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Evidence presented by Retartist
Tarc Ignores the WP:CIVIL pillar
- The above links are tarc removing warnings (which he is allowed to do) of people warning him for uncivil behaviour which implies that he knows he has been uncivil
- The following diff is of tarc claiming that WP:CIVIL can be ignored. (tarc saying we can ignore civility if people hold a particular world view)
Evidence presented by Tstormcandy
For my rationale as to why I chose to become involved in the case please see User:Tstormcandy/Gamergate ArbCom Discussion.
To preface, I would like to point the Committee to precedent set at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list which states that ArbCom can and will consider certain off-Wiki activity as part of final decision principles and findings of fact. This is meant to be more procedural evidence and generally not directed at any specific editors.
Involved editors have been targets of harassment
Some of the users listed as involved parties in this case have been specifically targeted by external forces for additional scrutiny and potential harassment. Though this does not excuse user actions it may help explain some of the stresses and behaviors displayed in other evidence and should be taken into account as state of mind. User Ryulong is singled out exceptionally, with screen captures of discussions posted on top of diffs. I would welcome the overall behavior of this user be examined the same as any others, of course.
Found as another extension of an off-Wiki forum is this Pastebin file, detailing how persons should complete an "operation" to "dig through" post histories of particular users for the sake of gathering obstructionist evidence for collection and reproduction. In this one case, users Ryulong, NorthBySouthBraanof, Tarc, TheRedPenOfDoom and TaraInDC are singled out as "The five horsemen of Misplaced Pages" and messages such as "here's a guide to help". These users have suffered from needlessly excessive talk page contacts., and common listings at incident board discussions.
Off-wiki discussion is disrupting the Encyclopedia
The task of collaboration and research resulted in many edits at incident boards and even on the talk page of User:Jimbo Wales (as recommended) many times; . The repeated forum shopping and multiple requests to ArbCom in a short amount of time can also be attributed to this high amount of off-WIki discussion. One recent example is seen here which is "for the purpose of discussing Misplaced Pages matters". Another offsite thread was created after my original statement merely to warn people that I had used the first link, , advising users to "try not to be a fucking moron" thus implying their possible participation.
By extension of the collaboration and cases of users following through with it we get a large amount of meatpuppetry happening within this topic. I strongly support this evidence section as a collection of diffs.
Such bullying and discussion designed to intimidate and impact on-wiki matters must not be permitted to hold sway over WP:FRINGE and WP:IDONTLIKEIT article content on Misplaced Pages and editors should feel safe in the process of following basic Misplaced Pages policies (such as WP:RS and WP:BLP) without being threatened. I implore the committee to not "let the bullies win" in this case. ♪ Tstorm(talk) 23:32, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
Edited: ♪ Tstorm(talk) 06:38, 28 November 2014 (UTC) Heavily edited: ♪ Tstorm(talk) 13:23, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Masem
Ownership and refusal for consensus development
(I will be proving diffs to support this in next few days) There is no question that Gamergate is a troubling situation for WP, due to the fact that the "proGG" side have been trying to significantly influence the article, administration, and this case, though not always in a malicious manner, just clumsy and/or unworkable. It should be clear that the coverage of GG is predominately against proGG (there are few RSes that give a leaderless anonymous online effort any time of day particularly as the proGG efforts include criticizing and attacking those RSes, in addition to the fact that there is the harassment/threats of female figures attached to the situation - no one really is ready to give them any positive coverage). There's little we can do while staying within reliable sourcing policy like WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE and WP:BLP, so there is no way that the GG article can be (at the current time) very favorable of the proGG position, and hence the need to enforce some decorum on the behavior of WP:SPAs and unsigned editors who can't contribute towards that.
That said, these same facts have been used by a number of editors who have refused to engage in efforts to build consensus as mitigate the tone of the article and engaged in ownership-type behavior to maintain their version; these include (but not limited to) Ryulong, NorthBySouthBaranof, TheRedPenOfDoom, and TaraInDC. I believe they have very strong feelings against the proGG side of the story (aka sympathy for those who were harassed), which itself is not a problem until it gets in the way of constructive editing, as their edits and behavior to the article have clearly tainted the approach of the article and has made it difficult or impossible to work with. They early on established a persona non grata approach to the proGG SPAs trying to influence the article, and continue to claim that all that the article needs are methods to deal with SPAs (see associated case statements). This has been their excuse to refuse to participate in other dispute resolution methods, including formal mediation .
There's probably many other problems with the article from other contributions, but this group of editors have been the largest contributors to the article (outside myself), and while they are adding material w/ sources and the like that meets the base WP polices for V, NOR, and NPOV, they have used a structure and language that I and other editors believe is far from the impartial nature that WP:NPOV demands for an encyclopedia article. While this starts getting into content-related issues which I know ArbCom generally does not comment on, understanding what issues that I and others have seen is part of the behavior problems:
- Part of the issue is the nature of the press's role in Gamergate, in that they are involved parties, moreso at the video game and tech sources since proGG are trying to directly impact their ad funding. As such, the press has every reason to be negative of the movement, and many have flat out called the movement as a whole "misogynistic" due to the nature of the harassment. I want to stress this doesn't invalid these as sources, but we have to understand the difference between facts and opinions expressed in these These editors want to have WP's article call the movement out as misogynistic in WP's voice instead of stating it as the widestream press's opinion. This has been argued through many times, pointing that other articles for strongly-disliked groups by the public, like Westboro Baptist Church and Scientology put all such criticism in the approach non-WP statement instead of in WP's voice, but they shut down and refuse to accept this distinction, claiming that what the RSes state is absolute.
- There are some neutral statements about the proGG's stance on their desire to change ethics from good reliable sources, as well as the nature of this being a "movement". But these editors focus too much on the press's stance that because of the harassment issues, that there can be no "movement" or their "ethics" cries are false fronts; as such they reject attempts to write sections of the article in a different structure or a more impartial manner to present these points without ridicule. Examples:
A key part is, 90% of the article, in my opinion, is fine in light of what the sources give - there's good proper sourcing, and telling the story per WP:WEIGHT; it does need trimming, some smoothing of what are now minor points (it does suffer from WP:RECENTISM), some WP:QUOTEFARM edits, which most agree to, and could use a re-organization in light of these. But the impartialness, also a requirement of WP:NPOV can be fixed, in my opinion, simply by reworking some language order, word choices, and general article structure without loosing any of the key points or verving away from the net impression that the GG side has been broadly condemned by the VG industry and public at large, but I and other editors cannot convince this small group to go in this direction, because they seem unable to separate their strong feelings against proGG from editing the article, and reject these changes or refuse to accept that the article is written as an attack article towards the proGG side in WP's voice. This has led to long-standard conflict over the article that needs arbitration, as to assure that we actually have processes to get better consensus, and if possible (as that is more content related) on what WP's stance should be on writing impartial articles in light of the issues Gamergate presents. --MASEM (t) 01:53, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Evidence presented by NorthBySouthBaranof
Gamergate supporters have attempted to use Misplaced Pages as a platform to attack their opponents
There is a campaign by Gamergate supporters to use Misplaced Pages to further their movement's smear campaigns against Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu — in defiance of reliable sources, the Biographies of living persons policy and human decency. The below edits are only a sampling — I could fill several evidence sections with these diffs.
Zoe Quinn
- This history page for the article and its talk page are instructive — both Titanium Dragon and TheNewMinistry inserted an array of allegations, including a section entitled "Accusations of Personal and Professional Misconduct" with edit summaries that personally attack the subject.
- — On the talk page, Titanium Dragon refers to Zoe Quinn as "a scandal attached to a person."
- — On the talk page, Titanium Dragon makes poorly-sourced/unsourced negative statements about Zoe Quinn. The user proceeds to revert the material back in after another editor removes them on BLP grounds.
- — Bosstopher inserts poorly-sourced allegations that Quinn is responsible for DDoS attacks and bribery.
- — Titanium Dragon removes sourced statements by Zoe Quinn, with edit summaries stating that "Zoe Quinn's integrity is at the heart of the GamerGate nonsense" and "It is Zoe Quinn making statements in order to cast herself in a more sympathetic light, which is generally unacceptable."
- — More rev-deleted harassment edits.
- — Crisis proposes unsourced statements about Quinn's name, and when their proposal is rejected, puts them in the article anyway.
- — More rev-deleted material from Titanium Dragon.
- — DHeyward compares Zoe Quinn to Bill Clinton's "bimbo eruptions" and states that Quinn intentionally "pivoted to victim."
Brianna Wu
- — An IP editor inserts the weasel-worded and unsourced claim that Wu doxxed herself.
- — Pepsiwithcoke removes cited material on threats against Wu with an edit summary accusing Wu of doxxing herself, and later removes it again.
- — QuantumMass inserts the libelous allegation that Wu faked death threats against herself, sourced to a Gamergate message board. After being reverted, reinserts the same allegations sourced to a blog.
Anita Sarkeesian and Tropes vs. Women in Video Games
- — Anonymous attacks.
- — Akulkis inserts something so offensive that it has been rev-deleted.
- — PizzaMan inserts unsourced insinuations that Sarkeesian has lied and reinserts it after it was objected to, with an edit summary accusing her of lying.
- — Poroboros persistently inserts YouTube-sourced claims that Sarkeesian "lied" and generally attempts to discredit her.
- — Bluefoxicy makes unsupported statements on the talk page to the effect that Sarkeesian has "known limited credibility."
- — Tomous43 makes repeated BLP-violating edits to the talk page, all of which are revision-deleted.
- — Xander756 makes defamatory claims on the talk page, purporting to link Sarkeesian with fraud and deceit.
Gamergate controversy
- — Titanium Dragon inserts unsourced and poorly-sourced accusations.
- —YellowSandals compares Zoe Quinn to a prostitute.
- — Thronedrei makes unsupported accusations that Brianna Wu has lied about death threats.
- — Tutelary reverts a removal of BLP-violating material, claiming that such can be justified as "content choices."
- — "previously-involved IP user" makes the unsupported claim that Zoe Quinn was responsible for "an abusive relationship." To be entirely clear, the user calls for "Putting forward evidence of an abusive relationship" in a thread discussing Zoe Quinn's purported sexual relationships.
- — DownWIthSJWs calls Zoe Quinn a "professional victim."
