The Wikipedia Post — Part 7: Knights with no Horses
Back on Wikipedia, several of the administrators involved in the GamerGate case began running into trouble. It would be another feminism-related dispute, this time over the site’s gender gap, which would put these admins in the cross-fire. One notoriously grumpy ferret-loving Wikipedian, Eric Corbett, had been banned from discussing the gender gap in a similar catastrophe of an ArbCom case, one of several such catastrophes starring Corbett over the years. Being something of a bête noire for Wikipedia’s feminist troupe and civility police, he had a long list of blocks and sanctions with plenty of people eager to report him for the slightest mishap. So it came to be that one mishap saw him brought before the gallows and given a quick reprieve by Black Kite. Despite over half a dozen people having said no to blocking Corbett for his minor transgression and Black Kite closing it as declined, arbitrator Molly “GorillaWarfare” White leap into action and put the smackdown on Corbett for his high wikicrimes. Black Kite changed his closing statement to fuss at White and people left angry comments at her page about how she was a bad naughty girl who does bad naughty things. Eventually, it all went to one of Wikipedia’s drama boards where admin Reaper Eternal counted heads, said “close enough” and decided there was a widespread consensus to lift the block.
The whole matter was brought before the Committee at the same time. When arbitrator Thryduulf suggested that any action against the administrators involved would require proof of prior misconduct, I was happy to offer some from my own interactions during the GamerGate case. Deciding this was a violation of my restrictions, Thryduulf blocked me for 48 hours. I explained in much detail how I felt a case examining all their prior conduct would fall within several outlined exemptions, but Thryduulf ignored everything save the small part he could misrepresent as supporting his original position. Thryduulf then proceeded to vote for accepting the case specifically provided no look into prior conduct was included. Not surprisingly, Corbett managed to get in trouble again for being grumpy before the case even concluded. His offense this time was calling Wikimedia Foundation employee and WikiProject Feminism creator Ryan Kaldari a “disgusting low-life” for the rather innocent thing of having previously harassed Corbett with a sock-puppet and having operated a joke snuff site full of real pictures of murdered kids. Corbett was brought to the gallows this time around by the now late Kevin Gorman, who had for some reason also added himself as a party to Corbett’s ArbCom case. In mere hours, Corbett was given a month-long block by Keilana who moderated Wikipedia’s Gender Gap Mailing list alongside her good friend Gorman, though the block was quickly reduced to three days.
Consistent with not wanting to look at past conduct and wanting to cover for a colleague, the ArbCom declared the case would not be about sanctions. They instead merely found the three admins who took action regarding Corbett’s initial block were all wrong in some way and Corbett himself was kind of asking for it anyway. Mischief managed the matter of Eric Corbett would never come before the Committee again that year, except one more time. During a discussion of civility Corbett had once suggested the best way to not get called a “cunt” is to not be one, which made Lightbreather, the female editor he was talking to, so mad she would spend a whole year complaining about it and turning it into a feminist crusade for things like female-only safe spaces. Finally, she blabbed about the incident to The Atlantic after she was banned for a completely unrelated matter where she requested members of Wikipediocracy be her personal army and dox a completely unrelated male editor (Spoiler: they doxed him) in an ArbCom case filed, ironically, by a woman.
After seeing the Atlantic’s article on him, for which he was not contacted, Corbett felt the need to defend himself from the article’s claims such as by noting he never called Lightbreather a cunt, but did call Jimmy Wales one or pointing out the article wrongly called him an administrator. However, Corbett started straying into discussing the overall topic of the article where he was but a prop to be used for discussing “misogyny” on Wikipedia. Due to his deviation from just defending his own personally besmirched reputation he was blocked by then former arbitrator and ninja assassin Kirill Lokshin who hopped out of a bush to block Corbett for a month in his first block of any user in nearly a year. Black Kite didn’t like this one bit and accused Kirill of being put up to it by some anonymous coward. As is the case with most of Corbett’s blocks, it didn’t last as he was quickly unblocked by a female admin (again ironic) who in turn was stripped of her admin position since that was technically not allowed, but no one bothered to restore the block.
At this point Black Kite was quickly disowned and thrown under the bus by two of his former admin allies during the GamerGate case: Gamaliel and the late Kevin Gorman. Molly White, who made an appearance in the Atlantic herself and commented during discussion of the article to make sure everyone knew she too has been harassed, also helped Black Kite get nice and snug under that bus. Unlike last time, ArbCom decided some action was needed rather than empty reprimands. Initially, some on the Committee favored stripping Black Kite of his admin privileges by citing his “admonishment” in the previous Corbett case. When Black Kite noted that was technically a non-admonishment admonishment, they rescinded those comments. Even so, considerable support existed for stripping Black Kite of his privileges with some pondering it. However, once Brustopher pointed out the previous case granted Black Kite amnesty over his previous actions, Arbs largely agreed it was not viable. At the conclusion of the case, all Black Kite received was an admonishment.
Next: Part 8: Beginning of the Crackdown
Previous: Part 6: Horsemen After the Fall
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