The Wikipedia Post — Part 5: Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat

Some of the aftermath from the arbitration case and the false narrative spun about it by Mark Bernstein was immediately apparent. It was cited as a product of the gender gap in Wikipedia’s editing community, estimated at generally around 10% female and 90% male. Days after the GamerGate ArbCom case concluded the result was being used to push an Art+Feminism “edit-a-thon”, events typically organized and run by Wikipedians or with their assistance to recruit editors for special tasks. Such edit-a-thons are often offered up as a solution to an alleged systemic bias blamed on the gender gap and the GamerGate case served as a convenient pretext for promoting the event and multiple outlets such as The Mary Sue and Wired made sure to mention GamerGate in articles about it, a practice labeled “gamedropping” by GamerGate supporters. It is estimated that more than twice as many people participated in this feminist edit-a-thon from the previous year for a total of approximately 1,500 people creating 330 articles.

Though it is believed few editors become lasting parts of the editing community as a result of edit-a-thons, their influence cannot be dismissed completely. One of the Five Horsemen, the sole female in the bunch TaraInDC, made most of her early contributions through edit-a-thons before becoming a more regular part of the editing community. A prominent figure in edit-a-thons, former WMF employee and notorious one-time paid editor Sarah Striech organized an edit-a-thon promising “edits that stick” at the Women’s Studies Summer Technology Institute at the University of Maryland. This edit-a-thon led to the creation of Zoe Quinn’s page on Wikipedia, weeks before GamerGate and Stierch made sure it stuck by declining a request for deleting the page, lending the decline extra credibility given she remains an admin. Not surprisingly, a presenter at the event was an advocate for Twine and connected to its creator, which got a nice plug in Quinn’s page. Even if they are only mildly effective recruitment tools, such edit-a-thons can definitely be used to further the ideological objectives of those who organize them and fighting the GamerGate boogeyman is a perfect way to attract misguided young feminists.

It was with this promotion of a feminist edit-a-thon that we saw the first glimmer of how Bernstein’s bogus narrative, a narrative reiterated by feminist studies citing his blog posts, would be used as a pretext to reshape Wikipedia. Though this story of the insidious campaign by outsiders being enabled by sexist authorities on Wikipedia was belied by the fact all but one of the editors sanctioned in the case had been editing Wikipedia prior to GamerGate and the decision was publicly defended by feminist female arbitrator Molly White despite her strong anti-GamerGate leanings, it has still endured in media coverage and thus remained useful as a way to “wave the bloody flag” on any pet issue of Wikipedia’s progressive ideologues. Yet even in the wake of ArbCom’s intervention, the many problems that motivated me to seek their assistance have persisted and in some cases only become worse.

This does not mean there were not some glimmers of hope for a meaningful change in the editing dynamic. Having been one of two horsemen to escape a ban from GamerGate topics, TheRedPenOfDoom was banned from the topic months after the ArbCom case for his trademark polemics about GamerGate supporters and general hostility (However, Robert “Gamaliel” Fernandez let him get away with an “exemption” claim for bashing Breitbart after someone attempted to cite a Breitbart article on then-Reddit CEO Ellen Pao’s article). Another anti-GamerGate editor, an admin, was even briefly blocked and banned from the topic after he made false claims about Eron Gjoni on the GamerGate article talk page, though both of his sanctions were rapidly lifted. These two incidents still served as a positive sign that the situation would be handled more fairly than it had been up to that point.

Established editors, however, were still being banned from the topic for various technical reasons under Wikipedia’s policies on claims about living people. Barely two weeks after the case concluded one editor was banned from the GamerGate topic indefinitely because he linked to the unofficial gamergate.me site, specifically a press dossier and its sources laying out ethical improprieties of games journalists. Another was banned indefinitely from the GamerGate topic after he was reported for linking to an analysis of GamerGate tweets also hosted on gamergate.me. Although the editors removing the link to the analysis cited Wikipedia’s policies on claims about living people, you may notice there weren’t any people mentioned in that piece. The reasoning was that because the press dossier on the site documented ethical improprieties by games journalists, nothing on the site could be linked anywhere on Wikipedia as parts of the site contained claims about living people. Admin Guy Chapman, known to be snippy with anyone he sees as sympathetic to “the Gamergate cult”, would later blacklist the site in an official admin action. When I informed ArbCom about Chapman blacklisting the site given his history of abusing the blacklist I was told it was not their problem. Meanwhile, a site such as Encyclopedia Dramatica was linked directly in Wikipedia’s article about it.

