Wikipedia Declares War On Women, Gives Anti-Feminist Males Control Over Gender And Sexuality Entries

[KamaAina]

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/01/24/wikipedia-declares-war-on-women-gives-anti-feminist-males-control-over-gender-and-sexuality-entries/

The anti-feminist GamerGate war rages on, and now Wikipedia has joined the sexist pigs by barring female editors from working on entries that deal with women’s issues, effectively giving control of these entries to the He-Man woman haters club.

As you’ll recall, GamerGate centers around sexist and misogynistic attacks against women in the gaming industry. Since August 2014, a group consisting of male gamers have targeted females in the industry with threats of violence and harassment, including rape and death threats.

It’s a small group of anti-female gamers who are leading the anonymous assaults from sites such as 4Chan and Reddit, but it appears the seventh most popular website on the planet has decided to aid their war on women.

This week, Wikipedia’s male-dominated Arbitration Committee voted to ban five female editors from contributing to any entry on the site that has to do with women. That’s right, Wikipedia has declared war on women and feminism in favor of sexist a**holes. One editor even refers to these women as the Five Horsemen of the apocalypse. How very “neutral” of them, right?

[seabeyond]

1. i stopped using wiki a couple years ago, seeing definitions change to mra voice, with feminist

issues

[Nye Bevan]

18. Here's the current Wikipedia summary of Gamergate.

The Gamergate controversy, centering on a debate about sexism in video game culture, came to public attention in August 2014 as a result of sexist and misogynistic attacks targeting a number of women in the video game industry, including game developers Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu, cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian, and others. These attacks, which were often performed under the #gamergate hashtag or by people connected to it, included online harassment and death threats and were frequently coordinated and promoted within subforums of virtual communities such as Reddit and 8chan.

Self-identified supporters of the Gamergate movement say they are concerned with ethical concerns in video game journalism. However, the unorganized movement has been denounced by most commentators and viewed as merely enabling the harassment, with the movement's stated concerns considered unfounded, trivial, conspiracy theories, or unrelated to ethics.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy

Does this seem excessively biased to you?

[Bonobo]

22. Answering that question would require an admission that this OP is BS.

So my guess is there will not be an answer forthcoming.

It seems that the entry you quoted goes well out of its way to identify the Gamergaters as hiding behind the pretense of concern over ethical questions in video game journalism.

And THAT is the whole ball of wax. I will requote what you already did, but in bold and italics with the hope that some of those shouting the loudest may actually read it and decide for themselves whether Wikipedia has suddenly become an MRA stronghold:

Self-identified supporters of the Gamergate movement say they are concerned with ethical concerns in video game journalism. However, the unorganized movement has been denounced by most commentators and viewed as merely enabling the harassment, with the movement's stated concerns considered unfounded, trivial, conspiracy theories, or unrelated to ethics.

[NaturalHigh]

36. I'm genuinely curious.

What definitions did you see "change to mra voice"? Considering what I know about the Wikipedia editing process, I would be very surprised if you could point to even one.

[geek tragedy]

2. Just like the GOP Congress. nt

[11 Bravo]

3. That blows straight past "bad optics" and directly into the realm of ...

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

What in the world are those jackasses thinking?

[NuclearDem]

4. Fuck GamerGate.

They give the rest of us gamers a bad name.

[KamaAina]

5. Seriously.

The gamer I know best happens to be female.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

19. ^^^

This. Fuck GamerGate and anyone who thinks it's "actually about ethics in gaming journalism". It never was. It never will be.

[Bonobo]

23. Indeed, fuck Gamer Gate. But Wikipedia is blameless here as far as I can see.

So I would add "Fuck people behind this kind of hysterical overblown BS of a headline".

Read the Wiki entry and it is clear that the charge is unfair.

[Maedhros]

6. I am vehemently opposed to the GamerGate anti-feminists.

That said, is it possible that the Wikipedia panel voted to ban the five female editors because they were violating Wikipedia's terms of service, rather than because of some anti-feminist bias on behalf of the panel?

The article did not mention what behavior prompted the ban. For example, if the editors posted personal attacks or outright disinformation, that would warrant a ban.

Some clarification would be helpful.

[Lancero]

12. Unless Wikipedias ToS prohibits women from editing articles...

I don't see what they could have violated.

If they violated anything, then that information would have been released as justification for the ban.

Just men stripping women of their voice. So much for 'neutrality'.

[Maedhros]

13. I'm sure that Wikipedia has guidelines for banning bad actors.

People who deface Holocaust pages with anti-semitic slurs, for example.

I think the assumption that the Wikipedia panel acted specifically to "strip women of their voice" is unproven. It may very well be true, but there is not enough information presented to make that case.

[Lancero]

15. With how broadly they ruled, it's pretty much what happened.

[Maedhros]

20. It looks like this is the Wikipedia rule relevant to this situation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/GamerGate/Proposed_decision&oldid=643277787

Battlefield conduct

2) Wikipedia is a reference work, not a battlefield. Each and every user is expected to interact with others civilly, calmly, and in a spirit of cooperation. Borderline personal attacks and edit-warring are incompatible with this spirit. Use of the site to pursue feuds and quarrels is extremely disruptive, flies directly in the face of our key policies and goals, and is prohibited. Editors who are unable to resolve their personal or ideological differences are expected to keep mutual contact to a minimum. If battling editors fail to disengage, they may be compelled to do so through the imposition of restrictions.