Repeated attempts to present false claims about living people as true or disputed
Mainstream reliable sources have unanimously dismissed Gamergate's allegations of unethical behavior involving Zoe Quinn and Nathan Grayson as false: and plenty more are available. It is provable that neither Nathan Grayson nor Kotaku ever reviewed Depression Quest and that Grayson wrote nothing about Quinn after beginning their relationship. We are well beyond the point where the claim that their relationship involved any ethical violations is a fringe allegation deserving of no credence in the encyclopedia, particularly given the sensitive nature of the allegations and their effect on living people.
Despite this fact, there have been repeated efforts by Gamergate supporters to water down the article's depiction of the falsity of the claims or present them as the subject of legitimate debate (or even true!) — long after the consensus of reliable sources and Misplaced Pages editors is clear. These endless, monotonous, no-I-will-never-drop-the-stick-stop-asking arguments have wasted editors' time and verge on the tendentious. An incomplete sampling follows:
- 22 November — : Avono opens a thread entitled "False allegations against Quinn and subsequent harassment" arguing that because "a friendship existed," we can't call the allegations false.
- 12 November — : DHeyward suggests that we ignore the documented fact that there was no unethical behavior in favor of embracing the idea that because Quinn had a "relationship with a journalist," the allegations are meaningful.
- 2 November — : Akesgeroth declares that the article has "an absolute lack of neutrality" — and their proposed fix includes removing a reference to the falsity of the allegations about Quinn and Grayson from the sublede.
- 2 November — : TJRaptis20 declares that there is "no proof" the claims are false and calls for the removal of well-sourced discussion of their falsity.
- 26 October — : AgentChieftain states "Why are we saying that the allegations against Quinn were "proven" false...?"
- 24 October — : Diego Moya argues that describing the accusations as false is "the opposite of what we need to cover the topic in a detached, formal tone" and "emotional-ridden wording", and then, when confronted with the weight of the sources, argues that we should attribute the statement to "mainstream media" as if it is a contested opinion and that "we just need to avoid asserting they're false, as they *are* part of a controversy."
{in progress}
Gamergate supporters have targeted long-term editors who attempted to deal with these issues
Gamergate supporters have targeted long-term editors, creating multiple pages which are "hit lists" including dozens of long-term Misplaced Pages editors who have opposed them. This has included implied and explicit threats, abusive vandalism, miscellaneous garbage and other personal attacks.
There has been no lack of discussion or failure to engage
There were no less than fourteen (14) archive pages created on Talk:Gamergate controversy in less than three months, representing the fact that all sides have extensively engaged in good-faith debate and discussion about the issue.
Community processes have not found the article to be biased
On 26 October, Masem opened a Request for Comment asking two questions, one hypothetical and one actual: Can an article be too biased in favor of near-universal sourcing of one side of an issue?
and Is the current Gamergate article too biased in this manner?
The RFC saw extensive participation. On 29 November, the RFC was closed by an uninvolved party, MDann52. The first (hypothetical) question was closed with the comment that Overall, people seem to think there is a bias in the press and the usual pool of RS over this. However, Misplaced Pages is kind of trapped into reflecting this
and that overall, the article is fairly neutral.
The second (actual) question was closed with the comment that Often, WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE are hard to distinguish in situations like this, due to the unbalance in sourcing avalible. However, the overall tone is, while there are some issues, there is no overarching bias in the article.
Events of 30 November exemplify Gamergate editors' bad faith
The events of 30 November involving myself, Xander756 and Kevin Gorman are instructive as to the bad-faith manner in which any editor or administrator who acts against Gamergate is declared to be biased, treated as an enemy and subjected to on- and off-wiki attacks. Xander756 posted a thread on WP:ANI accusing me of disruptive editing on Talk:Anita Sarkeesian. Gorman, an uninvolved administrator, responded and recognized that Xander756 was violating the biographies of living persons policy and that my edits removed defamatory material. Gorman warned Xander756. In response, Xander756 declared that Gorman "appears to be a feminist"
and that Gorman "is clearly not unbiased when it comes to Anita Sarkeesian."
Xander756 then tweeted that "Misplaced Pages admin Kevin Gorman is currently (Redacted)"
and posted on Gorman's user talk page that "I am currently talking to a news site that is working on a piece about your behavior tonight which may be sent to Jimmy Wales. Looking through your bio and edits, it seems that you are a feminist. Is this the case?"
Later, The Devil's Advocate adopted Xander756's line of reasoning, declaring on Gorman's talk page that "you have been highly active and very much involved regarding articles covering feminism and men's rights. Sarkeesian is a feminist critic and her vlog is called "Feminist Frequency" so you are involved regarding her bio."
- Note: I removed a BLP violation from the quote above. This is not a comment on the evidence, and should not be seen as a reflection on NorthBySouthBaranof. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:10, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
The Devil's Advocate has engaged in POV-pushing
- — Repeatedly removed attribution from pro-Gamergate claims sourced solely to op-eds, asserting that such attribution is unnecessary and that we should present those writers' opinions as fact, in violation of the precept that
opinion pieces ... are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact.
- — Removes, without discussion, a direct quote from the article subject about the harassment she was subjected to, which is sourced to a generally-reliable source, Kotaku, claiming that the source is unusable merely because it has been the subject of criticism from Gamergate supporters. The blind revert also removes an indisputable reliable source, The Boston Globe. His removals are reverted by multiple editors.
Previously-involved IP user fails to understand core content policies
- — Declares twice, without evidence, that there is "evidence of an abusive relationship" involving Zoe Quinn.
- — After Masem notes that we can't repeat defamatory claims made by someone on their blog, declares that
"What was accused in that post" is a matter of objective fact, though. Anyone can see it for themselves.
I have initiated good-faith efforts at consensus-building and argument-defusing
After an edit war on Gamergate controversy in mid-November resulted in long-term protection, I initiated the development of a draft page, now located at Draft:Gamergate controversy, with the intent of providing a focal point for editors to develop proposals for actual changes to article content, rather than make endless hypothetical arguments. Similarly, after DHeyward raised what I thought was a valid point about the article's lede, I initiated a discussion and drafted a formal proposal to improve it based on those concerns.
Rebuttal to Tutelary
Hatting talk-page trolling relating to a living person is not only permitted, it is encouraged per WP:NOT. This explains why I hatted the edit request — it is a common Gamergate meme to refer to their targets as "Literally Who" and the edit request would have inserted text referencing the meme.
Rebuttal to Carrite
I encourage arbitrators to read the talk page discussion of Carrite's alleged "source," wherein it is clear that it is an anonymous self-published blog presenting defamatory claims about living people, which the external links policy categorically prohibits. No other editor has supported this material. Even Masem has agreed that it's inappropriate.
Rebuttal to The Devil's Advocate
The diffs that TDA uses to support his accusations of "POV-pushing" demonstrate that I have done the following: add material sourced from The Boston Globe, add The Boston Globe again, add a quote from a key figure in the Gamergate controversy sourced to The New Yorker, write about an international news story sourced to The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times, add attributed editorial discussion of an issue by The Salt Lake Tribune and add material sourced from The New York Times. I plead guilty to the charge of using high-quality reliable sources to create article content. TDA is also being highly disingenuous in his criticism of the Brianna Wu meme material — he attacks me for attempting to paraphrase the source, and then when I replace that offending paraphrase with a direct quote, he complains that the direct quote is "inflammatory."
Evidence presented by The Devil's Advocate
Ryulong has repeatedly made egregiously POV and inflammatory edits
- Adds numerous unnecessary quotes of insults made by a single person towards GamerGate to reinforce narrative about a gender bias in harassment.
- Uses "noting" when referring to several inflammatory opinions about GamerGate, thus presenting them as fact.
- Adds massive paragraph accusing GamerGate supporters of copyright violations based off a single source.
- Adds nearly a paragraph worth of material based off one in-depth source suggesting the unofficial mascot of GamerGate references what the source suggests is a depiction of rape.
Ryulong has engaged in POINTy behavior to push a POV
- Anil Dash material
- Argues for excluding mention of alleged harassment of GamerGate supporters using a mocking heading.
- Claims "poor sourcing" for above allegations warrants mention of allegations against named person. Asks about including several serious criminal accusations against named individual based off much weaker sourcing, including tweets from a critic.
- Removes certain mentions of harassment, including reliably-sourced details about female and minority GamerGate supporters receiving rape and death threats or being fired for supporting GamerGate.
- After the material was restored, Ryulong adds the allegations against a BLP subject to the article. Initially mild, he later expands the material to include allegations of a potentially criminal nature (bribery).
- When I remove the paragraph, he restores it and moves it to a section on "support for charitable efforts" apparently on the basis that the "bribe" claim concerned a charity donation.
- After I remove it, noting the BLP concern, and it is restored again, Ryulong adds an image to the section with a caption containing the potentially criminal accusation.
- GamerGate diversity material
- Removes reliably-sourced material about women and minorities supporting GamerGate with the rest attributed as opinion, claiming it is to hold "pro-GG" content to the same standard as "anti-GG" content.
- Subsequently edit-wars to remove from an image caption mention of Christina Sommers stating the gaming generation is much less prejudiced than previous generations.
- Acknowledges in two comments his attributing mention of the existence of female and minority supporters as though it were opinion, despite acknowledging it as fact, was due to the alleged misogyny of GamerGate not being treated as fact based off similar sourcing.
Ryulong has violated BLP
- Adam Baldwin
- Adds material listing several prominent supporters, including Baldwin, who the material states "have had nothing to do with video games", despite the source not stating this about him.
- Halfhat removes Baldwin noting he has been heavily involved in video games previously (numerous voice-acting roles).
- Ryulong restores Baldwin's name.
- Ryulong amends it to say article author "pointed out" statements "by the various people . . . derisive of gamers" prior to GamerGate implying Baldwin had made such statements despite this not being said in the source.
- Eron Gjoni
- Changes lede to state the controversy began with "harassment . . . by an ex-boyfriend" despite no sources labeling his actions harassment. Several sources mention Gjoni by name.
- Presents opinion that Gjoni used "online harassment troops to do his bidding" in the editorial voice. Removes attribution of characterization of post as vindictive.
- Further note is that the details of the situation between Gjoni and Quinn are the subject of ongoing legal proceedings.
