Helping a user be unblocked on Wikidata

General Off-topic
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Thank you for your response @PPelberg_WMF. I am a community leader at the Wiki fan club NIJ. I was training some participants on how to use Wikidata. I was using Faith Oyedepo as an example. While training, I later realised that the participants were also inputting the same data as I was. Instead of listening, they were also working on the same data.
My account was seen as a sockpuppet and blocked indefinitely.
I appealed, wrote messages to prove my account and my participant’s accounts are not sockpuppet.
My blocking issue:
Reason: These users have created several items on Faith Oyedepo and The Effective Minister’s wife. I am afraid this is just the tip of an iceberg… Lymantria (talk) 15:35, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
Results: All accounts are  Confirmed to be the same, with the following exceptions:

Jerachin24 is only  Likely related to the others, as is Perperment22

Salvadoryetty and Olubukunmi are only  Likely related to the others, but are  Confirmed to be the same as Armanycashbag (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · case block · block log · CA · checkuser (log) · investigate)

I also found the following accounts,  Confirmed to the master:

3timilexy (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · case block · block log · CA · checkuser (log) · investigate)

Maliksales2 (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · case block · block log · CA · checkuser (log) · investigate)

Semmy1960 (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · case block · block log · CA · checkuser (log) · investigate)

Godsmarket (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · case block · block log · CA · checkuser (log) · investigate)

Oladamglobal (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · case block · block log · CA · checkuser (log) · investigate)

Arowosola60 (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · case block · block log · CA · checkuser (log) ·

In all of these issues, while doing my investigation and begging to be unblocked, i was told checkusers are very powerful, and most of them dont like Africans.
If I explained to the checkusers that my account is not
a sockpuppet, I wrote many mails just to see how my participant’s can contribute again. They are new but we all can be given a second chance. I was on the Wikidata help group just to apologise to the checkuser, but he didnt answer. I sent so many mails and I kept begging but I was not given another chance so I let it slide.
I just accepted my faith that I am not allowed to contribute to Wikidata and Checkusers dont give second chances.
Many of my participants stopped contributing but I cant stop because this is a part of my life now and I have alot of people I am training and needs to be trained.
I learnt from the experience and I realised that every community has its own challenges and politics.
I

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Thank you @Qgil-WMF for your response. We use the event dashboard and we also create a Meta page and it doesnt work. They still block us from editing.
How does this look?
This user is currently blocked. The latest block log entry is provided below for reference:

Jasper Deng is a Check-user and he blocked me indefinitely. I sent mails to two other Check-users to explain the situation, I sent mails to Jasper Deng because i could not write on Wikidata again. I went on Wikimentor to appeal, I was added to Wikidata help Telegram group. Another Wikimedia pinged Jasper for me and Alas! Jasper replied me once. He said he didn’t see my mail and how does the problem relate? That was the last time I heard from him. I sent a mail to the Admin notice board, sent to @DannyS712. He replied and told me to send a mail to Check-users that i was blocked by a CU .
So I started my journey by sending mails and appeal. I sent a mail to @197KB and he responded.

(Moderation note: 3 private messages copied here have been removed.)

Above are the messages I sent and efforts I made to explain to the administrators that my account is not a sock-puppet. My Co-trainer also explained and dropped a message on Wikidata for Jasper Deng since she can access Wikidata. It was no response from him.
I didn’t create multiple accounts, we were doing a training for new participants and they were inputting the data while I was training them. They were doing exactly what I was doing. I never knew until later that we were editing the same article. I was blocked indefinitely, I have appealed many times but it seems as if the Administrators are so powerful and part of their rules is that they must find offenders and offenders must be punished and not forgiven no matter how long they try to explain and apologise.
I have moved on and accepted in good faith, but learnt from the costly and painful mistakes. I told my participants that were blocked as well to wait till we are all unblocked. They asked me when, even the leader doesn’t have a clue when the powerful Administrators will temper justice with mercy.

Yes! How do we achieve this together? These future administrators need to come from Africa, and for that volunteers in Africa need to step in. How can the rest of us in or outside Africa help find and support these future administrators?
How do we spend so much to bring in new volunteers and we loose them by blocking them?
I think we should create a program that will educate leaders in the community on how to become administrators,we also encourage the leaders to apply and the community will vote. They can work with other administrators in diaspora so that we can help retain new volunteers. They can also help protect our Wikis from the African end.
I hope you would support me to find a solution to my challenges.
Thank you for your time

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I appreciate you recounting and sharing the experience you had with me, @Semmy1960 :slight_smile:

It sounds like you:

  1. Unintentionally did something that disrupted someone else on the wikis in the process of trying to be helpful.
  2. You then sought to talk with the person who was impacted by the disruption you unintentionally caused so that you could rectify the situation
  3. That person did not respond to you

…assuming the above accurately describes what happened, then that sounds frustrating :confused: I’m sorry you had that experience and I’m grateful that you’re still here trying to help out in spite of it :slight_smile:

A couple of resulting questions for you:

  1. Are you able to share a link to the page you are referring to above? I thought you might be referring to the David Oyedepo page, but it doesn’t look like you (User:Semmy1960) have edited that page.
  1. Are the accounts you listed in the message you posted above, the usernames of the people who were participating in the training you were leading?
  1. Are you able to share a bit more about what inspires you to continue contributing? So you’re aware: I’m asking you this particular question in an effort to see if there could be ways we could translate what you share into the software in ways that could inspire other people :slight_smile:
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FYI, @PPelberg_WMF for Wikidata item: we have Faith A. Oyedepo - Wikidata created at10:06, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
Cheers,

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It seems that all the communications were private, one-to-one? Would it help in these situations to use the corresponding wiki noticeboard to make a request publicly? There you could also provide links to public information about the meditation, even i.e. mentions in social Media or pictures of the event…

Basically, follow a public community process to request the lift of these blocks showing your public evidence that the cause of the problem were understandable mistakes by newcomers in an editathon, in good faith, without intentions of vandalism, promotion, or sockpuppetting.

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Hello @PPelberg_WMF,
Thank you for your response. It was Faith Oyedopo I was using to illustrate to the participants. My account was linked to other accounts.
You are currently unable to edit Wikidata.

You are still able to view pages and data entries, but you are now not able to edit, move, or create them.

Editing from ‪Semmy1960‬ has been blocked (disabled) by <U+202A>Jasper Deng<U+202C> for the following reason(s):

Abusing multiple accounts

This block (ID #37121) has been set to expire: infinite.

For more information, see Guide to appealing blocks.

Are the accounts you listed in the message you posted above, the usernames of the people who were participating in the training you were leading? Yes they were.

Are you able to share a bit more about what inspires you to continue contributing? So you’re aware: I’m asking you this particular question in an effort to see if there could be ways we could translate what you share into the software in ways that could inspire other people :

What keeps me going or contributing to Wikipedia is the fact that I believe in the dream and the project. I see it as a safe place to store our histories, our story, my culture, heritage. All will go into extinction without any documentation. The older ones are dying, who will keep these records for us? What will our children and great grandchildren meet if not documented? I have seen Wikipedia as the only safe place to store those important history about us as Africans. Wikipedia in my own believe is here to stay. It is not going to die or going into extinction. It can only be better and my story is there, I cant leave it because of a temporary problem that we will definitely find a lasting solution to soon. My conviction about the project and the long term impact on humanity has made me to keep going on in the community. No matter the block, I will never leave this community.

I have built a world around it in such a short time. It has also helped to cushion the Social Media addiction and negativity in that space, It takes me away from that world without taking me off the world. It has helped to build and shaped me. It has impacted in me positively. I can go on and on and…on. Wikipedia is a positive addiction for anyone who cares to know. It is time consuming but a positive one at that.

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@Semmy1960: wow!

Reading what you shared about what motivates you to continue contributing to Wikipedia took me aback. I’ve shared what you’ve written with a few other people who I work with here at the Foundation and they too were inspired by what you had to say.

The above is a long way of saying: thank you :slight_smile:

…thank you for investing the time to clearly translate, what I imagine is, a complex set of feelings and experiences into language that gave me goosebumps and is opening up all kinds of new questions and curiosities in my mind.

To this end, please look out for an email from me! I’m going to send you an email using Wikipedia email this user feature this week so that we can hopefully talk more.

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@Semmy1960 I have moved the posts related to your particular case to this topic, so that the conversation at How to resolve the problem of IP and user blocks in African editathons can continue focused on addressing the general problems.

Question: can you edit your user talk page on Wikidata? If you can, I suggest you follow the steps described at Wikidata:Guide to appealing blocks - Wikidata.

As I have mentioned in another post, if you could provide a public link of that editathon or any other Wikimedia activities you have been involved with, that would be very useful for your case. Wikidata admins only want to block Wikidata vandals, and you clearly are not one. Show them some prof publicly and I believe your case should be solved soon.

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Hello @Qgil-WMF, thank you for your response. I cant edit my Wikidata page because of the block.
This is a link to the event dashboard

This is a link to the Meta page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiGlam_Awareness_for_Librarians_in_Lagos_State#Event_details
I had sent the link to the Meta page to the Checkuser that blocked me and other Checkusers appealing that we were training and that my account is not a Sockpuppet but no luck.
They are not satisfied with my explanations with proof. I told them I am a community leader but no luck for me. I was curious when after several appeals with proofs, they didn’t unblock me. I was told they don’t like to be wrong and that it was an ego issue. Their job is to block, so unblocking for them means they have not done a thorough investigation before they blocked the user. They said if I keep putting pressure and begging they will never unblock me again. I was shocked! I said to myself, I will stay away from Wikidata, then be very careful with my contributions on other Wikis so that I wont be disenfranchised from contributing on other Wikis.
I really hope your intervention will help.
Thank you for your care!

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@PPelberg_WMF, thank you for your message. I will be expecting your mail.

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