The Wikipedia Post — Part 10: A Knight Dismounted

Robert Fernandez a.k.a. Gamaliel, wrote a very wonderful piece in the Signpost in late March of 2016 to commemorate the untimely passing of Dreadstar. In his piece, Fernandez cited the tragic event as a reminder for everyone that they should give more consideration to the fact the people they are dealing with on Wikipedia are human beings and fittingly titled the piece: “God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” A week later Fernandez would be making vulgar insinuations about future President Donald Trump’s penis and vilifying anyone who didn’t appreciate his humor. The resulting case before the Arbitration Committee would be a strong representation of how the Committee handles misconduct regarding one of its own as Fernandez had only that year taken up his position at the Committee as part of the “anti-harassment” campaign initiated in response to GamerGate and gender-related controversies on the online encyclopedia. Spoiler alert: they handled it horribly.

The conflict began innocently enough with an April Fool’s joke in Wikipedia newsletter The Signpost, where Fernandez was editor-in-chief. Being the year of the 2016 Presidential election, the joke unsurprisingly concerned then-candidate Donald Trump. A satirical piece in the Signpost claimed Trump had just announced Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales as his running mate. Littered with plenty of ribbing at Wales, Trump, and even critics such as co-founder Larry Sanger who set up a failed Wikipedia rival, there was little cause for offense over the piece itself. Some certainly did not appreciate some of the humor, such as jokes about Trump’s hands and insinuations that it meant something more i.e. his penis size, but this was left alone given it was a clear satirical piece dated to the common day of tomfoolery. However, after April Fool’s it became a little more contentious as the piece also included various faux headlines related to Trump, such as one claiming he offered to “purchase” Wikipedia, and unlike the piece itself these headlines were dated as if they were published outside April Fool’s Day.

Rather than incorporating these headlines into the piece itself, independent pages were created for each headline. One of these headline pages, which Fernandez created, claimed Trump had threatened to sue Wikipedia over an image of his “small hands” on the site. A couple days after April 1st, DHeyward nominated the page for speedy deletion as a “hoax” or “vandalism” and Fernandez removed the nomination. DHeyward expressed concern about having April Fool’s jokes maligning living people being included in spaces not clearly dated to April Fool’s Day and potentially encouraging further mean-spirited humor pages about living people being spread around the site if this set a precedent. Others agreed with this sentiment and nominated the page for deletion. When editor Arkon repeatedly tried to blank the page over the objections of Fernandez, the page was protected from non-administrator edits by Ed Erhart, member of the Wikimedia Foundation’s communications staff and previous editor-in-chief of the Signpost. Everything was brought to a conduct noticeboard discussion where things truly began to spiral out of control. Administrator Guy Chapman prematurely closed the discussion with a mocking remark about Trump’s hands and attacking Arkon, which Arkon undid only for Fernandez to repeatedly restore the close and its attacks on Arkon and Trump, warning Arkon about “edit-warring” with him.

On the page itself DHeyward replaced the headline with one stating “Small hands Gamaliel created this” and Fernandez reverted him noting it was a personal attack. He then redacted the reference to hands, magnifying the issue as it was even more suggestive. Though the page was deleted, the fight went on as Fernandez created a “userbox” for “small hands” to continue the dispute with a link to a hit piece on Donald Trump (itself later deleted), though Fernandez deleted the userbox under pressure. Administrator Fram raised concerns about Fernandez using his administrative privileges to protect the page from editing by non-administrators as well as his other actions in relation to the conflict. Fernandez would also repeatedly invoke the GamerGate boogeyman in his responses, interspersed with attacks on various people criticizing his behavior. Discussion eventually closed without any sanctions against Fernandez and a failed attempt at imposing sanctions on Arkon, before making its way up to the Arbitration Committee itself. Four of the newly-elected “anti-harassment” clique on ArbCom would be forced to recuse, including Fernandez obviously. Emily Temple-Wood a.k.a. Keilana and Kirill Lokshin recused due to both being board members of the Wikimedia DC chapter organization with Fernandez. Molly “GorillaWarfare” White recused as well.