- Milo Yiannopoulos
- Adds material accusing Yiannopoulos of making a "sexist remark" and includes other negative comments about him. These are attributed to a piece by Liana Kerzner, who is not a professional journalist, on MetalEater, which appears to have no editorial staff. She was also remarking on a personal dispute with Yiannopoulos.
- Ryulong, and several other editors (Red Pen in particular), engaged in derisive off-topic discussion of Yiannapolous on the talk page.
- David Auerbach
- Added a paragraph claiming Auerbach "insisted" women who were threatened should be "held responsible" for "what Gamergate had become" as well as the men threatening them. As I explained, this completely misrepresented the source and presented the misrepresentation as fact. Anthonyhcole, who Ryulong cites as having originally agreed with him, concurred.
- Zoe Quinn
- Ryulong inserted material from an interview in a non-reliable source to insert contentious claims about Quinn, a third party.
- See first incidence of edit-warring mentioned above where he made three reverts to restore the material, breaching 3RR in the process. The claims were removed and after being restored the next revert noted the BLP issue, but Ryulong still made two more reverts.
Ryulong has repeatedly and flagrantly breached 3RR
NorthbySouthBaranof has engaged in POV-pushing
- GamerGate article
- Adds quote from Quinn about "her attackers" having "deep-seeded self-loathing" in a veiled reference to GamerGate.
- Anita Sarkeesian bio
- Creates section for shooting threats and adds source to label it a "terrorist" threat in the section heading. After section was expanded with more sources and I remove the term noting only one source uses it, Baranof restores the term with several additional sources for the sole purpose of keeping the term "terrorist" in the section heading.
- Adds quote from Sarkeesian stating supporting GamerGate is implicitly supporting harassment of women.
- Removes material about there being no "imminent danger" from shooting threat. Performs a "rewrite" of material that removes mention of there being no imminent danger and reverts to keep wording. Supports Red Pen's claim of it being coatrack material. After having added material about gun control and violence in video games based off state paper editorial on shooting threat, breaches 3RR to keep material. Restores it again, while adding more material about gun control.
- Brianna Wu bio
- Adds material presenting as fact that the movement has a "penchant for misogynist, violent harassment of women" with source not supporting POV language and claims Wu created meme to mock GamerGate supporters harassing women despite none of the six cited source stating this as the reason.
- Uses Ars Technica piece unrelated to Wu to replace PBS-backed material stating GamerGate originated with concerns about corruption in journalism to claim it originated from 4chan and that ethics concerns were tied to misogynistic attacks. Changes material to state GamerGate's origins as being "4chan-organized harassment" of Quinn using ethics concerns as a "cover" for attacks and insinuates all ethics concerns of GamerGate were debunked, rather than just the review claim as the source states.
- Adds material claiming meme mocked GamerGate for "illogical statements and misogynistic threats" despite this not being supported by sources, characterizes the site 8chan as a "pro-GamerGate message board" and adds quote from Wu to assert GamerGate's responsibility. Restores material adding sentence to state threats were widely attributed to GamerGate supporters. Adds another source, but still does not support statement about the meme. Performs two additional reverts to keep in material. Replaces material about meme with lengthy and inflammatory direct quote from source.
TheRedPenofDoom has engaged in POV-pushing
- GamerGate article
- Restores version of GamerGate lede claiming Gjoni made "sex for reviews" allegation in blog post despite source (still wrongly) stating it was "implied" in the post.
- Anita Sarkeesian bio
- Removes source noting Universtiy statement about there being no imminent danger from Utah shooting threat against Sarkeesian claiming it is irrelevant. Removes it again claiming it is irrelevant. Tags statement as "undue" in the article. Removes material a third time with an edit summary saying "BLP" and nothing more.
- Initiates talk page discussion claiming statement about there being no imminent danger from threats is a WP:COATRACK issue. Claims to established editor who supports inclusion that only reason to include material is to cast doubt on her decision to cancel speaking engagement. Breachs 3RR to restore material from a state paper with a quote stating incident proves need for stricter gun control and proves Sarkeesian right about violence in video games.
- States as fact that Utah shooting threat was from someone affiliated with GamerGate despite source characterizing it as a claim. Restores statement. Restores it again claiming anyone who claims to be part of GamerGate is part of GamerGate. Performs third revert to present as fact that shooting threat was by someone affiliated with GamerGate.
Gamaliel is INVOLVED
- A year ago he and I were engaged in a content dispute over a BLP of a female Microsoft executive, where I objected to giving undue weight to online comments about the executive. In several edits and comments he sought to emphasize "widespread gamer misogyny" on the article.
- I detailed evidence of Gamaliel being involved in the GamerGate articles during an ANI discussion. One important example is this remark calling for topic bans of Tutelary, Titanium Dragon, and "Puedo", which I believe was referencing PseudoSomething, an editor he had argued with on the talk page about sources. This comment on the talk page stating (bolding mine): "Any discussion of GamerGate supposedly being about "corruption" should note the reliable sources pointing out the complainers' complete disinterest in actual corruption", this subsequent response, his removal of one IP user's criticism of his comment, and his reply, are also significant.
Gamaliel has misused his admin privileges while INVOLVED
- Per above evidence, Gamaliel had called for a topic ban of Titanium Dragon and been involved in disputes over the GamerGate article. About a week after that statement on TD is when he imposed an indefinite topic ban on Titanium Dragon under the BLP discretionary sanctions. This action had actually been performed out of process as TD had not been clearly notified of the sanctions and thus the topic ban was reversed.
- When an editor filed a community sanctions enforcement request against Tarc, stating he was edit-warring to include an inflammatory term and flouting a compromise to use one less inflammatory, Gamaliel essentially argued that no action be taken against Tarc even if he was editing against consensus because his edit was correct and later closed the discussion with no action.
- Soon after this case was opened Gamaliel imposed an indefinite topic ban against Tutelary, who as I noted was one of three editors he previously voted to topic ban. Gamaliel states he made this decision by ruling out "involved" editors, but from my own count there are only six editors who are uninvolved regarding Tutelary generally or uninvolved regarding GamerGate specifically. Of those Cullen328, Dave Dial, and Daveosaurus, supported a topic ban, while Ivanvector, Obsidi, and Xezbeth opposed a topic ban. Mere minutes after the topic ban on Tutelary, Gamaliel imposed an indefinite topic ban on MarkBernstein, but logged it to where it looks like Tutelary was topic-banned after Mark. A day earlier he made a very sympathetic statement about Mark suggesting he did not want to sanction him. His reluctant statement about imposing the sanction came after at least two other admins suggested sanctions based off Mark's egregious incivility for which Gamaliel had previously only warned him with a very sympathetic statement.
Black Kite is INVOLVED and has used his tools
- Canvassed Gender Gap Task Force to deal with "misogynistic" edits on the pages for Quinn and her game.
- Proposes topic ban or site ban for Tutelary based off WO piece
- Removes material about a DDoS attack on The Escapist's GamerGate thread.
- Claims said attack is not relevant to GamerGate article because there is no proof of responsibility.
- Removes the NPOV tag from the article disputing its basis.
- Reverts a change to the lede by ArmyLine due to "no consensus" from previous discussions.
- Has performed revision deletions on relevant articles ().
- Closed ANI case against TD four hours after the case opened after Future reimposed TD's topic ban despite minimal discussion and at least one objection to the sanction.
- States in arbitration request that he "reserves" the "right" to take further admin action on the subject.
GameJournoPros
- Baranof removes material about GameJournoPros calling it "Breitbart garbage" despite it being cited to other reliable sources reporting on the allegations and removed it again saying "We don't really care what someone from Breitbart said. We just don't."
- Red Pen removes the material while calling Yiannopoulos a "fringe conspiracy theorist" in the edit summary.
- Tarc removes the material calling it "nuttery" and rejecting any inclusion of the allegations.
- Ryulong removes the material due to "no consensus" on inclusion.
As it concerns squabbling over sourcing for abuse allegations
You two may find these sources illuminating.
Regarding Drmies
- For the record, while I think the block imposed by Drmies was wrong, I do not believe he is or was "involved" regarding the topic area and I left him out of the list of parties for this case for a reason. His actions since then vindicate my omitting his name.
Evidence presented by Mr. Random
Ryulong has been edit-warring in a controversial article despite an acknowledged COI
(This has already been presented at WP:ANI, but it was closed as a "frivolous, baseless and misplaced/forum-shopped request" - by an involved administrator, no less - despite the evidence I am about to provide. I will leave commentary on that, if any, to other users.)
A user on Reddit named "ryulong67" ran an AMA ("Ask Me Anything") titled "I'm Ryulong" on r/GamerGhazi, a subreddit for those opposed to the GamerGate revolt. To do this, the user had to confirm that he was User:Ryulong, which he did by adding a "code" from the Reddit thread to an edit summary on his user page. The subreddit later "shamelessly bumped" a GoFundMe donation drive under the name "Ryulong" - connecting it to ryulong67 - prompting User:Ryulong to stop editing the page due to a COI. (I can provide more substantial proof that the donation drive is his, but I fear it may violate WP:OUTING, as it involves a connection between off-wiki accounts; however, I will post it if requested to do so by an arbitrator. Never mind - confirmed by Ryulong below.) He has since engaged in an edit war on the draft page, despite having received money from a group with a known anti-Gamergate agenda.
Evidence presented by LoganMac
Ryulong recieved $370 by a known anti-GamerGate subreddit
Ryulong recieved $370 by a known anti-GamerGate subreddit after having made an AMA (ask me anything) that same day. He admits that any further edit would be a conflict of interest
Ryulong is asked by anti-GamerGate subreddit to add the string "2mj5ds" to his profile
He does so here confirming it's his account
The user who donated most of his goal is a known anti-GamerGate person Ryulong tried implying that "anyone could donate", and that the GoFundMe would be posted "on a another pro-GamerGate subreddit". No such thing happened.
