Additional updates made as of 05/31/2011:

For those who might be interested I am in the process of appealing my ban on Wikipedia.

As part of my appeal I was asked by the committee to make a full accounting of any sock puppets that I have used.  In response I have admitted to the committee that I have, in fact, employed sock puppets in violation of my ban and I have provided a complete list of the puppets I created to the subcommittee.

As part of my appeal I have pledged to leave the battleground tactics of my past behind me, and I have asked that I be judged going forward by my post-ban behavior rather than any pre-ban behaviors.  I believe the primary message to come out of the Climate Change Arbitration which took place during my absence was that battleground tactics will not be tolerated.

I am now taking that message to heart.  If I am successful at getting unblocked I plan to do the following:

• I will seek a voluntary interaction ban with any individuals with whom I have previously had any significant disagreements, and I fully intend to honor any such agreements which are mutually accepted.
• I will make a good faith effort to edit in a manner generally consistent withWP:1RR with a clear preference for resolving issues on the talk pages rather than engaging in edit warring.
• UPDATE: Both as a means of proving my sincerity and to make some measure of restitution to the community I will voluntarily restrict my article space and article talk activities for a period of 6 months from when I am unblocked to nothing but direct community service.  This will be served as a combination of (a) helping the project to reduce it’scopy edit backlog, and (b)Recent Changes Patrol to help fight vandalism.  I propose that at the end of 6 months the following four administrators review my work: MastCell, 2over0,LessHeard vanU, andLar.  If three or more of these administrators agree that I need to do more service before editing outside of these parameters I will voluntarily extend my self-imposed restriction for an additional 6 months.  If I wish to try other similar forms of community service during this period I will first ask for community approval to do so and will only do so if approved.

Much time has passed since I was banned.  It is true that I have violated my ban by employing sock puppets.  It is true that I vigorously denied that activity at the time and that I said some things which were unkind and hurtful.  I hereby apologize for having said those things.  The bottom line is that I eventually came to understand that my socking activity was wrong and I have since chosen to stop but I cannot undo what I have already done.

I would hope that my having recognized the error of my ways (both in terms of socking and employing a battleground approach to editing) would count for something in this appeal.  I clearly understand that any return to a battleground mentality will result in an immediate return to my current ban.

The committee has decided to ask for community input.  The resulting discussion ishere,here, andhere.

UPDATE:

While I have told the committee that I am intentionally avoiding any point by point rebuttals of issues being raised in the above mentioned discussions (to avoid increasing the drama level caused by my appeal) I believe that the following raises a valid and important point:

I note that he has not taken any steps to update the lies, taunts, and attacks in his previous blog entries about other editors who correctly identified his now-acknowledged sockpuppets, nor has he named his sockpuppet accounts in his blog.TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:18, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

So with that in mind I hereby publicly acknowledge that I was wrong to use sock puppets to evade my ban, and further that in my attempt to conceal my activity I did actively and unfairly lie to, taunt, and attack those who sought to expose those same activities.

To those whom I have wronged in this respect I do hereby offer my sincere apologies.  I know that an apology offers little comfort but it is the best I can do at this point.  I cannot undo what I have done on wiki.  I could delete the posts on this blog but I will instead make this public statement and link to it from each blog entry where I have made false claims.  This shall then serve as an enduring reminder of my shame in this matter.

Not all accounts which were suspected of being my sock puppets actually were.  As has been already made public on wiki I hereby acknowledge having created and used the following accounts to evade my ban: TheNeutralityDoctor (talk ·contribs),Absit invidia II (talk ·contribs), andCopyright_police (talk ·contribs).  I deny all other suspected socks and shall not discuss them further.

UPDATE:

The archived version of the above discussionis here.

Posted inWikipedia Politics