User talk:Jhugh95/Archives/2012/September

Confusion caused by Seipjere

Hi there; I saw your message on [[User talk:Seipjere#Help|]], and I think I can clear things up. Seipjere is one of a small number of Wikipedia editors who strongly embrace the hypothesis that vaccines or their additives cause autism in young children. Among the few remaining advocates for this position are Mark and David Geier, a father-and-son team involved in publishing some poorly-received research in the area and offering untested, unnecessary, and potentially dangerous treatments to autistic children based on their hypotheses. (Mark Geier's medical license was finally suspended last year and fully revoked this summer. David Geier isn't a physician, and was charged last year with practicing medicine without a license.)

It appears that one of the Geiers or someone connected with their work – or at the very least, strongly supportive of it – edited Wikipedia using the IP address 69.138.225.97 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) waaaaaay back in 2006. Since that IP address belongs to Comcast, it is likely that the Geiers stopped editing from that IP and were assigned a new address the next time they cycled the power on their cable modem; at that time the IP address would have been returned to Comcast's pool and eventually assigned to another random individual. Since then, there have probably several different individuals who have used that IP address, each having it for a few weeks or months at a time. Right now, six years later, it looks like you're the very first one of those lucky individuals to edit Wikipedia. That means that you would get the bright orange 'you have new messages' banner for any messages left on that IP address' user talk page (User talk:69.138.225.97) at any time since the last person visted that talk page—probably six years ago.

Coming back to Seipjere's message, he has recently been canvassing the talk pages of any or all editors he can find who might at any point in Wikipedia's history have supported or endorsed his preferred fringe views linking autism to vaccination. Seipjere has been leaving friendly messages for these individuals, many of whom have not apparently edited Wikipedia for some months or even years. His message to the 'Geiers' on the IP talk page is a particularly extreme example, being in response to edits more than half a decade old.

Most experienced Wikipedia editors (including all Wikipedia adminstrators) are fully aware that residential IP addresses provided by large ISPs are not static, and tend to be reassigned from one individual or household to another on an irregular basis. You can rest assured that no one except Seipjere thinks you might in any way be linked to the anti-vaccination camp or the associated editing disputes. You are welcome to edit Wikipedia while logged out and ignore any messages on your IP address' talk page that relate to years-old activity. Alternatively, you can feel free to continue to use this registered account (Jhugh95); as you've probably already gathered, logging in prevents any potential confusion about which messages are meant for whom, as only you will be making edits under this account name. As you've noticed, Wikipedia doesn't allow editing through the Tor network or open proxies because there has been just too much abuse over the years.

I can't find any indication that 69.138.225.97 is blocked or otherwise restricted from editing; aside from the perplexing talk page messages, you should be able to edit normally using it. Sorry for any confusion or distress; it's safe for you to ignore Seipjere's recent notes, as well as any years-old messages. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 07:08, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

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Ah. Thank you. I doubt I'll be making many edits; as I alluded to earlier, while I find Wikipedia a valuable resource, the syntax on the backend is too bureaucratic for my taste. I'd love to get involved in trying to keep pseudoscience out of wikipedia, but it appears to be well under control by other editors, so I'll stick to the other things the monopolize my time.

Though my IP is indeed blocked. It's not an admin block, it's a CheckUser. Which I assume is even more of a pain to get rid of. Jhugh95 (talk) 03:43, 16 September 2012 (UTC)