A True Story

Once upon a time, there was this guy who'd edited Wikipedia anonybously for many months (let's call him Derek). Derek edited anonymously so regularly hopped from IP address to IP address. He was very happy making contributions to what he believed to be a reputable encyclopedia. He worked as a journalist at a London based newspaper in the real world, and in the virtual world, Wikipedia was one of his many hobbies, where he edited this and that and made a small difference - so he liked to think. But then Derek made a huge mistake - when he tried to take on the cyber bullies - and  and came off the worse for it.

It was the afternoon of [[Monday[[ 7 April 2008. Derek had the day off work and was online and browsing Wikipedia. He happened to click on an article about the Radio 2 traffic presenter Sally Bowsman via the random articles button, and he noticed a piece of vandalism. Derek reverted it.

Derek's next move was to look at who had added this piece of vandalism. He knew it was against Wikipedia rules to vandalise pages, so issued a user warning to the chap involved in the vandalism. Derek then decided he would keep an eye on this individual so that he might revert any more vandalism that  might commit.

And lo and behond,  did exactly that. Derek reverted more vandalism and issued further warnings. Even when  made a personal attack against Derek, accusing him of having a personal interest in these other articles, Derek issued the appropriate warning.

Things eventually got to the point where  had used up his four lives - that is, he had been issued with four user warnings; and still  continued to make disruptive edits. Derek therefore decided to approach WP:AIV and report this. Derek then looked at Tom's page history and discovered that he was a regular disruptive editor with rogue edits stretching back over a year.

A user by the name of  promptly blocked the user. But two hours later, he had what can only be described as an attack of conscience and he unblocked .  didn't really give a reason for this about face other than that he had made a mistake. There then followed some discussion between Derek and Todd, and  even threw in his two penneth. Todd suggested Derek and Tom should chill out. Derek thought that a jolly good idea, and Derek even posted a friendly message on Tom's talk page urging him to make sensible edits - after all, unconstructive edits damage the reputation of Wikipedia, and the thing which damanges Wiki's reputation further is when rogue editors are allowed to continue making rogue edits willy nilly.

Tom began editing again, and he was soon being his old disruptive self. Derek reverted the edit, then decided to go back to WP:AIV and report this new offence. Unfortunately though, this is where he came unstuck.

 soon accused Derek of Wikistalking and promptly decided that  and so he deleted Derek's report - he didn't even have the decency to leave it for another admininstrator to assess the situation.

So Derek came away with a blooded nose for his troubles, and Derek feels he has no choice now than to leave Wikipedia. He posted the following message on Toddy's talk page:

    Unfortunately, your decision is a bad day for common sense. By reversing his block you have given him the green light to do as he wishes. Furthermore, you have also now made a personal attack against me. I was trying to help clear up what I saw - when I checked his edit history this afternoon - to be a long-standing problem which nobody appears to be willing to address. It seems whenever one tries to stand up to the bullies, one comes away with a bloody nose for one's troubles. Well, on your heads be it. It's unsurprising that Wikipedia is seen as such an unreliable source in the press when people such as this are given carte blanche to do what they want (I am a journalist so ought to know