[WikiEN-l] Blocked - In violation of the Wikipedia blocking policy

Tue Oct 25 08:54:43 UTC 2005

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Paul Rynne wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> When attempting to edit a page in Wikipedia, I encountered the following
> message:
> 
> Your user name or IP address has been blocked
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy> by Jtdirl
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jtdirl>.
> 
> The reason given is:
> /on the evidence almost certainly Skyring
> /
> 
> *Your IP address is 213.202.191.123. Please include this address, along
> with your username, in any queries you make.
> *
> 

RIPE WHOIS reveals that this IP is used by "Ireland On-Line Broadband
Customers". Unless Skyring has been travelling I don't see how such a
connection was made.

> This block is a violation of the Wikipedia blocking policy which stated
> that it should take place in the case of  "vandalism, bots, personal
> attacks". I engaged in no such activity.
> 

I have checked this IP's contributions. Four of the edits removed or
altered significant material from [[Republic of Ireland]] without
explanation; The last edit altered information in [[Presbyterian Church
in Ireland]], again without explanation.

> In addition, I discovered that the pages I had edited (a grand total of
> 5 edits EVER), had all been reverted. These edits were all minor and
> were intended to either edit, correct mistakes or badly worded entries.
> For example, in the "Demographics" section of the "Republic of Ireland"
> section, the last paragraph contains some dubious comments about
> immigrants into the Republic of Ireland. I edited this because the
> comments as they: a) ignore the largest EU immigrant community in the
> Republic (the British), and instead mentions the smaller numbers of
> Poles and Latvians (It also speculates inappropriately on the reasons
> that have chosen to immigrate), and; b) mentions various African
> nationalities under "Other nationalities" while ignoring larger less
> visible (non-EU) groupings such as Americans and Canadians!
> 

None of the edits used edit summaries. I cannot comment on the content
itself, except that these concerns should probably be taken to the talk
page.

> The "blocking" policy as used by user Jtdirl might more accurately be
> labelled a censorship policy as it is clearly intended to prevent
> editing of inaccurate entries. I would strongly suggest you come up with
> a better policy to police who can block people and review when and why
> they do so.
> 

At no stage were any messages left on [[User talk:213.202.191.123]].
Blocking and reverting without leaving messages on the users' talk page
is clearly not acceptable behaviour. Neither is claiming "ownership" of
articles.

If you read the edit box, you will note that it says "If you don't want
your writing to be edited and redistributed by others, please don't
submit it." It used to be a lot harsher (something like "If you don't
want your writing to be mercilessly edited...") and IMO should be a lot
BIGGER as well.

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