Probably one of the most obscene admin abuses to occur after the ArbCom case was a five-month ban (mistakenly cited as a six-month ban) from the GamerGate topic imposed on editor Kyohyi by Acroterion. His offense was, by all accounts, editing the article on Zoe Quinn to replace “was falsely accused of receiving positive coverage from a journalist she was in a relationship with” with “was falsely accused of exchanging sex for reviews” a fact expressly stated in The Daily Telegraph article used as a citation for the claim. Yet for this he had been banned from the GamerGate article for nearly half a year and criticized by Acroterion for being “too focused on literally following sources” as he put it. Acroterion even went so far as to delete the revision containing the words explicitly used in The Daily Telegraph.

Other editors would also take up the mantle of the Five Horsemen, such as Aquillion who has often sought to remove or downplay “opinion pieces” that coincidentally focuses solely on those presenting a view sympathetic to GamerGate. Pieces by Cathy Young at Reason and Allum Bokhari at TechCrunch have been prime targets with particular focus on pieces noting the left-leaning and diverse nature of GamerGate supporters as well as mention of the harassment female supporters received. The argument Aquillion gave for removing mention of female supporters by these “two random libertarian commentators” was that the article never included claims these supporters didn’t exist. Originally, Young and Bokhari had been included in a section about diversity, but in a slight-of -hand gesture during the ArbCom case they were pushed out of that section. The section was instead made entirely about the NotYourShield hashtag meant to highlight the diversity of GamerGate supporters with claims about the tag consisting of impersonation sock-puppets now being uncontested in the section. As even the Washington Post’s mention of female supporters had been excluded by the article at the time of Aquillion’s change a few months later, it meant the sole mention of female GamerGate supporters was that same section. The existence of female supporters would only be acknowledged again in the article two months later.

Hostility towards opinion pieces is certainly odd given the GamerGate article’s references has consisted mostly of them, including multiple citations for the highly opinionated Mary Sue and the lengthy diatribes of Arthur Chu, miscredited as “Arthur Cho” in one instance. Such a selective approach to sourcing and policies along with some creative shuffling is a common way editors manipulate articles to suit their agenda. Aquillion’s removal of a link to Cinema Blend was subsequently used as a pretext to eventually remove any mention in the article about Destructoid and The Escapist updating their ethics policies in response to GamerGate because only “primary sources”, i.e. the news outlets themselves, were left after excluding Cinema Blend. Despite there being a section for “debate over ethics allegations” the updates to ethics policies had already been quietly moved over to an “industry response” section around the end of the ArbCom case, a section which otherwise concerned video game developers and tech companies condemning harassment and supporting diversity. The re-named “ ethics in journalism complaints” section now consists of writers trivializing GamerGate’s concerns and disputing its sincerity regarding journalistic ethics.

What has become the most critical element in the worsening of the GamerGate dispute following the ArbCom case is the presence of Mark Bernstein. Once it became clear that the Arbitration Committee was letting Robert “Gamaliel” Fernandez slide for his administrative conduct during the GamerGate dispute he began lobbying for Bernstein to be let back into the GamerGate topic area. Having reluctantly imposed the topic ban at a time when he made a much more questionable ban on Tutelary, who was on the opposing side of the GamerGate dispute and someone Fernandez long wanted removed, this sudden reversal of opinions regarding Bernstein essentially confirmed that the original sanction was little more than a cover for the sanction against Tutelary. As Bernstein had been blocked for discussing his blog posts about the arbitration case in violation of his ban, Fernandez had to persuade HJ Mitchell to lift the block and he succeeded a couple weeks after the ArbCom case concluded and a few days after Gamaliel lifted Bernstein’s ban from the GamerGate topic. Mitchell did offer up a condition that Bernstein stop making “personally directed comments” about other editors.

