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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 began picking fights with 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.

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 began picking fights with 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 move was something that happened nine months earlier and didn’t involve him.

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 move 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 work. 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.

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 work. 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.