One day you ask the Oracle, "O Oracle most wise, please choose ten Wikipedia users, and tell me their stories."
And in response, thus speaks the Oracle:
- Alice is five years old. One day, she picks up her sister's iPad, which is logged in to Wikipedia, presses "edit", and types "poooooo". An over-eager admin blocks the account indefinitely. Fifteen years later, she creates a new account for a student editing project at her college.
- Bob is nine years old. One boring day, he creates an account on Wikipedia, clicks on a random article and adds "fuck shit piss". He does this to a dozen more articles before being blocked indefinitely. Five years later, he decides to create an account to improve articles about his favorite musician.
- Carol is eleven years old. She has a Wikipedia account that she's used to make a few dozen minor but helpful edits. One day, her friends gather around and urge her to add a stupid joke to TFA. She succumbs to peer pressure, and an over-eager admin blocks her indefinitely. She is humiliated. The very next day, she creates a new account, not disclosing the old one. She becomes more involved with Wikipedia over the next two years, gaining minor user rights, but never tells anyone about the old account.
- Dave is thirteen years old. He has a strong compulsion to do repetitive things. He creates hundreds of accounts, each time adding gibberish to as many pages as possible before being blocked. Over time, this becomes less and less enjoyable. He stops. A few years later, he comes back to Wikipedia, and starts rapidly (but skillfully) fixing typos instead.
- Eli is also thirteen years old. He registers an account using his full real name, and starts playing "recent changes the video game." Multiple people call him out for his sloppy reverts, but he continues making too many mistakes, and he eventually gets blocked indef. A troll stumbles across the latest ANI thread, and works out his home address, and makes a threatening phone call. He wants to get back in the good graces the community, but doesn't want to be connected with his real name, so he creates a new account, telling no one. He doesn't even tell ArbCom. This time around, he is much more careful with his reverts, and becomes a valued member of the community.
- Frank is a young adult. One day, he creates an account and writes an article about his favorite restaurant in a major city. Unfortunately, at the same, a paid editor on the same ISP is also writing articles about local businesses. He is swept in the block. His appeal fails, so he just creates a new account, but is eventually "caught" with this one too. This continues for a few more cycles, with each block appeal declined quickly, because, after all, CU data shows he is evading several blocks. Eventually, he moves to a new city, creates an account that no one notices, and becomes an administrator. He has never disrupted under any account.
- Gina is a young adult. She believes that many celebrities are beaming messages into her head using satellites, and edits Wikipedia occasionally to inform the world of this. She always uses accounts, which are all indeffed. Eventually, she obtains help, and no longer believes this. She creates a new account and begins writing high-quality pages about historical figures, but doesn't want the stigma of mental illness following her, so she tells no one of her old accounts.
- Harry is a young adult. He likes to submit extremely subtle and well-thought-out hoaxes to AFC. The kind where the online refs check out superficially, and all the important fact are cited to offline refs. Most of his drafts are accepted, but one day, someone catches on. The pages are all deleted, but no one bothers blocking his IP. He decides to start over, creating an account this time. He has created over 100 pages, mostly cited to difficult-to-find offline sources. None of the pages were "created in violation of a block or ban". None are blatant hoaxes. It would take hours to review each one.
- Ian is a grown adult. Once every week after a few beers, he picks up his phone, goes to the talk page of the controversy-of-the-week, and taps out a bigoted rant. He never creates an account. His IP is blocked each time, but it bounces over a huge mobile range and no one ever realizes that they're dealing with the same user. The continues for years. One second after the last 31-hour block expires, he creates an account, and over the next 30 days, makes 499 small but useful edits. He is not evading any active block.
- J.T. is a mystery. All day between 9:00 and 5:00 (Moscow time) he (using proxy IPs, never accounts) goes on the talk pages of various Russia-related pages and attempts to sway editors to a pro-Putin viewpoint. Occasionally these IPs are blocked, but never for long, and because he uses proxies, no one ever realizes that it is same person. One day this abruptly stops. He creates an account, and spends a few years building up trust in the community, and then successfully runs for adminship. A year later, he requests CheckUser access. He is not evading any active block, and had no previous accounts to disclose to ArbCom.