Not long after being set loose on the GamerGate topic area once again, Bernstein began running into trouble for, well, making personally directed comments about other editors. The now late Dreadstar took to enforcing this condition, first by removing one of his comments and then giving him a final warning that he would be sanctioned when he continued making such comments. After Bernstein accused an established editor of being part of some nefarious GamerGate cabal coordinating in secret, a repeat of earlier paranoid allegations, Dreadstar gave him a second final warning and said the next violation would lead to a ban from the GamerGate topic. After making another personally directed comment about another editor, Dreadstar blocked him for 24 hours and took no further action. Following the publication of the ThinkProgress piece that reiterated his narrative about the ArbCom case, Bernstein proclaimed the piece to be valuable journalism and implicitly attacked editors challenging the outlet’s reputability. Dreadstar responded by banning Bernstein from the topic for three months.

However, this would not even come close to being the end of Bernstein’s saga. As he would detail while reporting Dreadstar at an administrative noticeboard, the admin swore at him in an e-mail. Bernstein had asked if Dreadstar’s intent with the “gender-related disputes or controversies” ban imposed per the standard wording from ArbCom was meant to ban him from being involved in articles about campus rape. He then remarked “One might say that opposition to rape is uncontroversial, but doubtless campus rape has supporters, too”, which Dreadstar mistook as implying he condoned rape, especially since Bernstein implied Dreadstar’s actions might scare off a rape counselor he was in contact with about a Wikipedia editing initiative. This desire for clarification would be taken to ArbCom and after two editors expressed annoyance with Bernstein’s insistence on repeatedly posting the ThinkProgress article and links to his blog in the request, Bernstein responded by filing reports against both editors for personally directed comments about another editor to apparently make a point.

Bernstein’s filing against one of the editors, Thargor Orlando, was shut down promptly by admin Callanecc due to it being a violation of his ban and the admin suggested Bernstein talk to the ArbCom’s clerks about comments made at arbitration pages. Yet at Bernstein’s other filing, against DHeyward, Fernandez disregarded the violation by Bernstein and instead suggested the three editors be banned from talking about each other or, without permission, filing requests against each other. For some reason Callanecc, either not realizing or not caring that the same user filed both reports, agreed with this suggestion mere minutes after closing the other report by Bernstein and Fernandez subsequently implemented his suggestion. Callanecc was not the only admin guilty of this inconsistency regarding the situation. HJ Mitchell would express support for the sanctions on the editors criticizing Bernstein citing the “abnormal conditions” of the GamerGate dispute, only to reject a report against Bernstein the next day saying misconduct on arbitration pages must be handled by ArbCom clerks.

His clarification from ArbCom received and all related reports settled with admins responding to his ban violations by sanctioning his critics, Bernstein decided to appeal the ban imposed by Dreadstar the next day. A couple editors referred to Bernstein “climbing the Reichstag” and linked to a humorous Wikipedia essay advising against making a public display of one’s self by climbing the German parliament building dressed as Spiderman. Bernstein declared this reference to something German must have been some sort of anti-Semitic dog whistle and he repeated the claim on Twitter and his blog. Ignoring the possible offense to Germans everywhere, Fernandez agreed mentioning the German parliament building in relation to someone who is Jewish was inappropriate regardless of the context and decided to remove all references to the Reichstag from the discussion of Bernstein’s appeal.

A day prior to Bernstein’s appeal an editor had filed a report against Bernstein for a violation of his GamerGate ban citing his use of the derisive anti-GamerGate term “sea lion” and him linking to his latest blog post regarding the GamerGate dispute on Wikipedia. Fernandez also relentlessly defended Bernstein in that case, but his support would fail to protect Bernstein. He gave a lengthy complaint about the report in his appeal facetiously apologizing for having “embarrassed you all” in reference to his blogging about the ArbCom case, but suggesting if they didn’t protect him and silence his opponents there might be more “embarrassment” in the future. In the complaint, Bernstein referred to his opponents as the “Armies of Mordor” and it was this that became the last straw for HJ Mitchell, who apologetically blocked Bernstein for a month while acknowledging Bernstein had been getting “greater latitude” than others had received.

