date:20090709

[WikiEN-l] The current purges in English Wikipedia (...and my personal case)

2009-07-09 Thread Desiphral

I was recently indefinitely blocked in connection with the paid editing
issue, without being a paid editor myself. Actually the paid users with whom
I had a previous collaboration on voluntary subjects are even now free to
edit. Worse, it is proposed the closure of the Wikipedia I put on track.

Here are the relevant links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Bad_news

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#The_Vlax_Romani_Wikipedia_and_its_compromised_admin

and in this article:

http://publish.indymedia.org/en/2009/07/926495.shtml

this is the part that concerns me:

"However, we find even more tragicomic and worrisome a strange case that
occured in the last few days. One of the "detectives"
foundthat
the Tayzen account from Elance included in its portfolio from October
2008 the work of Desiphral, a veteran user who contributed a great deal of
voluntary work at English Wikipedia and also founded the Wikipedia in his
native language. The proposed conclusion, namely that this user is engaged
in paid editing, was accepted by most of the other users without any
inquiries. Quickly, in the discussion place there appeared users seemingly
having some previous grudges against Desiphral, using the opportunity to
request his block. Additionally there appeared some at least dubious users
requesting the closure of the Wikipedia founded by Desiphral (in the
language of a certain minority of Indian origin widely discriminated). In a
normal (or better said, a previous) communication process at Wikipedia, such
conclusions would have been dismissed as a good joke, but it was not the
case here. We took our liberty to check the edits of the incriminated user
and we did not find anything to suggest paid editing. Needless to say that
the accusers too did not present any actual evidences for their allegations.

After a few days, when it appeared there Desiphral himself, it turned out
that he had some years ago a collaboration on Wikipedia with people from the
staff of Tayzen, but not in the field of paid editing (our investigation
found out that the respective Elance account did not even exist at that
time). Somehow unexpectedly (given the current atmosphere of fear and
adulation at Wikipedia around the issue of paid editing), besides
complaining about the attempt of public shaming, he started to point out the
unprofessional manner of conducting the current purges. There followed some
retorts, then... silence. When we contacted Desiphral to find out what
exactly is going on there, we learned that his account was blocked, but the
blocking notice was hidden somewhere in the talk page, not displayed on the
user account, as it is the common practice at Wikipedia. The "death
sentence" was done on the sly, after talking too much, somehow reminding of
our attempt to talk openly there. We found the blocking reason really
sarcastic, namely that "he indicated he permitted the use of his account for
commercial purposes" (without showing where exactly was that indication,
while we could not find anything of this kind in his replies). Even if it
would have been true, this is not a punishable offense on Wikipedia... only
you'll get intro trouble with those who do not like this. The accusers
changed later the reason for blocking to "group account", because he
permitted some years ago some people to learn how to edit, using his
account. Obviously, a pretext, the same "first shoot, then ask" pattern,
since the casual teaching of other people did not amount to what is
understood at Wikipedia as a "group account", plus that the respective user
was not active on Wikipedia for about a year and a half and at the time
scale of Wikipedia such old issues are not considered when judging an user.

The suppressed user also told us that he was not announced by e-mail about
the public shaming (he was not active on Wikipedia for long time and for
such cases this would be the standard procedure), thus preventing him to
present his position. He was not announced also about the following requests
of somebody to
blockhim
in the Wikipedias in all languages and to
close
downthe
one he founded. The most ironic thing in all this affair is that those
suspected editing on behalf of Tayzen are free to edit even at this moment
(although they keep being hindered), while the one who was wrongly accused
to associate with them was taken to the backyard and executed on the sly for
sulking against the conduct of the purges. The language and the conduct of
this episode suggests a combination of muting the dissent and a seizure of
the opportunity by some people who have a problem with the respective user
and/or with the Wikipedia he started."

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