I largely agree with Sarah.
After several years taking a break from using the Checkuser tool, in early
January I decided to actively join the the team again. So, I read all the
active ArbCom cases to familarize myself with the current controversies on
Wikipedia. During my reading of the GamerGate controversy evidence,
workshop, and proposed decison I never saw this case as people who were
feminists or strong advocates for eliminating systemic bias in Wikipedia.
So, I was shocked to see it being reported that ArbCom was purging
feminists!
This is not the first dispute that has been imported into Wikipedia
English, but it is one of the biggest and worst. Right now the people who
have reported on GamerGate in the media for months are reporting on the
ArbCom case. Some of these people have pretty entrenched points of view.
This is true of both sides.
The issue of off site harassment that is happening to Wikipedia editors. is
something that need to be addressed in a broader way and not put on ArbCom to
fix because that is beyond their ability to investigate and resolve. If you
are being harassed take Sarah's advice and take a break and find something
off or on wiki to do that feeds your soul.. Life is too short to let
Wikipedia ruin your life.
There are some reasonable people who are working to keep violations of BLP
out of the articles and off the talk pages and stop the constant fighting.
These people are not getting sanctioned. I truly appreciate the work that
they are doing in the face of the harassment and negative publicity in the
media.
Sydney
Sydney Poore
User:FloNight
Wikipedian in Residence
at Cochrane Collaboration
On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 1:03 PM, Sarah Stierch <sarah.stierch(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I am now on digest mode with this mailing list. The
traffic is often too
much for me and the voice of this list is frustrating for me
sometimes..so... remember that please :)
---
I have been asked to share my thoughts by many people this morning on the
internet, here they are:
I have been editing Wikipedia for ten years and i have no clue what has
been going on with the feminist/gamergate thing. As one of the more well
known female editors i have cut back heavily on my involvement after last
year. I don't know any of the editors, personally, who "went to court" but
I have seen this stuff happen to both sides in men's rights articles in the
past.
After reviewing the Arbcom case, I don't even know who got the idea that
any of the contributing editors are feminist, per se. No one even mentions
the word, except once, when describing a subject that was "slandered" in
the gamer gate article(s).
I also don't think that the edits made to the article are overwhelmingly
feminist in nature. It appears to be just a bunch of people editing the
Wikipedia article to protect it from being a hot mess of 4chan junk.
Note: most of the "in trouble" editor's aren't that productive at
contributing feminist content to Wikipedia. I have interacted with only
four of them - Black Kite, Future Perfect at Sunrise, TarainDC and Bilby -
only one is a female in real life and I know her from GLAM editing
projects. She is the only one that I know who has actively edited feminist
topics prior to this. I actually consider Bilby an ally, but, I have never
heard him or any of the other editors blatantly identify themselves as
feminists.
From what I know, only one of the editors on the entire "trial list"
identifies out as a female.
So, it appears a bunch of editors trying to keep the article clean had to
run through the gauntlet. I don't think the end of the world has come to
any of their lives - they have plenty of other subjects of interest to keep
them busy on Wikipedia.
I also think people invest *too much* into Wikipedia to where it's what
they live for..per se. I see a lot of that in this case, and many others
that "go to court" on Wikipedia. I stopped participating on Wikipedia when
it screwed up my personal life so much, and I lost sleep over it. So...
that's my advice to anyone involved in that Arbcom case :) Go on vacation
and get another hobby and edit Wikipedia when you feel like it. It isn't
life. It's just an encyclopedia.
Sarah
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