Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/GamerGate/Evidence: Difference between revisions

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If you wish to submit evidence, please do so in a new section (or in your own section, if you have already created one). Do not edit anyone else's section. Please keep your evidence concise, and within the prescribed limits. If you wish to exceed the prescribed limits on evidence length, you must obtain the written consent of an arbitrator before doing so; you may ask for this on the Evidence talk page. Evidence that exceeds the prescribed limits without permission, or that contains inappropriate material or diffs, may be refactored, redacted or removed by a clerk or arbitrator without warning.

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The Arbitration Committee expects you to make rebuttals of other evidence submissions in your own section, and for such rebuttals to explain how or why the evidence in question is incorrect; do not engage in tit-for-tat on this page. Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop, which is open for comment by parties, Arbitrators, and others. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact, or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators (and Clerks, when clarification on votes is needed) may edit the proposed decision page.

Not all parties yet mentioned in evidence

In the interests of making this case more easily manageable, it is likely that we will prune the parties list to limit it to those against whom evidence has been submitted. For ease of reference, the parties as of 8 Dec 2014 are:

• The Devil's Advocate (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), filing party
• Acroterion (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• ArmyLine (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Bilby (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Black Kite (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Cuchullain (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Diego Moya (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Dreadstar (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA
  )
• DungeonSiegeAddict510 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Future Perfect at Sunrise (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Gamaliel (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Loganmac (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Masem (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• NorthBySouthBaranof (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• PhilKnight (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Ramba Ral (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Remorseless Angel (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Retartist (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Ryulong (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Tabascoman77 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• TaraInDC (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Tarc (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• TheRedPenOfDoom (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Titanium Dragon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Tutelary (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Willhesucceed (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Therefore, if anyone has anything to add, now is the time to do so.  Roger Davies ^talk 08:02, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tarc Ignores the

WP:CIVIL

pillar

1 2 3 4 5

The above links are tarc removing warnings (which he is allowed to do) of people warning him for uncivil behaviour which implies that he knows he has been uncivil

The following diff is of tarc claiming that

WP:CIVIL can be ignored. (tarc saying we can ignore civility if people hold a particular world view)

Evidence presented by Masem

Ownership and refusal for consensus development

There is no question that Gamergate is a troubling situation for WP, due to the fact that the "proGG" side have been trying to significantly influence the article, administration, and this case, though not always in a malicious manner, just clumsy and/or unworkable. It should be clear that the coverage of GG is predominately against proGG (there are few RSes that give a leaderless anonymous online effort any time of day particularly as the proGG efforts include criticizing and attacking those RSes, in addition to the fact that there is the harassment/threats of female figures attached to the situation - no one really is ready to give them any positive coverage). There's little we can do while staying within reliable sourcing policy like

WP:SPAs

and unsigned editors who can't contribute towards that.

That said, these same facts have been used by a number of editors who have refused to engage in efforts to build consensus as mitigate the tone of the article and engaged in

.

There's probably many other problems with the article from other contributions, but this group of editors have been the largest contributors to the article (outside myself), and while they are adding material w/ sources and the like that meets the base WP polices for V, NOR, and NPOV, they have used a structure and language that I and other editors believe is far from the impartial nature that

WP:NPOV

demands for an encyclopedia article. While this starts getting into content-related issues which I know ArbCom generally does not comment on, understanding what issues that I and others have seen is part of the behavior problems:

• Part of the issue is the nature of the press's role in Gamergate, in that they are involved parties, moreso at the video game and tech sources since proGG are trying to directly impact their ad funding. As such, the press has every reason to be negative of the movement, and many have flat out called the movement as a whole "misogynistic" due to the nature of the harassment. I want to stress this doesn't invalid these as sources, but we have to understand the difference between facts and opinions expressed in these These editors want to have WP's article call the movement out as misogynistic in WP's voice instead of stating it as the widestream press's opinion. This has been argued through many times, pointing that other articles for strongly-disliked groups by the public, like Westboro Baptist Church and Scientology put all such criticism in the approach non-WP statement instead of in WP's voice, but they shut down and refuse to accept this distinction, claiming that what the RSes state is absolute. [5], [6], [7]
• There are some neutral statements about the proGG's stance on their desire to change ethics from good reliable sources, as well as the nature of this being a "movement". But these editors focus too much on the press's stance that because of the harassment issues, that there can be no "movement" or their "ethics" cries are false fronts; as such they reject attempts to write sections of the article in a different structure or a more impartial manner to present these points without ridicule. Examples: [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13]

A key part is, 90% of the article, in my opinion, is fine in light of what the sources give - there's good proper sourcing, and telling the story per

]

Response to NorthBySouthBaranof re: Proposing changes

I have proposed language changes to the article either as exact recommended wording or specific details on given sections (prior to the draft article) either in the article or on the talk page [17], [18], [19], [20], [21] that I believe are improvements in impartiality without influencing the weight, but these have been shot down by the OWNing group above (Diffs there), and, particularly in article space with the sanctions in place, would not be appropriate to edit war over. I've also provided thoughts on better organization in general [22] which would be a major reorganization of the article, and it would not make sense to actually make those changes until consensus was obtained to make them. --MASEM (t) 18:09, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Without making this back and forth to what North has added, I strongly object to the claims I'm not working towards consensus (I'm trying to find a middle group) or that my suggestions are inactionable/unsupported (in specific, North's claim that the attacks/movement are factually misogynistic because the press has said so, when it is clear these are widely held opinions of the press and we need to make so WP does not refect opinion as fact regardless if every main RS makes that claim, though obviously saying what the press's stanc), in light of all aspects of NPOV policy but specifically impartiality, and how we write other articles on controversial topics. If there are specific issue ArbCom needs more info on I can reply to those facets. --19:48, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Additional comment (Re: Masem and potential offsite issues)

I am very well my name comes up in offsite discussions regarding the GG article, as proGG people see me as neutral, and there have been claims in the past that I've been leading offsite groups to edit/swamp the GG article/talk page from that side (eg [23] by a since indef-blocked editor). I want to assure the committee and others I have purposely avoided communication with those groups (save for one private message exchange on the reliability of sources with one user), and, if necessary, will do whatever the committee requests to show this, if this is an issue. --MASEM (t) 18:09, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Gamergate supporters have attempted to use Wikipedia as a platform to attack their opponents

There is a campaign by Gamergate supporters to use Wikipedia to further their movement's smear campaigns against Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu — in defiance of reliable sources, the Biographies of living persons policy and human decency. The below edits are only a sampling — I could fill several evidence sections with these diffs.

Zoe Quinn

• [24] This history page for the article and its talk page are instructive — both Titanium Dragon and TheNewMinistry inserted an array of allegations, including a section entitled "Accusations of Personal and Professional Misconduct" with edit summaries that personally attack the subject.
• [25] — On the talk page, Titanium Dragon refers to Zoe Quinn as "a scandal attached to a person."
• [26] — On the talk page, Titanium Dragon makes poorly-sourced/unsourced negative statements about Zoe Quinn and reverts them back in after another editor removes them on BLP grounds.
• [27] —
  Bosstopher
  inserts poorly-sourced allegations that Quinn is responsible for DDoS attacks and bribery.
• [28] [29] — Titanium Dragon removes sourced statements by Zoe Quinn, with edit summaries stating that "Zoe Quinn's integrity is at the heart of the GamerGate nonsense" and "It is Zoe Quinn making statements in order to cast herself in a more sympathetic light, which is generally unacceptable."
• [30] [31] [32] — More rev-deleted harassment edits.
• [33] —
  Crisis proposes unsourced statements about Quinn's name, and when their proposal is rejected, puts them in the article anyway
  .
• [34] [35] — More rev-deleted material from Titanium Dragon.

Brianna Wu

• [36] — An IP editor inserts the weasel-worded and unsourced claim that Wu doxxed herself.
• [37] — Pepsiwithcoke removes cited material on threats against Wu with an edit summary accusing Wu of doxxing herself, and later removes it again.
• [38] — QuantumMass inserts the libelous allegation that Wu faked death threats against herself. After being reverted, reinserts them.

