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My time at Wikipedia
* [[Diacritic]] — This is a zippy overview of the most controversial aspect of my editing.
* [[Diacritic]] — This is a zippy overview of the most controversial aspect of my editing.
* [[User:PeterKa/Diacritics_proposal |Diacritics proposal]] — You can find a detailed set of arguments here.
* [[User:PeterKa/Diacritics_proposal |Diacritics proposal]] — You can find a detailed set of arguments here.
==My time at Wikipedia==
Back in 2012, I was a senior editor on Wikipedia and could boast tens of thousands of edits as well as a clean eight-year track record. I was especially active in a forum called “requested moves.” One day, an editor I will refer to as “IIO” got jealous of my unofficial status as an “RM expert” and started harassing me. Day after day, he complained about me in one forum after another. After a year of this, some admins summarily imposed a series of blocks. Admins can block as they like, a power they need to deal with spammers and trolls. But unlike me, most editors who have been around for a while generally get some degree of due process and procedural protection, including second chances, topic bans, and interaction bans.
The original block arose from a dispute as to whether the city of Can Tho should be spelled with diacritics, as the Vietnamese spell it, or without, as English-language reference works give it. When IIO is not picking a fight with me, he focuses on music and art articles, not Vietnam. The Can Tho issue was something that happened nine months earlier and didn’t involve him.
Why diacritics? For whatever reason, Arbcom was cracking down on editors with dissent views on diacritics at this time. Wikipedia guidelines instruct editors to follow “[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_%28use_English%29#Modified_letters the general usage]” on this question. I interpret this to mean that we should follow the Chicago Manual, Merriam-Webster, or some other widely used reference of this type. IIO argues that my approach discriminates against Vietnamese, as if this was a civil rights issue. (Before anyone takes this argument seriously, I should note that English-language websites run by the Vietnamese government also remove the diacritics.) A good style is one that goes unnoticed so that a reader can focus on content. Few English-language speakers are familiar with Vietnamese diacritics, so they stand out in running text. If the overarching thought the reader goes away with is “Gee, those Vietnamese use a lot of interesting marks,” that’s a failure of communication.
My case was discussed in ANI several times. Each time, the “consensus,” as it is called, was not to sanction me. At the time, I thought I’d won the battle. But it turned out that the only reason anyone respected these decisions is because there was an admin who was protecting me at that time. Once he took a break from editing, the consensus-making process was about as useful as last year’s J. Crew catalogue. In the harassment offensive that followed, many more editors became involved, few of whom were familiar with Vietnam-related issues. The offensive started with an attack on article I wrote on the [[Roman Warm Period]]. This time it featured crude insults and name calling. It continued with an attack on [[User:PeterKa/Filipacchi|my user page]] and an article I wrote on [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Han-Nom&oldid=563875554 Sino-Vietnamese characters]. None of that succeeded in provoking me into doing anything they could block me for. But Wikipedia has hundreds of admins, so a persistent editor can often find one who will do what he wants, a practice referred to as “forumshopping.” In the end, Team Harassment used a transparently bogus claim that I was edit warring as a pretext to block me.
Sue Gardner, executive director at the time, was intent on moving Wikipedia to the left. Perhaps this is why various political issues came up. As far as IIO and the rest of Team Harassment were concerned, the fact that I had narrowly escaped sanction earlier was reason enough to try again. Since Gardner left Wikipedia, other editors caught up in the great diacritics purge have returned. Compared to people who were more easily provoked, I was a lot more trouble to block and ban. Reinstating me at this point would require too many admins to backtrack.
People who should know have told me that Arbcom started manipulating my case behind the scenes well before I was banned. That would certainly help explain why so many editors became interested in my case at that time. If so, Arbcom effectively overrode the various ANI discussions that had gone in my favor. Arbcom is set up as a quasi judicial body, so it is irregular for the group to act in a case that was not appealed.
==What I have written==
==What I have written==