My block log. I'd like to suggest that everyone who considers using the length of my block log against me take a look at just how short nearly all of those blocks lasted. Only once have I been blocked for a period of more than a week (and it was quite deserved); every other block (including this last one) was undone within a day or so. Does this fact not indicate that maybe, just maybe, in some of these cases the error was on the part of the individual who blocked me, and not me? Does it not, at the very least, suggest that perhaps some of the circumstances surrounding these blocks should be investigated, so you can arrive at an independent judgment of whether or not those blocks were justified? Should unjustified blocks be held against me? The only way my block log can be considered evidence of wrongdoing on my part, in and of itself, is if one believes that Wikipedia community servants never make mistakes. That is not only an unreasonable belief, but is proven false by my block log itself: nearly all of the blocks made were overturned before they expired, meaning either the person making the block or the person removing the block made a mistake.
"He has a long history of this, and he's been given several chances." Have I? In general, the complaints against me stem from three different issues. Up through mid-2006 (that is, four years ago), I had the habit of using the phrase "deletionist vandals" to refer to people who I thought nominated a lot of articles for deletion. Since then, I stopped using it, and no one's brought it up since. That one, at least, is over. It's the other two issues that are the problem.
The first of these two is the RfA/AfD voting. Every single time someone has blocked me for that, there has been overwhelming agreement to overturn the block; and every single time someone has made some sort of public complaint not involving a block, those complaints have been overwhelmingly rejected. There is a minority now who likes to claim that those were the reasons I was almost banned, but that's clearly not true given how roundly those complaints were rejected. The other issue, and the one for which I perhaps was indeed "almost banned," was an unfortunate tendency in mid-to-late 2008 to attack people who had disagreed with me, which as I recall initially started with the Bedford desysopping and degenerated from there. And you know what happened? I was called out on that, I acknowledged I was wrong, and I stopped doing it. Furthermore, this is the incident out of which arose the supposed "topic ban" against me.
Now, here's where it gets interesting. There were, it is true, a few people who, during the discussions concerning the aforementioned personal attacks, also tried to bring in the RfA/AfD voting into it as a reason to ban me. Those people were very few in number, only a small fraction of the total people participating in the discussion, and were in fact outnumbered by those explicitly rejecting that particular rationale. But few though they were, they remain the most vocal, most fanatical, and most obsessive of the bunch; and they are the ones who keep insisting that I've had "several chances already," despite the fact that that's clearly not true. Their attempt to include my votes on RfA/AfD as instances where I was nearly banned and supposedly "slipped through," by mentioning them in the discussion for the brief (and long-over) spate of personal attacks and so trying to attach them to that issue like legislators and pork, is disingenuous at best if not outright dishonest.
I will acknowledge that "having enough chances" really shouldn't matter, since I shouldn't be doing anything wrong to begin with. That is absolutely correct. The point is, there are certain individuals who insist that my RfA/AfD votes are part of some long history of disruption, despite that argument being roundly rejected every time it's brought up in public, and who by virtue of being so vocal and fanatical (and at times using strong-arm and bullying tactics to prevent me from defending myself) in their insistence are able to convince others that my past is worse than it is. The fact is, the only times the Wikipedia community has generally agreed (and rightly so) that I acted improperly were in the "deletionist vandals" episode that was so long ago that no one even brings it up anymore, and the spate of personal attacks in mid-to-late-2008--which have long since ceased. That is hardly a "long-term, consistent pattern of disruption and inappropriate behavior."
I only create short, unsourced stubs, and doesn't even bother to categorize them properly That's simply not true or irrelevant, as the case may be. I am largely responsible for such articles as Princeton, Indiana, Gibson County Courthouse, Testor Corporation, the initial Head gasket article, and Lyles Station, Indiana, among others. That said, it is true that lately a lot of the articles I have created have been short stubs. But what's wrong with that? I don't have as much time now as I have in years past (and the more of my Wikipedia-time I have to spend defending myself against an onslaught, the less still I have for productive work), so I do what I can when I find the time. And by putting a stub out there in mainspace, rather than keeping it hidden away in some userspace subpage, I put it out there where the general public can find it. This way, anyone who happens across it that has something useful to add can easily find it and do so. This kind of organic growth is the whole point of a wiki, which provides a wonderful model for content development. How can this possibly be problematic? As best I can tell, it appears that some people are just afraid of this new paradigm in content creation that a wiki provides; that's the only explanation I can see for their insistence that the old, cathedral-like model of cloistered article development, not unveiling it until there is a finished product, be used.
Categorization is essentially the same. I enjoy writing article content; I know a lot, and I'm good at it. Other people enjoy categorizing and the day-to-day minutiae; they know a lot about it, and they're good at it. Another advantage that a wiki provides is specialization. One need not know everything to contribute; one person does what he's good at and enjoys, and leaves the rest to others to do what they're good at and enjoy. That way, everyone does what they enjoy (we're all volunteers, remember?) and understand, and those who aren't interested in a certain aspect of contributing don't have to worry about it and can instead focus their available energies on becoming better at what they do do. Specialization leads to increased efficiency and effectiveness, and a wiki provides a unique and wonderful opportunity to exploit this. Once again, I can't see any explanation, other than fear of the unknown, for opposing this; I've certainly seen no substantiative argument as to why it's bad.
Sources are more of the same. Ironically, those who claim that I'm somehow operating in contravention of "policy" by not bothering to include sources don't seem to realize that the argument I've been making all along (that sources are only necessary for direct quotes and contentious or potentially contentious statements) is exactly what WP:V has said for years now. That's not to say sources are bad; only that they're generally not necessary (especially given the kinds of subjects I participate in—is Rodney Watson's birthplace really controversial, after all?), so I'm hardly doing anything wrong by not including them. Again, those who want them and are good at that kind of thing are welcome to find them and include them: I do what I enjoy and I'm good at, and others do what they enjoy and are good at.