I read through the entries covering the banned editors here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/GamerGate/Proposed_decision#Ryulong_.28remedies.29

Here is a sample entry:

While I understand where the opposers are coming from, this is not any ordinary topic. In NBSB, we have a prolific editor who has made about 500 edits to the Gamergate controversy article, and over 2300 (yes, 2300) more to its talk page. They have also made around 700 edits to this case. This is evidence of deep investment. Simply put, it is difficult to imagine how a person can be part of the problem one day, and part of the solution the next. Furthermore, it is difficult to imagine that such a determined editor can met their editing opponent half-way to resolve an editing dispute. Our role is to get the article back to normal as rapidly as possible and we will not do that by handing it back to the poor admins having failed to pass an obvious remedy. Roger Davies talk 00:33, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

It appears that these editors were banned because of "edit warring" with the GamerGate people. Whether that was a result of the misogyny of the Wikipedia staff is open for debate.

Were I involved in the decision I would not have ruled so broadly.

ON EDIT: This sentence in the finding:

Our role is to get the article back to normal as rapidly as possible

is where I take issue with Wikipedia. For the GamerGate article, "normal" may very well be filled with misogynistic distortions by the GamerGate editors. There is a problem if GG editors, pretending to be "civil", post thinly-veiled bigotry and passionate rebuttal is censored as "uncivil."

[daredtowork]

26. Wikipedia has long used Pseudo-Neutrality and Obscure-rule Mongering

To bully women off articles. Wikipedia gangs out to win "edit wars" were frankly the stronghold of GamerGaters years before there was GamerGate. The lame WikiStress page was developed to help people "cope" with their behavior, but what would have helped a lot more was for someone to see how, in the theoretical democracy of crowd-sourcing, women were easily marginalized, bullied, and dominated by these organized male groups who played Wikipedia like a "game" and enjoyed exploiting it's petty "rules".

The knowledge that "rational pose" that has captured the place of power is phony and the rules are being twisted and manipulated creates anger among the people being marginalized, and often creates responses that those in power want to suppress (what DU likes to call "disruptive Meta&quot . That's probably what went on here - as in the comment above, "civility" can read as thinly-veiled sneering and bigotry (especially if you just saw someone's evil Wikipedia planz on 4Chan 5 minutes ago...).

Anyway, Wikipedia is a bastion of the Gamergate 'tude. That's why it has never had a large female editorship. It has been since it's inception. Someone needs to staple this memo to the forehead of Jimmy Wales.

[Maedhros]

33. I have no feelings for Wikipedia one way or another.

My reading of their decision is that they made a grave error, but I don't see evidence of outright misogyny.

As you point out, there is a history behind the recent incident of which I am not familiar. I'm probably missing some context.

[daredtowork]

34. It is hard to tell from the Guardian article

There's also a note at the bottom saying the article has been edited. The original suggested the "feminists" were all banned and the Gamergaters left alone. The problem with Wikipedia, however, is general - it's not with that one article. And, IMHO, the same problem would develop in any context where there is crowd-sourcing (anarchy/gang-rule), a deep rule set (that can be "gamed&quot , and an underlying culture of science-rational-poseur-putdowning of the Other.

If that last point seems like I'm against science - I'm not. I'm against the tendency of men to be identified with science and to automatically gain the upper-hand and the authority of "neutrality" from that. The reason this is especially associated with Wikipedia is they used to have a "Not Neutral Point of View" tag that was used in edit wars to condemn anything that was critique/other, even if it was sourced. Whole articles could be slapped with NPOV at the top, and it was difficult to get this removed. Anything that is controversial will have this problem. The white male privileged pov will be scientific and authoritative - everyone elses will be "not neutral".

To give you some insight into the distortion of perspective we are talking about here - just a couple of months ago a disabled performance artist asked me to help him because his entry in Wikipedia was being questioned. He had a considerable body of work, media coverage, a play performed at the Kennedy Center, work in an online exhibit at the Smithsonian, and his papers archived at a world class university. He was an important voice in the independent living movement. I had to ARGUE for his notability. Several times. Do you think anyone has to argue for an entry on the latest cool anime? "Neutral" at Wikipedia is what the gangs who rule there think is "notable".

[Maedhros]

35. Agreed - Wikipedia is fundamentally flawed. [n/t]

[Maedhros]

32. They were censored because of the excessive number of edits they had made to the site.

This was explained. Claiming that the censure was entirely because of their gender is begging the question.

Again, I don't agree with Wikipedia's actions in this regard, but I think it's more a case of them making a big error rather than calculated misogyny.

[Recursion]

25. It's the first step of a multi-step byzantine process; nobody is as of yet banned

ArbCom gets to make recommendations that are, generally, then ignored for a few years, at which point the next step happens, which is a differently-named committee.

