Post by blissyu2 on Jul 12, 2008 5:35:28 GMT -5
Supposedly, Wikipedia likes newbies. They have a whole policy based around it. WP:BITE says "Don't bite the newbies". So why then do they have such a bad reputation for being so nasty to new people? The answer is simple - because they don't have any reasonable way to verify if someone is who they say they are.
As anyone who is familiar with my case would know, I was banned because of an assumption that I was someone else. The reason is because I was using Internode, a large ISP, who assigned different IP addresses each login. That meant that other people used that IP address. Furthermore, I didn't bother to create an account, at least not at first. So, they assumed that all of the "crimes" done with that IP were done by me. They assumed that everyone who has ever used Internode was the same person. They also assumed that I had given death threats to myself using Wikipedia - except that they pretended that they were legal threats made by me to someone else! How idiotic can you get?!?
The thing is that this kind of scenario led to the apology about my ban meaning that I was then regarded as a sock puppet, and then banned indefinitely. That is even though I never did anything against any of their rules, aside from accidentally because of being a newbie.
This case isn't unique or unusual. If for some reason Wikipedians think that you are someone else, they ban you. The slightest hint that you are the same person and wham bang you can never do anything ever again in your entire life.
Over time, Wikipedia assumes that more and more people are secretly the same person. Yamla, who is a long term administrator there, bans up to 50 different people per day, assuming that they are all the same person. No evidence is required, this is just a hunch.
If we were to believe Wikipedia, the average person who gets banned has access to 5,000 different IP addresses. Wow! I mean you can often have 1 at work/school and 1 at home, but that's about it for most people. Sure, so they can go to an internet cafe or to a library, but there are limits to it. After a while it gets to be too annoying, and it's just not practical for most people. Whilst some people work in IT and can have access to more, most don't.
Thus if you are a new person, the attitude is that they hate you before they consider you. You are expected to know all of their rules, yet if you do then they assume that you are evil.
They could sort all of this out really easily, but they refuse to.
Not only that, but if you are banned, that's it forever. It doesn't matter what the reason was - all that matters is that it happened. It makes it a lot worse for you if someone there in power doesn't like you.
So you can have done nothing but help the place for your entire time, yet your name is tarnished forever with lies, because they banned you.
If I ban someone from this forum, is their name tarnished? I can just do it willy nilly for any reason. Yet if it happens on Wikipedia, suddenly someone is evil.
Wikipedia as a society has a lot of improvement required. I don't think that there exists a place that is less friendly.
As anyone who is familiar with my case would know, I was banned because of an assumption that I was someone else. The reason is because I was using Internode, a large ISP, who assigned different IP addresses each login. That meant that other people used that IP address. Furthermore, I didn't bother to create an account, at least not at first. So, they assumed that all of the "crimes" done with that IP were done by me. They assumed that everyone who has ever used Internode was the same person. They also assumed that I had given death threats to myself using Wikipedia - except that they pretended that they were legal threats made by me to someone else! How idiotic can you get?!?
The thing is that this kind of scenario led to the apology about my ban meaning that I was then regarded as a sock puppet, and then banned indefinitely. That is even though I never did anything against any of their rules, aside from accidentally because of being a newbie.
This case isn't unique or unusual. If for some reason Wikipedians think that you are someone else, they ban you. The slightest hint that you are the same person and wham bang you can never do anything ever again in your entire life.
Over time, Wikipedia assumes that more and more people are secretly the same person. Yamla, who is a long term administrator there, bans up to 50 different people per day, assuming that they are all the same person. No evidence is required, this is just a hunch.
If we were to believe Wikipedia, the average person who gets banned has access to 5,000 different IP addresses. Wow! I mean you can often have 1 at work/school and 1 at home, but that's about it for most people. Sure, so they can go to an internet cafe or to a library, but there are limits to it. After a while it gets to be too annoying, and it's just not practical for most people. Whilst some people work in IT and can have access to more, most don't.
Thus if you are a new person, the attitude is that they hate you before they consider you. You are expected to know all of their rules, yet if you do then they assume that you are evil.
They could sort all of this out really easily, but they refuse to.
Not only that, but if you are banned, that's it forever. It doesn't matter what the reason was - all that matters is that it happened. It makes it a lot worse for you if someone there in power doesn't like you.
So you can have done nothing but help the place for your entire time, yet your name is tarnished forever with lies, because they banned you.
If I ban someone from this forum, is their name tarnished? I can just do it willy nilly for any reason. Yet if it happens on Wikipedia, suddenly someone is evil.
Wikipedia as a society has a lot of improvement required. I don't think that there exists a place that is less friendly.