His fully founded GoFundMe page
He confirms on his public Twitter page that the GoFundMe was made by him (this is not doxxing, he has admitted that account it's his, I came to learn of his account when HE himself asked me to "learn to fucking read" on that account) On this same account, he further admits of a conflict of interest, hence "quitting" yet he came back less than a week later
He breaks his self-imposed topic ban by editing the article draft on multiple ocassions He even says "I'm going to regret doing this later" in his edit summary
He continues to do so in the 8chan article, adding a POV and notability tag , and after gettnig deleted, adding a POV tag again As well as multiple suggestions on its talk page about the article being biased
He was even asked by Jimbo to step down of the article but he refused
Ryulong shows an extreme case of WP:OWN, has time and time again violated WP:CIVIL, has demonstraded a heavy bias, not only on-site but off-site as well. He seems to take pride in angering userbases and fandoms. Constantly reverts people instead of making suggestions to change an user edit.
This only further damages the image of Misplaced Pages, like Auerbach of Slate own encounter with Ryulong, or notable scholar and multi-published feminist Christina Sommers criticism . The article should be dealt by completely new uninvolved editors. And as Masem noted, should be written in a disinterested voice.
PresN's evidence
I had written a rebuttal but PresN politely deleted his evidence since there's no relevance to users' off-wiki accounts. Loganmac (talk) 23:21, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Ryulong
The Devil's Advocate intentionally misinterpreting policy
The Devil's Advocate (TDA) frequently claims violations of WP:BLP for unintentional and honest mistakes and ignores actual malicious intent for the purpose of attempting to ban people from the topic area. His evidence here against myself and other editors critical of Gamergate solely consists of such edits. He has never brought up any intentionally malicious edits by other editors as he does not see them as opposition.
The Anil Dash paragraph, for example, is heavily represented, despite the community at large dismissing his claims.
The "edit warring" is also frivolous as I attempted to trim all captions on the page because there were talk page complaints about them, but when Tutelary made a blanket revert, I had to retrim. Not to mention that I added all photographs to the page in the first place with that same caption that I'm apparently edit warring over refactoring.
(Redacted) He has constantly edited the article and talk page in a way to ensure that any negative material is demoted to being an opinion of a writer while actively pushing that anything supportive of Gamergate gets treated as a fact.
TDA's claims regarding David Auerbach are also frivolous as the community as a whole has supported me, including not finding any real fault in my paraphrasing of an article critical of his writing.
TDA has also intentionally misinterpreted policy in order to protect a user who had openly disclosed his identity on his user page and had been discovered to have a conflict of interest by redacting the blocking admin's statements under the claim of WP:OUTING.
- Note: I redacted an unsupported allegation of off-wiki activity from the section above. Please do not restore it without evidence to back it up. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:15, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
A disclosure regarding what happened on Reddit has been forwarded to the arbitration committee mailing list.
The following concerns the "edits" made to 8chan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) that caused a furor off-site.
Edits to Draft:Gamergate controversy (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) have also been a point of contention. This is an unofficial article draft where a brand new user was rehashing old established content and informed him of the problems (). This led Tutelary to report me to ANI where that thread was closed without action, and it was also opened up at WP:GS/GG/E where it is under discussion but near closing with no action.
Loganmac rebuttal
The incident concerning Auerbach was resolved on-site with the community backing me rather than saying I should be censured.
Off-site canvassing and harassment
Evidence regarding the actions of Misplaced Pages editors in regards to enabling and fomenting harassment of myself and oher editors onsite has been forwarded to the arbitration committee.
BLP violations by The Devil's Advocate
This edit by The Devil's Advocate intentionally toes the line of a BLP violation where he uses the article's talk page to make statements about the subject's past that are not reliably sourced, are generally irrelevant, and regard the subject's private life.
Harassment by Tutelary
Tutelary has focused their attention on eliminating me from the article several times. Tutelary has repeatedly attempted to report my behavior on the article on WP:AN and other related boards, which ultimately resulted in no action taken.
Examples against NorthBySouthBaranof as well
Edit warring by Tutelary
Tutelary has edit warred with administrators over closures of threads that had been made to seek bans or over the page itself.
General issue of links to my Twitter account
Archived links to posts on my Twitter account where I was harassed by Gamergate advocates should be discounted as evidence, as it plays into off-site harassment. It does not fall within the purview of this case regarding behavior of editors on Misplaced Pages or in regards to Misplaced Pages. I admit to owning the account but I have not used it to organize anything on Misplaced Pages.
Starship.paint rebuttal
It is impossible for anyone to be completely unbiased, and it is only when biases affect WP:NPOV should they be examined. The complaints about neutrality at Gamergate controversy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) are attempts to contravene WP:UNDUE and WP:BALASPS when reliable sources do not adequately cover what Gamergate advocates want them to.
Posts at websites that do not pass WP:RS should not mean that my presence, or the presence of other editors critical of GamerGate, is bringing the project into disrepute. Information concerning Gamergate advocates trying to silence Misplaced Pages editors in this manner has been forwarded to the arbitration committee. Regarding my own claimed possible COI, it has not been acknowledged by the community at large here (thread still live).
Starship.paint's evidence also features ad hominem attacks on a person uninvolved in Misplaced Pages concerning this other issue as well. The actions or intents of people outside of Misplaced Pages are not within the arbitration committee's purview.
Starship.paint is saying here that my presence on Misplaced Pages is problematic because I've made comments off-site that were questionable (since deleted/retracted but that doesn't stop people from constantly bringing them up it seems) and because I've made the most edits to the article (a common complaint). This whole event is contra to the request an arbitrator made on the evidence talk page as this does not constitute what evidence should be in this case.
Single-purpose accounts and "zombie" accounts
The Gamergate article and its talk page have been heavily edited by users who either are newly registered accounts that only edit the Gamergate article and related topics and can be considered as representative of WP:SPA or they are users who have had long stretches (sometimes years) of inactivity on Misplaced Pages, but have seemingly all returned to edit Misplaced Pages's Gamergate topic area (which were termed as "zombie" accounts by EvergreenFir here). I initially attempted to raise this issue for discussion at WP:AN in the poorly executed "Nip Gamergate in the bud" thread. Regardless of my errors then, the issue still plagues the topic area. I will only be listing the most prolific and still present editors here.
- Loganmac has edits going back to 2008. However, he seemingly stopped editing Misplaced Pages in 2011 only to make his first edit in over 3 years to the Gamergate article's talkpage and for the past 3 months barely make any substantiative edits to any other article or talk page.
- YellowSandals' first edit ever was regarding the talk page and has only ever made edits to the talk page (some are to the article itself and others are on user pages or project pages regarding the subject).
- Pepsiwithcoke, while having a somewhat varied editing history, jumped into the fray with this "false flag" remark and since then hasn't done much regarding any other subject on Misplaced Pages.
- Halfhat, while having registered in April of this year, did not perform that many edits after registering. However, he did begin editing the Gamergate topic area in October and since then the majority of his edits have been regarding Gamergate in some way. Simply because he can present a dozen or so edits out of the several hundred he has made that are not about Gamergate does not mean he does not fit here.
- Racuce's first edit is about Gamergate and there's no edits of his that aren't about Gamergate.
- Jgm74 originally registered in 2007 and had 2 edits but after making enough edits to be autoconfirmed, he began editing the Gamergate topic area only
- Zakkarum, whose edits on the draft page raised my concerns and general drama in the area these past few days made his first edit to Masem's RFC and has done nothing since.
- Torga, who was banned with the community sanctions while the case was still being considered, made one edit in 2008, made 9 more to get autoconfirmed in September this year, and then jumped straight into Gamergate.
- Weedwacker has recently re-appeared after a year of absence to edit Gamergate and related pages extensively. This has included harassing me.
- Tabascoman77, while having made some minimal edits across the project throughout the period of 2010 to mid-2014, was last extensively involved in Misplaced Pages in 2009. He returned to Misplaced Pages to support Titanium Dragon following his initial topic ban. He was ultimately indefinitely blocked as as a result of violating the BLP discretionary sanctions within the Gamergate topic area. The edits he made to Talk:Gamergate controversy have since been revdelled over their content but the resultant thread was archived here.
- DungeonSiegeAddict510 is an editor at Uncyclopedia. His editing history locally is fairly short up until Gamergate became a thing in September of this year. He began editting in earnest after linking to my ancient personal website (diff since revdelled) which went the way of the dinosaur with Geocities. He also repeatedly restored a thread on Talk:Gamergate controversy (and then to his user talk) that I had removed out of BLP concerns. These edits were never revdelled (, , , ).
- Casimirin registered 1 week ago after editing as an IP and has entrenched himself at a Gamergate-based dispute at Talk:Christina Hoff Sommers.
There are also several other editors who were inactive on Misplaced Pages for some period of time and then made edits advocating for Gamergate but they were the ones who were most displeased with being included on the poorly executed list of last month.
Tutelary refutations
Incivility to peoples offsite is irrelevant. Cobbsaladin's actions spoke for themselves, and that is why he is blocked.
Community sanctions & admin shopping
Hasteur proposed a set of general sanctions in order to deal with editors disrupting Gamergate controversy. After approximately 24 hours of discussion, Jehochman closed the discussion to allow the general sanctions to be confirmed by the community here. This went live on 24 October 2014. The sanction enforcement page went live on 12 November 2014 after a request that was answered by RGloucester here.
Since the instatement of the page, 11 editors were banned for various lengths under these sanctions. The bans were mostly meted out against editors advocating for Gamergate. Complaints have been made about a claim of unfair implimentation of these rules, despite no attempt by editors on one side of the dispute to even attempt to use the enforcement page to seek out sanctions against editors they consistently complain about on noticeboards.
Two prior attempts at arbitration were sought prior to this third accepted request. Both had been declined . At the time of the second request, the Gamergate sanctions were only in place for 4 days. The third accepted request was made under a week after the second request was declined, and no attempts at solving issues at the enforcement page were made by the filing party The Devil's Advocate, or any prior filing parties of the requests, to use the enforcement page to solve problems, and only pile onto existing threads to avoid having their allies be censured.
Out of all of the threads started at WP:GS/GG/E, none have been started by The Devil's Advocate or Tutelary and only two (this one against Tarc and the live one against myself opened by a single purpose account) have been opened by other editors advocating for Gamergate, despite their complaints that no one critical of Gamergate has been censured under the sanctions.
East718 refutation/rebuttal/whatever
Several pieces of East718's evidence also meet the same "out of context honest mistake rather than actual malicious intent" description as in TDA's evidence. It also relies on off-site behavior, which is not in the purview of Misplaced Pages (necessarily) as per the argument against Mr. Random's evidence. Aside from that, the "witch hunt" was poorly executed, and nothing came out of it other than the sanctions page. Edit warring was never acted on per Tutelary's evidence, and none of that past behavior (such as my actions as an administrator) are not relevant in this case IMO.