Still only two weeks into his ban from the GamerGate topic area, Bernstein would soon find himself benefiting from one rather peculiar dispute over hidden text about an infobox in an article on a dead English actor (remember, this is Wikipedia we are talking about). Dreadstar removed this hidden text a total of three times before protecting the article from editing by non-admins so they could not restore it. When another admin removed this protection, Dreadstar removed the hidden text three more times. At this point HJ Mitchell blocked Dreadstar for edit-warring, but unblocked after requesting ArbCom review the infobox dispute. Elsewhere Dreadstar was attacking editors left and right in comments and e-mails. Following his remark about how if “the little creeps” he was arguing with over the hidden text about an infobox could be mean to him with impunity then Mark Bernstein’s comments are fine, Dreadstar lifted the GamerGate ban he imposed on Bernstein and requested Mitchell remove the block Bernstein got for violating it. A day later Dreadstar lifted the block himself. Since a sanction pursuant to an ArbCom remedy can only be lifted with permission of the imposing admin, a community appeal, or ArbCom itself, the result was Dreadstar being stripped of his admin position, though not before Dreadstar blocked himself indefinitely.

Dreadstar’s blow-up meant Bernstein was let back into the GamerGate dispute only two weeks into his three-month ban. About three months after he was loosed back on the topic area, an editor called Vordrak would set his sights on Bernstein. Vordrak, whose real name is Sam Smith, had recently written about a scandal involving former arbitrator Richard Symonds a.k.a “Chase me ladies, I’m the cavalry” feeding The Guardian information alleging British Tory Grant Shapps was secretly maligning his opponents on Wikipedia. Smith learned of an incident where Bernstein had edited an article about Senator Elizabeth Warren for whom he had volunteered during her successful Senate campaign and did a video detailing his concerns about the apparent conflict of interest editing, as well as other concerns about Bernstein’s behavior on Wikipedia then shared it on the discussion page for Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. Fernandez would claim Smith was intimidating editors he contacted about the story with the threat of negative media attention for suggesting Bernstein’s behavior left unchecked would lead to such attention. Another editor mocked Smith, blaming him for an admin closing a report against Bernstein without taking action, even though most focused on the editor reporting him or suggested no action.

Smith would do a follow-up piece, detailing some of Bernstein’s editing related to his company Eastgate Systems, its products, and his colleagues, which he also shared with Wales. Though a number of Bernstein’s early edits were inappropriately promotional as well as a more recent edit he quickly reverted, established editors responded with snark dismissal given the more minor nature of most edits. Despite acknowledging some legitimate problems with Bernstein’s edits, another editor complained that pretty much everyone has done it and there are much more serious violations of Wikipedia’s conflict of interest policies. It is hard to argue with that as many of Bernstein’s anti-GamerGate cohorts are far guiltier than him. Wikipediocracy, for all its faults, has meticulously documented examples of paid editing, including by the Wikimedia Foundation’s biggest donors, organizations and corporations visiting its offices, employees of the Wikimedia Foundation, and even Jimmy Wales himself. Given that Wikipedia admins and Central Asian dictatorships have been able to manipulate articles about them or their professional interests for years without detection, it does seem a bit unfair for Smith to go after Bernstein for a few minor breaches.

Having taken to criticizing Wikipedia, Smith found himself going to the main game in town: Wikipedia criticism site Wikipediocracy. Unfortunately, Smith would receive a rather chilly reception at the site. When Smith began digging into Wikipedia’s troubled history with pedophiles and pedophile activists then wrote a piece about it, a number would take issue with his work. Some complaints centered on his use of an article on pedophilia to highlight other deficiencies he saw in Wikipedia, such as those regarding conflicts of interest, harassment, and defamation. One user was particularly upset with his mention of an admin called Shii or Ashibaka who had advocated allowing pedophiles to openly participate on Wikipedia in a somewhat infamous fight between admins over a userbox for editors who wanted to self-identify as pedophiles. Shii had, incidentally, shown some sympathy towards having GamerGate better represented on Wikipedia. The user upset with Smith, Michael Suarez, felt Shii being criticized for poor decisions made years ago when he was just a teenager himself was overly harsh. A member of Wikipediocracy was apparently so angry with Smith over his writings that the member wrote an article for the site’s blog as “Mat Shims”, an anagram for Smith’s real name. The article alleged without a shred of evidence that Smith was the one operating the account Shapps was accused of using.

