 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
If an editor has been blocked, and their unblock request isn't going well, the community might begin to give up and consider whether the user can be unblocked at all, or whether to extend the block to a longer block or even a ban.
That's not something the community wants or enjoys, but people are human and patience doesn't last forever. Various users who habitually "act up" are demonstrating they aren't really here to write an encyclopedia or that they temperamentally cannot work well within community consensus about appropriateness of edits and behavior toward other editors on Wikipedia.
But this is not true of all editors who have gotten into some trouble. Some users initially find it hard to understand what's needed in a discussion about their conduct, and when they don't understand, they try to argue their way out or just react with melodramatic butt-hurt. Conditioned by habits formed on social media and online debate forums and not yet unlearned in their Wikipedia interactions, they act in a way that's well-intended ("I just want to get back to editing") and which feels reasonable to them ("I need to defend myself"), but which just makes everything worse for them.
If that's you, and you have been blocked, and it's going badly, and people are starting to sound like they are giving up on you, and you truly want to behave but everything you say with the aim of putting it right just makes it worse, then this essay is for you.