st want to make it clear that don't consider myself to be a feminist, whatever that is.  I was not a member of GGTF and have never edited in the topic of gender.  I saw the disruptions on the page, and tried to give some support and validation to the only admin I saw trying to deal with the situation. When the ANI discussions seemed like they had gone on for too long, I tried to use my position as an uninvolved editor to get them to agree to a voluntary topic ban.  I'm pretty much of a newbie with regards to ANI and have no experience at all with topic bans at all, so maybe I was too naive in thinking that users could just talk things out and come to some agreement.  If I had succeeded, there would not have been a case.

At the time, I was in the process of deleting my unnecessary sub-pages and storing them off site, as I had decided to  retire.  On a whim, I asked for an RFA review from an admin who was offering to do them, remembering that Kevin Gorman had a successful RFA after working with KillerChihuahua on Men's Rights issues.   After seeing the comments on the RFA review, I started to wonder if my Wikipedia experience had really been as negative as I remembered it.  Incidentally, this admin had seen my name on the Gender Gap case, but did not even consider that anyone might take the accusations against me seriously. 

It's telling that the diffs that were presented about me in the Gender Gap case had nothing to do with gender or with GGTF.  They were copy-pasted from the statement of an individual whose disruptions the Arbitration committee had been asked to investigate.  The committee even copied his error in citing BADNAMES policy.

It's clear to me that the Foundation has reached some kind of Seldon Crisis--if I may borrow a page from Isaac Asimov-- with off-site meatpuppets, and the arbitration committee is not able to deal with it.  This page is instructive: http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2lxw4x/effort_gamergates_latest_wikipedia_war_shows_how/ 

GamerGate's latest "Arbitration Request" is 15,000 words and climbing. That's about 60 typed, double-spaced pages. That's not counting the dozens (hundreds?) of hyperlinks you have to read to digest it.

It owes its size to 8chan canvasing for "meatpuppets" to target specific editors.

Their users dutifully dredged up countless old, investigated and already settled accusations, and material not appropriate for Arbitration....

But perhaps the main takeaway?

This is a typical day in a 3-month ordeal on Wikipedia. It must be exhausting, which GG must know...

Yes, it is exhausting, especially if you have already stopped editing and have many pressing things in real life.   Even if you come out with your reputation intact, you will never get those three months of your life back. 

The Arbitration Committee is being expected to do too much here.  The arbs are real individuals, who, in many cases, have had their real life identities ferreted out. And they are volunteers.  They cannot possibly be expected to investigate these Gamergate individuals who are so well organized off-site, and who are adept at issuing death threats, and getting campus events cancelled for security threats.  At this point, all the  Arbcom can do, as they did in the Gender Gap case, is to ignore the mountains of diffs, and make scapegoats of good faith editors.  The Foundation needs to step in here, and protect its editors, not only from the Gamer Gaters, but from the Arbitration Committee, which is being asked to do the impossible without any resources.  


On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 8:12 PM, Tarc . <tarc@hotmail.com> wrote:

   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


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