User blog comment:Imasexysimlover/Is it goodbye?/@comment-1519608-20150715180129

I would like to encourage you to stay.

As is evident here, the "big ones" including myself have not been doing enough to make new and rising members feel welcome here. There are many reasons for this, one of which you did touch on - the sockpuppetry incidents of late. I feel they've distracted us from being open and inviting, and instead we have an automatic distrust of any new faces, for fear that they may be socks in disguise. This is a bad approach and it kills any sort of community building that should be happening, and I apologize for it.

I also want to say, where you're from never had any impact on how I looked at you. To be honest, I didn't even know where you were from until you mentioned it, and even if I had known it wouldn't have changed my opinion. You're a strong editor and are becoming part of this community, and the fact that you're from Syria doesn't matter one bit.

I've always been proud of the fact that The Sims Wiki has a wide and diverse audience, editing community and administrative team. You would assume that most of our admins and "power users" would be from the US, UK, Canada or Australia and, while there are a fair number of us that are from those places, I can point to several other users past and present that are not; we've had or have administrators from Portugal, The Philippines, South Africa, Indonesia, South Korea, as well as active and useful members from all over the world. Truly, the fact that you're from Syria or the Middle East doesn't change the fact that you're a good editor here. To assume something about you based only on where you're from would be silly, just as it would be silly for you to assume things about me because I'm from the United States.

In any case, I feel like I've been rambling a bit, so I just want to reinforce that you are welcome here, and I hope that you reconsider leaving. And if there's anything that I or others can do to make the experience better for you and others, please don't hesitate to let me know.