Carrite rebuttal
The evidence provided is a Gamergate adbocacy website that does not accurately depict the events, or does so in a way that puts a group of people who only became notable for their harassment of women in the video game industry in a positive light, somehow. It makes sense that personal blogs of people who are not reputable are to be forbidden on a topic where BLP is such a major issue.
It also appears to be an attempt to forum shop in a content dispute as Carrite tried to get the website onto the article during protection and was met with opposition.
IP editor rebuttal
Never actioned, not actionable, just because I'm arguing with you does not make it harassment.
Don't present things out of context.
The IP editor really has something against me. I reverted the edits to the talk page because the archival bot would not work when people keep bringing the old threads up again. The page was impossible to use at such a length. He has also been active in trying to get me banned through this when it is clear he is advocating for Gamergate and refuses to create an account to cover his actions through his three IP addresses:
- 70.24.5.250 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
- Denying a harassment target's statements
- "it helped further their biased narratives", "The only evidence presented of her being harassed is her word, and people repeating her word"
- "alleged harassment of Anita Sarkeesian is reported without question in this article, and treated as relevant for no reason beyond the say-so of those sources. The bias is absurd"
- This edit was revdelled
- "Can you show me where they do any investigative work whatsoever, or indeed do anything other than cite Sarkeesian's claims on Twitter?"
- Seriously most of these edits deal with denial of one person's statements because they don't want to believe her
- Questioning sources
- 74.12.93.242 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
- All edits are about this case
- 76.64.35.209 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
- Same as above
- Save for this where he accuses people of getting the photo deleted because of bias against the subject rather than it being Russavia adminning on the commons and discovering the photo has no valid copyright for Misplaced Pages usage
Evidence presented by Silver seren
Notice of possible meatpuppetry
I am still debating whether I want to get involved with presenting a full set of evidence in this case, as I really don't want to have to deal with SPAs harassing me and the like. But, for now, I just wanted to make a simple notification that anyone involved in this evidence page that uses Archive.today as a link, such as Mr. Random and LoganMac up above, likely have personal involvement with Gamergate as they are the only ones involved in using such links. Furthermore, the evidence presented just above by both has already been dismissed by the community as not an actual case of COI or a concern, as seen in this ANI discussion. And the exact evidence links given by them are also something that is currently, as I write this, being compiled in an 8chan thread and has been since this Evidence page was opened, so that is likely where the two above have been getting their sources. Again the use of Archive.today is a rather blatant showcase for that.
Also, the fact that the same 8chan thread is discussing having Misplaced Pages editor insiders who will ferry their wanted evidence along implies enough itself (and one of the commenters there implying they are a Misplaced Pages editor). And, yes, I have screenshots of this, which is necessary since they often delete or change comments in order to pretend certain things were not said. Silverseren 03:58, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
- Also I should note the removal here was done by the poster after collaboration with the users in the same 8chan thread I mentioned before. Also, apparently they are working together in an IRC chat in addition to the 8chan thread in order to facilitate the meatpuppetry. Silverseren 04:41, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
- There's also this acknowledgement.
- "Again, If you guys can, just delete my entry and I'll leave it to the pro editors with the long-standing accts on the gamergate.me side edit / present evidence."
- Diff. Silverseren 04:44, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Evidence presented by TheRedPenOfDoom
User:Titanium_Dragon has an inherent conflict of interest
User:Titanium_Dragon self identifies as and therefore has an inherent conflict of interest in editing gamergate articles, since gamergate in general is ostensibly about wide-spread collusion between game designers and journalists when it is not about sending death threats to women, and articles/content about Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu in particular who as indie game developers are effectively competitors in the game design space. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 06:25, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Starship.paint
Comments and actions bringing Misplaced Pages into disrepute
Some actions of Ryulong and Tarc, while off-wiki, has brought Misplaced Pages into disrepute. Even when Ryulong and Tarc are off-wiki, they still use virtually the same user names or handles, for example their Twitter accounts, which are called Ryulong and Tarc Meridian respectively. The Twitter acounts have publicly acknowledged that they are Misplaced Pages editors. (Tarc's admission is quoted below) The Misplaced Pages accounts have also admitted to using the Twitter accounts: Ryulong and Tarc (Rebuttal, Avono).
These were comments made when they were actively editing the article. I will demonstrate the bias below; I'm afraid I have to rely on an archive system as the damaging tweets were deleted at some point in time:
oh, you're a gamergate douche trying to get his way on Wiki by bitching that the page is biased as it doesn't show what you want
I don't have time to deal with gamergate fags here - Ryulong
FWIW I am a Misplaced Pages editor, and have done what I can to keep the BS out.
Hey, sorry you're getting crap from Gamergater neckbeards. These people need to and will be shouted down.
The narrative is being won, media's coming down hard against the trolls."
1 month later tho, looks like my p.o.v. is winning out.. - Tarc Meridian source
These aggressive and insulting comments have led to people questioning the integrity of the project if editors who have displayed such a bias and a anti-GG POV are still allowed to edit in this topic. Additionally, Ryulong on-wiki essentially admits he's not a neutral editor here. In the post above, he also claims being attacked on Twitter by the "mindless gamergate zombies". Honestly, I acknowledge not every editor approaching a subject will be neutral. However, when editors broadcast their biasness in a public manner, all it does it damage the reputation and reliability of Misplaced Pages.
Furthermore, the case of Ryulong was complicated due to him opening a GoFundMe online asking for donations. When he opened the GoFundMe, Ryulong acknowledged on-wiki that "further edits I make to the article or its talk page may be construed as a conflict of interest", referring to GamerGate. Ryulong's GoFundMe quota was met by a $350 donation from a certain FishFox Nuro, a self-described "SJW Lunatic" (social justice warrior, a label referring to someone with an anti-GamerGate POV). It seems to me that after accepting this donation from someone who is publicly anti-GG ("I sent off the bulk of my repayment to my friend tonight") - Ryulong now has a financial WP:COI regarding future edits on GamerGate. starship.paint ~ regal 09:30, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Update: I found a discussion on the GamerGate article here on the Escapist Magazine forums which is not reddit, 4chan or 8chan. It's interesting how the posters view the article and Ryulong, just CTRL-F Ryulong. starship.paint ~ regal 02:03, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
Update 2: In response to Cla68's question on whether Ryulong made "a homophobic slur on your Twitter feed when referring to your editing of the GG article on WP", Ryulong responded that "As a homosexual I can reclaim it for my own use. Not to mention said slur is often used as a meaningless suffix for some of the websites this topic originated on.
- Overall I'm not sure whether Ryulong really understands the need for accountability of his actions and words. How many "unintentional and honest mistakes" should we tolerate? One must analyse this situation; firstly, GamerGate is very controversial and is an issue with two "sides"; secondly, Ryulong is extremely involved (at time of post 18.55% of the article's edits belong to Ryulong). As long as people could be led to believe that Ryulong endorses one "side" of GamerGate to the point of casting slurs on the other "side", then we have a problem. Ditto to Tarc describing GamerGaters as "neckbeards" above. We have to consider the explicit connections the Misplaced Pages accounts and Twitter accounts have made to each other - together, they constitute unacceptable behaviour for future editing of the topic. starship.paint ~ regal 08:43, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
Accusations without proof by MarkBernstein
not needed for nowSince MarkBernstein was topic banned after I made this post, I've hidden this as it is no longer necessary at this point in time. There's some technical error, sorry, but if you absolutely need to read it, there's the edit tab. I may restore this accordingly if the situation changes. starship.paint ~ regal 01:23, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
Closure of 12RR as Stale
I am not sure whether this closure was appropriate, given the severity of the supposed offending action. starship.paint ~ regal 09:04, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Response to EvergreenFir
@EvergreenFir: - regarding the doxxxing, I just want to clarify that it's not only Ryulong who was doxxxed. There's also editors whom I do not consider "anti-GG", like Tutelary and DungeonSiegeAddict510, who also suffered from such attacks. starship.paint ~ regal 23:17, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
Evidence presented by HalfHat
Odd action by Dreadstar
I'd like to bring up a recent action by Dreadstar that I find rather odd, and I think is worth looking at. Basically he told me to stop making references to Hitler threatening me with sanctions. The thing is all I was doing is referring to the Misplaced Pages article on Adolph Hitler to make a point. The reason I (and I'd guess others) make references to the Hitler article is because it's a well written article on a very controversial topic where nonfringe sources have strong opinions, the argument requires it to be an article on someone or something hated by the RSs. I was simply making the argument that if all sources share an opinion we shouldn't agree in Misplaced Pages's voice. Please note I did not compare anyone or anything to Hitler, I didn't accuse anyone of being a Nazi or anything like that, I was simply making an argument about what is written in the RSs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=User_talk%3AHalfhat&diff=635482043&oldid=635152453 https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Talk%3AGamergate_controversy&diff=635481687&oldid=635481421
Response to Ryulong
I quickly compiled some difs here I think help show I'm not here to push an agenda. In fact that block of text was pointless, I'll add it to the diff page if someone wants to read it though but it's pointless. Ryulong has presented nothing to show advocacy.
Evidence presented by Thargor Orlando
before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person
{Write your assertion here}
Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.
Evidence presented by Avono
before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person
Regarding Battlefield Mentality
see this report submitted by User:Auerbachkeller and this response from Tarc Avono (talk) 17:05, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
- Tarc's conduct is especially worrying because he has been repeatedly warnned of this , Avono (talk) 22:32, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Rebutal Tarc
WP:BLP#Non-article_space allows posting links of BLP issue material in order to discuss If said source can be used. Therefore just linking to it is no violation (I never presented this material in article talk page space and never referred to it) Avono (talk) 22:03, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Tutelary
Ryulong has repeatedly gotten away with edit warring even 15RR by administrators primarily indulged with sanctions
People have reported Ryulong multiple times for edit warring, and both times, Ryulong was not taken action against, and the person who had absolved Ryulong of any block was the person primarily active in the sanctions page.
