User:Tstormcandy/Gamergate Edit Discussion

Edits Related To Gamergate controversy
Hey there. It's come to my attention that there has been a large amount of harassment and off-site organization against editors in this general topic area, thus I'm going to walk away regardless of my opinion of the situation or future edits made. For one example of such sour intent against other editors I will refer you to this outside link to a Pastebin file. I've realized I've found my way into making more edits into a controversial situation that I might potentially have preferred. For the sake of transparency and to avoid any sort of future arguments or misunderstandings in what I now understand is an extremely divisive issue, I've decided I should go through my edits related to the matter.

Despite the harassment concerns, I've decided that I will continue to do things like browse areas such as WP:BLPN and other largely bureaucratic locations such as WP:RPP or essentially anything relating to WP:ARV if I see edit warring during my Huggle browsing. BLP accuracy and potential defamation edits are of utmost importance on Wikipedia and should trump any possible ideology. Also, endless reversion edit warring or vandalism are of utmost importance and should trump anyone's ideology. Lastly, I will consider discussion of existing material on my talk page.

Work In the Gamergate controversy article
This started on 28 October when I made this very generic copyedit for readability. I thought no more of the matter but the article was by default added to my watchlist. The following day noting the extremely activity on the article and its talk page I read though some of the current concerns. On the talk page I left this edit regarding sourcing in the article and quoted WP:BLPSOURCES. Again, I thought nothing more on the matter. There was clearly a vigorous discussion ongoing and I didn't doubt that others could raise these sorts of concerns again in the future.

I made a reversion here on 1 November. I do not consider this in any way controversial, as bullying is indeed important in this [topic's] discussion and any such mentions or accusations need to have proper citation. This is not a "sides" argument. We're an encyclopedia. We state the truth best we can via what facts we can verify.

Edits in Articles for deletion/Social Justice Warrior
This is apparently a touchy term that I found was a tangent of the larger Gamergate controversy. I saw the page up on the new AfD list and decided to comment in support of a deletion. It's admittedly not deeply rooted in policy (though I feel the "keep" argument lacks it as well) so I went more to common sense. If a term is vitally important as encyclopedic content and has the media coverage to back itself up which would suggest some kind of future historical notability, Urban Dictionary as a top search result is laughable. Clearly WP:RECENT is worth a mention here and this article could certainly be reconsidered in the future if sources do actually show themselves. Searches in News and other standard research methods yielded very little other than list or dictionary mentions of the term. I determined that there was no reason to keep this article.

A few minutes later I followed up with an expanded mention of agreement with previous users who had commented.

I was questioned regarding the logic of WP:RECENT as I used in part of my comment, and it was (correctly, to be fair) noted that WP:RECENT is a Wikipedia style essay and not Policy. Though this it true, AfDs have a long-standing tradition of using common sense and precedent over some things that might be lawyered into following policy. Some essays have massive importance and have been used countless times previously in discussion. As we're taught to ignore all rules this is a good example of a case where a technicality on policy should be overlooked. The editor that made this comment is also highly experienced and with even basic AfD knowledge would remember the heavy use of WP:RECENT in discussions.

Unfortunately, discussion will be quite meaningless as general meatpuppet tactics will ensure a perpetual "no consensus" on the debate.

Regarding Christina Hoff Sommers
I'd allowed a few days to pass since the AfD as I didn't want to feel too involved in this very dirty matter.

Completely by coincidence the name Christina Hoff Sommers appeared at BLP/N, which I do try to browse every few days. I did a quick search for the name and noted the tangential connection to the Gamergate controversy, however as a BLP matter substantive enough to get a post on BLP/N that instantly removes any active or even passive thoughts on a person as one of Wikipedia's continuous short-term goals is the accuracy of our BLPs. My first edit was a request for clarification from the original poster, including a link to WP:DIFF as this person did not seem terribly familiar with the procedure.

I was back roughly 6 hours later to check in on the matter and added this. Again, I was mostly seeking clarification but echoed other editors that there had been some improvement. Lastly I gave a quick reminder of the purpose of BLP/N. To reiterate something from a moment ago, BLPs should transcend any other thoughts on an article. My comments on BLP/N here were made entirely in good faith, were completely non-partisan and looked for improvement and resolution. There's not a single word of my comments that mention any article content and I'm speaking completely for procedural purposes. I still haven't read the article at length; I don't consider it relevant to my interests.

Regarding 8chan
This was not enjoyable. I went into a low-level edit war and eventually backed away to avoid anything that could even be accidentally construed to be a 3RR violation.

I went through 3 consecutive edits could be lawyered into being raw reverts with another user over inappropriate sourcing and a refusal to use the content of an appropriate source in content in what looked like it could be a weak WP:NOV slant. Instead of a 4th revert/undo/"fix" I replaced the section in question with the 100% exact precise quote copy-pasted from the source material so that it would be impossible to argue over further. I haven't been back to that article since but I can only assume it was reverted within a matter of minutes because who-knows-why.

At one point early on a user posted this which was literally one click away from pornographic content involving minors. That wasn't even being debated! It was being used as a source to mention child pornography on the website! If you'll pardon my language, that's some messed up shit. Unfortunately at the time I hadn't clicked through the last large string of diffs to get an appropriate context and did not instantly recognize this user's edit as a gateway to child pornography. I feel like a horrible human being for not catching this immediately. Fortunately the user I was having my mini-war with reverted it him/herself, though it seems to have been completely coincidental while they were looking for proper sources. They caught a WP:SPS and reverted. Phew.

TLDR?
I am a chronic violator of WP:TLDR which is why I wrote this out instead of trying to make just a quick statement on my talk page.

In brief, I covered every single one of my edits in articles remotely pertaining to the Gamergate controversy in order to demonstrate my good faith in the matter.

More specifically, I wanted to take a chance to explain myself ahead of time in the event of the yes-I-legitimately-worry-about-this harassment from users or persons not even involved with Wikipedia engaging in bullying or other forms of harassment because--Either on or off Wikipedia via email or doxxing-- I might have offended them with reverts or disagreements. I have witnessed what they can do to other users and it's terrifying. Actually, scratch that. Let me speak directly to those involved-- I have witnessed what you can do to people and it's terrifying as well as nauseating. Stop scaring decent people away from Wikipedia.

A general plea to anyone else reading-- Do not let the bullies win. I beg you. Please read here for another massive thread of off-site collusion and discussion that is overwhelming the Project. To quote it, "Fucking hypocrite crying about off wiki collusion. ARBCOM doesn't care about off wiki shit since whatever diffs brought up is on wiki." So, care, please.