Fernandez being pre-occupied with the ArbCom case meant he could do little to protect Bernstein, who reacted to his ally being under fire with all his usual grace. Citing a list of Bernstein’s usual histrionics, editor Starke Hathaway reported Bernstein to the page for enforcing ArbCom sanctions on GamerGate-related disputes. The comments included his various defenses of Fernandez mixed in with ravings about the gamers and criticizing efforts to have Nintendo employee Alison Rapp fired from the family-friendly company for the minor little thing of suggesting the possession of child pornography involving actual children should be legal (she would later be fired for other offenses). Naturally, his outlandish conspiracy theories and vitriolic rhetoric were raised. As has been common in any case of users reporting Bernstein there were attempts to suggest if Bernstein goes then so too should many others, implying those deemed pro-GamerGate, but for a change those voices lost out. While Fernandez commented, the heat on him prompted one administrator to suggest he was now too close to the subject to continue being an admin in the area. In the end, Bernstein was given an indefinite ban from the GamerGate topic.

David Auerbach at Slate also became involved due to his prior experiences with Wikipedia and his criticism of the site. On Twitter Auerbach highlighted the complicated nature of the Fernandez case and suggested the Committee was looking to protect one of its own members from consequences for his misconduct. He noted the unusual situation of Fernandez wearing multiple hats as a member of the Arbitration Committee, the editor-in-chief of the Signpost, and a board member at Wikimedia DC. Auerbach’s criticism of Fernandez as corrupt prompted him to fight with Aurbach on Twitter. When Auerbach questioned White over whether her colleague’s behavior was appropriate, she suggested Auerbach commenting on a Wikipedia case and criticizing Fernandez was inappropriate behavior. Eventually, Auerbach noticed his own page on Wikipedia had been nominated for deletion, which he saw as a common form of retaliation for his comments about the ArbCom case against Fernandez. While the discussion technically began before he spoke about the case, it did come as he was criticizing Wikipedia for unrelated reasons and the deletion request was from anti-GamerGate administrator Protonk, who had previously been blocked for making defamatory comments about Eron Gjoni, whose blog post about his ex-girlfriend Zoe Quinn helped spark GamerGate. Additionally, former Foundation staffer Brandon “Jorm” Harris, a regular anti-GamerGate presence on the GamerGate article, voted for deleting Auerbach’s page not long after Auerbach began criticizing Fernandez.

Although Auerbach’s page would be kept due to a lack of consensus, with some back-handed support from Fernandez included, it would color his sentiment as the case went further. He criticized the addition of Arkon and DHeyward as parties to the case and it being reframed as “Gamaliel and others” by suggesting it was making the case a “kangaroo court” proceeding. The case’s scope was also restricted to only covering recent actions by Fernandez and not delving into his general conduct. One result was evidence of Fernandez’s past bias regarding GamerGate and Bernstein was repeatedly removed as “out of scope” for the case. In the end, ArbCom themselves only gave Fernandez an “admonishment” for his conduct and banned him and DHeyward from interacting with each other. This was not the full extent of his fall as Fernandez also resigned from the Committee and asked to be restricted from taking administrative action regarding GamerGate. He also “retired” from the site. It was noted with frustration by Auerbach and others that the case did not consider removing his admin status, prompting claims the case was “rigged” in his favor. Making it worse were claims there was no evidence of a “long-term pattern” of misconduct, despite them specifically excluding such evidence from the scope of the case.

Bernstein would fare worse with Fernandez out of commission and banned from GamerGate as his inability to avoid raising his conspiracy theories about the gamers would get him blocked one week and then six weeks. While Bernstein’s rants about “extortion” were tinged by his usual paranoid claims about GamerGate, he did have the barest kernel of truth in his allegations this time. Samual Collingwood Smith, known as Vordrak on Wikipedia, states he contacted Fernandez regarding a piece. Smith’s piece contained allegations of Fernandez not taking sufficient action on child protection issues as part of broader criticism of Wikipedia’s handling of various topics, including my ban from Wikipedia. He reached out to Fernandez’s employer to get comment from them as well. The exact timing is unclear, but Smith states he offered to remove Fernandez from the piece after he requested a GamerGate restriction. According to arbitrator Doug Weller, Fernandez only resigned from the Committee shortly before the proposed decision on his case after he was informed the Committee was discussing his removal from the body, citing “inactivity” as the reason. He also stated Fernandez resigned from Wikimedia DC, a statement that would be the source of further conflict. Regardless of the truth, Bernstein used his blog to put out the most inflammatory and paranoid characterization of the matter, but his outrage fell on deaf ears.

