User:ArturZ

I'm also at Wikipedia and at this site and at the Wiktionary and at Wikinews.


 * http://creatingminds.org/quotes/education.htm
 * Project that intends to study conformity among other things
 * Wikipedia arbitration committee
 * Software Freedom

I'm trying to change my user name to Artur.

On Wikiversity, I may be able to help on topics about Brazil and the Portuguese language, being Brazilian as I am. If you want to learn something about those subjects, or create a project about them, or do anything related to them, and want me to participate somehow, then contact me on my talk page, or ask a question at the Help Desk.

Explanation
Hi. I would like to explain some things about my behavior at Wikipedia and here. There are some people who I met at Wikipedia that I would like to read this.

Basically what I want to say is this: some very bad things happened to me before I started editing Wikipedia. Almost all of the people I trusted betrayed me and did awful things to me, and much of that was because I came out as gay to some people and other people "outed" me against my will.

I was very lonely for some time, and I would edit Wikipedia until three or four in the morning some days. Wikipedia was a place where I could interact with other people and spend time and do something. It felt terrible to be alone. Some times I would even speak to myself. There were brief thoughts of suicide, which I spoke about briefly on Wikipedia. I think this is normal in a situation of loneliness. But most of the time I was very optimistic and hopeful and I believed things would be better, and I made a great effort for everything to get better in my life.

I did not go through my edits and read them before writing this. But I know that my behavior at Wikipedia was often inappropriate. Sometimes I was stubborn and very impatient. There were some times when I thought people were attacking me that they weren't, though there were some people there that really attacked me. I was more mad at the people who treated me badly than I should have been, and I was more upset and irritated with anything bad that happened than I should have been.

Everything people said to me, either good or bad, at Wikipedia mattered a lot to me because these were practically the only people I was interacting with at the time.

I have made apologies to people on Wikipedia when I realized I had said something wrong, and I have reversed many edits when asked to do so, and changed my mind often, after reflecting and after talking to others. Still I feel it is good to write this, explaining that I was not well while editing Wikipedia. I never became crazy or anything like that, but I probably would if I had continued to be lonely for too long.

More explanation
Regarding my edits on the topic of pedophilia and my subsequent block, I have already said a lot. It is unfortunate that I would have to say things like that I'm against child abuse and that it is wrong and it would harm a child if someone would try to have sex with a child.

Since I was so blunt when having conversations on the talk pages about this and related subjects, there may be people who misinterpreted what I said, which was mostly just arguing about whether there was scientific evidence of the claims made in articles related to the subject. And saying that sexual contact between adults and children might not be inherently harmful didn't mean I would think it's acceptable for someone to actually try this!

However, I did say some stupid things just to shock people. Specifically I remember I suggested the age of consent should be 10 and I chose this number just because it was a little under the lowest existing age of consent, which is 12. If the lowest age were, say, 14, I think I would have said that it should be 12, just because I wanted to have a controversial opinion.

This subject is very sensitive, and If I could go back in time, I would not have been so blunt when talking about it. I would be much more careful, more prudent, more cautious, if I would talk about it at all. You need to be prepared psychologically to debate an issue like this, because many people have strong feelings about this and they will judge you. It's much more uncomfortable to be misunderstood and to have said stupid things about this subject than about other controversial subjects. I do like debates and I don't mind holding some opinions that are not particularly popular, but I wasn't at all prepared to get into a debate about pedophilia and all related subjects.

I really wanted to improve Wikipedia's coverage of this topic, but I was also interested in debating it for the sake of it, in shocking some people, and in creating polemics and controversies, which was immature. Artur 01:41, 9 November 2009 (UTC)