Requests for comment/declared as troll for no real reason

This is a subpage; for more information, see the Requests for comments page.

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I was one of the 50 editors who were blocked from hewiki in June. I see that some of them have posted requests here, but my case is a bit different, as it goes far beyond the permanent block with no warning, explanation or evidence.

I must begin by stating that I know my activity in hewiki was harsh for some religious and nationalist editors, as I contributed a lot in subjects like evolution, biblical criticism, biblical archeology, Israeli occupation, settler's violence, Israeli secularism etc, adding content which wasn't aligned with ultra-religious and nationalist narratives. Even though the information I added was never declared as vandalism, because I was very keen on NPOV and always attached reliable sources, my contributions were canceled many times, and I was even accused at times of being "anti-religious" or "auto-antisemite" (of course, I'm neither). In my first years in hewiki, before I understood the rules, I participated in several edit wars, and was rightfully blocked for short periods, but eventually I learned how to use the talk pages properly and avoid edit wars.

But since January 2023, when the judicial overhaul in Israel began and hewiki became a battleground between supporters and opposers of the government, I was blocked again and again, mostly because of talk page edits which were unjustly presented as "breaking wp:etiquette". I was also blocked for longer periods by the bureaucrat Garfield, twice: once after being falsely accused of legal threats with no real investigation of the case, and once for no specific reason except for "being one of the prominent editors who argue and argue", and "in the purpose of making it clear to all the editors that political debates are pointless". Eventually I was blocked permanently during the massive blockage event of June 2024. Like all others who were blocked in that event, I was never told why I was blocked, except for general accusations of "recruiting liberal editors" and "canvassing for liberal agenda", which I never did and was never shown any evidence of. When a worried editor asked one of the bureaucrats why the 50 editors were blocked, his reply was "they know very well why they were blocked" - which is simply not true, as is obvious from my case and from the other requests for comment I see here about hewiki.

I refused to accept this unjust and unexplained block, which many veteran editors protested against in several discussions in the village pump (such as here, here and more). I tried to converse with the bureaucrats and some admins over e-mail, but didn't get any answers or explanations. Therefore, I continued to edit articles from outside of my account, from public ip's, and participated in discussions about the massive blockings and about general wikipedia stuff, signing my messages manually. I guess this made several editors angry, because they started erasing my signed messages, claiming "when you're blocked - you're blocked". However, my contributions to the main namespace articles were never erased, as like always, they were notable and verifiable. At one point, after being abused by one of the admins, who kept erasing messages I added to a talk page, blocking the public ip's I was writing from, and daring me to write from more ip's so he can block them as well - I broke and wrote him a rude message on his talk page. But this is NOT why I was declared a Troll.

The reason I was declared as a troll was because a user who was abroad and had trouble accessing wikipedia gave me the password to her account, and sent me messages to publish on her behalf on specific talk pages. That user was in the middle of discussing a new policy she was working on with other editors, and was afraid that her absence will harm the process of preparing the policy, so I offered to help her in that matter only. Of course now I understand that this is not appropriate, even though I never used her account to write anything in articles but only to paste the messages she asked me to paste into a specific discussion. Writing from another user's account on their behalf in talk pages, even with their permission, is probably wrong - but it's not vandalism, and it sure doesn't appear anywhere as a valid reason for being declared a troll.

My claim is that the troll declaration, as well as my permanent block, was simply a way to get rid of me and shut me up. I was active in areas that were politically inconvenient to the religious and nationalist editors (who are now, after the massive blockings, the majority in hewiki). I never did anything which fits the definition of a wikipedia troll, and there was no discussion prior to the declaration - it was decided on a whim, by the same bureaucrat who already blocked me several times without presenting a reason. Several veteran editors wrote that they think the declaration was unjust and wrong (here, here and more), but the bureaucrats never agreed to rethink it, and some of these messages were simply erased (here).

I request to un-troll and un-block me! I tried to get it done through the local admins and bureaucrats, but was ignored. Also, hewiki is going through a very dark phase, and there are good reasons for a thorough investigation by whomever has the authority to do it. I hope this is the right place to submit this request. If I should move it to a different place, or turn to a different team, please let me know.

Thanks for reading all this,

Ithamar Eshpar איתמראשפר (talk) 12:42, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello @איתמראשפר, I will reply, mostly because no one else has yet. In English we have a phrase "Sticks and Stones". Does it really matter if they called you a troll? It is upsetting, but the real problem is the ban.

I think the general idea is that bans are a local wiki issue. I don't know how you can proceed to get unblocked.

Incidentally, you mention a "very dark phase" for hewiki. If you want, could you link to a current hewiki and current enwiki version of the same article that shows a problem with the NPOV at hewiki? Just to fulfill my curiosity. I will use machine translation to compare them. Commander Keane (talk) 07:59, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello Commander Keane, thanks for your reply. I must point out that this is not a "name calling" issue - in hewiki, a "Declared Troll" is not only a slur but an official status, which has to be declared by a bureaucrat, and has serious implications: all of a Declared Troll's edits must be erased, even if they edit anonymously, fix a typo or add valuable sources; all their talk page edits must be erased and hidden from history; their user page and talk page are erased, and other users are not allowed to write on them (I received some support messages from editors who thought I was wrongfully declared as a troll, and they were erased). So it's not only that my feelings were hurt (I can survive that!) but my entire ability to contribute to Wikipedia - even anonymously! - was devoided. Since the declaration as troll was not made according to the regular regulations and for valid reasons, I ask to cencel it.

