Oh yes, the Unblock mailing list has given me an interesting view on the
interaction between newbies and admins who regularly block users ('Wikipedia
says I was blocked for "user." What the heck is that and why I am being
blocked?' is a fairly common complaint, along with the usual autoblocks and
AOL collateral damage). I've also noted that most of us replying on the
Unblock mailing list have used "customer service" language to a high degree.
On 9/5/06, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Ah, a great example of something where both policy and its practical
implimentation are biting newbies.
At unblock-en-l we are getting a slow but steady stream of unblock
requests
(a few a week) of people who were username blocked. In most cases they
don't understand why, because there wasn't nearly enough information left
on
their talk page at block time and there was no polite discussion prior to
the block informing them of the policy and asking them to chose another
name
and use the name-shift functions to switch to it.
As a general rule, I think that unblock-en-l is getting an interesting
view
into newbie interactions with Wikipedia. One thing that concerns me is
that
it's hard to tell what fraction of people who should contact unblock-en-l
actually do, as opposed to just walking away from the project. That could
be a very high ratio and as far as I know we have no way to tell what it
is.
If we exclude the well-known, work-in-progress AOL block problem, we see a
slow steady stream of problem editors complaining about their latest
block,
innocent people caught in autoblocks on shared IP space, people who didn't
think 3RR applied to them or didn't understand 3RR, and other minor
issues.
The problem users are not particularly a problem worth otherwise
addressing.
People caught in autoblocks on shared IP space seems to be high enough
volume to be a potential real problem.
People who don't understand 3RR seems to be a possible big deal. It also
comes up a few times a week. We may have a communications issue telling
new
users about it...