Uživatel:Dan Polansky/English Wiktionary block

What follows is my position on my English Wiktionary block.

1) Some block for my singling out a certain person ("Theknightwho") by their nationality was in order. People should be judged as individuals and the person I commented on produced countless bad behavior, and it is that behavior I should have been focusing on, not the putative nationality. However, indefinite block seems excessive, especially for someone with over 26,000 created Czech entries and over 800 created thesaurus entries (these are more like categories).

2) The posts I made in the English Wiktionary on my talk page about other users were poorly executed. Either I should not have made these posts at all, or if, then in a much milder tone and meticulously sourced, avoiding evaluation as much as possible and focusing on description.

3) I have observed before that when I enter a nasty social environment, I start to behave in problematic ways. I was vulgarly insulted and then hounded by "Theknightwho" and no one complained; instead, they made that nasty editor an administrator. I still find it hard to believe what has happened with the English Wiktionary. Evidence is here: Uživatel:Dan Polansky/User Theknightwho. These repeated attacks on me do not justify my behavior, but they do explain it in part, I think. I suspect it works like this: when the psyche in the background is repeatedly insulted and attacked, it may start to misbehave and seek opportunity to strike back. The psyche may think that on a project where trading insults is allowed, it is really allowed. (There were other de facto attacks on me by other people, some perhaps constituting "psychological manipulation" as defined by Universal Code of Conduct.)

4) Expanding on the above, as a general advice: the only safe way how to exists in a project where one is target of insults with no reprimand against the insulting person is to be sure to behave as politely as humanly possible, and in case of doubt, perhaps impose sanctions on oneself that one would not impose otherwise, e.g. no comments about other persons.

5) I have a long history of having been blocked in the English Wiktionary. Most of that history is evidence of me being abused/harassed more than anything else. I will not explain all of them, but let us consider one example[1]:

• 17:07, 19 May 2018 Metaknowledge talk contribs unblocked Dan Polansky talk contribs (Not a blockable offence; block given by an involved admin)
• 14:54, 19 May 2018 Benwing talk contribs changed block settings for Dan Polansky talk contribs with an expiration time of 1 day (account creation disabled) (Dan has not been blocked in 3 years so I think 1 week is too long)
• 09:20, 19 May 2018 Wyang talk contribs blocked Dan Polansky talk contribs with an expiration time of 1 week (account creation disabled) (Disruptive edits)

These were the only blocks between 2015 and 2022, and as one can see above, Metaknowledge canceled the block as inappropriate. The alleged disruptive edits were my creating of a vote to codify that people can edit a language that they do not know and have not studied. This vote was important since editors started to claim that editors who do not know a language cannot edit it. The vote talk page is still here: wikt:en:Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2018-05/Proficiency as a prerequisite for contribution. The vote did not fail RFDO and was deleted by Wyang out of process.