(By Future Perfect, giving no reasoning on why Ryulong shouldn't be blocked per WP:3RR saying to go to WP:ANI if anything needs to happen further, even though Ryulong perfectly passed 5RR without an exception.) Tutelary (talk) 22:29, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Repeated refactoring and/or hatting of others' comments in violation of WP:REFACTOR and WP:TPO
Multiple users have hatted, refactored others' comments even withstanding those user's rejections and have gotten into edit wars regarding this fact. Note that WP:TPO states Indeed it tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. The basic rule—with some specific exceptions outlined below—is that you should not edit or delete the comments of other editors without their permission.
and also states that involved users should not be hatting others' comments. The template for hat advises to follow WP:TPO and WP:REFACTOR, which states that if anyone objects to refactoring, that it be reverted. Diffs coming later as well as usernames, this is a big issue on the page. Tutelary (talk) 22:29, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Red Pen:
- Hatting a discussion related to content (without signing), a violation of WP:BLPTALK
- A violation of WP:TPO, editing another's comments More diffs to be added as I find them. Tutelary (talk) 03:22, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
North:
Conduct and comments unbecoming of a Misplaced Pages editor
Ryulong:
- Telling another editor to 'eat shit'
- Says another editor is 'full of shit' More diffs and users as I find them. Tutelary (talk) 03:22, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
- Refusal to engage in the encylopedic process
- Making unsubstanciated claims about another editor
- Assuming bad faith with a Misplaced Pages editor
Entirety of decision to impose discretionary sanctions discussion was closed after 23.5 hours
The decision on whether to issue discretionary sanctions for GamerGate was closed only after 23.5 hours of discussion, with no SNOW close but with "2:1" support as by closing administrator. Link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Archive265#Proposed_Gamergate_solution_by_Hasteur No matter on whether or not they should have been passed, it is a bit ridiculous that not less than 24 hours is enough to impose discretionary sanctions while dsicussion was still ongoing. I'd expect at least 7 days. Tutelary (talk) 22:29, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Future Perfect's Conduct
Future Perfect, the administrator closed Ryulong's boomerang topic ban as a result of him proposing that 35+ people, at least 70% of which were not SPAs the way he described them, citing 'no possibility of consensus' as reason for closing said discussion. In this, he also closed one of the 3RRN noticeboard complaints with no action against Ryulong. He's also rarely if ever active to the WP:3RRN, when searching through his Misplaced Pages namespace contributions, he's only ever reported commented on the noticeboard 6 times while the contributions span through April. Tutelary (talk) 22:29, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Dreadstar's conduct
Dreadstar used administrative tools multiple occasions in protecting the article, topic banning users, and the like on the article. However, one particularly instance which I can't find an exact reasoning for doing is this deleting of a page to remove revisions. Northbysouthbaranof was edit warring with another account over some edit. I later reported North to which no action happened but that's not the point. Dreadstar deleted the page to -remove- any evidence that this edit warring happened, and the actual content which was being edit warred over. Literally, once those revisions were gone, there was absolutely no evidence that North had edit warred at all, and my diffs for my 3RRN report became void. They were invalid links after that had happened. I questioned this on their talk page and Dreadstar reverted, but the fact that Dreadstar would delete a page to delete revisions so no one could prove that they existed is baffling. Even when an edit is oversighted or revision deleted, the username, the edit summary, and the content of the edit may be deleted. But not the edit itself. This was strange. Tutelary (talk) 02:23, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
Full protection of the GamerGate article for 5 months
The article has been fully protected by administrator User:Nyttend for a period of 5 months. When this was contested on Jimbo's talk page, they asserted that quality sources for the article can only be found months or even years later after the controversy began. This reasoning conflicts with the five pillars (the one about being free to edit) and the fact that Misplaced Pages is always improving itself, and we only keep to the sources that are available. This only delays the editing process and keeping an article in a fully protected state for that long is not in the interest of Misplaced Pages. Jimbo affirmed that 5 months of full protection was too long of a period. Nyttend has not reverted this protection. The only article which warranted this level of protection (which had it indefinitely and that I'm aware of) is Yank Barry, who had pursued legal action against Wikipedians. That was an WP:IAR action by administrators to protect the users of the page to not become engaged in a legal dispute, and justified reasonable under WP:IAR. This is not. Tutelary (talk) 04:11, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
My topic ban by Gamaliel is out of process and by an involved admin
My topic ban by Gamaliel is out of process and by an involved administrator. The Devil's Advocate demonstrated quite accurately on how Gamaliel is an involved administrator in this topic area and as a result, should not be imposing sanctions on others in this topic area. Not to mention that any type of 'uninvolved' nature of them due to becoming an involved party in this ArbCom; IE delivering general sanctions to others involved as parties should be absolutely unambiguous to their nature of being involved. The sanction itself is also out of process. Let me demonstrate how.
The sanctions were enacted on October 24, with the wording proposed by Hasteur being accepted (and is on the WP:GS page as)
Any uninvolved administrator may, on his or her own discretion, impose sanctions on any editor working on a page within the topic space of Gamergate controversy broadly construed, if, despite being warned, that editor repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Misplaced Pages, any expected standards of behavior, or any normal editorial process. This may include, but is not limited to, page banning, topic banning, semi protection, Pending Changes enabling, or blocking any editor with an interest other than that of the Misplaced Pages community and without regard for compliance with content rules. Sanctions may be appealed to the administrator who placed them, the administrators' noticeboard, or the Arbitration Committee
- I was never warned of any conduct relating to GamerGate by any administrator, only notified of general sanctions. That, per the official process guidelines for general sanctions only explicitly counts as a notification, and cannot be revoked. Hence, I was never warned of any type of disruption regarding the topic area which is mandated for sanctioning under the wording and never given any time to clarify any appearance of disruption.
- Gamaliel took this community process of WP:ANI and twisted it into discretionary sanctions with exactly no need for it. The community does not lose their ability to propose sanctions just because discretionary sanctions are enacted.
- Ryulong is not related to GamerGate. I proposed on WP:ANI for experienced users and administrators to look at Ryulong's conduct, decide if it was alright, and accordingly, sanction if it was not. I proposed a topic ban due to his pronounced WP:COI in the area. None of this is related to GamerGate edits, but a COI with the tangential topic of a GamerGate forum. General sanctions do not cover specific editors, but topics, and I was sanctioned for in effect calling Ryulong out.
- Even deferring to the community discussion which Gamaliel blatantly stated was an imposition of general sanctions, and not a community based one, his reasoning still does not hold up.
- Gamaliel is not an uninvolved administrator to be sanctioning users, as demonstrated by The Devil's Advocate. Tutelary (talk) 21:07, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
Evidence presented by DungeonSiegeAddict510
All links archived for security.
Off-site conduct
Since if one side (pro-gg)'s actions are being scrutinized, it is only fair that ALL off-site actions are scrutinized, and yes, feel free to dig up my Uncyc history.
On-site conduct
There'll probably be reposted info/diffs here.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:8chan#Tagging -this little thing happened. (https://archive.today/0Mkpa)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/User_talk:Ryulong/Archive_15#4chan_Page -Ryulong has some sort of vendetta against Alex Wuori (apparently a GG supporter or something) (https://archive.today/HyW0j)
Evidence presented by Weedwacker
Behavior of involved admins
Titanium Dragon was topic banned by Future Perfect at Sunrise for raising the argument that death threats shouldn’t be attributed to a source until the source is known.
When the subject of Ryulong’s WP:COI came up on the General Sanctions page, Future Perfect at Sunrise hatted a great deal of editor statements for being “mostly useless quabbling” , this hatting was later reversed and commented on by another admin.
The Devil’s Advocate was temporarily blocked by Drmies for presenting evidence of Gamaliel’s involvement in the article.
Tutelary was recently topic banned by Gamaliel after a boomerang motion request. Tutelary initially brought up a request concerning Ryulong’s WP:COI for receiving funds, something that even Jimbo Wales said should be looked into. Future Perfect at Sunrise closed it calling it “frivolous”. The ban on Tutelary was imposed by Gamaliel despite a 10:10 support:oppose vote, stating that he discounted objections as they “are from involved editors or are largely procedural in nature”
Future Perfect at Sunrise was unhappy with how this arbitration case was handling WP:OUTING, so because he didn't like the rules, he changed them himself.
A thread in brought up by Revent concerning bans Gamaliel has imposed since ArbCom began was closed in ~90 minutes by Dreadstar, citing the opinion of one arbitrator that previously uninvolved (my bold) admins would still be uninvolved after being named as party to the case.
Admin PresN submitted evidence claiming to be mostly uninvolved, which is mostly true for on-wiki, but off wiki he spends his time helping out ryulong and taunting gamergate supporters on reddit under an account he has confirmed on-wiki.
On the subject of SPAs and the “us vs. them” mentality
I’ve seen lots of accusations thrown around that editors are SPAs only here to disrupt Misplaced Pages. One notable incident outside of this page was Ryulong’s “Nip Gamergate in the bud” proposal to topic ban 35 editor accounts that he claimed were WP:SPA. On closer examination most of the accounts listed were found to not be SPAs, with some having years of contributions to Misplaced Pages. The proposal, and the responsive calls for a WP:BOOMERANG were closed by Future Perfect at Sunrise within a day of their opening saying there is “no chance of consensus”.
I do not discount the fact that there have been incidences of SPAs, but the term seems to be loosely thrown around as accusation against every editor who disagrees with or raises objections about a select number of editors involved in this topic. There are countless examples of these editors proclaiming other editors to be “obviously pro-gamer gate” just for disagreeing with them. Likewise, not everyone is engaged in WP:SOCK just because you say they are, though WP:MEAT accounts can be proven by their creation date and lack of edits, no evidence has been presented that editors here are encouraging it. Weedwacker (talk) 21:18, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Here is what an actual SPA looks like. Weedwacker (talk) 12:41, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
Response to Ryulong
Despite your accusations that I have, I have never edited the Gamergate article. In regards to the comment I made on your talk page, I am sorry for making it as it wasn't very civil, and am glad you removed it. I only took to your talk page to begin with because Gamaliel hatted a discussion on 8chan and said concerns with individual editors should be brought to their talk pages. Also, a single edit is not WP:HARASSMENT.
Evidence presented by Tarc
Rebuttals
- Retartist: I place no value on "warnings" from involved single-purpose accounts, hence the removal. You misinterpreted this comment in regards to Corbett. Also, I WANT the civility pillar to be enforced against so-called "vested editors", but am too jaded to believe it will ever happen.
