[Wikipedia-l] I have been banned HOW CAN I APPEAL

[Phil Sandifer]

Just to be clear for people, here's what we know about "Editing Saddam  
Hussein."

The account was first created on June 4th. It was using the IP  
63.230.159.235 prior to logging in as Editing Saddam Hussein. The IP  
was used for several of the edits to [[Saddam Hussein]], as well as to  
vote against my admin nomination. Subsequently, the attribution for  
that vote was changed to Editing Saddam Hussein. This can be seen at  
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia: 
Requests_for_adminship&diff=3902017&oldid=3900347

As that vote was being cast, in IRC, Comrade Nick informed me that one  
of his "comrades" had voted against me. Comrades here refers to members  
of Red Faction, his little group that includes Mr. Natural Health,  
irismeister, and J.R.R. Trollkien. So we're faced with two  
possibilities here. 1) Editing Saddam Hussein showed up on Wikipedia  
and immediately joined an obscure group of users, as well as immedately  
took a side on the long-standing controversy surrounding 172, and that  
this side was detailed enough to identify who 172's "lapdogs" may or  
may not be. 2) Editing Saddam Hussein is a sock puppet.

Now, only a few minutes after that vote, Lir nominated Plato/Comrade  
Nick for administrator status, in part because of his leadership of Red  
Faction. Lir's IP address is known to be a Qwest address out of Iowa.  
The IP that Editing Saddam Hussein was using only ten minutes earlier  
was also a Qwest address out of Iowa. This, combined with the  
connection to Red Faction, nails the sock puppetry accusation beyond,  
to my mind, any serious objection.

The next day, Lir/Editing Saddam Hussein showed up in IRC protesting  
his 24 hour block. When people disagreed with him, including Fennec and  
myself, we were told to "plz stop talking" to him. Since this is a  
somewhat silly request in a public IRC channel, neither of us found it  
particularly binding. In my case, since I'd been accused of being a  
"lapdog" by this user, I was not particularly inclined to let his  
absurd and false summaries of events go uncorrected. Eventually, he  
began flooding the channel, as the log Fennec posted earlier in this  
discussion shows. For this, Tim Starling kickbanned him.

Aggravating all of this is the fact that, when 172 listed Editing  
Saddam Hussein/Lir on ViP, an IP address accused Editing of being a  
sockpuppet of "the retard otherwise known as Wik". Hadal deleted the  
accusation, and it was put back by a username designed to look like  
RickK - in fact, it was an impostor account using an i with an accent  
mark, and copying Rick's userpage so that it would pass a cursory  
inspection. The fake RickK also added his own belief that Editing/Lir  
was Wik. Indeed, it did pass cursory inspection, and fooled several  
users, including Hadal and, at first, myself. Now, this IP  
(219.88.160.45) is not a Qwest one, but one out of New Zealand, so  
there's no firm evidence tying it to Editing/Lir, but it should be  
noted that the fake RickK account was used to vote for the  
aforementioned nomination of Plato/Comrade Nick, suggesting at least  
some tie to Red Faction, which, while circumstantial, is suspicious  
considering that we already know sockpuppeting was going on here.

Sorry to be long-winded here, but I wanted to make sure no one was led  
into believing there was anything resembling an actual issue here. Just  
some marginally novel vandalism by the usual suspects.

-Snowspinner

On Jun 5, 2004, at 11:21 AM, sada asda wrote:

> I have been banned unfairly three times. I was first banned because I  
> allegedly violated a "3 revert rule" of which I was never warned  
> about; regardless of whether I did break it, I was banned by a sysop  
> (Guarnaco) involved in an edit war on the page -- this is a gross  
> violation of sysop rules!
>  
> I then went to the IRC channel to appeal my case, where I was  
> harrassed by users such as Snowspinner and Fennec -- whose sole intent  
> was to "rub salt in my wounds" if you will. I started telling them,  
> "Please do not talk to me. You are rude and inconsiderate" each time  
> did so. Then I was banned, solely for asking them not to talk to me!  
> If anyone should have been banned, it should be them for being so rude  
> to another contributor!
>  
> After I was unbanned by a more reasonably sysop, I was then  
> immediately re-banned by RickK -- even though I had not edited any  
> articles!!!!!!!! This second ban appears to be permanent, YET I HAVE  
> NOT VIOLATED ANY RULES!
>   
> It is completely fallacious, RickKs claim that I am another user --  
> that I am a "sockpuppet". And even if I were, is it a crime? Am I  
> double-voting? Am I agreeing with my other accounts, and creating  
> false consensus? The answer to those questions are NO, this is NOT A  
> SOCKPUPPET ACCOUNT.
>
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> Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo!  
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