User blog comment:Sannse/How to Get Unblocked/@comment-3542404-20140717165903/@comment-2170536-20140717175212

You are correct, I personally know of several instances where the punishment has not fit the crime, usually due to either overzealous admins or personality conflicts (and sometimes due to relationships outside the wiki). That is unfortunately the nature of things when human beings are involved; sometimes people are unable or unwilling to separate emotions from their decision-making when they are in a position of authority or power over another individual.

That being said, this guide is still applicable to those situations. Whether right or wrong, you (referring to the person being banned) are still the one on the outside looking in, and unless you don't care about coming back (see 'time to move on'), the only real choices you have are to reason with that admin (see 'talk to the admin who banned you') or talk to someone else about their inappropriate behavior (see 'contact another admin from the same wikia for a second opinion'). If the ban truly is egregious, odds are the second admin will help you. But, if there really are two sides to the story (which there almost always are), you really ought to understand exactly what you did to provoke the ban (see 'take an honest look at your actions') and own up to it (see 'apologise sincerely and genuinely').

No one is saying that you should apologize for something you didn't do. But I don't know of a single case where even the inappropriate bans were made without some action (however small) that violated some rule or another by the banned party. Was the admin in those cases just looking for an excuse? Very often, yes. But just because the admin overreacted doesn't mean there wasn't an initial infraction, and the banned party should at least own up to that.