- Starship.paint: I will make no apologies for expressing empathy to victims of rape and murder threats, nor for assuring them that the Misplaced Pages has strict policies against scurrilous tabloid material, and that they wiki-bios will be written fairly and neutrally.
- Avono: My entierly off-wiki comments directed at Mr. Auerbach were hasty and ill-advised. I retracted what I said and apologized personally ( here and a longer post on Drmies talk page.) Note that Mr. Auerbach accepted that apology. We have moved on from that unfortunate tiff, which was my fault entirely.
The necessity of oversighting and revision deletion
Avono posts a link to a college newspaper OpEd that contains serious BLP violations
On Dec 3rd, Avono posted this link to the GG talk page, in a tangent about the fringe nature of GG ethics proponents, but the link pointed to a student newspaper that contained egregious violations of WP:BLP policy. Upon being contacted by myself and apparently others, Amherst has removed the article from their website, which IMO validates the egregiousness of the linked text.
Evidence presented by Obsidi
I don’t really care about the content issues. What I care about is that we have a good fair process. To that end, what I see as a problem is a lack of causation between some of the topic bans imposed and the actions from which they are based. Without causation everything becomes a subjective mess in which if there are biases tinting the vision of the admins it is impossible to tell.
What should happen is that the editor posts X, X violates policy Y in the opinion of the admin, the admin then evaluates the history of the editor and based on that history imposes remedy Z. We can then go back and examine, was X really a violation of policy Y? What does policy Y really mean? And with that we can have a uniform application of the policies to everyone.
Let’s take case in point the topic ban of Tutelary from this ANI thread. Normally in a case of a WP:Boomerang the actual post to ANI is objectionable, that or there are other specific actions taken by the user that is make the poster the one really responsible for what they are accusing someone of. That is not the case in this instance. The original reason for the ANI request was one in which an uninvolved admin said a 1 year topic ban was possibly appropriate , nor was Tutelary accused of likewise having a COI. Instead we have a long list of Misplaced Pages:IDONTLIKETHIS accusations of Tendentious Editing without any diffs (and not even majority support for a topic ban) followed by a topic ban due to the "wide latitude" or discretion given to the admin. This is abuse of discretion. A specific edit (with diff) should be given, and on the basis of that edit violating a WP policy then the topic ban should be imposed. (admins should continue to have wide discretion for the remedy, given they are not applying it unequally)
Now let’s take another situation Cobbsaladin topic ban. In this case the accusation was made that Cobbsaladin purposefully copied Ryulong’s userpage and replaced all of Ryulong’s details with his own. The first question is was this really done to mock Ryulong? I’m of the opinion that it wasn’t (Ryulong thinks it was), for the moment let’s assume that it was. There was NOTHING about this (other than that it was done to Ryulong) that in any way links this action to gamergate of which he was topic banned from because of it. No mention of gamergate or anything related to it was in the userpage (as far as I am aware). But instead of lifting the topic ban (maybe impose IBAN), it was EXTENDED based on this appeal (not a single person other than the closing admin asked it to be extended). I don’t doubt there was a copyvio problem going on here, but it wasn’t gamergate related.
A clear and fair system is one in which everyone can trust. --Obsidi (talk) 22:21, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Gamaliel
I have no idea what evidence to provide to defend myself against the allegations offered by The Devil's Advocate and others that I am an uninvolved party. I offer my entire edit history as evidence that I have little interest in games and gaming culture. The only time I can recall editing Misplaced Pages regarding video games in my ten years here was this 2011 Signpost article I wrote about a controversy that involved a gaming review website. It has been claimed that I have a "vested interest" but not a single complainer has identified what that supposed interested is. I believe that this is a deliberate campaign to influence administrative decisions (i.e., "work the refs"), and as evidence I offer the complete lack of real evidence of any involvement or interest on my part presented by any of the many parties who have made the claim of my involvement.
In this message, User:Pudeo chided me for not acting in the capacity of a "mediator", but the role of a neutral mediator is exactly what I was trying to accomplish with most of the comments cited as "evidence" of my alleged involvement, "vested interest", etc. Per WP:INVOLVED: "Warnings, calm and reasonable discussion and explanation of those warnings, advice about community norms, and suggestions on possible wordings and approaches do not make an administrator 'involved'."
I believe all my comments and administrative actions have been in the best interests of Misplaced Pages policy and the community.
Evidence presented by previously involved IP user
BLP violations against Eron Gjoni
User:Ryulong rewrote the lede of the article, asserting that the controversy "...began with harassment of... Zoe Quinn by an ex-boyfriend".
In the context of an admin noticeboard discussion, User:TheRedPenOfDoom refers to the ranting blog post of an ex boyfriend (repeated ad nauseum by internet trolls)
, labeling it as an 'allegation' that in TRPoD's opinion must be 'adorned', and therefore attributing the specific claim under discussion - i.e. "that the relationship had resulted in favorable media coverage" - to Gjoni.
In both of these cases, Gjoni is not responsible for what is alleged, and neither do the reliable sources claim he is.
For a long period of time, the Zoe Quinn article was sourced using an article from Cracked, written by Quinn herself. Although the offensive material was not used in the WP article, focusing instead on her side of the experience, this Cracked article includes several opinionated and defamatory statements about Eron Gjoni (not named there, but his identity is common knowledge among people following the discussion). On December 1, based off this discussion, User:NorthBySouthBaranof finally replaced the source, using comments from a BBC interview instead; but in doing so, he inserted one of the defamatory comments from the Cracked article which she apparently repeated to the BBC interviewer.
At ANI, User:NorthBySouthBaranof makes claims about Gjoni's behaviour; his second assertion is not evidenced by the citation (of the Ars Technica article). He goes on to WP:SYNTH an opinion about Gjoni's actions.
Other BLP issues
User:Ryulong has made opinionated, disparaging remarks about Milo Yiannopoulos on the talk page, and violated BLP in the article about Dale North (per User:Bilby's immediate reversion).
User:TaraInDC reverted an edit by User:ArmyLine on ANI, citing BLP. However, ArmyLine's claim is in my view adequately corroborated by the cited source from the main article, which explicitly states "in early April, Nathan and Zoe began a romantic relationship
"; Quinn and Gjoni were still together at the time.
Violations of WP:CIVIL/WP:BITE by Ryulong
Ryulong has, throughout the entire affair, demonstrated repeated incivility, including frequent use of profanity, ad hominem, disrespect for Misplaced Pages policies and procedures such as DRN, intimidating, standoffish and WP:HOUNDING behaviour, and repeatedly misrepresenting the arguments of others in spite of explicit clarification. He has done this on the GG talk page (more diffs to come), on AN/EW , and continuing during these proceedings.
On October 8, Ryulong was explicitly asked to stop using profanity on the GG Talk page, and he agreed to this, but did not comply (TODO: relevant diffs marked with an asterisk above).
Ryulong, NorthBySouthBaranof and TheRedPenOfDoom have defended each others' incivility and biased remarks (WP:TAGTEAM concerns)
On the GG Talk page, TheRedPenOfDoom referred to Gamergate supporters as "(sexually repressed) basement dwellers" . (Hypocritically, the next day, TRPoD suggested to Arbcom that the talk page could potentially benefit from adult oversight
.)
After I called out the obvious bias demonstrated by these remarks, Ryulong removed those comments as trolling and comments that will prevent this page from ever adequately being archived
, while allowing TRPoD's comments to stand. The comments he removed also include me attempting to call out NBSB for hypocrisy in his evaluation of the reliability of sources.
17 minutes later - immediately after removing my attempt to appeal NBSB's accusation of supposed BLP violations on my part - Ryulong performed a "manual archive", effectively shutting me out of the discussion. I cannot find an indication of where the supposedly "archived" content was placed. I was never given a proper hearing on the BLP accusation and the entire encounter struck me as very much WP:BITE.
In the previously noted AN/EW incident, User:NorthBySouthBaranof showed up to defend Ryulong, immediately after (note timestamps) a direct appeal for help on his user talk page.
Ryulong and COI
Per Ryulong's own account of events, after soliciting funds off Reddit, he apparently felt the need to take a break from the Gamergate topic, 'broadly construed' as seems to be the fashionable phrasing, so as to avoid the appearance of impropriety. However, when a new article popped up and he was unsure whether he ought to participate, apparently Ryulong felt it was appropriate to ask, not any sort of Misplaced Pages official, but the relevant moderators on Reddit.
Rebuttal, Ryulong
The Anil Dash paragraph, for example, is heavily represented, despite the community at large dismissing his claims.
Yet, in the linked discussion, Ryulong himself claims that No. The talk page discussion is split down the middle which is why it's being brought up here for discussion from uninvolved parties.
. I also don't see anything like a consensus view expressed by "the community at large" there. If anything, the uninvolved people commenting at the end see a slight BLP concern
and seem to be arguing that the existing content is/was WP:UNDUE.
Regarding the Xander756 case, per the timestamps on the provided diffs, it looks to me like TDA made a good-faith decision, then either had his mind changed or came to some sort of agreement-to-disagree.
Questioning the reliability of sources is not in any way actionable. More importantly, questioning the accurate representation of the sources' content in the article is definitely not actionable. That I have an opinion on the topic of Gamergate is also not relevant; it certainly has not caused me to make NPOV edits, as I have not edited the article.
Rebuttal, TheRedPenOfDoom
Absurd. If being a game developer represents a conflict of interest, then given the "misogynistic harassment" narrative, so does being a woman.
Evidence presented by east718
Ryulong's witch-hunting mentality
Ryulong started a thread on WP:AN asking for a list of around 40 supposed single-purpose accounts which he had been compiling over several weeks to be "blocked for violating WP:NOTBATTLEGROUND and WP:NOTHERE." When it's found by the community that most of the list is false, with it including people having 5+ year long editing histories and administrators, Ryulong starts attacking accused editors, making bizarre claims such as one person's editing of Deadspin, NHK, Breitbart (website) and Time (magazine) making them a GamerGate SPA. None of these articles have any content about GamerGate in them, and have never had any GamerGate-related discussion on their talkpages or talkpage archives.