Anita Sarkeesian and Tropes vs. Women in Video Games

• [39] — Anonymous attacks.
• [40] — Akulkis inserts something so offensive that it has been rev-deleted.
• [41] — PizzaMan inserts unsourced insinuations that Sarkeesian has lied and reinserts it after it was objected to, with an edit summary accusing her of lying.
• [42] —
  Poroboros persistently
  inserts YouTube-sourced claims that Sarkeesian "lied" and generally attempts to discredit her.
• [43] — Bluefoxicy makes unsupported statements on the talk page to the effect that Sarkeesian has "known limited credibility."
• [44] — Tomous43 makes repeated BLP-violating edits to the talk page, all of which are revision-deleted.
• [45] — Xander756 makes defamatory claims on the talk page, purporting to link Sarkeesian with fraud and deceit.

Gamergate controversy

• [46] [47] [48] — Titanium Dragon inserts unsourced and poorly-sourced accusations.
• [49] —YellowSandals compares Zoe Quinn to a prostitute.
• [50] — Thronedrei accuses Brianna Wu of lying about death threats.
• [51] — Tutelary reverts a removal of BLP-violating material, claiming that such can be justified as "content choices."
• [52] — "previously-involved IP user" makes the unsupported claim that Zoe Quinn was responsible for "an abusive relationship." The user calls for "Putting forward evidence of an abusive relationship" in a thread discussing Zoe Quinn's purported sexual relationships.
• [53] — DownWIthSJWs calls Zoe Quinn a "professional victim."
• [54] — DHeyward compares Zoe Quinn to Bill Clinton's "bimbo eruptions" and states that Quinn intentionally "pivoted to victim."

Repeated attempts to present false claims about living people as true or disputed

Mainstream reliable sources have unanimously dismissed Gamergate's allegations of unethical behavior involving Zoe Quinn and Nathan Grayson as false: [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60] [61] [62] [63]. It is provable that neither Grayson nor Kotaku ever reviewed Depression Quest and that Grayson wrote nothing about Quinn after beginning their relationship. We are well beyond the point where the claim that their relationship involved any ethical violations is a

deserving of no credence in the encyclopedia, particularly given the sensitive nature of the allegations and their effect on living people.

Despite this fact, there have been repeated efforts to water down the article's depiction of the falsity of the claims or present them as the subject of legitimate debate. These endless, monotonous,

arguments have wasted editors' time and verge on the tendentious. An incomplete sampling follows:

• 22 November — [64]: Avono argues that because "a friendship existed," we can't call the allegations false.
• 12 November — [65]: DHeyward suggests that we ignore the fact that there was no unethical behavior in favor of embracing the idea that because Quinn had a "relationship with a journalist," the allegations are meaningful.
• 2 November — [66]: Akesgeroth declares that the article has "an absolute lack of neutrality" — and their proposed fix includes removing a reference to the falsity of the allegations about Quinn and Grayson from the sublede.
• 2 November — [67]: TJRaptis20 declares that there is "no proof" the claims are false and calls for the removal of well-sourced discussion of their falsity.
• 26 October — [68]: AgentChieftain states "Why are we saying that the allegations against Quinn were "proven" false...?"
• 24 October — [69] [70] [71] [72]: Diego Moya argues that describing the accusations as false is "the opposite of what we need to cover the topic in a detached, formal tone" and "emotional-ridden wording", and then, when confronted with the weight of the sources, argues that we should attribute the statement to "mainstream media" as if it is a contested opinion and that "we just need to avoid asserting they're false, as they *are* part of a controversy."

Gamergate supporters have targeted long-term editors who attempted to deal with these issues

Gamergate supporters have targeted long-term editors, creating multiple pages which are "hit lists" including dozens of long-term Wikipedia editors who have opposed them. This has included implied and explicit threats, abusive vandalism, miscellaneous garbage and other personal attacks.

There has been no lack of discussion or failure to engage

There were no less than fourteen (14) archive pages created on

in less than three months, representing the fact that all sides have extensively engaged in good-faith debate and discussion about the issue.

Community processes have not found the article to be biased

On 26 October,

with the comment that Overall, people seem to think there is a bias in the press and the usual pool of RS over this but that overall, the article is fairly neutral. The second (actual) question was closed with the comment that Often, WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE are hard to distinguish in situations like this, due to the unbalance in sourcing avalible. However, the overall tone is, while there are some issues, there is no overarching bias in the article.

Events of 30 November exemplify Gamergate editors' bad faith

The events of 30 November involving myself,

that "I am currently talking to a news site that is working on a piece about your behavior tonight which may be sent to Jimmy Wales. Looking through your bio and edits, it seems that you are a feminist. Is this the case?"

Note: I removed a BLP violation from the quote above. This is not a comment on the evidence, and should not be seen as a reflection on NorthBySouthBaranof. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:10, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Devil's Advocate has engaged in POV-pushing and imputes bad faith in decisions he disagrees with

• [73] [74] — Repeatedly removed
  the precept
  that opinion pieces ... are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact.
• [75] [76] — Removes, without discussion, a quote from the article subject about the harassment she was subjected to, sourced to a reliable source, Kotaku, claiming that the source is unusable because it has been criticized by Gamergate supporters. The revert also removes an indisputable reliable source, The Boston Globe. His removals are reverted by multiple editors.

Levels accusations of bad faith, bias and conspiracy in many Gamergate-related decisions he disagrees with.

• Here, he attacks The Wordsmith for imposing a relatively-brief topic ban on a recidivist BLP-violating editor and EdJohnston for endorsing it, claiming that This is an outrage and that You both were apparently so concerned about finding an excuse to ding someone on one side of the dispute that you ignored what was staring you in the face.
• Here, he attacks
  request for comment related to Gamergate, claiming That closure was a contentious non-admin close by an editor who has taken similarly contentious non-admin actions on this topic. The closure was made on 29 November pursuant to a proper request
  and contrary to TDA's description of the closure as "contentious," there is no evidence anyone contested the closure.
• Here, he attacks
  involved
  " in the biography of a feminist because he has previously edited articles related to feminism.

I have initiated good-faith efforts at consensus-building and argument-defusing

After an edit war on

, there was significant and productive collaboration between myself, Tony Sidaway, Masem and other editors, utilizing the draft page to develop a consensus-driven section on Intel reinstating its advertising with Gamasutra.

Masem has not proposed actionable changes and has not been willing to compromise

As per Masem's evidence, he believes the article's tone is "not impartial." He has repeatedly made this known on the talk page, generally in the context of more or less vague statements about the movement's ethics claims. However, his activity on the draft page is limited to one series of edits to another editor's proposed submission and one addition of a brief statement. He has not drafted new sections or substantively proposed new language for existing sections. It is difficult to move forward in a thorny content dispute when an editor who disputes the content declines to present more than general disagreement - it results in unproductive circular arguments. This is not to say that Masem has not been active on the talk page in good faith, but I believe the lack of specificity in his arguments has been unhelpful. To that end, I have invited Masem to propose rewritten language for discussion.

Masem presents a couple key examples as to why his unmodified prior proposals are not actionable and will not gain consensus — not because of any "OWNing group" but because of the weight of reliable sources. In this diff, he proposes removing any description of sexism, misogyny or harassment from the lead sentence, which is clearly not a "neutral" or "impartial" way of wording a controversy that has made worldwide headlines around issues of sexism, misogyny and harassment. In this diff, he proposes removing the word "misogynistic" from the description of the harassment suffered by Zoe Quinn, claiming that stating it factually is heading into "weasel word" territory. However, it is verifiable and factual that the harassment was misogynistic, and there is nothing "neutral" or "impartial" about hiding that fact on the grounds that Gamergate supporters don't like it.

Masem has not weakened his stance or been willing to find middle ground. Masem helpfully provides an example here, where he BOLDly rewrites the section on ethics without discussion. Accepting Masem's rewrite as the new starting point, I made edits within the rewrite to address my concerns with the text. I did not revert Masem's edits. Within 3 minutes of my compromise edits, Masem reverted them wholesale, claiming that they were "not a neutral edit." That is not good-faith editing, particularly when one has just made an undiscussed large-scale rewrite of a longstanding section. Were my edits perfectly neutral? Probably not. But neither were his, and I made an effort to work with Masem only to get flatly reverted for even trying. Later,

which must be presented as such.

Rebuttal to Tutelary

Hatting talk-page trolling relating to a living person is not only permitted, it is encouraged per

explains why I hatted the edit request — it is a common Gamergate meme to refer to their targets as "Literally Who" and the edit request would have inserted text referencing the meme.

Rebuttal to Carrite

I encourage arbitrators to read the

WP:ELBLP

categorically prohibit. No other editor has supported this material. Even Masem has agreed that it's inappropriate.

