Wikipedia is an awesome resource, and a symbol of the age of freedom of information in which we now live. I learn something new from Wikipedia every day and I try to contribute whenever and wherever I can, so that I can help people all over the world learn something new too. I am a teacher, and in the last five years I have taught in the UK, Spain, Thailand, Pakistan and Malaysia, and my students have come from many more countries. Wikipedia has been an incredibly useful resource for my work, as well as developing my own knowledge, and this is ultimately due to the verifiability of every article, and, of course, the users who give their valuable time to ensure that every piece of information in this encyclopedia is appropriately sourced.
Unfortunately the past two years of my four and a half year life as a Wikipedian have been less than trouble-free. Despite having never intentionally broken any of Wikipedia's rules, or doing anything to abuse Wikipedia or its users, over the past couple of years a small group of users have made a concerted effort to end my involvement with Wikipedia. As a result I have been accused of "sock puppetry" on three occasions, and two of these resulted in an indefinite block, despite there being no real basis behind any of it. All of these were undone once they were looked at by independent administrators, but in an effort to avoid future repetitions, I would like to take a few moments to explain why I believe these misunderstandings have arisen.