User talk:Makulele

Welcome!

Hello, Makulele, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome! Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 02:35, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
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Blocked?
Hello, Makulele. I am trying to understand your edit here. Clearly, you are able to edit with this account, but yes, the IP address 184.107.210.113 is rangeblocked as seen here. If you are somehow being prevented from editing, please leave a message here, rather than on another page, and I or another admin will do what we can to resolve the issue. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 14:37, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Dear Mr. DoRD:

I was surprised to find the above message. I do not even know how it appeared on my screen. Nor do I know how to enter it, and thus am not sure it will reach you But thank you in any case.

First thing first. I think my computer number is 184.107.210.114, and does not end in 113, as you have it above.

Here is the partial text of a message I was in the process of writing to a friend, in cyberspace, in the hope of finding someone who might help me end this strange blocked thing. _________________

It was kind of you to take an interest in my situation vis-à-vis Wikipedia. I appreciate it.

Here’s what I think has happened. There is a number assigned to my desktop computer. I believe that number is 184.107.210.114

Via your father, I gave you my “username,” which is Makulule, and my password, which is REDACTED. But evidently when you put those two items into Wikipedia’s system, nothing came up. You said in your email that “I can’t find user Makulele anywhere.”

You also asked about my “userpage.” I don’t even know what that means. I can’t find it anywhere on the screen, even after I have logged in. I have never used Wikipedia to chat, and never to my knowledge written anything on any sort of “userpage.” In any case, I have no access to any “userpage” now, since I am blocked.

But the question of finding such a “userpage” seems academic, anyway.

I am guessing that Wikipedia insists that Makulele and the password must both emanate from a computer bearing the 12-digit number above. When it does not, there is no match, and no ingress to anything for any outsider.

If that is not the case, and not the reason why, when you insert Makulele and PASSWORD in the appropriate boxes, nothing happens, and no “userpage” or anything else appears – then I simply do not know what is happening. But then that has been my experience all along, from about three days ago. I have been blocked; everything else is baffling.

You wrote “But I can at least find out the process for challenging blocked accounts.” I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t bother. When I log in as Makulele and give the password, and then hit “edit,” this enormous big box appears that gives all kinds of information “for challenging blocked accounts.”

Unfortunately, it is composed of impenetrable jargon, incomprehensible acronyms, numerous contradictory instructions, and dozens of nested links that only lead farther into still more links containing still more impenetrable jargon. A veritable Borgesian garden of forked paths.

I have searched these many avenues, and I have attempted to follow the instructions. I have done as much as I could understand. There is some sort of talk page. I stated my case there. I haven’t defaced anything, done anything wrong, shown anyone any disrespect, harbored any cyber-criminals, or flown under false colors. All such allegations are untrue.

Wikipedia replies – and I have neither the time nor the patience to track down and copy its various remarks – that I may be innocent but it still doesn’t matter. That I defaced a page dealing with some Eastern European town. That I am operating a server and hiding behind something. That maybe my twelve-digit number was unfortunately included in a series of number that were blocked. (Apparently this is called being “rangeblocked.” Even the IRS isn’t that punitive.)  That I should do this. Or that. That I should go here, or there, and type in this, and file that, and so on.

All of it couched in hopeless insider pseudo-technical jargon.

Life is too short for this kind of foolishness. Wikipedia, I fear, is in danger of being hoist by its own petard.

If Wikipedia wishes to operate in this way, it’s perfectly fine with me. I do have a personal page under the name “Jared Carter,” and I have appreciated being allowed to have it, all this time. But if I cannot add changes and updates –- and yes, if I cannot remove the hateful remarks that unknown persons sometimes scribble onto it -- it will gradually become useless to me, and then an embarrassment. Unfortunately, now that I’m blocked, I can’t even remove it. But perhaps that’s next – Wikipedia will unilaterally remove it. So be it.

Evidently Wikipedia has no further interest in whatever small contributions I might have been able to make in the future, not simply to my own page, but to others. Out of a fear of retaliation – in this day and age, who knows who may be reading this email message to you? -- I forbear to mention some of the other sites where I have occasionally contributed a more grammatical sentence, or a an updated fact, or a corrected date.

Such a removal – a final erasure of Jared Carter, Makulele, and anything relating to them -- would be O.K. with me. And not at all surprising. I think the web has had ten or fifteen good, productive years, since about the year 2000, but the increasing commercialization and commodification are obvious. Given those trends, I’m neither troubled nor surprised to be getting arbitrarily shut out of Wikipedia.

It occurred to me today that until Wikipedia came along, I relied for much factual information on the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. (From which many of the older, more scholarly articles on Wikipedia have been cribbed.) And that I still have those volumes, if the electricity should fail.

