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==My time at Wikipedia==

==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 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. Wikipedia has hundreds of admins, and they can block as they like, a power they need to deal with spammers and trolls. But an editor who has been around for a while generally receives some degree of due process and procedural protection, including second chances, topic bans, and interaction bans. I never even got a warning, although this is standard procedure even for beginning users.

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” began picking fights with me. Day after day, he complained about me in one forum after another. He put an astonishing amount of time and energy into harassing and stalking me, apparently jealous of my unofficial status as "RM expert." After a full year of this, the powers that be decided that the simplest solution was to ban me. The banning discussion that followed was obviously rigged. It was full of people I'd never heard of up to that point. They must have been canvassed together. There was little if any effort to make a coherent argument against me. Not a single diff was presented -- a diff being Wikipedia's version of evidence.

 

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. Wikipedia has hundreds of admins, and they can block as they like, a power they need to deal with spammers and trolls. But an editor who has been around for a while generally receives some degree of due process and procedural protection, including second chances, topic bans, and interaction bans. I never even got a warning, although this is standard procedure even for beginning users.

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 edits music and art articles, and not Vietnam-related material. The Can Tho move was something that happened nine months earlier and didn’t involve him. To get this block, IIO had to go from one admin to another to another selling his cause, a practice referred to as “forumshopping.”

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 edits music and art articles, and not Vietnam-related material. The Can Tho move was something that happened nine months earlier and didn’t involve him. To get this block, IIO had to go from one admin to another to another selling his cause, a practice referred to as “forumshopping.”