The Wikipedia Post — Part 11: Consolidating Power and a Horseman’s Return
Despite the dramatic circumstances of Robert “Gamaliel” Fernandez losing his position on the Arbitration Committee and his self-proclaimed “retirement” from Wikipedia, Fernandez would get back to editing in just a few months, though oddly still calling himself “retired” to this day. However, his lower activity and commitment to stay away from GamerGate administrative activity put Mark Bernstein at the mercy of others without his most loyal protector. Even knowing he was on a tight leash and under watch, Bernstein couldn’t help but nibble away at the edges of his GamerGate ban, which covered gender-related controversies and the people associated with them. Bernstein came off a six-week ban and promptly began editing about Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and her feminist roots. When it was suggested this violated his ban, he waved off the concern. He continued dancing close to the line by editing the article on the alt-right, which contained material linking the political ideology, albeit flimsily, to GamerGate and it was suggested this was just shy of the line. That line would be crossed after Bernstein edited the article on 8chan, one of the major hubs for GamerGate activity, and got him blocked for half a year.
Even after nearly two years, conflict between prominent figures associated with GamerGate and anti-GamerGate Wikipedia editors continued flaring up. One such case would involved game developer Brad Wardell whose page on Wikipedia would become the subject of an “edit war” in mid-2016 after an editor tried to add a “controversy” section about a sexual harassment lawsuit against Wardell and his company Stardock. The suit was eventually dismissed and the filer apologized, but it was used to smear Wardell in the progressive gaming press, who were cited for the material on Wardell’s Wikipedia page. As it turned out one of the people warring to keep the section in was an anti-GamerGate administrator called Swatjester who had heckled Wardell on Twitter during the early days of GamerGate as Wardell noted on Twitter. After a user linked to this information when removing the section again, the mention was deleted and the user blocked a day by Swatjester then indefinitely by another administrator citing Wikipedia’s “doxing” policies because the link showed Swatjester’s Twitter account.
Regardless of the fact that the two accounts literally have the same username, Swatjester’s real name was not even a secret. He ran for a seat on the Wikimedia Foundation’s Board of Trustees in 2009, identifying himself as Dan Rosenthal as mentioned on his profile page at a Wikipedia-affiliated site. Rosenthal also uses Swatjester for his LinkedIn page. He is currently listed as a producer for Bethesda’s Fallout 76 and served law clients such as Cloud Imperium Games, developers of the controversial crowd-funded title Star Citizen. The conflict over whether to mention the unsuccessful harassment suit continued until it was suggested that the material would not only be questionable under the policies on living people with regards to Wardell, but also the filer of the suit due to the allegations in Wardell’s counter-suit. Although this halted the conflict over the section, a year later Rosenthal would still try to restore the section, again to no avail.
A major effort was launched to try and fix some of the issues with the GamerGate article, with one user proposing a massive revamp of the page. The effort by editor Rhoark cited numerous past discussions on the GamerGate discussion page. Such discussions were, as was common, heavily slanted by the participation of anti-GamerGate single-purpose accounts(See Appendix C). One discussion over the introduction to the article saw two competing proposals: one from Rhoark and another from anti-GamerGate editor Artw. While Rhoark’s proposal portrayed a more nuanced depiction of events, which all the same gave the harassment narrative the greater focus, Artw’s proposal focused almost entirely on harassment with only two mentions of journalism. The full article draft was quickly criticized by anti-GamerGate members of Wikipedia with Guy Chapman criticizing it as putting the two sides on “equal footing” and being too “matter-of-fact” in its writing, stating it “looks suspiciously as if it’s all about ethics in videogame journalism.” Both the discussion on a new intro and Rhoark’s article revamp would stalemate, but the closer argued strongly that for any future success a proposed new version could not “whitewash GamerGate” by which he meant it must portray the movement for ethics in games journalism as primarily about harassment stating it “must lay blame, front and centre.”
The 2016 Arbitration Committee was not nearly as eventful or emotionally-charged as the previous year, but it was not without some GamerGate-related drama. Salvidrim a.k.a. Ben Landry, an administrator sympathetic to GamerGate offered up himself as a prospective member of ArbCom. Unfortunately, he would come under a malicious assault from a sitting member of the Committee, Molly White a.k.a. “GorillaWarfare”, who took exception to Landry’s participation on the Wikipedia criticism community on reddit WikiInAction. Digging through his reddit account, White brought up several shocking remarks he made on the site. This included him talking about having killed a bird when he was a small child and other cruel antics. He also remarked that the Wikipedia page on “psychopathy in the workplace” read “like a biography” to him. Landry rejected attacking him for his actions when he was a young child and said his other remarks were not serious self-diagnosis, as suggested by the smiley he used when making the remarks and his remark dissing categorization of the human psyche. White also conveniently timed her attack for right when voting for candidates began, rather than any time during the two prior weeks. A year later she engaged in the same vicious attack when Salvidrim tried to run for another position and tanked his hopes once more.