None of my own personal experience in this regard has anything to do with you, of course. I am sorry to have troubled you in the first place. I am sure you are doing good work. I am sure Wikipedia does many good things for considerable numbers of people. Perhaps it has simply grown so large and so bureaucratic that only numbers matter, and not individuals. Makulele (talk) 23:13, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Postscript

I see in Wikipedia's inner pages the constant charge of "sockpuppetry." I assume this to mean that agent A assumes a disguise or false name, a sock, in order to promote him- or herself anonymously, in a Wikipedia page ostensibly about B but really promoting A.

If I am correct about the meaning of the term, then I am certainly guilty of it, and perhaps that is what this "blocked" business is all about. Years ago a friend suggested that I put up a Wikipedia entry for "Jared Carter," which is who I am, since everyone else was doing it. And also since it seemed at the time about as harmless as having a web site or a blog, both opportunities of which are available for free on other web venues.

I did so, and used the name Makulele because I was instructed to do so. I have endeavored to make it an honest, informative page about my work in poetry. It makes no false or exaggerated claims. If it is still regarded as sockpuppetry, however, simply because I wrote it, then Wikipedia is quite right to block my access, and I apologize for the infringement.

My only request would be that I would be allowed to take down that page. Or that someone on the staff would take it down, and then cancel my Makulele account, so that I would have no further involvement with Wikipedia. Unfortunately I cannot seem to do either at present because I am blocked.

Indeed, if sockpuppetry is at the bottom of this, then I think someone at Wikipedia should have the common courtesy to say so, and simply make the Jared Carter page and the Makulele account disappear. That would save us all a great deal of time.Makulele (talk) 00:00, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:07, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

March 2017
Hello. Your recent edit to Windfall, Indiana appears to have added the name of a non-notable entity to a list that normally includes only notable entries. In general, a person or organization added to a list should have a pre-existing article before being added to most lists. If you wish to create such an article, please first confirm that the subject qualifies for a separate, stand-alone article according to Wikipedia's notability guideline. Thank you. Evking22 (talk) 00:25, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

October 2017
Hello, I'm John from Idegon. I noticed that you made a change to an article, Elwood, Indiana, but you didn't provide a reliable source. It's been removed and archived in the page history for now, but if you'd like to include a citation and re-add it, please do so! If you need guidance on referencing, please see the referencing for beginners tutorial, or if you think I made a mistake, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. John from Idegon (talk) 01:45, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

January 2020
Hello. Your recent edit to Elwood, Indiana appears to have added the name of a non-notable entity to a list that normally includes only notable entries. In general, a person, organization or product added to a list should have a pre-existing article before being added to most lists. If you wish to create such an article, please first confirm that the subject qualifies for a separate, stand-alone article according to Wikipedia's notability guideline. Thank you. John from Idegon (talk) 01:05, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

January 2020
[[Hi, John, Makulele here.  In October 18 I posted Harold Fey's name on the Elwood IN site.  You took it down and explained there was "no reliable source" for Fey.

A month or so ago I put Fey up again, this time with a link to his obituary in the Chicago Trib. I notice you are still letting that stand, so the "reliable source" seems to have been acceptable to you.

A few days ago I noticed that the distinguised Christian magazine that Fey edited for eight years, The Christian Century, had no link to the existing Wikipedia page about that important religious journal. So I added it, assuming such a link would be helpful to any reader who may have consulted Fey's obituary in the Trib, but who may not have been familiar with the magazine itself.

And now you seem to have removed that link. Why? As for Fey being a "non-notable entity" compared with a oouple of people on that list, I couldn't disagree more. Fey obviously had a long and distinguished career as a clergyman and social activist. He was also an early liberal advocate for Native Americans.

In contrast, that guy Wattles, on the Elwood list, was an obscure crackpot. Check it out. Wattles is interesting, and for that reason deserves to be on the list, but as a minor oddity, not any sort of notable person. A hundred years later he's still a crackpot. As Fey most certainly was not. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Wattles's books are clearly moonshine and, like phrenology or astrology, have no real credibility at all. The Christian Century is still in business today and is widely respected. I think Fey's inclusion now appearing on the Elwood IN page list of notables deserves a link to the Christian Century's Wikipedia page.]]
 * You don't know how to even post on a talk page; it doesn't suprise me you have no clue as to the existence of guidelines and policies on content of notable people lists. When you are informed enough to edit on settlement articles, gimme a hollar. This content will continue to be opposed until you create a Wikipedia biography on the subject, and not just by me. And frankly, no-one here gives a damn about your opinions. We operate on cited facts from reliable sources. Don't waste other editor's time with this drivel. You've been here plenty long enough to know how this works. John from Idegon (talk) 02:38, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

You're right. Sorry to have wasted your time. Good luck to you.