Gamergate; a Wiki hoax; Kanye West

ThinkProgress tech reporter Lauren C. Williams wrote a long article (March 6) on how the Gamergate controversy has spilled over onto Wikipedia. Disputes regarding this video game controversy have raged for months on Wikipedia, culminating in a contentious Arbitration case which involved numerous editors and administrators, including this author. This has already received heavy media coverage, but Williams has produced what appears to be the most thorough piece of journalism about the Wikipedia controversy, including a number of original interviews.

Williams corrected the widely-reported misconception that the "Five Horsemen", the Wikipedia editors targeted by Gamergate, were feminists, noting that only one of the five was female and edited articles related to feminism, while the others were "longtime Wikipedia editors aiming to return normalcy and factual accuracy to the Gamergate pages". Williams interviewed one of them, NorthBySouthBaranof, who was topic banned by the Arbitration Committee, as well as Mark Bernstein, whose vocal blog posts about Gamergate made him a target of their ire as well. Both discussed the harassment they and others received at the hands of Gamergate. NorthbySouthBaronof complained that “I haven’t seen one note of sympathy about the harassment from anyone in ArbCom, which says, ‘We don’t care about what happens off Wikipedia.'" Williams also spoke with GorillaWarfare, noting that she was the only member of ArbCom who openly identified as female. She said "The Arbitration Committee rules only on user conduct, which is a fact that outside observers have been missing. We do not, have not, and cannot make rulings on the content of articles or the validity of users’ ideologies.”

Williams interviewed two female longtime Wikipedia editors, Amy Senger (ASenger) and Sarah Stierch (Missvain), about larger issues on the encyclopedia, including systemic bias and the gender gap. Senger said that the ArbCom decision was evidence of the former and that “the people who are more vocal and combative tend to prevail in disputes” before the Committee. Stierch spoke of "a history of hostility" on the website and said "The fact that I have to go to my volunteer ‘job’ and fear that I’m going to get yelled at by somebody and get called a nasty name...You shouldn’t have to worry about what happens in your personal life...There is no reason why anybody, regardless of gender or political beliefs, should have to go onto a website about sharing knowledge and writing an encyclopedia — which is pretty damn geeky — and get harassed while doing it. It’s absurd.” She is among those who feel that the Wikimedia Foundation is not doing enough about these issues. "They’re the hospital administrator and the lunatics are running the asylum," Stierch said.

At Slate, Amanda Marcotte responded to Williams' article by writing "On Wikipedia, Gamergate Refuses to Die" (March 6). Marcotte wrote: "In an effort to stick to Wikipedia’s touted belief in 'neutrality,' the committee decided to hand out banishments on both sides of the equation: both to people for injecting the harassing claims into pages and for the people who were trying to clean it up...Wikipedia lost the very people who were trying to guard the gates in the first place. What happens to the next victim of a Wikipedia harassment campaign if the defenders are getting squeezed out through this pox-on-both-your-houses system?" G

For more Signpost coverage on Gamergate see our Gamergate series.

At Medium, Gilad Lotan, chief data scientist at Betaworks, examines (March 7) last September's Columbian Chemicals Plant explosion hoax. The hoax, whose perpetrators are still unknown but who may be Russian, involved fake accounts on Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other services. Lotan identified AmandaGray91 as the source of a hoax article on Wikipedia attributing the fake explosion to a terrorist attack. The account, created only eight days earlier, had made previous edits to articles about Russian author Alexander Asov, the Aditya Birla Group, owner of the chemical plant, and carbon black, which is manufactured there. Lotan wrote "Wikipedia editors are a global community that has very clear rules of conduct as well as an internal authority rank. As a completely new Wikipedia editor, it is very difficult to simply add a page, especially one depicting an ISIS terror attack on US territory, and expect it to stick around for long. The page was taken down quite rapidly, as users who were led to it from tweets flagged it as potentially problematic." G

For more Signpost coverage on hoaxes see our Hoaxes series.