Weller’s claim about Fernandez resigning from Wikimedia DC turned out to not be true. As the DC chapter made an abortive attempt to have Zoe Quinn as a keynote speaker, the organization was put in a strange position concerning Fernandez. Commenting on a Wikimedia Foundation tweet spotlighting Fernandez, Auerbach questioned why someone who had been so recently disgraced for numerous violations of policy would receive such attention and also indicated he had asked Wikimedia DC why Fernandez was still staff on the organization. Failing to get a response from Wikimedia DC, Auerbach inquired on July 1st of 2016 about Weller’s claims to the Arbitration Committee. He had also politely asked White about a comment Fernandez made about the Committee needing supervision. On the very next day, Fernandez began a campaign to have Auerbach fired from his job by repeatedly tagging in his employers with inflammatory falsehoods. Protonk a.k.a. Adam Hyland then of the Wiki Education Organization, a spin-off of the Wikimedia Foundation, would join in on the harassment campaign. Erhart, the Foundation staffer who ran the Signpost before Fernandez, seemingly endorsed their efforts to target Auerbach’s job, while ArbCom members Temple-Wood (also a Wikimedia DC board member) and White disregarded Auerbach’s concerns about Fernandez’s actions. None of this is surprising as much more intimidating tactics have been used by Wikipedia’s insiders.

In the fallout of the attempt at getting Auerbach fired, Smith decided to publish his piece mentioning Fernandez and references how after the case he had attempted to get his ban reviewed with promises to cease criticism of Wikipedia as well as abiding by all relevant policies. Though initially receiving favorable response from the administrator Smith contacted, when the administrator who blocked him was informed the administrator spoke to the Arbitration Committee who insisted the ban would have to go through them. Auerbach continued seeking clarification from the Committee about Weller’s claim that Fernandez resigned from Wikimedia DC. He received no response, but a few days after one e-mail, Michel “Drmies” Aaij went in and removed content from Auerbach’s page. When Auerbach learned Fernandez would be a beneficiary of a $50,000 grant from the Wikimedia Foundation so he could act as the head of communications for a North American Wikimedia conference, he decided to make his inquiry public. Harris left a vicious accusation of Auerbach “hounding” Fernandez to “further a grudge” and an editor removed his remarks as a personal attack, prompting Harris to repeatedly restore his attack until relenting with a sarcastic “free speech” quip. Aaij declared the unsubstantiated and inflammatory attacks to be acceptable and restored them.

Auerbach’s request would grow more contentious as the Committee and various anti-GamerGate editors weighed in to throw invective at Auerbach. Editor Johnuniq, who had also restored the previous attacks from Harris, launched into his own set of attacks accusing Auerbach of “harassment” for asking about the matter and suggested the discussion be shut down. When Arkon asked about Fernandez’s threats against Auerbach’s job, meanwhile, Aaij was dismissive of the whole affair and suggested it wasn’t really harassment for Fernandez to threaten Auerbach’s job. When Auerbach asked whether the non-resignation from Wikimedia DC might have prompted more lenient treatment from the Committee, Aaij denied it and another member of the Committee attacked Auerbach suggesting the question was evidence of a grudge against Fernandez. Creating further tension was when Auerbach asked about the odd timing of Fernandez’s attack the day after his e-mail inquiry to the Committee. He questioned whether his e-mail had been shared with Fernandez to which White exploded at him, dishonestly and disingenuously misrepresenting his question. She suggested the completely innocuous July 1st tweet was a potential cause or that it could be a coincidence. After Auerbach thanked her subsequent responses as “all he wanted to know” this answer was misconstrued as concerning the entire discussion in order to close it down.

One user took the discussion to Weller’s page, only for Aaij to butt in and try to discourage further questions. Auerbach criticized Aaij’s decorum and posted about it on Twitter, prompting Aaij to cry of harassment. Weller finally responded after a couple days to lay into Auerbach and sought to discredit him by suggesting the “context” of the question was Auerbach hounding Fernandez and “other editors” on Twitter. He then punted on the question, suggesting any answer would be used for “hounding” as an excuse to keep concealing the truth from Auerbach. Taking exception to the more incendiary parts of this response, Auerbach redacted them as personal attacks, prompting another interloper to repeatedly restore the attacks and threaten to block Auerbach if he removed them again. Discussion was subsequently shut down. Auerbach attempted to politely ask Weller to remove the attacks only for the same interlopers to insist they were not attacks with threatening suggestions of action against him if he continued and Ian.thomson, the individual whose adminship I tried to discourage before my ban(See Appendix D), similarly joined the dogpile. Nathalie “DracoEssentialis” Collida leapt to Auerbach’s defense, but was banned after pushing her well-intended criticism too far for their liking. Auerbach’s original question never got answered.

Next: Part 11: Consolidating Power and a Horseman’s Return

Previous: Part 9: One Year Since the Fall

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