Rebuttal to The Devil's Advocate

The diffs that TDA uses to support his accusations of "POV-pushing" demonstrate that I have done the following: add material sourced from The Boston Globe, add The Boston Globe again, add a quote from a key figure in the Gamergate controversy sourced to The New Yorker, write about an international news story sourced to The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times, add attributed editorial discussion of an issue by The Salt Lake Tribune and add material sourced from The New York Times. I plead guilty to the charge of using high-quality reliable sources to create article content. TDA is also being highly disingenuous in his criticism of the Brianna Wu meme material — he attacks me for attempting to paraphrase the source, and then when I replace that offending paraphrase with a direct quote, he complains that the direct quote is "inflammatory."

Ryulong has repeatedly made egregiously POV and inflammatory edits

• Adds numerous unnecessary quotes of insults against GamerGate.
• Presents several inflammatory opinions about GamerGate as fact.
• Adds massive paragraph accusing GamerGate supporters of copyright violations based off a single source.
• Adds nearly a paragraph worth of material based off one source to attack the unofficial mascot of GamerGate.

Ryulong has engaged in POINTy behavior to push a POV

• Anil Dash material
  • Argues for excluding mention of alleged harassment of GamerGate supporters using a mocking heading.
  • Claims "poor sourcing" for above allegations warrants mention of allegations against named person. Asks about including several serious criminal accusations against named individual based off much weaker sourcing, including tweets from a critic.
  • Removes certain mentions of harassment, including reliably-sourced details about female and minority GamerGate supporters receiving rape and death threats or being fired for supporting GamerGate.
  • After the material was restored, Ryulong adds the allegations against a BLP subject to the article. Initially mild, he later expands the material to include allegations of a potentially criminal nature (bribery).
  • When I remove the paragraph, he restores it and moves it to a section on "support for charitable efforts" apparently on the basis that the "bribe" claim concerned a charity donation.
  • After I remove it, noting the BLP concern, and it is restored again, Ryulong adds an image to the section with a caption containing the potentially criminal accusation.
• GamerGate diversity material
  • Removes reliably-sourced material about women and minorities supporting GamerGate with the rest attributed as opinion, claiming it is to hold "pro-GG" content to the same standard as "anti-GG" content.
  • Subsequently edit-wars to remove from an image caption mention of Christina Sommers stating the gaming generation is much less prejudiced than previous generations.
  • Acknowledges in two comments his attributing mention of the existence of female and minority supporters as though it were opinion, despite acknowledging it as fact, was due to the alleged misogyny of GamerGate not being treated as fact based off similar sourcing.

Ryulong has violated BLP

• Adam Baldwin
  • Repeatedly adds unsupported negative claims ([77][78] [79] ) despite issue being pointed out by another editor. [80]
• Eron Gjoni
  • Changes lede to make unsupported negative characterizations of his actions.
  • Presents potentially defamatory claim as fact and removes attribution of negative opinion.
  • Situation between Gjoni and Quinn is subject of ongoing legal proceedings.
• Milo Yiannopoulos
  • Adds material making inflammatory claims about him citing a piece in an unreliable source from someone in a personal dispute with Yiannopoulos.
  • Ryulong, Red Pen, and others, engaged in derisive off-topic discussion of Yiannapolous.
• David Auerbach
  • Added a paragraph claiming Auerbach "insisted" women who were threatened should be "held responsible" for "what Gamergate had become" as well as the men threatening them. As I explained, this completely misrepresented the source and presented the misrepresentation as fact. Anthonyhcole, who Ryulong cites as having originally agreed with him, concurred.
• Zoe Quinn
  • Ryulong inserted material from an interview in a non-reliable source to insert contentious claims about Quinn, a third party.
  • See first incidence of edit-warring mentioned above where he made three reverts to restore the material, breaching 3RR in the process. The claims were removed and after being restored the next revert noted the BLP issue, but Ryulong still made two more reverts.

Ryulong has repeatedly and flagrantly breached 3RR

• 9RR (seven listed are significant) - [81] [82] [83] [84] [85] [86] [87]

NorthbySouthBaranof has engaged in POV-pushing

GamerGate article

• Adds quote from Quinn about "her attackers" having "deep-seeded self-loathing" in a veiled reference to GamerGate.

Anita Sarkeesian bio

• Creates section for shooting threats and adds source to label it a "terrorist" threat in the section heading. After section was expanded with more sources and I remove the term noting only one source uses it, Baranof restores the term with several additional sources for the sole purpose of keeping the term "terrorist" in the section heading.
• Adds quote from Sarkeesian stating supporting GamerGate is implicitly supporting harassment of women.
• Removes material about there being no "imminent danger" from shooting threat. Performs a "rewrite" of material that removes mention of there being no imminent danger and reverts to keep wording. Supports Red Pen's claim of it being coatrack material. After having added material about gun control and violence in video games based off state paper editorial on shooting threat, breaches 3RR to keep material. Restores it again, while adding more material about gun control.

Brianna Wu bio

• Adds material presenting as fact that the movement has a "penchant for misogynist, violent harassment of women" with source not supporting POV language and claims Wu created meme to mock GamerGate supporters harassing women despite none of the six cited source stating this as the reason.
• Uses Ars Technica piece unrelated to Wu to replace PBS-backed material stating GamerGate originated with concerns about corruption in journalism to claim it originated from 4chan and that ethics concerns were tied to misogynistic attacks. Changes material to state GamerGate's origins as being "4chan-organized harassment" of Quinn using ethics concerns as a "cover" for attacks and insinuates all ethics concerns of GamerGate were debunked, rather than just the review claim as the source states.
• Adds material claiming meme mocked GamerGate for "illogical statements and misogynistic threats" despite this not being supported by sources, characterizes the site 8chan as a "pro-GamerGate message board" and adds quote from Wu to assert GamerGate's responsibility. Restores material adding sentence to state threats were widely attributed to GamerGate supporters. Adds another source, but still does not support statement about the meme. Performs two additional reverts to keep in material. Replaces material about meme with lengthy and inflammatory direct quote from source.

TheRedPenofDoom has engaged in POV-pushing

GamerGate article

• Restores version of GamerGate lede claiming Gjoni made "sex for reviews" allegation in blog post despite source (still wrongly) stating it was "implied" in the post.

Anita Sarkeesian bio

• Removes source noting Universtiy statement about there being no imminent danger from Utah shooting threat against Sarkeesian claiming it is irrelevant. Removes it again claiming it is irrelevant. Tags statement as "undue" in the article. Removes material a third time with an edit summary saying "BLP" and nothing more.
• Initiates talk page discussion claiming statement about there being no imminent danger from threats is a WP:COATRACK issue. Claims to established editor who supports inclusion that only reason to include material is to cast doubt on her decision to cancel speaking engagement. Breachs 3RR to restore material from a state paper with a quote stating incident proves need for stricter gun control and proves Sarkeesian right about violence in video games.
• States as fact that Utah shooting threat was from someone affiliated with GamerGate despite source characterizing it as a claim. Restores statement. Restores it again claiming anyone who claims to be part of GamerGate is part of GamerGate. Performs third revert to present as fact that shooting threat was by someone affiliated with GamerGate.

Gamaliel is INVOLVED

• A year ago he and I were engaged in a content dispute over a BLP of a female Microsoft executive, where I objected to giving undue weight to online comments about the executive. In several edits and comments he sought to emphasize "widespread gamer misogyny" on the article.
• I detailed evidence of Gamaliel being involved in the GamerGate articles during an ANI discussion. One important example is this remark calling for topic bans of Tutelary, Titanium Dragon, and "Puedo", which I believe was referencing PseudoSomething, an editor he had argued with on the talk page about sources. This comment on the talk page stating (bolding mine): "Any discussion of GamerGate supposedly being about "corruption" should note the reliable sources pointing out the complainers' complete disinterest in actual corruption", this subsequent response, his removal of one IP user's criticism of his comment, and his reply, are also significant.

