Wikipedia:My little brother did it
 | This page is intended as humor. It is not, has never been, nor will ever be, a Wikipedia policy or guideline. Rather, it illustrates standards or conduct that are generally not accepted by the Wikipedia community. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Blaming disruptive edits made from your account on your little brother or anyone else may seem like a good idea, but it isn't. It's a very common excuse, and we have no way of verifying it, and won't bother to try. You are responsible for all edits made from your account. |
If you've been blocked for vandalism, you can always appeal your block. But unfortunately, vandals usually find that abusive administrators will refuse to unblock vandals or even go so far as to prevent further appeals by protecting their talk pages or modifying the block. Rest assured, however, there is one sure-fire way to get yourself unblocked, and back to messing up articles for fun. Just blame your little brother!
Why blaming your little brother works
Since owning up to the vandalism yourself would obviously never work, you're stuck blaming someone else for it. The best people to blame, of course, would be your family members, since they could easily be on the same computer you're using. Chances are, they're not on Wikipedia anyway, so they'll never know. You can't lay the blame on an older sibling or your parents, because they're supposed to be more mature and beyond "that sort of thing." Girls are usually too prim and proper to do the sort of things a vandal would do, so you'll never be able to convince anyone that your sister was the one who ruined those articles. That, of course, leaves you with the little brother. Younger children and boys are particularly troublesome, so logic would lead one to believe that a young boy would be especially devious, and would certainly be the sort to replace articles with "poop" and other inappropriate words. Perfect!
Another good scapegoat is your cat, particularly if you created an article deleted as patent nonsense.
But what if I don't have a little brother?
So what? You're lying anyway; just pretend you have one. The administrator looking at your unblock request has no idea how many siblings you have. Better still, they're supposed to assume good faith, and since we've picked the perfect person to blame, they'll have no choice but to take your word for it! You'll get even more points if you promise never to let your brother on your computer again because of what he did. Bang! Instant unblock, and you're home free (until of course, you vandalize another article, and you've already promised to not let your brother back on the computer ever again. However, no one ever said that you don't have two little brothers!)
What if the admin knows about the little brother excuse?
Claim to be a teacher who was showing their class why you can't trust Wikipedia! We love it when people disrupt the site to prove a point, we won't just disregard your claim as a childish lie, and we think any action taken by a teacher is justified. In fact, if you really are a teacher, some more brilliant lesson plans similar to vandalizing Wikipedia to demonstrate its unreliability include:
- teaching racial equality by addressing minority students only with ethnic slurs,
- discouraging sexual harassment by having everyone in the class spank each other,
- teaching healthy dieting by having students take the cinnamon challenge or even the Tide Pod challenge,
- discouraging gang violence by joining a gang,
- teaching the importance of fire safety by setting the entire school on fire.
Clearly, vandalizing Wikipedia is a much better option than explaining that:
- Wikipedia is not a stable source,
- Wikipedia is written by volunteers (not accredited scholars),
- Wikipedia avoids original research,
- Wikipedia only summarizes academic and journalistic sources (which are good sources for research papers).
Seriously, though...
Don't try to lay the blame on someone else. All we know is that your IP address or account made edits which it shouldn't have – we can't tell who's on your end of the computer screen or mobile device. As you might guess from the existence of this essay, this is a very common unblock request, and is not accepted. In fact, if you are a registered user, this guarantees you won't be unblocked, because if true this means your account has been compromised and must remain blocked for security and attribution reasons. Please take a look at some of the links below for more information on how to properly request unblocking.
Insulting the admin's intelligence is the last thing a blocked person should want to do, and in fact it often goes to show how a person has failed to change and in many ways shows why a person shouldn't be unblocked.