While it is not clear who authored the article, Suarez was concerned about Smith stating his intentions to write a follow-up article entirely focused on Shii. In Smith’s article he suggested Shii had lied about his age, arousing furious protest from Suarez that the discrepancy was just a minor difference of a year that could be easily explained as a mistake (having looked into it myself I can say Shii really was just a year older than what he stated to Smith, but my belief is that it was probably a white lie) with the response from Suarez being swift and vicious. Suarez was also an administrator on Encyclopedia Dramatica named JuniusThaddeus who had been banned from Wikipedia for creating an ED page about a gay administrator so the same day Smith posted his article, Suarez posted his own article on ED all about Smith including many of the details from the Wikipediocracy article. Given the uncharacteristically adulatory nature of Shii’s page on ED, it may be members of that community have a particular soft spot for him, explaining the reaction from Suarez. Note that most revisions of Smith’s page on ED have since been deleted after legal threats he issued over changes made by editors affiliated with Kiwi Farms, a site dedicated to stalking and trolling the mentally ill that got in a feud with Smith over his attempts to stop its activities, a dispute Suarez happily started a thread about on Wikipediocracy. Archives show Suarez was the most, and effectively only, active contributor to the page early in its inception.

Responding to the Wikipediocracy article, Smith would publish his own article about the site’s then-domain owner and trustee Gregory Kohs in which Smith mentioned his selling of merchandise such as thongs mocking a controversial female Wikipedia administrator who had banned him for his paid editing activities, harassment claims cited as a basis for banning him from Wikipedia-related public events, and his extensive history of sock-puppetry in support of his paid editing business MyWikiBiz. Kohs, a director at Comcast, has responded to his ban over paid editing by exposing on Wikipediocracy and its predecessor Wikipedia Review countless other instances of paid editing. For full disclosure, I myself have been paid on two separate occasions by Kohs for editing contests run through Wikipedia’s reward board for a total sum of less than $100, though he was also later one of the trustees who pushed for my ban from Wikipediocracy. Smith attacked several members at the site and concluded his article with a promise of more pieces to come.

Wikipediocracy staff would quickly move to resolve this dispute, agreeing to pull the article on Smith in exchange for him pulling his piece on Kohs and not pursuing further articles. Suarez added this to Smith’s ED page as evidence that he was “corruptible” and willing to “censor his own blog for favors” and Suarez would not stop with that. Over the next month Suarez would continuously update the page with negative attacks on Smith, determined to have every action he took added to the article and portrayed in the worst possible light. He showed an obsession with Smith’s GamerGate-related activities and this was not unusual. Prior to encountering Smith, Suarez had drawn attention to the GamerGate site created on Wikia and attacked the owner, admitting he wanted to undermine him and implicitly soliciting for the user’s personal information. In particular, Suarez pointed to a page on the Wikia site chronicling the conduct of anti-GamerGate editors on Wikipedia. After Jimmy Wales offered for GamerGate supporters to write a proposed draft GamerGate article on the Wikia site, Suarez would talk about the “lulz” that could result from editors noticing the page and requesting its deletion.

Incidentally, 5 albert square would alert Wikipedia’s community to the page on the Wikia site a few weeks later complaining about it being “harassment” and asking that Wales intervene. However, Wales would apparently be beaten to the punch by banned editor and then-banned Wikipediocracy member Kumioko. Suarez favorably noted the page’s deletion, albeit bemoaning the fact the creator was not stripped of admin privileges by Wikia staff. Despite again not doing anything other than talk a lot, Wales did vigorously defend the deletion because of his belief it is “harassment” to list things Wikipedia editors do on the site in order to criticize them. His comments, the backlash, and his retorts to the backlash, would bash GamerGate and garner him heaps of praise from the Mary Sue and Complex who apparently believe his words actually have any effect other than helping him look good in front of an audience. Even if Suarez did not play some part in the deletion of the page on the GamerGate Wikia site, his intent in raising it repeatedly on Wikipediocracy was certainly fulfilled.