Gamaliel has misused his admin privileges while INVOLVED

• Per above evidence, Gamaliel had called for a topic ban of Titanium Dragon and been involved in disputes over the GamerGate article. About a week after that statement on TD is when he imposed an indefinite topic ban on Titanium Dragon under the BLP discretionary sanctions. This action had actually been performed out of process as TD had not been clearly notified of the sanctions and thus the topic ban was reversed.
• When an editor filed a community sanctions enforcement request against Tarc, stating he was edit-warring to include an inflammatory term and flouting a compromise to use one less inflammatory, Gamaliel essentially argued that no action be taken against Tarc even if he was editing against consensus because his edit was correct and later closed the discussion with no action.
• Soon after this case was opened Gamaliel imposed an indefinite topic ban against Tutelary, who as I noted was one of three editors he previously voted to topic ban. Gamaliel states he made this decision by ruling out "involved" editors, but from my own count there are only six editors who are uninvolved regarding Tutelary generally or uninvolved regarding GamerGate specifically. Of those Cullen328, Dave Dial, and Daveosaurus, supported a topic ban, while Ivanvector, Obsidi, and Xezbeth opposed a topic ban. Mere minutes after the topic ban on Tutelary, Gamaliel imposed an indefinite topic ban on MarkBernstein, but logged it to where it looks like Tutelary was topic-banned after Mark. A day earlier he made a very sympathetic statement about Mark suggesting he did not want to sanction him. His reluctant statement about imposing the sanction came after at least two other admins suggested sanctions based off Mark's egregious incivility for which Gamaliel had previously only warned him with a very sympathetic statement.

Black Kite is INVOLVED and has used his tools

• Canvassed Gender Gap Task Force to deal with "misogynistic" edits on the pages for Quinn and her game.
• Proposes topic ban or site ban for Tutelary based off WO piece
• Removes material about a DDoS attack on The Escapist's GamerGate thread.
• Claims said attack is not relevant to GamerGate article because there is no proof of responsibility.
• Removes the NPOV tag from the article disputing its basis.
• Reverts a change to the lede by ArmyLine due to "no consensus" from previous discussions.
• Has performed revision deletions on relevant articles ([88]).
• Closed ANI case against TD four hours after the case opened after Future reimposed TD's topic ban despite minimal discussion and at least one objection to the sanction.
• States in arbitration request that he "reserves" the "right" to take further admin action on the subject.

GameJournoPros

• Baranof removes material about GameJournoPros calling it "Breitbart garbage" despite it being cited to other reliable sources reporting on the allegations and removed it again saying "We don't really care what someone from Breitbart said. We just don't."
• Red Pen removes the material while calling Yiannopoulos a "fringe conspiracy theorist" in the edit summary.
• Tarc removes the material calling it "nuttery" and rejecting any inclusion of the allegations.
• Ryulong removes the material due to "no consensus" on inclusion.

As it concerns squabbling over sourcing for abuse allegations

You two may find these sources illuminating.

Regarding Drmies

• For the record, while I think the block imposed by Drmies was wrong, I do not believe he is or was "involved" regarding the topic area and I left him out of the list of parties for this case for a reason. His actions since then vindicate my omitting his name.

Ryulong has been edit-warring in a controversial article despite an acknowledged COI

(This has already been presented at WP:ANI, but it was closed as a "frivolous, baseless and misplaced/forum-shopped request" - by an involved administrator, no less - despite the evidence I am about to provide. I will leave commentary on that, if any, to other users.)

A user on Reddit named "ryulong67" ran an AMA ("Ask Me Anything") titled "I'm Ryulong" on r/GamerGhazi, a subreddit for those opposed to the GamerGate revolt. To do this, the user had to confirm that he was

, despite having received money from a group with a known anti-Gamergate agenda.

Evidence presented by LoganMac

Ryulong recieved $370 by a known anti-GamerGate subreddit

Ryulong recieved $370 by a known anti-GamerGate subreddit after having made an AMA (ask me anything) that same day. He admits that any further edit would be a conflict of interest [89]

Said Reddit thread [90]

Ryulong is asked by anti-GamerGate subreddit to add the string "2mj5ds" to his profile [91]

He does so here [92] confirming it's his account

The user who donated most of his goal is a known anti-GamerGate person [93] [94] Ryulong tried implying that "anyone could donate", and that the GoFundMe would be posted "on a another pro-GamerGate subreddit". No such thing happened.

His fully founded GoFundMe page [95]

He confirms on his public Twitter page that the GoFundMe was made by him [96] (this is not doxxing, he has admitted that account it's his, I came to learn of his account when HE himself asked me to "learn to fucking read" on that account) On this same account, he further admits of a conflict of interest, hence "quitting" [97] yet he came back less than a week later

He breaks his self-imposed topic ban by editing the article draft on multiple ocassions [98] [99] [100] He even says "I'm going to regret doing this later" in his edit summary

He continues to do so in the 8chan article, adding a POV and notability tag [101], and after gettnig deleted, adding a POV tag again [102] As well as multiple suggestions on its talk page about the article being biased [103] [104] [105] [106]

He was even asked by Jimbo to step down of the article [107] but he refused

Ryulong shows an extreme case of

, has demonstraded a heavy bias, not only on-site but off-site as well. He seems to take pride in angering userbases and fandoms. Constantly reverts people instead of making suggestions to change an user edit.

This only further damages the image of Wikipedia, like Auerbach of

criticism . The article should be dealt by completely new uninvolved editors. And as Masem noted, should be written in a disinterested voice.

Update 12-08: Ryulong continues to be involved in GamerGate related stuff and showing his bias, he argued for the deletion nomination of the article

He deleted an IP user comment deeming it "trolling", who "is blatanly lying". Lying apparently is grounds for deleting someone else's comment, if he judges it as a lie. Loganmac (talk) 04:16, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

PresN's evidence

I had written a rebuttal but PresN politely deleted his evidence since there's no relevance to users' off-wiki accounts. Loganmac (talk) 23:21, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

TDA intentionally misinterpreting policy

The Devil's Advocate (TDA) frequently claims violations of

and my only violation is not having a local consensus to add it because of him and Tutelary.

The "edit warring" claim is frivolous as I was responding to a request on the talk page to trim the image captions [115] that got caught in a blanket revert by Tutelary; I was the original author of the image captions anyway. [116].

TDA has constantly edited the article and talk page in a way to ensure that any negative material is demoted to being an opinion of a writer while actively pushing that anything supportive of Gamergate gets treated as a fact. (See NorthBySouthBaranof's evidence)

TDA's claims regarding David Auerbach are also frivolous as the community as a whole has supported me, including not finding any real fault in my paraphrasing of an article critical of his writing.

TDA has also intentionally misinterpreted policy in order to protect a user who had openly disclosed his identity on his user page and had been discovered to have a conflict of interest by redacting the blocking admin's statements under the claim of

Reddit

A disclosure regarding what happened on Reddit has been forwarded to the arbitration committee mailing list.

The following are the "edits" made to 8chan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) that caused a furor off-site.

• [118]
• [119]
• [120]
• [121]
• [122]
• [123]
• [124]

Edits to Draft:Gamergate controversy (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs), an unofficial sandbox version, have also been a point of contention. The brand new user involved was informed of the issues at hand ([125]). Threads begun at ANI by Tutelary [126] and GS/GG/E by Dwavenhobble (an SPA) [127] were both closed without action.

Loganmac rebuttal

The incident concerning Auerbach was resolved on-site with the community backing me rather than saying I should be censured.

Update: I'm allowed to participate in talk page discussions and disagree with an article's notability, Loganmac. Arbitration is not a venue to vaguely complain about me like you do elsewhere.

Off-site canvassing and harassment

Evidence regarding the actions of Wikipedia editors on other websites in regards to enabling and fomenting harassment of myself and oher editors onsite has been forwarded to the arbitration committee.

BLP violations by TDA

This edit by TDA intentionally toes the line of a BLP violation where he uses the article's talk page to make statements about the subject's past that are not reliably sourced, are generally irrelevant, and regard the subject's private life.

Harassment by Tutelary

Tutelary has focused their attention on eliminating me from the article several times. Tutelary has repeatedly attempted to report my behavior on the article on

and other related boards, which ultimately resulted in no action taken.

• [128]
• [129]
• [130]
• [131]

Examples against NorthBySouthBaranof as well

• [132]
• [133]

Edit warring by Tutelary

Tutelary has edit warred with administrators and others over closures of threads that had been made to seek bans or over the page itself.

• [134]
• [135]
• [136]
• [137]
• [138]
• [139]
• [140]
• [141]

General issue of links to my Twitter account

My behavior on my personal Twitter account where I was harassed by Gamergate advocates is not evidence of anything, as I've made no attempt to influence what was happening on Wikipedia through those channels. Archived links exist solely to harass me.

