Suppose I should say a brief something since some of
the posts here talk about me. I have been caustic and
acerbic at the Wikipedia over the years, though in fits and
starts I am trying to take it down a few notches. So, yea,
I'm quite aware that I'm not the best poster-child for any
sort of movement or change or whatnot. I dived into
Gamergate after hearing about some of the really awful
things that were being said about Zoe Quinn elsewhere,
thinking (correctly) that her Wiki bio was going to be a
harassment magnet. As far as I am concerned, there is no
debate; if one identifies as a "pro-Gamergater", than that
one stands side-by-side with the harassment that was done
under the hashtag. I did not want to allow these people to
direct the narrative of the Gamergate article.
So, yes, sometimes one loses one's cool when dealing
with dirtbags from 8chan/reddit. However, it is a shame
that we who kept the hordes at bay, while being harassed by 8chan/reddit and hell, harassed
by Jimmy Wales himself for a time til his eyes belatedly
opened, were not cut a little more slack. We were doing
something right (with using some wrong words/tone at
times) and got the same treatment as a bunch of throwaway accounts.
That is the narrative
that the mainstream media
seems to be running with, and while it isn't accurate for
them to say "feminists and women were banned", they are
still correctly portraying the WIkipedia's Arbcom as doing a pretty bad thing
here.
-t