On Jul 1, 2013 11:26 AM, "luke.leighton" <[email protected]> wrote: > > 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.
Deplorable. Has it been fixed yet? 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. Using an account under a pseudonym makes you more anonymous than editing while logged out. > > 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. > While I understand the sentiment, it does make it virtually impossible to address what's been going on here. > 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 > Sounds reasonable to look in to this, and maybe address it. who were they? It is rather naive to hope they are on the mailinglist reading this, and assume this will change anything regarding their bwhaviour > 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. > Open proxies are generally blocked not to prevent a single specific user access, but to prevent vandals from hopping from proxy to proxy. This is not a theoretical concern, but has been amply proven in practice. Other open proxies and tor are also agressively blocked. In the case of tor we even have an entire extension to handle blocks. If your proxy isn't open, it shouldn't have been blocked as such - though at times the community has found that particularly problematic ranges from webhosts are blocked entirely because if the sheer number of proxies that have actively facilitated vandalism through them. Anyway, requesting unblock on-wiki should be the first step. While I understand in part why you aren't willing to divulge the blocked IP here, on the other we can't unblock unknown blocks. > 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. > The foundation can't really do anything about this really. Fixing this problem lies with the community. > 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. > > Parts of our community certainly enjoy enforcing "the rules" far more than is good for the project. This email seems to underline that yet again. But I'm unsure what you are hoping to accomplish with this email. The problem is fairly well known, and on the agenda for many already. Senior members of the foundation don't have any more standing on wiki than volunteers, and are often less active in wiki , and can't help you any more than normal community discussion can. Unblock requests are certainly to be made on-wiki, and if the proxy is open, not going to happen. I'm not sure what else there is to do for this specific case other than serve as a reminder that we still have a community that is not always communicating well and sometimes toxic. For specific action to be taken, the specific situation must be named. _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