[joeglow3]

7. On the surface, that sounds like bull shit

However, I also noticed the article was kind of light on specifics and facts. Does anyone else have something about this that is more substantive.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

8. Now there's a wonderfully biased and non-loaded article...

And so full of evidence...

[Lancero]

14. Here's another

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/23/wikipedia-bans-editors-from-gender-related-articles-amid-gamergate-controversy

One key thing said - "feminists are to be purged en bloc from the encyclopedia"

Most of the information from the articles is taken from this writeup, done by Wikipedia editor Mark Bernstein, over the decision - http://www.markbernstein.org/Jan15/Infamous.html

One line though from that writeup that not a lot of articles bother to mention - "Liberals are the new Scientologists as far as Arbcom is concerned"

[daredtowork]

28. One thing this article skates over

For the last few years Wikipedia has had pretensions toward becoming a "real" encyclopedia. New articles need to be approved. The bar to get an article on a living person has been substantially raised. A lot of articles seem to be curated and managed rather than "crowd-sourced".

Like American democracy itself, there is to be the "appearance of crowd-sourcing", using crowd-sourced materials submitted over the years, but the new Wikipedia is to be crafted and tailored and curated by experts. I think there are a number of people with Wikipedia scholarships at academic institutions doing the crafting and locking the "important" articles...?

So a lot of Wikipedia's political shading will be in the hands of who gets the "final edit" on these article.

[Waiting For Everyman]

9. I know next to nothing about this controversy

except that it exists, because I'm not a gamer. But I just finished reading a whole, long article about it on Wikipedia which appears to me to be 99.9% favorable to the women and critical of those harassing them, so... I don't quite get what's supposed to be going on. Link below, if others care to see for themselves...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy

I don't see the "war on women" in that at all, so if it isn't there in an article specifically about Gamergate then where would one expect to see it, exactly? If it has no reflection in the articles and it's only in the fact of those five particular women being dropped from editing, that decision may have been valid or unfair but whatever else it is, it certainly doesn't constitute a war on women.

The OP article links back to a largely similar one from Gawker, and from what I read on the Wiki piece, I gather that Gawker has itself had some involvement or role of its own in the controversy in some way. I don't know what that says, but it doesn't make the allegations more credible for me.

While I sincerely sympathize with the women who are being threatened by the Gamergaters as described, and that fact that they ARE being bullied in such a manner seems entirely evident, I am not prepared based on this piece to take up pitchforks against Wikipedia as the OP article and its link are clearly trying to persuade readers to do.

I'm aware that there are seemingly valid criticisms about Wikipedia's accuracy on various subjects, but I have to say that on the subjects that I do know a lot about first-hand, their articles have been very well done. So credit where credit is due. It is often a useful site, certainly as worthwhile as lots of others.

I won't be joining the outrage-at-Wikipedia bandwagon just yet, but if more emerges from this story which changes my impression of it, I'll see when / if it happens.

[Starry Messenger]

10. I never use Wiki for anything but the most surface definitions.

Too compromised by agendas.

[Lancero]

11. Dealing with the credit card company is a pain...

But I think I'm going to call them and do a charge back for my recent donation to them. And have them charge back previous donations if possible.

[Jesus Malverde]

16. Seems to be a misunderstanding of how wikipedia works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/GamerGate/Proposed_decision#Proposed_motions

[mythology]

27. It's not a misunderstanding

It's leaping to a conclusion based on what somebody wants to be true. The case against these particular editors is pretty strong based on the link you posted.

But to say that Wikipedia is out to get the feminists makes for a juicier headline and thus more clicks. It also works great if instead of being interested in something approaching truth, the author is more interested in pushing an agenda.

[daredtowork]

31. Well you can cloak it in your media theory

But women who have actually edited Wikipedia know the truth.

The problem is that the boys who were gaming at the bottom rose to do the "arbitration" at the top. I'm sure it all looks perfectly neutral to them when they freeze the edit war after the GamerGate side has established their "vision of the article".

[blackcrow]

17. anyone who thinks Wikipedia is gender unbiased

has not been editing there. I finally gave up after seeing article after article about notable women deleted, while articles about men far less notable were left in.

[joeglow3]

21. Do you have examples?

[daredtowork]

29. I haven't regularly edited wikipedia since around 2007

It became such a massive waste of time. 99% of my time was spent edit warring with boys playing "I am more NPOV than thou" and who had time to read up on these super obscure rules. And they were OBVIOUSLY GAMERS playing Wikipedia LIKE A GAME. I've pointed this out from time to time over the years, and sometimes when I see articles about sexism at Wikipedia, I drop a note to the journalists.

When GamerGaters made a tour of the comments here, and I tried to warn the largely oblivious DU about what they were up to, I listed Wikipedia among other known hangouts. There is a certain type a guy that likes to try to use rules to domineer over other people, and Wikipedia is a FEAST for that type of guy.

[Lancero]

24. I've been following a Wikipedia editors site after hearing about this...

http://www.markbernstein.org/

Has a number of intresting writeups on this ruling, including information about how Wikipedia's heavy handed tactics against fellow editiors who are speaking out against the ruling.

[shenmue]

30. Sue these people