As many of you know, I am an administrator on Wikipedia, and with that comes various extra tools that allow me to roll back vandalism, protect pages, and block disruptive editors. There are occasions when administrative actions get some feedback. Some think I may have been slightly too close to a dispute. Or maybe I protected a page on The Wrong Version. Or maybe I speedily deleted something that wasn’t as clear-cut as I thought. It happens.
It’s the people who get blocked that are amusing. This bit of hate mail recently came across my inbox, from a person named Jim Cooper, from Email address cooper7069@yahoo.com, and with an IP address of 76.123.26.105:
hello, 1st, i would like to say that i really enjoy your website. 2nd i noticed that you went to james masdison university, many of my friends attend JMU currently, and its a beautiful place. 3rd, i like were you state that people should act their age, not their shoe size. i wear a size 15 shoe, so i hope that my age wouldnt show.(haha) 4th, im pretty sure my size 15 shoe with proper force would fit up your ass. (jk) 5th, block me on wikipedia for no reason again and i will make sure that it happens. (lol)
take care.
Sincerly, Jim Cooper
Nice guy. Apparently I blocked him for something on Wikipedia. I don’t remember what I blocked him for nor do I even remember what his username was, but obviously I was right in making the block, considering he’s threatened to physically assault me. Most normal people, when blocked, either wait out their block period, or contest it by discussing it. You take it off-Wiki, and things are no longer part of the Wikipedia “record”, where all can see, analyze, and discuss. And that’s generally not a good thing, because then there’s no paper trail on how certain Wiki-related actions were decided upon. And certainly if one goes off-Wiki and threatens me, I’m not going to take any action in the blocked party’s favor based on it.
Yeah, you’ve gotta love the wackadoodles sometimes. They keep life interesting, and they’re somewhat inspiring, too. For all the issues one might have in life, you could always be like these guys that send hate mail and post their real name and Email to a Web site that is pretty explicit about its hate mail policy through the contact form, and isn’t afraid to attribute comments to their authors using the information that they supplied me (I didn’t do any research to get name, Email, and IP – it was provided to me by the user).
These people that send these sorts of messages kind of remind me of the folks you hear about in America’s Dumbest Criminals. You know – like the folks who come up to the checkout counter with a six-pack of beer, show their ID for the alcohol, and then proceed to hold up the cashier. Not bright…