Falsely accused of being a puppet, Banned indefinitely Options

[Likipenia]

Hi, I found your site while Googling for anti-Wikipedia stuff to read, as you can obviously understand. I was unjustly banned. Indefinitely. For being a "sock puppet."

This will be long, boring and convoluted, but I'll outline the events for you. I hope you'll read because my blood is still boiling and I need a hug. :-)

Full disclosure of account history: I made my account "CreepyCrawly" in November 2006. I used it once, to make a babbling comment on a talk page, then didn't log in again until yesterday. I did edit in the interim, as whatever IP I happened to have, mostly just random little fixes here and there, to whatever article I happened to be reading. I remember none of them, but it is irrelevant. I'm not a "Wikipedian," in other words. But the other day, March 9th, I did make another account, "Razor6." I was listening to "Metal Health" by Quiet Riot while reading an article, and when I heard the lyric "I'm like a laser, six-string razor," I thought Razor6 would be a cool username so I figured I'd snag it, just in case I ever did decide to become a Wikipedian (not bloody likely now). I made a couple edits and logged out. (I don't ever remember registering at Wikipedia before CreepyCrawly, but I have been using the site and making sporadic edits for several years. This is why I'm reasonably familiar with the policies, which apparently qualifies as "evidence" that I am some malicious multi-personality.)

So, yesterday I wanted to edit Global Warming, but it is semi-protected. When I tried to log in with Razor6, I realized I must have mistyped my intended password when I signed up, and I hadn't entered an email. Oh well, cool username lost, whatever. So I log in with CreepyCrawly and commence. I tried rewording something that was rather subjective and weaselly, but it didn't show up when I was done, so I reverted myself because I was afraid I'd broken something. (I later realized that I had deleted it from the citation rather than the body.) As I looked at the history, I noticed a user named "Spamsham" had made a weasel word edit, and that it had been reverted because "the intro is a carefully balanced (and highly discussed) item. Please take to talk before changing." I became incensed at this; editors are NOT required to beg for permission in talk pages before making good-faith edits that they believe will improve an article. I feel this was the case with Spamsham's edit. Yet here was this other person waltzing in and declaring otherwise. So I went to bat for Spamsham and reverted it back. I can now see that this is where my trouble started, because Raul654 later opened a discussion on his talk page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Raul654#Halbut_returb), which has since been deleted or archived or otherwise hidden (big surprise), trying to figure out if I WAS Spamsham, as well as some other names. Let me state for the record here that I am not ANY of those other people. Although, "Raymond arritt" did call me "Obedium" as well, on my user page, so maybe they were thinking I was Obedium first, for whatever reason, and chatting about me behind the scenes somewhere, like a coffee clutch gossiping about the new single guy down the street. Anyway, I made a couple more changes, which were all instantly reverted by the article "ownership," along with discussion in the talk page and on user pages. Feel free to peruse them if you're bored; I am admittedly bold in asserting my equal editing privileges in the face of Wikibullys, but I'm not a troublemaker/flamer/vandal/etc. You'll find none of that from me. Note that user "Nonexistant User" in Global Warming history was named "Veritas" when he went to bat for me there. I'm not sure what the deal is with his name change; I visited his userpage a couple times and it kept changing, then he seems to have vanished. Very strange. Anyway, I do not know who Veritas is or was, other than a seemingly objective editor. He was later reverted as well, by another pompous asshat who explained himself by simply stating, "this is better." So at the end of it all, they kept "their" article "balanced" (i.e., stagnant and under iron-fisted lockdown).

At any rate, they seem to believe they're wrapped up their "case," and here I am permabanned. I am now accused of being a cabal of sock puppets, when I've never used a sock puppet in my life because I've never even been a regularly logged in editor! Raul654 even admits on his talk page, "There's no IP evidence linking them," but since he believes that "Scibaby" is a proxy user, and since his amazing gut feeling tells him that I am apparently this Scibaby as well as all his other phantom tormentors, the banhammer was dropped! I even went to Spamsham's page and asked him to tell them I am not him, which he quickly did (they didn't seem to notice or care that we were apparently logged in at the same time, which would seem to me to be an obvious mark against their "case"). From Scibaby's page, I checked the guy who banned him and he appears obsessed with Global Warming. I get the feeling this really is all about keeping the hooks into that article by quickly "determining" that any member of the proletariat who dare touch it is clearly a sock puppet of some past insurrectionist whom they've squashed.