Starship.paint rebuttal

It is impossible for anyone to be completely unbiased, and it is only when biases affect

when reliable sources do not adequately cover what Gamergate advocates want them to.

Much of the evidence involves either websites of ill repute or no reliability character assassinating me and others. General evidence of Gamergate advocates attempting to silence Wikipedia editors through the "press" has been forwarded to the arbitration committee. The claimed COI issues is discussed above.

The evidence also features ad hominem attacks on a person uninvolved in Wikipedia concerning this other issue as well.

The claims that my presence on Wikipedia is problematic because I've made comments off-site that were questionable (since deleted/retracted but that doesn't stop people from constantly bringing them up it seems) and because I've made the most edits to the article (a common complaint) are contra to the request an arbitrator made on the evidence talk page as this does not constitute what evidence should be in this case.

Single-purpose accounts and "zombie" accounts

The Gamergate article and its talk page have been heavily edited by users who either are newly registered accounts that only edit the Gamergate article and related topics and can be considered as representative of

" thread. Regardless of my errors then, the issue still plagues the topic area. I will only be listing the most prolific and still present editors here.

• Loganmac has edits going back to 2008. However, he seemingly stopped editing Wikipedia in 2011 only to make his first edit in over 3 years to the Gamergate article's talkpage and for the past 3 months barely make any substantiative edits to any other article or talk page.
• YellowSandals' first edit ever was regarding the talk page and has only ever made edits to the talk page (some are to the article itself and others are on user pages or project pages regarding the subject).
• Pepsiwithcoke, while having a somewhat varied editing history, jumped into the fray with this "false flag" remark and since then hasn't done much regarding any other subject on Wikipedia.
• Halfhat, while having registered in April of this year, did not perform that many edits after registering. However, he did begin editing the Gamergate topic area in October and since then the majority of his edits have been regarding Gamergate in some way. Simply because he can present a dozen or so edits out of the several hundred he has made that are not about Gamergate does not mean he does not fit here.
• Racuce's first edit is about Gamergate and there's no edits of his that aren't about Gamergate.
• Jgm74 originally registered in 2007 and had 2 edits but after making enough edits to be autoconfirmed, he began editing the Gamergate topic area only
• Zakkarum, whose edits on the draft page raised my concerns and general drama in the area these past few days made his first edit to Masem's RFC and has done nothing since.
• Torga, who was banned with the community sanctions while the case was still being considered, made one edit in 2008, made 9 more to get autoconfirmed in September this year, and then jumped straight into Gamergate.
• Weedwacker has recently re-appeared after a year of absence to edit Gamergate and related pages extensively. This has included harassing me.
• here
  .
• Talk:Gamergate controversy (and then to his user talk) that I had removed out of BLP concerns. These edits were never revdelled ([142], [143], [144], [145]
  ).
• Casimirin registered 1 week ago after editing as an IP and has entrenched himself at a Gamergate-based dispute at Talk:Christina Hoff Sommers.
• Dwavenhobble was registered last month and made a few edits then has solely advocated

Tutelary refutations

Incivility to peoples offsite is irrelevant. Cobbsaladin's actions spoke for themselves, and that is why he is blocked.

Community sanctions & admin shopping

.

Since the instatement of the page, several editors were banned for various lengths under these sanctions, mostly against those advocating for Gamergate (including several parties to this case). Complaints have been made about a claim of unfair implimentation of these rules, despite no attempt by editors on one side of the dispute to even attempt to use the enforcement page to seek out sanctions against editors they consistently complain about on noticeboards. [146]

Two prior attempts at arbitration were sought prior to this third accepted request. Both had been declined [147] [148]. At the time of the second request, the Gamergate sanctions were only in place for 4 days. The third accepted request was made under a week after the second request was declined, and no attempts at solving issues at the enforcement page were made by the filing party TDA, or any prior filing parties of the requests, to use the enforcement page to solve problems, and only pile onto existing threads to avoid having their allies be censured.

Out of all of the threads started at

and the live one against myself opened by a single purpose account) have been opened by other editors advocating for Gamergate, despite their complaints that no one critical of Gamergate has been censured under the sanctions.

East718 refutation/rebuttal/whatever

Several pieces of East718's evidence also meet the same "out of context honest mistake rather than actual malicious intent" description as in TDA's evidence. It also relies on off-site behavior, which is not in the purview of Wikipedia (necessarily) as per the argument against Mr. Random's evidence. Aside from that, the "witch hunt" was poorly executed, and nothing came out of it other than the sanctions page. Edit warring was never acted on per Tutelary's evidence, and none of that past behavior (such as my actions as an administrator) are not relevant in this present case as those happened 5 years ago.

Carrite rebuttal

Carrite is trying to use arbitration to solve a content dispute as his request on the talk page has been met with denial. The website features may problematic statements concerning living persons.

IP editor rebuttal

The IP editor claims that arguments with him count as harassment and he takes things out of context. All of his edits have been to advocate for Gamergate across his 3 addresses:

• 70.24.5.250 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
  • [149]
  • [150]
  • [151]
  • [152]
  • [153]
  • [154]
  • [155]
  • [156]
• 74.12.93.242 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
  • All edits are about this case
• 76.64.35.209 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)
  • Same as above
  • [157]

For his latest addition, the IP editor claims my asking "why do you want me to be banned" counts as incivility or biting when his goals are clear. [158], [159], [160], [161], [162], [163], [164], [165].

DHeyward rebuttal

This isn't a content dispute and that is not a review. It's two sentences saying the game exists and it's from a year ago.

Re:DHeyward: The only reason it was added is because Gamergate is insisting that it was a problem when it's two sentences of nothing and Gamergate has made its name for making mountains out of these molehills. It's not a review. It's barely a plug. It's two sentences that have thrown the internet into a frenzy.

Notice of possible meatpuppetry

I am still debating whether I want to get involved with presenting a full set of evidence in this case, as I really don't want to have to deal with SPAs harassing me and the like. But, for now, I just wanted to make a simple notification that anyone involved in this evidence page that uses Archive.today as a link, such as Mr. Random and LoganMac up above, likely have personal involvement with Gamergate as they are the only ones involved in using such links. Furthermore, the evidence presented just above by both has already been dismissed by the community as not an actual case of COI or a concern, as seen in this ANI discussion. And the exact evidence links given by them are also something that is currently, as I write this, being compiled in an 8chan thread and has been since this Evidence page was opened, so that is likely where the two above have been getting their sources. Again the use of Archive.today is a rather blatant showcase for that.

Also, the fact that the same 8chan thread is discussing having Wikipedia editor insiders who will ferry their wanted evidence along implies enough itself (and one of the commenters there implying they are a Wikipedia editor). And, yes, I have screenshots of this, which is necessary since they often delete or change comments in order to pretend certain things were not said. Silverseren^C 03:58, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also I should note the removal here was done by the poster after collaboration with the users in the same 8chan thread I mentioned before. Also, apparently they are working together in an IRC chat in addition to the 8chan thread in order to facilitate the meatpuppetry. Silverseren^C 04:41, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There's also this acknowledgement.

"Again, If you guys can, just delete my entry and I'll leave it to the pro editors with the long-standing accts on the gamergate.me side edit / present evidence."

Diff. Silverseren^C 04:44, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User:Titanium_Dragon has an inherent conflict of interest

User:Titanium_Dragon self identifies as [ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Titanium_Dragon&diff=next&oldid=235412804 " a independent game designer "] and therefore has an inherent conflict of interest in editing gamergate articles, since gamergate in general is ostensibly about wide-spread collusion between game designers and journalists when it is not about sending death threats to women, and articles/content about

]

Rebuttal to TDA accusation of NPOV pushing

a) Per the source Quinn’s ex-boyfriend, programmer Eron Gjoni, wrote a blog post accusing Quinn of having an affair with a writer for a games Web site that had reported on “Depression Quest.” The site investigated the alleged ethics breach . Other reliable sources at the same time and after were similarly asserting that the blog tirade made the accusations Quinn was attacked online by an ex-boyfriend who alleged in lengthy blog posts that she cheated on him with a journalist from gaming-news site Kotaku to further her career.

b) [166] sources do directly link the terrorist threats to gamergate. BLP is not subject to 3RR. "Established" editors ESPECIALLY should not be pushing coatracks to insinuate that a living person is a coward for taking terrorist threats seriously, rather than merely dismissing as "internet trolls will be internet trolls". -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:22, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

rebuttal re Carrite

As Carrite demonstrates brilliantly in their "evidence", the so called "House POV" team has had to face countless assertions along the lines that Wikipedia must take blog posts written by

to sometimes snap.