Back on Wikipedia, Smith would end up in hot water after reporting Mark Bernstein to the Arbitration Committee. Fernandez, his long-time enabler, would consequently announce his intentions to ban Smith for his criticism, referring to him citing his blog at every opportunity as spam and accusing him of implicitly threatening negative media scrutiny if the site didn’t do what he pleased. If a Wikipedian citing his blog at every chance and using it to threaten negative media attention if the site does not do what he wants sounds familiar, then that is because it is indistinguishable behavior from that of Fernandez’s good friend Mark Bernstein. While the irony should not be lost on anyone, because it is Wikipedia the irony was, of course, lost on everyone. Yet, Fernandez would not get a chance to fulfill his pledge as Smith reacted in distress to this threat by suggesting if Fernandez followed through then he would give out Fernandez’s real name.

This talk of “outing” an admin was all the excuse needed to ban Smith from the site indefinitely. Even here the response was unusual as former arbitrator Floquenbeam went so far as to block Smith’s access to his page and the site’s e-mail function claiming it was to prevent him from making further threats of outing. In past cases editors who expressly engaged in outing have been treated less severely. One such case was Phil Sandifer an admin who was stripped of his position by ArbCom and banned for posting another editor’s employment information on his blog because of the user’s stance on Wikipedia’s Chelsea Manning name dispute. Even though he gave out another editor’s employment information, Sandifer is still able to use Wikipedia’s e-mail function and talk page, unlike Smith. Sandifer more recently could be seen offering up a rather peculiar defense of Sarah Nyberg, the GamerGate critic who for years admitted to being a pedophile in leaked chat logs and forum posts, but later “confessed” to just being an “edgelord” at the time. Months after Smith was banned ostensibly for threatening to give out his real name, Fernandez would give it out freely on the Twitter account linked from his Wikipedia profile page.

Following Breitbart’s coverage of Smith’s ban, I started a thread about it on Wikipediocracy. As members on the criticism site have often faced dubious reprisals from admins and fought blacklisting of the site on Wikipedia due to their criticism I thought they would appreciate its headline and some of the criticism of Wikipedia. Instead they railed against Breitbart and Smith, with Suarez showing up to essentially use the thread to bring up various random things Smith was doing on Twitter or reddit. Just as this was going on, a new user called Jkpilsudski showed up on Wikipedia to create an article about Smith citing the Breitbart article and several other sources. The article seemed to also rehash many of the same topics covered in Smith’s Encyclopedia Dramatica page. This fact aroused suspicion from editor Brustopher, who had seen Suarez talking about how there were enough sources to create a Wikipedia article about Smith.

Jkpilsudski acknowledged modeling the page after the ED article, but suggested he had no previous account on Wikipedia. He explained that he was a Wikia user active on gaming wikis and claimed to have only created his Wikipedia account out of fear of being doxed by Smith. Coincidentally, Suarez is also a Wikia user who has contributed on gaming wikis. When confronted with this compelling correlation, Suarez denied any connection to the account. Regardless of who operated the account, a day after Smith’s bio was deleted Jkpilsudski would pop up at Wikia to post Smith’s bio at the GamerGate Wikia site. A week after that, the same user would show up at the Evanescence Wikia site to post Smith’s bio there, due to his role in a prior controversy involving an Evanescence fan site. He would also post information about Smith to an article about the fan site. It is safe to say this mysterious Jkpilsudski was just as obsessed with smearing Smith as Suarez.

Another obstacle cleared out of his way by Fernandez, the next editor to fall victim to the Bernstein steamroller would be admin Masem. Though opposed to GamerGate and not always on the ball (he was responsible for the “Athur Cho” typo), Masem was a major impediment to Bernstein because he wanted the article to adopt a more neutral tone in compliance with Wikipedia’s policies. He had long been a target of Bernstein dating back to November of 2014 when Bernstein called Masem a “full-throated GamerGate rape apologist” for a statement questioning whether the image that allegedly inspired the color scheme for unofficial GamerGate mascot Vivian James depicted rape. Bernstein blogged about it and a couple days later was requesting sanctions against Masem, branding him a “GamerGate admin” for his commitment to neutrality. He would blog again about Masem, this time attacking him for noting that some allegations against Zoe Quinn could not be included because they are not mentioned in reliable sources. Considerable use would be made of Masem’s comment as it would appear in Bernstein’s Infamous blog post as well as a couple others and alluded to in another. Masem would be branded “GamerGate’s own admin” in another of Bernstein’s blog posts and in yet another be labeled the “Boss” of a GamerGate cabal.