I've read plenty of talk page squabbles over the years, but never got involved. I just laughed at how petty it all seemed. But I never thought I'd get caught up in it. Now I understand why emotions flare so easily at that place, because of jackasses like Raul654 who indefinitely ban people based on random "hunches," and who have no problem inflicting collateral damage in their inane witch hunts. Or, worse, who intentionally couch a banning under the guise of collateral damage, when their real motivation is that some "newbie" had the temerity to edit a page that he and his cronies "own." I don't know if my case comes down to administrative collusion or just idiocy, or both, but the end result is the same: I've been wronged. I've appealed my ban on my talk page and emailed Raul654, and even Jimmy Wales (hey, you never know!) and unblock-en-l@lists.wikimedia.org (twice), but I get the feeling that they just want people like me, who are bold and will not tolerate bullying, to go away. And I'm sure they refresh sites like this all day, so I'll probably never get unbanned now that I've offended the gods by daring to speak with devils. Heh. What's funny is that all they've accomplished by banning me is to make me want to circumvent it and actually start causing trouble. I won't bother though; the encyclopedic quality is fairly atrocious so I'd just as soon stop visiting it altogether.

Anyway, thanks for indulging me. :-)

[dogbiscuit]

Welcome, and indulging you and your kindred spirits is in part what we are here for. As you correctly deduce, Raul is one of those who is under the delusion that only his perspective is correct and anyone else must be a troll (a word I detest, in part because it is a WP code word for All That is Wrong With the World, the WP equivalent of being called a Communist in 50s America).

We live in hope that recording incidents like this will take the scales of people's eyes.

If you want to be unbanned, then there are a few good admins here who might review, assuming you haven't been too unwise in the aftermath of false accusations. I have to say the talk page of yours is an absolute hoot of DUCK tests. Perhaps you should ask georgewilliamherbert to take a look. He is the world's foremost expert on how to make false accusations using it, so perhaps we should set a thief to catch a thief?

[Likipenia]

Thanks for the kind words.

I got this response from the Wiki email: unblock-en-l is not equipped to deal with a request of this specific nature. Please contact someone from ArbCom:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ARBCOM

Is georgewilliamherbert on that list?

I can't check for myself, because I now get a connection timeout when I try to visit Wikipedia. Take a look at my talk page, I posted my IP just a few minutes ago and now this. I of course can't prove it's not coincidental. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/rolleyes.gif)

This post has been edited by Likipenia:

[dogbiscuit]

Thanks for the kind words.

I got this response from the Wiki email: unblock-en-l is not equipped to deal with a request of this specific nature. Please contact someone from ArbCom:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ARBCOM

Is georgewilliamherbert on that list?

I can't check for myself, because I now get a connection timeout when I try to visit Wikipedia. Take a look at my talk page, I posted my IP just a few minutes ago and now this. I of course can't prove it's not coincidental. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/rolleyes.gif)

I think Wikipedia is down at the moment, so just a coincidence.

gwh would probably not be a good idea. That was a somewhat sarcastic suggestion as there has just been a month-long debate on a known sockpuppeteer who the likes of Raul will not allow to be sanctioned for lack of evidence. gwh has argued long and hard that there is not enough evidence, yet he would willingly block you as you have clearly "outed yourself" by your foolish and obvious sockpuppetry-like actions. Unfortunately he decided to do this to another admin with friends.

Lar or Alison are sound and may be prepared to put things right, and will probably be passing by. I don't think you have done anything that would embarrass them from intervening.

[Likipenia]

I think Wikipedia is down at the moment, so just a coincidence.

Oh OK. I guess it's easy to become paranoid at a time like this.

Looking back at this whole thing, I guess I can see how they might think I was a puppet, since I edited the same article, for similar reasons and at similar times. But they seem to have forgotten that Wikipedia has a squillion editors. And they can't seem to understand that if so many people think the GW article has weasel words, then it might be true.

Part of me does empathize with Raul; he's probably just paranoid, too.

This post has been edited by Likipenia:

[dogbiscuit]

Part of me does empathize with Raul; he's probably just paranoid, too.

The sympathy tends to run out when you know that they have been told a gazillion times that they are just being paranoid and mean. I am sure they all believe they are right for the right reasons, but they are impervious to reasoned debate as to why they might need to re-evaluate their position once in a while.

The most telling thing is the self-reinforcement - probably a lot of discussion happening off wiki. Someone says, I didn't like that edit. If I didn't like it, the other person must be on the other side. The people on the other side are nasty, unethical people, so that is probably a sock. Ah, there is something fishy, this is a sock. And from then on it is all down hill, and in true paranoid fashion, if you complain about being falsely accused, then you probably are a sock, because a sock would protest their innocence, avoiding checkuser, well any good socker knows how to workaround that. Then it comes down to having come to a similar view, we call it the "living in Europe in a similar way" syndrome.