The Daily Beast profiles (March 4) Brian Connelly, owner of the domain loser.com, which made headlines (and a traffic spike for Wikipedia) last week when Connelly redirected it to the Wikipedia article for Kanye West, after West nearly interrupted Beck on stage at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards. (Beck first became famous in 1993 with the single "Loser".) Connelly has owned the domain since 1995 and in the past he redirected it to other targets, including sites for Governor Jim Hodges, Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, WikiLeaks, Google, and Reddit. Some of Connelly's ire is based on seeing West perform at the Bonnaroo Music Festival last year:

• Paging Doctor Wikipedia: CBC News profiles (March 11) Doc James and his fight to rid Wikipedia of medical errors. G
• St. Louis Blues: Three writers at Jezebel discuss the Wikipedia article St. Louis cuisine, which they find "Goddamned Hilarious" (March 11). They mock the article for, among other things, its regional boosterism and claiming local credit for foods including toasted ravioli, hot dogs, the waffle cone, and the hamburger. Following publication of the article, Wikipedia editors tagged or removed many of these claims. G
• Tulu incubator: The Hindu reports (March 10) on efforts by students and teachers to create articles for the Tulu Wikipedia, which is now in the incubation stage. They report that over 700 Tulu language articles have been uploaded and that they hope to reach 1000 articles soon. G
• Will the FTC ever drop the hammer on paid Wikipedia edits?: The Kernel wonders (March 8) whether the Federal Trade Commission will ever take action on paid editing of Wikipedia, given the lack of disclosure to the reader (the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use only require disclosure to the Wikimedia community). The piece, which features comments by Wikipedia consultants David King and William Beutler, had previously been published on author Simon Owens' blog. A.K.
• Truly outrageous: At Bleeding Cool, Rich Johnston reports (March 8) on the brief difficulties faced by Sophie Campbell, an artist whose credits include the current Jem and the Holograms comic book from IDW Publishing, with her Wikipedia article after she came out as transgender on March 6. G
• Sneaking through Wikipedia's notability test: Andrew McMillen, author of last month's widely circulated Backchannel profile of Giraffedata, writes "How I Snuck Through Wikipedia's Notability Test" (March 6). He compares his "ridiculously detailed" 1,905 word Wikipedia article to others; it is shorter than articles on Santa's Little Helper, Rickrolling, and spontaneous human combustion, but longer than articles on Lena Dunham, Frances McDormand, and Joe Rogan. McMillen recounts the creation of his article by JHunterJ as a stub in April 2014 and his surprise at its significant expansion by Soulparadox later that year. Following the publication of the Backchannel piece, his Wikipedia article was proposed for deletion. G
• The Inspire Campaign: Think Wikipedia is sexist?: Fast Company reports (March 5) on the Wikimedia Foundation's "Inspire" grants campaign looking for ideas to narrow the gender gap, which is also discussed in a report (March 5) on edit-a-thons in Wired. A.K.
• Wikiwand on iPhone: Venture Beat reports (March 5) that Wikiwand, a third-party skin for Wikipedia, is now available for iPhone. "It’s perhaps what a Wikipedia of 2015 should look like," the article says. Wikiwand says it will donate 30 percent of its profits to the Wikimedia Foundation. A.K.
• Who founded Wikipedia?: The Epoch Times revives (March 4) an old story, looking at how the account of Wikipedia's earliest days has differed over time, depending on when and by whom it was told. A.K.
• The Oracle of Wikipedia: At KQED, Adrienne Blaine discusses (March 6) how The Delphian Course of Reading, a ten volume series published by the Delphian Society in 1913, inspired her to contribute to Wikipedia. G
• US drug capitals according to Wikipedia edits: Quartz reports (March 3) on the American cities that have contributed the most edits to Wikipedia's articles on certain drugs. A.K.

• Coverage of Wikipedia's NSA lawsuit appears in this week's In focus section.