Moving into 2017, the most significant early development concerned Travis Mason-Bushmann a.k.a. NorthBySouthBaranof, one of the infamous Five Horsemen of Wikibias. Spending two years constantly violating, nibbling around, and invoking exemptions to his ban from gender-related controversies, Bushmann finally made the request to have it formally lifted by claiming he had “abided by the requirements of the sanction” and was otherwise not sanctioned. Bushmann openly worried that the longer he remained under the sanction the more likely it would be that he would be found violating it. With all his pronouncements about abiding by the sanction in good faith he essentially admitted he was actively violating the ban as he was requesting it be lifted. He proudly noted he had been editing the article on Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour to remove “poorly-sourced” material, conveniently omitting his more partisan edits about her excluding abortion opponents, and was concerned that his editing about the highly-criticized leader of a women-focused protest movement against the newly-elected President who was accused in contentious widespread media coverage of sexual misconduct towards women might be construed by some bad faith malefactor as concerning some sort of gender-related controversy. The Arbitration Committee lifted his ban. Bushmann immediately began seeking to exclude Breitbart from as many articles as possible, including ones where he may previously be seen as violating his ban.
In the middle of 2017 the anti-GamerGate SPAs, ForbiddenRocky specifically, began cutting extensively from the introduction to the GamerGate article. While it was mostly elaboration and duplicative material removed to address complaints about length, one notable thing kept out when the culling ceased were GamerGate’s infamous e-mail campaigns, despite them prompting multiple news-generating incidents of major advertisers pulling from major publications. Established anti-GamerGate editor Aquillion also removed most material from the article mentioning the campaigns. Once this purge of information was complete, anti-GamerGate editor Artw discussed whether the article on The Fine Young Capitalists, whose conflict with Quinn led to GamerGate supporters backing the organization, should be their next target and received approving remarks from the regular SPAs with one objection from an editor sympathetic to GamerGate. At the time they began targeting the article it had nearly two years before successfully passed a review by an administrator, himself no sympathizer of GamerGate, and was granted “Good Article” status. While not able to directly participate, I provided some behind-the-scenes assistance crucial to it gaining such recognition and was the original author who got the article to appear on the front page of Wikipedia during the height of GamerGate under intensive review from an administrator.
None of this mattered to the anti-GamerGate clique who began systematically gutting the article of material that would make the group look sympathetic. SPA ForbiddenRocky was particularly aggressive in removing material and seeking to discredit sources cited for anything seemingly positive. Joining this effort was administrator Cuchullain, whose actions on the Anita Sarkeesian article(See Appendix A) were mirrored here as he used various arguments unsupported by policy or evidence to argue for the “unreliability” of sources. In one instance, he argued the news outlet Campus Reform was unreliable, with his only reasoning being that it was a “conservative online student publication” rather than arguing it did not meet the necessary standards (the writer of the article now works as a reporter for Politico). He baselessly smeared another source as a “PR site for the crowdfunding industry.” More noxious was an argument claiming previous discussion “determined that TechCrunch is not usually a reliable source” when the cited discussion showed no such determination. Most damaging for the article was that Cinema Blend was deemed unreliable due to a 2010 discussion involving two people noting a snarky disclaimer on the site that was removed years before the relevant article on the TFYC page. While disingenuous, these arguments allowed them to obliterate most favorable content to make the page a hit piece and have its “Good Article” status revoked despite me again making some effort behind-the-scenes.
For the 2017 elections to the Arbitration Committee, most of the “anti-harassment” team would end up not running for re-election after their two-year terms expired. However, three curious characters would show up: BU_Rob13, KrakatoaKatie, and RickInBaltimore. All three coincidentally had a lot in common. While Katie and Rick had previously edited Wikipedia, each came back after long absences around the middle of 2015, which was also when Rob began editing. Rob also had the distinction of being the first and only person Opabinia regalis would nominate for adminship since her return to editing earlier in 2015. Even more curious is that Katie and Rick would both show up to support his nomination as well as GeneralizationsAreBad and Anarchyte, two future admins who also both showed up the same year the others appeared or returned. It is unclear whether all had the same reasons for returning or similar interests. Rob and Katie also played vital roles in the expansion of “extended confirmed” protection to other articles. Katie, Rob, Rick, and Opabinia would all be successful in their runs for ArbCom seats.
Next: Part 12: End of the Battle?
Previous: Part 10: A Knight Dismounted
Return to Table of Contents