Comments and actions bringing Wikipedia into disrepute

Some actions of Ryulong and Tarc, while off-wiki, has brought Wikipedia into disrepute. Even when Ryulong and Tarc are off-wiki, they still use virtually the same user names or handles, for example their Twitter accounts, which are called Ryulong and Tarc Meridian respectively. The Twitter acounts have publicly acknowledged that they are Wikipedia editors. [167] (Tarc's admission is quoted below) The Wikipedia accounts have also admitted to using the Twitter accounts: Ryulong [168] and Tarc (Rebuttal, Avono). [169]

These were comments made when they were actively editing the article. I will demonstrate the bias below; I'm afraid I have to rely on an archive system as the damaging tweets were deleted at some point in time:

oh, you're a gamergate douche trying to get his way on Wiki by bitching that the page is biased as it doesn't show what you want [170]
I don't have time to deal with gamergate fags here [171] - Ryulong

FWIW I am a Wikipedia editor, and have done what I can to keep the BS out.
Hey, sorry you're getting crap from Gamergater neckbeards. These people need to and will be shouted down.
The narrative is being won, media's coming down hard against the trolls."
1 month later tho, looks like my p.o.v. is winning out.. - Tarc Meridian source

These aggressive and insulting comments have led to people questioning the integrity of the project if editors who have displayed such a bias and a anti-GG POV are still allowed to edit in this topic. Additionally, Ryulong on-wiki essentially admits he's not a neutral editor here. In the post above, he also claims being attacked on Twitter by the "mindless gamergate zombies". Honestly, I acknowledge not every editor approaching a subject will be neutral. However, when editors broadcast their biasness in a public manner, all it does it damage the reputation and reliability of Wikipedia.

Furthermore, the case of Ryulong was complicated due to him opening a GoFundMe online asking for donations. When he opened the GoFundMe, Ryulong acknowledged on-wiki that "further edits I make to the article or its talk page may be construed as a conflict of interest", referring to GamerGate. [172] Ryulong's GoFundMe quota was met by a $350 donation from a certain FishFox Nuro, [173] a self-described "SJW Lunatic" [174] (social justice warrior, a label referring to someone with an anti-GamerGate POV). It seems to me that after accepting this donation from someone who is publicly anti-GG ("I sent off the bulk of my repayment to my friend tonight") - Ryulong now has a financial

]

Update: I found a discussion on the GamerGate article here on the Escapist Magazine forums which is not reddit, 4chan or 8chan. It's interesting how the posters view the article and Ryulong, just CTRL-F Ryulong. starship.paint ~ regal 02:03, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Update 2: In response to Cla68's question on whether Ryulong made "a homophobic slur on your Twitter feed when referring to your editing of the GG article on WP", Ryulong responded that "As a homosexual I can reclaim it for my own use. Not to mention said slur is often used as a meaningless suffix for some of the websites this topic originated on. [175]

• Overall I'm not sure whether Ryulong really understands the need for accountability of his actions and words. How many "unintentional and honest mistakes" should we tolerate? One must analyse this situation; firstly, GamerGate is very controversial and is an issue with two "sides"; secondly, Ryulong is extremely involved (at time of post 18.55% of the article's edits belong to Ryulong). As long as people could be led to believe that Ryulong endorses one "side" of GamerGate to the point of casting slurs on the other "side", then we have a problem. Ditto to Tarc describing GamerGaters as "neckbeards" above. We have to consider the explicit connections the Wikipedia accounts and Twitter accounts have made to each other - together, they constitute unacceptable behaviour for future editing of the topic. starship.paint ~ regal 08:43, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Accusations without proof by MarkBernstein

Since MarkBernstein was topic banned after I made this post, I've hidden this as it is no longer necessary at this point in time. There's some technical error, sorry, but if you absolutely need to read it, there's the edit tab. I may restore this accordingly if the situation changes. starship.paint ~ regal 01:23, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Closure of 12RR as Stale

I am not sure whether this closure was appropriate, given the severity of the supposed offending action. starship.paint ~ regal 09:04, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Response to EvergreenFir

@EvergreenFir: - regarding the doxxxing, I just want to clarify that it's not only Ryulong who was doxxxed. There's also editors whom I do not consider "anti-GG", like Tutelary and DungeonSiegeAddict510, who also suffered from such attacks. starship.paint ~ regal 23:17, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Odd action by Dreadstar

I'd like to bring up a recent action by

that I find rather odd, and I think is worth looking at. Basically he told me to stop making references to Hitler threatening me with sanctions. The thing is all I was doing is referring to the Wikipedia article on Adolph Hitler to make a point. The reason I (and I'd guess others) make references to the Hitler article is because it's a well written article on a very controversial topic where nonfringe sources have strong opinions, the argument requires it to be an article on someone or something hated by the RSs. I was simply making the argument that if all sources share an opinion we shouldn't agree in Wikipedia's voice. Please note I did not compare anyone or anything to Hitler, I didn't accuse anyone of being a Nazi or anything like that, I was simply making an argument about what is written in the RSs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AHalfhat&diff=635482043&oldid=635152453 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AGamergate_controversy&diff=635481687&oldid=635481421

Response to Ryulong

I quickly compiled some difs here I think help show I'm not here to push an agenda. In fact that block of text was pointless, I'll add it to the diff page if someone wants to read it though but it's pointless. Ryulong has presented nothing to show advocacy.

before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}

Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.

before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

Regarding Battlefield Mentality

see this report submitted by

]

Tarc's conduct is especially worrying because he has been repeatedly warnned of this [178], [179]

talk) 22:32, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply

]

Rebutal Tarc

]

MarkBernstein has violated his Topic Ban

see his comment here [180] where he states the word GamerGate

]

Evidence presented by Tutelary

Ryulong has repeatedly gotten away with edit warring even 15RR by administrators primarily indulged with sanctions

People have reported Ryulong multiple times for edit warring, and both times, Ryulong was not taken action against, and the person who had absolved Ryulong of any block was the person primarily active in the sanctions page.

• [181] (By administrator Dreadstar, who declared it 'stale' 15 hours later)
• [182]

(By Future Perfect, giving no reasoning on why Ryulong shouldn't be blocked per

]

Repeated refactoring and/or hatting of others' comments in violation of WP:REFACTOR and WP:TPO

Multiple users have hatted, refactored others' comments even withstanding those user's rejections and have gotten into edit wars regarding this fact. Note that

]

Red Pen:

• Hatting a discussion related to content (without signing), a violation of WP:BLPTALK
• A violation of WP:TPO, editing another's comments More diffs to be added as I find them. Tutelary (talk) 03:22, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

North:

• On 11/28/2014 Hatting another user's edit request with the edit summary 'Nope' and leaving said template unsigned to ensure one has to look at the edit history to see who hatted it

Conduct and comments unbecoming of a Wikipedia editor

Ryulong:

• Telling another editor to 'eat shit'
• Says another editor is 'full of shit' More diffs and users as I find them. Tutelary (talk) 03:22, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Refusal to engage in the encylopedic process
• Making unsubstanciated claims about another editor
• Assuming bad faith with a Wikipedia editor

Entirety of decision to impose discretionary sanctions discussion was closed after 23.5 hours

The decision on whether to issue discretionary sanctions for GamerGate was closed only after 23.5 hours of discussion, with no SNOW close but with "2:1" support as by closing administrator. Link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Archive265#Proposed_Gamergate_solution_by_Hasteur No matter on whether or not they should have been passed, it is a bit ridiculous that not less than 24 hours is enough to impose discretionary sanctions while dsicussion was still ongoing. I'd expect at least 7 days. Tutelary (talk) 22:29, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Future Perfect's Conduct

Future Perfect, the administrator closed Ryulong's boomerang topic ban as a result of him proposing that 35+ people, at least 70% of which were not SPAs the way he described them, citing 'no possibility of consensus' as reason for closing said discussion. In this, he also closed one of the 3RRN noticeboard complaints with no action against Ryulong. He's also rarely if ever active to the

]

Dreadstar's conduct

Dreadstar used administrative tools multiple occasions in protecting the article, topic banning users, and the like on the article. However, one particularly instance which I can't find an exact reasoning for doing is this deleting of a page to remove revisions. Northbysouthbaranof was edit warring with another account over some edit. I later reported North to which no action happened but that's not the point. Dreadstar deleted the page to -remove- any evidence that this edit warring happened, and the actual content which was being edit warred over. Literally, once those revisions were gone, there was absolutely no evidence that North had edit warred at all, and my diffs for my 3RRN report became void. They were invalid links after that had happened. I questioned this on their talk page and Dreadstar reverted, but the fact that Dreadstar would delete a page to delete revisions so no one could prove that they existed is baffling. Even when an edit is oversighted or revision deleted, the username, the edit summary, and the content of the edit may be deleted. But not the edit itself. This was strange. Tutelary (talk) 02:23, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Full protection of the GamerGate article for 5 months

The article has been fully protected by administrator

]

My topic ban by Gamaliel is out of process and by an involved admin

My topic ban by Gamaliel is out of process and by an involved administrator. The Devil's Advocate demonstrated quite accurately on how Gamaliel is an involved administrator in this topic area and as a result, should not be imposing sanctions on others in this topic area. Not to mention that any type of 'uninvolved' nature of them due to becoming an involved party in this ArbCom; IE delivering general sanctions to others involved as parties should be absolutely unambiguous to their nature of being involved. The sanction itself is also out of process. Let me demonstrate how.

