Wikipedia:My little brother did it

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. Just blame your little brother!

Why blaming your little brother works

My little brother did it, I swear! Just look at the mess he's made!

Since owning up to the vandalism yourself would obviously never work, you're stuck with blaming someone else for it. You could blame your friend, and some people do, but more likely you will decide that the best person to blame would be one of 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 probably won't try to lay the blame on an older sibling, cousin, or your parents, because they're supposed to be more mature and beyond "that sort of thing." That, of course, leaves you with your little brother. Younger children and boys are particularly troublesome, so logic would lead one to believe that a young 5–8-year-old boy would be especially devious and naughty, and would certainly be the sort to replace articles with "poop", "peepee", and other inappropriate words as well as nonsensical gibberish. Perfect!

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, you never said that you only had one little brother...

What if the admin knows about the little brother excuse?

The "My kitten did it" excuse may also be useful, if you created an article deleted as patent nonsense.

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 playing with matches at a gas station.

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, but rather lose further privileges if they haven't already.

See also

• Wikipedia:Give 'em enough rope
• Wikipedia:Guide to appealing blocks#Examples of bad unblock requests
• Wikipedia:Sarcasm is really helpful
• Wikipedia:Compromised accounts
• On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog
• Shaggy defense