User:Geo Swan/unblock
Blocks are not supposed to be punitive, they are supposed to be administrative.
Blocks are not supposed to be mysterious. A good faith contributor should be able to understand the explanation, so he or she can realize where they went wrong, and avoid repeating their mistake in future, and, possibly, go back and try to fix other instances where they made the same mistake - assuming they did make a mistake. Administrators are subject to normal human fallibility, just like everyone else, and a clear explanation of the block is essential for a good faith contributor to make a case that the block was not warranted, after all.
Occasionally an administrator will impose a block without first issuing a warning. One legitimate use of the block without warning is when an errant contributor is ripping through a lot of articles, causing a lot of damage, at a fast rate, and there just isn't time to issue a warning, prior to the block. However, in cases like this, isn't a clear explanation absolutely necessary after the block?
My general rule, when someone's wikipedia action or edit has angered me, is to wait until my anger has faded. Well, it has been almost three months since Template:U imposed their entirely unjustifiable block, and I am still furious.
Template:U's #Only warning was, IMO, reckless.
- I think HJ Mitchell improperly usurped the role of OTRS. When anyone claiming to be a third party outsider, personally affected by a wikipedia article, or Commons image, I believe it is absolutely essential they confirm their real world identity through OTRS. The wikipedia is a prime target for trolls, vandals, and POV-pushers. Celebrities, or even the mildly notable, are vulnerable to having stalkers, frenemies claim to be them, and use making demands on the wikipedia or commons as a way to create chaos. I think it is a grave mistake for HJ Mitchell to have considered something said by a third party whose identity had not been confirmed through OTRS
- HJ Mitchell's admonishment claimed I was writing "...Wikipedia articles about people with whom you are in dispute elsewhere..." I don't know where this claim came from. I have had no contact with the real life Dan Trotta.
The Canadian Film Centre holds events attended by figures in the Canadian film industry, and has posted several thousand images from those events on its flick page, under free licenses. Some commons contributors have cropped headshots of figures from the Canadian film industry, from those free images. About 1000 headshots have been cropped from those images. A couple of hundred of those headshots are illustrating BLPs that had been unillustrated. I did most of that work, spent well over one hundred hours doing it. I consider it time well-spent and think I owe absolutely no apologies for doing so. <p>The real life Dan Trotta was just another one of those 1000 figures from the Canadian film industry. I never had a dispute with him. I don't know him. If I was ever introduced to him I'd give him a hearty congratulations for the success of his career. So, HJ Mitchell's claim I was carrying an off-wiki dispute to the WMF is simply incorrect.
- Commons:User:Imissdisco and Template:U are vandals.
It was highly disrespectful to me, and let down the entire wikimedia community.https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Geo_Swan&diff=1009919817&oldid=1008429340
