[WikiEN-l] Mis-use of donated money by Wikipedia user "Neutrality".

Sun Nov 14 20:51:20 UTC 2004

On Sun, 14 Nov 2004 09:29:11 -0800, wikiuser at cyber-rights.net
<wikiuser at cyber-rights.net> wrote:
> FURTHER He's blocked me, and 350 other computers, for a month with
> no
> justification whatsoever. 

Which "350 other computers" do you mean? Do you mean that you are
behind a proxy of some kind, and that other people will be using the
same IP address as you? This is an unfortunate consequence of the
technical nature of the Internet, and there is little the management
of *any* website can do about it: if it allows anonymous or
near-anonymous contributions, and wants to block genuinely undesirable
users (including those cases more blatantly anti-social than yours),
it *will* end up blocking innocent users behind the same proxies from
time to time.

> for
> mis-using his position, and the $50,000 donated, 

In what way does blocking a user make use of any of the donated money?
Do you mean that the donation of money gives everyone the right to use
the Wikimedia projects in any way they see fit? This is not an
experiment in anarchy, it is a serious attempt to create something, so
regardless of whether they are applied "fairly" (and in this case, I
see no evidence that they were not) the use of rules, and a social and
technical structure for enforcing those rules, is not only *compatible
with* but *essential to* the cause for which people have donated
money.

[I know: cue accusations of troll-feeding, but I was interested to
work through the logic of these accusations.]

-- 
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]