The sanctions were enacted on October 24, with the wording proposed by Hasteur being accepted (and is on the

WP:GS

page as) mandate the individual being warned, rather than notified of sanctions. This was the specific warning that was imposed.

1. I was never warned of any conduct relating to GamerGate by any administrator, only notified of general sanctions. That, per the official process guidelines for general sanctions only explicitly counts as a notification, and cannot be revoked. Hence, I was never warned of any type of disruption regarding the topic area which is mandated for sanctioning under the wording and never given any time to clarify any appearance of disruption.
2. Gamaliel took this community process of WP:ANI and twisted it into discretionary sanctions with exactly no need for it. The community does not lose their ability to propose sanctions just because discretionary sanctions are enacted.
3. Ryulong is not related to GamerGate. I proposed on WP:ANI for experienced users and administrators to look at Ryulong's conduct, decide if it was alright, and accordingly, sanction if it was not. I proposed a topic ban due to his pronounced WP:COI in the area. None of this is related to GamerGate edits, but a COI with the tangential topic of a GamerGate forum. General sanctions do not cover specific editors, but topics, and I was sanctioned for in effect calling Ryulong out.
4. Even deferring to the community discussion which Gamaliel blatantly stated was an imposition of general sanctions, and not a community based one, his reasoning still does not hold up.
5. Gamaliel is not an uninvolved administrator to be sanctioning users, as demonstrated by The Devil's Advocate. For more clarification in diffs, he was distinctly active on Talk:GamerGate for September, which included hatting discussions, removing others statements, and what appears to be general arguing on the talk page for and against certain things...which appears that he directly contributed to the talk page in certain disputes, making him an involved administrator for the topic matter.

Re to Andy

You're misunderstanding what I'm trying to say. It's whether he can be related to GamerGate and people be sanctioned for dealing with him/talking about him. For example, is it a violation of GamerGate sanctions to talk about Ryulong? No, as discretionary sanctions deal with topics, not Wikipedia editors. That was the point. An ANI about Ryulong is not about GamerGate, it's about the editor Ryulong. Why I got topic banned from GamerGate for asking for action against Ryulong, A Wikipedia Editor I don't know. There's other reasons I feel the topic ban is out of process but that's one of the main ones. Tutelary (talk) 21:09, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

All links archived for security.

Off-site conduct

Since if one side (pro-gg)'s actions are being scrutinized, it is only fair that ALL off-site actions are scrutinized, and yes, feel free to dig up my Uncyc history.

On-site conduct

There'll probably be reposted info/diffs here.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:8chan#Tagging -this little thing happened. (https://archive.today/0Mkpa)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ryulong/Archive_15#4chan_Page -Ryulong has some sort of vendetta against Alex Wuori (apparently a GG supporter or something) (https://archive.today/HyW0j)

Behavior of involved admins

Titanium Dragon was topic banned by Future Perfect at Sunrise for raising the argument that death threats shouldn’t be attributed to a source until the source is known. [183]

When the subject of Ryulong’s WP:COI came up on the General Sanctions page, Future Perfect at Sunrise hatted a great deal of editor statements for being “mostly useless quabbling” [184], this hatting was later reversed [185] and commented on [186] by another admin.

The Devil’s Advocate was temporarily blocked by Drmies [187] for presenting evidence of Gamaliel’s involvement in the article. [188]

Tutelary was recently topic banned by Gamaliel after a boomerang motion request. [189] Tutelary initially brought up a request concerning Ryulong’s

The ban on Tutelary was imposed by Gamaliel despite a 10:10 support:oppose vote, stating that he discounted objections as they “are from involved editors or are largely procedural in nature”

Future Perfect at Sunrise was unhappy with how this arbitration case was handling

.

A thread in [WP:AN] brought up by Revent concerning bans Gamaliel has imposed since ArbCom began was closed in ~90 minutes by Dreadstar, citing the opinion of one arbitrator that previously uninvolved (my bold) admins would still be uninvolved after being named as party to the case.

Admin PresN submitted evidence claiming to be mostly uninvolved, which is mostly true for on-wiki, but off wiki he spends his time helping out ryulong and taunting gamergate supporters on reddit under an account he has confirmed on-wiki. [191] [192]

On the subject of SPAs and the “us vs. them” mentality

I’ve seen lots of accusations thrown around that editors are SPAs only here to disrupt Wikipedia. One notable incident outside of this page was Ryulong’s “Nip Gamergate in the bud” proposal [193] to topic ban 35 editor accounts [194] that he claimed were

were closed by Future Perfect at Sunrise within a day of their opening saying there is “no chance of consensus”.

I do not discount the fact that there have been incidences of SPAs, but the term seems to be loosely thrown around as accusation against every editor who disagrees with or raises objections about a select number of editors involved in this topic. There are countless examples of these editors proclaiming other editors to be “obviously pro-gamer gate” just for disagreeing with them. Likewise, not everyone is engaged in

]

Here is what an actual SPA looks like. Weedwacker (talk) 12:41, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Ryulong

Despite your accusations that I have, I have never edited the Gamergate article. In regards to the comment I made on your talk page, I am sorry for making it as it wasn't very civil, and am glad you removed it. I only took to your talk page to begin with because Gamaliel hatted a discussion on 8chan and said concerns with individual editors should be brought to their talk pages. Also, a single edit is not

.

Rebuttals

1. Retartist: I place no value on "warnings" from involved single-purpose accounts, hence the removal. You misinterpreted this comment in regards to Corbett. Also, I WANT the civility pillar to be enforced against so-called "vested editors", but am too jaded to believe it will ever happen.
2. Starship.paint: I will make no apologies for expressing empathy to victims of rape and murder threats, nor for assuring them that the Wikipedia has strict policies against scurrilous tabloid material, and that they wiki-bios will be written fairly and neutrally.
3. Avono: My entierly off-wiki comments directed at Mr. Auerbach were hasty and ill-advised. I retracted what I said and apologized personally ( here and a longer post on Drmies talk page.) Note that Mr. Auerbach accepted that apology. We have moved on from that unfortunate tiff, which was my fault entirely.

The necessity of oversighting and revision deletion

• Talk:Gamergate controversy - 17 actions
• Talk:Zoe Quinn - 19 actions

Avono posts a link to a college newspaper OpEd that contains serious BLP violations

On Dec 3rd, Avono posted this link to the GG talk page, in a tangent about the fringe nature of GG ethics proponents, but the link pointed to a student newspaper that contained egregious violations of

policy. Upon being contacted by myself and apparently others, Amherst has removed the article from their website, which IMO validates the egregiousness of the linked text.

I don’t really care about the content issues. What I care about is that we have a good fair process. To that end, what I see as a problem is a lack of causation between some of the topic bans imposed and the actions from which they are based. Without causation everything becomes a subjective mess in which if there are biases tinting the vision of the admins it is impossible to tell.

What should happen is that the editor posts X, X violates policy Y in the opinion of the admin, the admin then evaluates the history of the editor and based on that history imposes remedy Z. We can then go back and examine, was X really a violation of policy Y? What does policy Y really mean? And with that we can have a uniform application of the policies to everyone.