When I posted my analysis of his list and noted this, Ryulong doubled down on his false claim that Breitbart is a related entity and that it was appropriate to witch-hunt a user because of their editing of it. He then attacked me for being a "zombie account that SPA," despite the facts that I'd started an unrelated article that day, have never edited a video game-related article, and have been an admin for ~8 years. I was not the only person caught in Ryulong's crossfire simply for posting on that AN thread, further down Ryulong attacks another user ("editors such as myself have become exhausted in having to deal with editors like yourself who have come to the English Misplaced Pages push an agenda"), despite this person having a 9-year history and having never made any GamerGate-related edit.
Ryulong has engaged in edit warring
Ryulong has violated BLP, antagonized journalists, and made defamatory claims about them on- and off-wiki
- Adds material to an article accusing Milo Yiannopoulos of making sexist remarks, this is attributed to a primary source on a website with no editorial staff.
- "The Based Liar continues to care about me."
- Adds material to an article falsely claiming that Dale North blacklisted a writer from industry. The source he cites notes that this is only an allegation by a website called GameZone, and that attempting to blacklist someone from employment is illegal. GameZone has no editorial staff, and their article uses an imgur post as its source.
- Adds material to an article falsely claiming David Auerbach "insist that women harassed and threatened should both be held responsible for what Gamergate had become"; this material is not found in the source he cites.
- Falsely accuses David Auerbach of threatening him , then tries to get an admin to revoke his autochecked permissions. This is the post from Auerbach which beget Ryulong's response.
- "David Auerbach is enabling my harassers."
- " is enabling a group of homophobes and anti-semites."
- "Are you going to go running to Jimbo over something like this too? "
- "Georgina wants some more ad revenue."
- "That would require ethical journalism ."
- The ryulong67 Reddit account and @Ryulong Twitter account are admitted by Ryulong to be his.
Ryulong has been a recidivist problem editor for years
Concerns about Ryulong's lack of decorum, hostility towards newcomers, edit warring, inappropriate off-wiki behavior, and failing to address community concerns have been voiced over a period of years. Ryulong has been blocked for edit warring 13 times since 2009.
Evidence presented by Carrite
It is apparent to me that Gamergate controversy is not only under attack by an organized caucus of new editors (meatpuppets, in crude terms), but also is being tag-team "owned" in a tendentious manner by a group of emotionally involved Wikipedians which include Ryulong, Tarc, and NorthBySouthBaranof. Arbs, please do read the following link as part of your due diligence trying to understand both sides of the issue:
- Gurney Halleck, A People's History of Gamergate. www.historyofgamergate.com/
The article is now locked down in favor of House POV, which portrays the ProGG side as more or less a caucus of cyber thugs systematically making terroristic threats against women. To some extent, this is part of it. However, any external link to this temperate source cited above explaining the Pro-GG "side" has been tossed aside on the clearly specious claim of being a blog (Tarc) — as if all links to blogs are prohibited from external links! — or on bogus BLP gounds (NorthBySouthBaranof).
There are two warrior sides on this issue, the Gamergaters are obvious, but do not fail to take a look at the House POV which is being systematically defended by a handful of Wikipedians who in their fury seem to have cast aside WP:NPOV. Carrite (talk) 18:20, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
Evidence presented by EvergreenFir
Off-wiki efforts to (1) dox users and influence the article and (2) SPAs and zombie accounts
As with the request to take the case, my only comments are that:
- The ARBCOM should consider the off-wiki organization and attacks occurring. Searching "Ryulong gamergate", for example, shows the vast off-wiki effort to dox editors and to influence the article in a pro-gamergate light. I can find no such behavior from anti-gamergate editor.
- This case and page is plagued by SPA and zombie accounts (those that were inactive for years that suddenly came to life for this one issue). See this archived ANI as an example of discussions of SPA and zombie accounts.
The drafters of this case have my sympathies. Best of luck. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 20:27, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
- @Starship.paint: They are separate, but likely correlated, issues. I suspect that any Wikipedian editing would be a potential doxxing target. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 23:38, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
Evidence presented by CIreland
Misplaced Pages's Gamergate article was recommended by BBC News to its readers
Regular readers of BBC News will know that BBC News is not in the habit of explicity directing its readers to partisan coverage, nor is it in the habit of describing non-neutral accounts as "factual":
This BBC News article, whilst noting our internal disputes about "objectivity", describes the article as "what looks like a factual account", linking readers looking for comprehensive coverage to Misplaced Pages.
Evidence presented by ArmyLine
The current system has proven itself biased. Now it's just a question of how unfair it really is
The preferential treatment demonstrated by certain admins is in itself cause for concern. However, when I discovered involved admin PresN admitted he was "very much on one side of the issue" (he has also demonstrated this) and yet had not recused himself before being called out, it just all just snapped into place. How many other involved admins have undisclosed conflicts of interest?
For instance, in the process of a topic ban appeal/call for the review of an admin's actions, Future Perfect at Sunrise saw fit to give me a one week block and seemed to quietly brush a BLP transgression against Eron Gjoni (someone who several admins have demonstrated blind spots for) under the rug, namely "Exactly what BLP violation do you claim exists in re: the article's discussion of Eron Gjoni? He is currently mentioned in the article, as the author of the blogpost which sparked the firestorm. Given his publicity-seeking behavior in widely spreading his claims about Zoe Quinn, he can hardly be considered an unwilling participant in the controversy." (first written by NorthBySouthBaranof, which was then restored by Ryulong). While Future Perfect at Sunrise saw it suitable to hat the appeal for a "violation of topic ban", he did not see fit to enforce any BLP sanctions against NorthBySouthBaranof or Ryulong or even to warn them. As an aside, I did not include either editor on my appeal and both showed up and started making backhanded insults without provocation - another thing Future Perfect at Sunrise seems to have had issues seeing. This sort of selective enforcement and a hair-trigger for enforcing sanctions on behalf of only certain individuals has demonstrated that bias, cronyism, and the desire for approval by certain external groups are a deciding factor in the enforcement of sanctions by many of the involved admins.--ArmyLine (talk) 09:09, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
Rebuttal to PresN
"I have taken no admin actions in regards to this case, only submitted evidence that was later withdrawn after the arbs said they would not consider off-wiki posts."
PresN closed a discussion here. While the arbitrator later endorsed the closure, it was inappropriate for PresN to be the one to close the discussion, given his lack of objectivity in the matter. However, that even one admin failed to disclose his COI is very troubling given some of the statements and sympathies expressed as well as the selective enforcement of sanctions in this case. How many more admins are compromising their and Misplaced Pages's objectivity to push a certain narrative? I find it difficult to believe that these exclusionary beliefs form in a vacuum, and find it likely that this is indicative of a larger issue of cliquishness within certain segments of the administration.--ArmyLine (talk) 18:40, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
To specify, PresN was posting on a known anti-Gamergate subreddit and fraternizing there with Ryulong. I believe that should be enough to constitute a COI, as he is both sympathetic and wants the approval of the members of that subreddit. Additionally, the fact that he has this power and this COI is, combined, very problematic. He has done what could be construed as a threat against Tutelary when he stated "Don't sit here wiki-lawyering about whether I can close an off-topic thread or not, especially since you're topic-banned from GamerGate on-wiki.". Everything he does is as an admin and that power is enough to intimidate many other parties out of reverting or contradicting him.--ArmyLine (talk) 00:17, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
Evidence presented by Black Kite
As I said previously, I don't consider myself a party to this in any way, but I suppose I must refute TDA's rather silly allegations.
- Canvassed Gender Gap Task Force to deal with "misogynistic" edits on the pages for Quinn and her game.
- Irrelevant to this case, this was a straightforward BLP issue with Quinn's article. At the time the GamerGate article was a minor stub.
- Irrelevant to this case, other that the fact Tutelary later became a major editor of the GamerGate article. And I don't think I was wrong, either.
- Removes material about a DDoS attack on The Escapist's GamerGate thread.
- ...correct, because it was UNDUE, original research and in no way sourced to be even relevant to the article. You'll note that at least three different editors reverted User:Bosstopher's attempt to edit-war it into the article.
- Claims said attack is not relevant to GamerGate article because there is no proof of responsibility.
- ...correct, it was original research.
- Removes the NPOV tag from the article disputing its basis.
- ...because you have to provide a good reason for a tag like that, not a vague rant.
- Reverts a change to the lede by ArmyLine due to "no consensus" from previous discussions.
- ...well, you've explained that one yourself.
- So, let me get this right - your claim I have used tools whilst involved comes down to the fact that I removed BLP-violating vandalism? The Quinn stuff was simply unpleasant vandalism, whilst the GamerGate revdel was yet another editor claiming that the incident referred to as "false accusations" in the fourth line of the article was true. Black Kite (talk) 11:43, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
- Closed ANI case against TD four hours after the case opened after Future reimposed TD's topic ban despite minimal discussion and at least one objection to the sanction.
- Um, that's what you do with an ANI case when it's resolved (in this case by a topic ban being imposed).
- States in arbitration request that he "reserves" the "right" to take further admin action on the subject.
- Quite right, because I'm not involved. Actually though, I haven't touched it since, because I haven't been that active and I frankly got sick of reading the repeated nonsense from swathes of single purpose accounts. Black Kite (talk) 11:26, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
Evidence presented by PresN
Rebutals against Weedwacker et. al.
- Weedwacker claims that my possible off-wiki comments make me "involved", but even he admits that I have not worked on the article in question and have stayed out of the content dispute; having an opinion does not invalidate me from submitting evidence.
- ArmyLine says that due to my having an opinion on the issue, I should have "recused" myself. From what? I have taken no admin actions in regards to this case, only submitted evidence that was later withdrawn after the arbs said they would not consider off-wiki posts. Apparently, having an opinion that does not agree with the GamerGate position means that one should be banned from making any edits, admin-related or not. --PresN 16:09, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
- ArmyLine further states that my closing a thread on this talk page when it went off topic was an admin action. It is not- any editor can be bold and close a thread; admins have mops, we are not given super-editor permissions. The Devil's Advocate closed a thread on the talk page a week before, and they are not an admin. ArmyLine's statement betrays a lack of understanding of what powers admins have compared to regular editors, as well as the difference between "having an opinion" and "conflict of interest". Admins are still editors, and are able to act in that capacity like everyone else as long as they follow the same rules. --PresN 19:16, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
Evidence presented by {your user name}
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