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== Australian Feminist Writers ==

Where are all the Australian feminist writers on Wiki? Encouraging update and creation of pages on Australian Feminist Writers. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:05, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This issue's News and Notes has a long feature on the various Wikipedia events for International Women's Day and WikiWomen's History Month. Gamaliel (talk) 18:45, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Andrew McMillen

Regarding Andrew McMillen, how predictable and expected is it that a writer who criticizes Wikipedia finds his own article nominated for deletion...I'd be more surprised if it wasn't nominated. Some Wikipedians have incredibly thin skins and react poorly to anyone notable who criticizes the project, whether or not the criticism is justified. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:50, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Hey, I have an article even though I shouldn't!" "Oops, thanks for pointing that out! Let's correct that error!" What were you expecting? DS (talk) 19:20, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Snore...

Blah blah blah radical liberal hogwash blah. Blah blah blah radical conservative hogwash blah.

Seriously society? You still haven't realised that radical conservatives and radical liberals are equally foolish? How?

I tire much of this "epic battle" (sarcasm) between the radical conservatives and radical liberals that never seems to halt for even a moment.

I am starting to see why the Rastafarians call politics "politricks". Because it's all just a bunch of nonsense.

People should be judging individuals by their own merits. Anything less then that is indicative of poor judgment and stark bias.

So why can't we all just take a break from sparring every second and just sit down, have a glass of root beer, and give one another friendly hugs?

I use the Web much less now because of these silly political skirmishes that are going on within it. Where I live, everybody laughs at this silliness for the most part. The Web is becoming a mindless ball of silliness, and it's hard to take anything said within it seriously when people are arguing over dumb stuff.

It is one thing to wish to weaken the systematic bias of Wikipedia, but it is another to call the ArbCom case in question a "political injustice"; that borders on WP:DIVA territory. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 18:27, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So, you don't identify yourself as a proud New Englander? That is a group identification. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:34, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Group identification isn't the problem in this case. The problem is that the label being used is no longer sufficient to accurately give your average joe an idea of what you believe in. Rather than seeing Feminism as "a movement striving to break the gender divide in society and to get women to be granted equal opportunity everywhere", the average joe will see it as "a sort of cultish group that harasses and slanders those that they don't like".

Such a conclusion is the result of an extremely negative stigma that has become attached to the word in question. You can not simply pooh-pooh that stigma and go on your merry way. The simple fact is that the word "Feminism" has been torn and tattered to the point of unfathomability. That label needs to be tossed out and someone needs to come up with a new one. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 22:47, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Who started this whole shebang?

Gosh, I'm so glad we are still arguing about this. If only there was some way - like say a history page, or an archive of text discussions - to actually investigate who did what. (And to save time, and speaking as someone who was here almost from the very beginning, it was Jimbo's money and Larry's idea. Jimbo was barely present during year 1, his active involvement didn't really start until after Larry left in 2002. And does anyone remember Tim Shell?).Manning (talk) 00:07, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well as someone who has been here almost as long, I'll express doubt the argument will ever be resolved for good until all involved parties are dead. (Although I'll agree with you that Wikipedia was a creation "of Jimmy's money & Larry's idea".) On the one hand, Wikipedia is Jimmy Wales' sole claim to fame. Sharing credit for it with anyone -- Sanger, Ward Cunningham, the Foundation Board, people who write content for Wikipedia -- dilutes his single claim to fame. Then there is the problem Sanger has that when given the opportunity to create a "better Wikipedia" (i.e. Citzendium), he failed. That failure makes it appear that Sanger has no idea why Wikipedia was a success, thus invalidating his claim to have helped create it. Of course the truth is no one understands why Wikipedia was so successful for its first several years, why a bunch of nobodies would think writing an encyclopedia was worth joining a bunch of strangers & spending their spare time using Wiki software to make it happen in the first place. Simply put, there was an unexpected social dynamic here that Wales & Sanger stumbled upon by accident, which worked for a while with little need of management, & now both want to claim credit for because no one else could do it better than they. -- llywrch (talk) 23:13, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]