[dwringer]

I once tried to edit an article about a scientist who had developed a bit of surrounding controversy over his studies in parapsychology. Having no real knowledge of the debate, I didn't add or remove any information; I just felt the introduction had been written in an overtly non-neutral way by a past editor. So, I removed a couple of words like "hoax" and trimmed one or two sentences so that they didn't come off as a character assassination (they had contained unsourced editorializations). Specifics aside, the article had explicitly violated Wikipedia's policies on using NPOV language.

My edits were reverted within 24 hours, and the talk page was updated with an admonition to my IP address (I'd posted without logging in) claiming I'd been implicated in "unsavory" activities that could be found by Googling the IP (it was a dynamic IP, but of course I tried and found nothing) and making vague threats that I should not attempt such edits again. That's the last time I edited anything on Wikipedia.

[jtbayly]

That's editing. I mean, I can understand that certain people might not be great at editing.

But I'm shocked that they would say there are people they don't even want on the site.

[dwringer]

I can't tell if you're suggesting that my edits were simply bad, and typically I would accept that is a possibility; but, even then, it was the fact that I was threatened essentially with being swatted. There was no feedback on the edits that I made. Just unfounded assertions that my IP address was involved in something "unsavory" and that I would face severe consequences if I continued such edits. It made me feel very unwelcome and I assume many other people have the same experience on Wikipedia.

I realize the futility of trying to convince you that my edits were warranted, I guess. The article has since been updated, however, and the non-neutral tone that I'd tried to fix has been removed, so apparently somebody else ultimately did succeed.

[pastage]

There are many things to discuss about that, first were your edits correct, secondly how can you make such edits and be accepted on Wikipedia. It doesn't seem like you care about reflecting why you failed at the second one.

I guess that is a field of research how does Wikipedia handle anon edits. I have done thousands of anon edits on Wikipedia and have very low deletion rate, but I guess I kept away from tone and opinion.

[dwringer]

Regarding the topic of making edits that would be accepted, I assume it was subject matter that rubbed someone the wrong way because as I said it was basically a character assassination of the article's subject. I strongly suspect the writer of the original non-neutral content had a browser extension or bot monitoring the page for any edits. I reflected on it quite a bit (I'm not sure how you concluded I've no interest in that), but I just think it creates a bit of an issue with the community being unwelcoming to newcomers. On the receiving end of it there's not really any way to know why someone decided to make unfounded accusations against you in a public place without engaging them further, which seemed unwise to me.

I agree with you that it looks like a good field for some research, I don't know how the issue of anonymous edits could be handled to productively stamp out abusive edit behavior.

[jtbayly]

Wait a minute. I wasn’t questioning your editing at all. I was only pointing out that this guy is openly admitting not only that he doesn’t want some people editing, but that he doesn’t even want some people to have access to Wikipedia. That’s truly shocking to me.

[dwringer]

I get you. I'm sorry that I got a bit defensive, and I didn't mean to detract from your point.