Ken Mampel for several days was one of the most active Wikipedia editors on Hurricane Sandy’s page. He was soon called out for taking down mentions of global warming and climate change as it pertained to the storm. Now, reports are that Mampel was temporarily banned from editing on the site due to “edit warring.”
TheBlaze reported that Mampel believed global warming didn’t have a place on Hurricane Sandy’s page as scientists couldn’t prove that climate change would cause such an event, even though many at the time were discussing a connection. Even Wikipedia Foundation’s Head of Communications Jay Walsh was reported as saying Mampel’s edits were in “good faith.” Eventually, global warming and its potential connection to fueling storms like Sandy was included on Wikipedia.
Popular Science reported Tuesday that Mampel was banned from editing for 24 hours due to the editing war that ensued on the hurricane’s collaborative online encyclopedia page. Popular Science pointed to a discussion board Mampel had regarding the ban under his Kennvido account.
Here’s a notice of his block and appeal, which was denied:
The block was instituted because Mampel was pushing his point of view "which is apparent in the continuous reversions and the edit summaries." The user Bbb23 wrote that it "tried to advise Ken in this discussion about the policy issues involved in edit-warring, but he simply refused to grasp (or was unable to) the principles involved in collaborative editing. The editing on the article is difficult enough without this kind of disruption."