About the dark phase - I guess you can see from the other rfc's about hewiki that things are not well: dozens of editors were blocked permanently without any evidence shown, the parliament (where we vote about policy) was shut down and is still closed after 5 months, Liberal-leaning editors are receiving permanent blocks for "constantly arguing", "editing in political articles" and "insisting that we (the bureaucrats) are wrong" while religious and nationalist-leaning editors are given slack and sometimes a free hand - for example to write an article about "illegal Palestinian building in area C" (which ignores the immense illegal ISRAELI building in area C), or "the destruction of Israeli historical sites" which again deals only with sites which were destroyed by Palestinians, and is basically presenting the narrative of a certain settlet's association. Another good example is the erasure of the hebrew article about en:Israeli settler violence even though it's a well documented and researched phenomenon.

I hope I made things a bit clearer, both about my case and about the situation in hewiki. Thanks for reading, איתמראשפר (talk) 08:17, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

@איתמראשפר about your issue, is my summary of your idea correct: hewiki has an official Declared Troll policy that says only Beaurocrats can enact it, but in your case no Beaurocrats declared it?

Please link to the Declared Troll page.

It seens that Beaurocrat user:גארפילד banned you, so the policy seems to be being followed.

About the dark phase, it really concerning when there is such disparity between Wikipedias that machine translation is useless. For example enwiki has a whole article on en:Israeli settler violence and hewiki has none. hewiki had an entire article on Illegal Palestinian building in area C but enwiki has none. I know each language Wikipedia is independent but the inconsistency indicates terrible neutrality issues, either on enwiki, hewiki or both.

I also need to admit that I am having great trouble dealing with right-to-left text and automatic translation in my browser so my ability to understand your issue is limited. Commander Keane (talk) 23:05, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

@Commander Keane I understand the challenges of diving into a conflict in a Wiki with a different language and different rules, and I really appreciate your efforts to do it. About your summary of my case: you ALMOST got it. In hewiki there is indeed a Declared Troll status, and indeed only bureaucrats may invoke it, but the status should be invoked for specific reasons. User:גארפילד (it means "Garfield") is indeed a bureaucrat, so he does have the authority to invoke the status, but he invoked it with no justification: I didn't do anything that usually leads to a Declared Troll status.

As you can see from other RFC's about hewiki, in early June this bureaucrat blocked 43 editors permanently, in one day(!), most of them voted for the removal of his privileges just a few weeks earlier, and since then he has blocked permanently almost 20 more editors, most of them for expressing protest against his brutal actions as bureaucrats. He also changed the rules which dictate voting privileges in hewiki, without any poll or discussion with the community of editors, and locked the "parliament" page, where our community votes on policy and rules, for almost six months already.

Garfield has been chasing me for over a year, and has already blocked me more than once, sometimes without presenting any particular reason, and sometimes for strange reasons which were not supported by any evidence. This "Declared Troll" ordeal is merely his last attempt at getting rid of me - maybe because he doesn't like the content I add (many times I'd add NPOV content about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, biblical research and archeology, and I'm one of the founders of the hewiki Evolution project which adds a lot of content about evolution - all these are heavily biased subject in hewiki).

I'm beginning to wonder if you could help me at all, and if these pages are the right place to ask for aid. Is there any other authority I can turn to? Thank you very much, Ithamar איתמראשפר (talk) 07:26, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

@איתמראשפר, thank you for explaining. Unfortunately I don't know how to progress. Commander Keane (talk) 07:32, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

@Commander Keane are you part of the official RFC team? Do you know who are the people who usually respond to RFC's and have any authority to actually do something about thd requests? איתמראשפר (talk) 16:34, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

@איתמראשפר, there is no official RfC team. I was just passing by. According to Requests for comment "Anyone is welcome to give their opinion". My opinion is that Garfield (user:גארפילד) should come here and explain that they were following policy, but I have no authority to compell them to do so. Requests for comment/Policy says a meta admin or steward can close the RfC, or it will be closed after two years of inactivity. Commander Keane (talk) 20:56, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

@Barak a: Now there are some brief summaries for your admin actions locally, will you confute that which are wrong above? Or acknowledge with them to re-consider an unban? I would say that such blocking with just flighty reasons "I'm banning you/You're fired/You can get out..." are clearly-than-god unfair blockings. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 06:03, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

I think you have a mistake. Garfield blocked itammar, not me. Barak a (talk) 19:16, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Liuxinyu970226 Barak is right, in the sense that this RFC is not about him, but about the hewiki bureaucrat Garfield (User:גארפילד), who declared me as troll and blocked almost 60 users permanently without any explanation or evidence. Commander Keane as you can see there are about ten RFC regarding either bureaucrats of hewiki. I hope someone out there thinks it's worth addressing. איתמראשפר (talk) 13:16, 3 December 2024 (UTC)