things have been done then i am prepared to assist further
in resolving the subtly misleading parts of the article.  i am happy
to provide the details *privately* to more senior individuals within
the wikipedia foundation such that an investigation can be made.

my efforts to improve wikipedia's accuracy are genuine and sincere,
but as a very low-traffic part-time editor of highly-technical
corner-case articles i simply don't have time to go learning all the
"rules": i'm just not interested, to be absolutely frank.  i'm happy
to work with people who are sincere and accommodating who truly
welcome technical input.

l.