[WikiEN-l] Frequency and validity of blocks (was Re: Ban Appeals Subcommittee transparency and WP:EXPLAINBLOCK violations)

[Filipus Klutiero]

Hi Nathan,

On 2015-08-03 09:07, Nathan wrote:
> Filipus,
>
> You failed to link to your account or your block log. You may not realize
> that most editors of the English Wikipedia edit quietly for many years
> without even a single block, so accruing 5 blocks in any period of time is
> extraordinary.

My account is not particularly hard to guess. I did not attempt linking to my block log, but if someone failed to find it, it can be seen at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block&user=&page=Chealer&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&hide_patrol_log=1&hide_tag_log=1&hide_review_log=1&hide_thanks_log=1

I have myself contributed to another subproject without a single block for what could be considered many years, but I still find your perception a little naive although I do not know of statistics on the topic. The only Wikipedia I may have contributed to quietly for that long is the French Wikipedia, and that's certainly related to the fact that my only significant contribution there has been to fix articles or flag their issues as I read them. Try doing some serious article maintenance, and I can't imagine you would qualify edition as "quiet"... unless you maintain articles on decorative flowers, in which case you might want to try maintaining Wikipedia for a while and see if your opinion remains unchanged (in which case you could try Criticism of Wikipedia :-P ).

Obviously, the number of times one is blocked depends on how much one contributes, among other factors, and I contributed more than most editors. This offender is certainly not a reference, but even though he joined the project after me and enjoyed administrator status for most of his presence, he accrued as many blocks (but at least one of them was also in error).

This situation is not Wikipedia-specific; I have personally been blocked on Wiktionary, even though I didn't contribute 100 edits there (again in error).


That being said, if you realize the situation the hard way, you may also realize blocks tend to come by... blocks. My average time between blocks is over 2 years, yet my median time between blocks is under 20 days (JzG's log shows a similar pattern).

> I'm sure I won't be alone in remaining skeptical of your
> tale without convincing evidence that somehow all the blocks were in error.
>

I'm not sure what you mean, but I did not claim that all the blocks were in error. I claimed the first 3 blocks were in error, but the reasons (if they exist) for the last 2 remain unavailable, so I cannot tell whether those are in error. (Of course, they *are* also errors in the sense that a policy violation is necessarily an error, but they are not necessarily errors in the sense that the responsible users would have refrained from blocking had they realized that they were committing factual errors).



I have not seen discussions about block usage and misusage, and find the topic interesting, so you're welcome to discuss it, but I'd like to be clear on the [main] purpose of my message, which was to discuss block reviews. (Granted, a high rate of inappropriate appeal declines would be less concerning if there were fewer inappropriate blocks in the first place, so both processes equally need fixing for proper ACL management.)

-- 
Filipus Klutiero
http://www.philippecloutier.com