Before Smith’s expulsion from Wikipedia, Masem reported Bernstein’s provocative commentary about him, obviously believing he would get help from his fellow administrators. In his report Masem noted that when an editor removed material citing Brianna Wu stating Wu was “not an industry expert”, Bernstein demanded the editor’s claim about Wu not being an expert be deleted as defamatory. Also cited was a comment by Bernstein about “GamerGate fans” wanting to exclude Wu for being too close to the subject that just happened to quote the word “dependent”, which had only been used by Masem before that. Most obscene are Bernstein’s signature implied attacks against Masem in which Bernstein says he is “just assuming that you think it’s OK for victims to object to rape threats” and to “correct me if I’m mistaken” only to follow up with a statement to Masem suggesting he had no interest in helping GamerGate’s supposed victims. Bernstein went so far as to insinuate that Masem was only complaining about this behavior as part of some secret GamerGate plot against him.

One would think a fellow admin would be defended from such nasty back-handed attacks when made by someone who had shown a long history of hostility towards that admin. Instead, Masem’s report was rapidly closed on a technicality by admin Bishonen, even as a report with the exact same technical issue filed against an editor sympathetic to GamerGate was left open. Foolishly believing that discussion would see reason and good sense prevail, Masem appealed to Bishonen who responded with even more inconsistently-applied bureaucratic technicalities. Masem decided to seek out support on a community board only for another fellow admin Guy Chapman to agree with everything Bernstein said, insist he was perfectly innocent, and even suggest Masem was in the wrong for reporting Bernstein thus potentially facing sanctions himself. Chapman would take his insensitivity to Masem one step beyond by comparing Masem’s statements that he is anti-GamerGate as equivalent to a racist saying he has black friends. Failing to be held accountable for his actions, Bernstein would continue with his sniping insinuations against Masem at one point facetiously praising Masem as akin to Macbeth, the Shakespearian character who became a violent tyrant after viciously murdering his king and who in the end was killed and beheaded to much rejoicing.

Bernstein’s harassing of Masem would come to a head after he got upset at Masem calling him by his first name and responded by using “M____” for Masem. This persistent use of the prodding shorthand was interspersed with references to My Little Pony and its “sexual overtones”, which Masem took as an implied jab regarding his editing of articles on the series. Given a history of spamming angry blog posts attacking Masem and frequent accusations of him being part of some GamerGate conspiracy against Bernstein, it is understandable why this behavior would cause Masem concern. Yet another attempt was made by Masem at addressing Bernstein’s conduct and this time Fernandez jumped in to protect his new buddy’s behavior as harmless before turning it around on Masem. Once another admin agreed with Fernandez and suggested Masem was the one to blame for Bernstein’s behavior, Masem offered to step away from the dispute to the point of agreeing to a voluntary ban from the topic. Bishonen would pop up to applaud Masem’s offer, while insisting nothing be done about Bernstein. She was echoed in this sentiment by notoriously abusive power admin SlimVirgin.

Fernandez would close the case with nothing but an admonishment for Bernstein, effectively rewarding his bad behavior once again. This sympathetic enabling by Fernandez would only become more apparent as he would write articles for Wikipedia’s Signpost newsletter citing Bernstein as some authoritative source on “culture war” issues. His own biases regarding GamerGate would also just become clearer as he could be found on Twitter mocking GamerGate supporters for complaining about the article branding them terrorists or retweeting Molly “GorillaWarfare” White’s attacks on Milo Yiannopoulos. In addition, Fernandez could be heard complaining at a WikiConference that admins were wrongly attacked for their virtuous defense of the site against the GamerGate hordes. One of his later articles citing Bernstein as some sort of deeply insightful figure with rational ideas contained an angry screed about the “Internet hate mobs of GamerGate” compromising Wikipedia. Citing a long list of feminist grievances he demanded anyone in power on Wikipedia who dares to stay neutral on a moving train should resign or presumably be crushed under foot.

Next: Part 6: Horsemen After the Fall

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