I used to be a football (soccer) referee! Watch any top-class football match in England, and you will see at least two incidents where groups of players converge on the official and abuse him. I got quite used to that. The trick is to develop a way of handling it which allows you to smile at their ignorance, and step back from the 'heat'.

If a house is on fire, do you go into the middle of it? How's that for philosophy? -)

Like I say, as long as your own behaviour is impeccable (faultless), your tormentors' ignorance will be found out by the people that matter. You can still choose friends within Wikipedia - you just have to recognise who the true ones are.

IP range: A single IP address comprises of a series of four numbers spaced by dots to form an internet protocol, which looks like this - 240.83.17.116 for example. A complete IP range for the above would be - 240.83.0.0 to 240.83.255.255 for example. When a Wikipedia ban is applied, any user who tries to edit from a computer in the ISPs range above would find it impossible to open an edit, although they could still look at Wikipedia.

Good luck. (chew-fat)(eds)