Let’s take case in point the topic ban of Tutelary from

accusations of Tendentious Editing without any diffs (and not even majority support for a topic ban) followed by a topic ban due to the "wide latitude" or discretion given to the admin. This is abuse of discretion. A specific edit (with diff) should be given, and on the basis of that edit violating a WP policy then the topic ban should be imposed. (admins should continue to have wide discretion for the remedy, given they are not applying it unequally)

Now let’s take another situation Cobbsaladin topic ban. In this case the accusation was made that Cobbsaladin purposefully copied Ryulong’s userpage and replaced all of Ryulong’s details with his own. The first question is was this really done to mock Ryulong? I’m of the opinion that it wasn’t (Ryulong thinks it was), for the moment let’s assume that it was. There was NOTHING about this (other than that it was done to Ryulong) that in any way links this action to gamergate of which he was topic banned from because of it. No mention of gamergate or anything related to it was in the userpage (as far as I am aware). But instead of lifting the topic ban (maybe impose IBAN), it was EXTENDED based on this appeal (not a single person other than the closing admin asked it to be extended). I don’t doubt there was a copyvio problem going on here, but it wasn’t gamergate related.

A clear and fair system is one in which everyone can trust. --Obsidi (talk) 22:21, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea what evidence to provide to defend myself against the allegations offered by The Devil's Advocate and others that I am an uninvolved party. I offer my entire edit history as evidence that I have little interest in games and gaming culture. The only time I can recall editing Wikipedia regarding video games in my ten years here was this 2011 Signpost article I wrote about a controversy that involved a gaming review website. It has been claimed that I have a "vested interest" but not a single complainer has identified what that supposed interested is. I believe that this is a deliberate campaign to influence administrative decisions (i.e., "work the refs"), and as evidence I offer the complete lack of real evidence of any involvement or interest on my part presented by any of the many parties who have made the claim of my involvement.

In this message,

: "Warnings, calm and reasonable discussion and explanation of those warnings, advice about community norms, and suggestions on possible wordings and approaches do not make an administrator 'involved'."

I believe all my comments and administrative actions have been in the best interests of Wikipedia policy and the community.

BLP violations against Eron Gjoni

User:Ryulong rewrote the lede of the article, asserting that the controversy "...began with harassment of... Zoe Quinn by an ex-boyfriend".

In the context of an admin noticeboard discussion, User:TheRedPenOfDoom refers to the ranting blog post of an ex boyfriend (repeated ad nauseum by internet trolls), in a way that indirectly attributes the specific claim under discussion - i.e. "that the relationship had resulted in favorable media coverage" - to Gjoni.

In both of these cases, Gjoni is not responsible for what is alleged, and neither do the reliable sources claim he is.

For a long period of time, the

with an interview from the BBC; but in doing so, he inserted one of the aforementioned defamatory comments (which she apparently repeated to the BBC interviewer).

At ANI,

WP:SYNTH

an opinion about Gjoni's actions.

Other BLP issues

User:Ryulong has violated BLP in the article, WRT Dale North, per User:Bilby's immediate reversion.

User:TaraInDC reverted an edit by User:ArmyLine on ANI, citing BLP. However, ArmyLine's claim is in my view adequately corroborated by the cited source from the main article, which explicitly states "in early April, Nathan and Zoe began a romantic relationship"; Quinn and Gjoni were still together at the time.

User:NorthBySouthBaranof does not seem to care about users repeating potentially BLP-violating allegations on the Talk page - when it's someone he agrees with. He also seems to equate accusations of infidelity with "slut-shaming", which I really can't comprehend. However, agreeing with a source that is believed in good faith to be reliable earns a request to either support your statement or redact it.

Violations of WP:CIVIL/WP:BITE by Ryulong

Ryulong has, throughout the entire affair, demonstrated repeated incivility, including frequent use of profanity,

On October 8, Ryulong was explicitly asked to stop using profanity on the GG Talk page, and he agreed to this, but did not comply (TODO: relevant diffs marked with an asterisk above).

Incivility by others

[205] [206]

NorthBySouthBaranof has rejected sources purely on the basis of political slant

[207] NBSB also seems, with bold statements like these, to assume authority on the reliability of sources.

Incident of October 18

On the GG Talk page, TheRedPenOfDoom referred to Gamergate supporters as "(sexually repressed) basement dwellers" [208] [209]. (Hypocritically, the next day, TRPoD suggested to Arbcom that the talk page could potentially benefit from adult oversight.)

On October 18, I called out the obvious bias demonstrated by these remarks, while also calling out hypocrisy in the assessment of the reliability of sources. Ryulong removed all but one of those comments at once with a disparaging edit remark - while I was in the middle of leaving comments - allowing TRPoD's comments to stand. He immediately replied to another comment with disparaging remarks about Milo Yiannopoulos. In the next few minutes I noticed I had an "only warning" on my Talk page from NorthBySouthBaranof for BLP violation, and that he had removed some other previous edits of mine, when I had only been trying to argue that he had been misrepresenting the nature of Gjoni's allegations (I still maintain this position). When I attempted to defend this (ten minutes after the previous diff), Ryulong immediately removed my appeal, and then immediately performed a "manual archive", effectively shutting down the discussion, without indicating where the supposedly "archived" content was placed. I was never notified of any official channel or procedure by which to attempt to defend myself or make my case. It was only about 17 minutes from the first removal to the "manual archive".

Ryulong and COI

Per Ryulong's own account of events, after soliciting funds off Reddit, he apparently felt the need to take a break from the Gamergate topic, 'broadly construed' as seems to be the fashionable phrasing, so as to avoid the appearance of impropriety. However, when a new article popped up and he was unsure whether he ought to participate, apparently Ryulong felt it was appropriate to ask, not any sort of Wikipedia official, but the relevant moderators on Reddit.

Rebuttal, Ryulong

The Anil Dash paragraph, for example, is heavily represented, despite the community at large dismissing his claims. Yet, in the linked discussion, Ryulong himself claims that No. The talk page discussion is split down the middle which is why it's being brought up here for discussion from uninvolved parties.. I also don't see anything like a consensus view expressed by "the community at large" there. If anything, the uninvolved people commenting at the end see a slight BLP concern and seem to be arguing that the existing content is/was

.

Regarding the Xander756 case, per the timestamps on the provided diffs, it looks to me like TDA made a good-faith decision, then either had his mind changed or came to some sort of agreement-to-disagree.

Questioning the reliability of sources is not in any way actionable. More importantly, questioning the accurate representation of the sources' content in the article is definitely not actionable. That I have an opinion on the topic of Gamergate is also not relevant; it certainly has not caused me to make NPOV edits, as I have not edited the article.

Rebuttal, TheRedPenOfDoom

Absurd. If being a game developer represents a conflict of interest, then given the "misogynistic harassment" narrative, so does being a woman.

Ryulong's witch-hunting mentality

Ryulong started a thread on

None of these articles have any content about GamerGate in them, and have never had any GamerGate-related discussion on their talkpages or talkpage archives.

When I posted my analysis of his list and noted this, Ryulong doubled down on his false claim that Breitbart is a related entity and that it was appropriate to witch-hunt a user because of their editing of it. He then attacked me for being a "zombie account that [became an] SPA," despite the facts that I'd started an unrelated article that day, have never edited a video game-related article, and have been an admin for ~8 years. [214] I was not the only person caught in Ryulong's crossfire simply for posting on that AN thread, further down Ryulong attacks another user ("editors such as myself have become exhausted in having to deal with editors like yourself who have come to the English Wikipedia push an agenda"), despite this person having a 9-year history and having never made any GamerGate-related edit. [215]

Ryulong has engaged in edit warring

• 15 reverts: [216] [217] [218] [219] [220] [221] [222] [223] [224] [225] [226] [227] [228] [229] [230]; AN3 thread: [231].
• 9 reverts: [232] [233] [234] [235] [236] [237] [238] [239] [240]; AN3 thread: [241].

Ryulong has violated BLP, antagonized journalists, and made defamatory claims about them on- and off-wiki

• Adds material to an article accusing Milo Yiannopoulos of making sexist remarks, this is attributed to a primary source on a website with no editorial staff. [242]
• "The Based Liar [Yiannopoulos] continues to care about me." [243]
• Adds material to an article falsely claiming that Dale North blacklisted a writer from industry. [244] The source he cites notes that this is only an allegation by a website called GameZone, and that attempting to blacklist someone from employment is illegal. GameZone has no editorial staff, and their article uses an imgur post as its source. [245]
• Adds material to an article falsely claiming David Auerbach "insist[ed] that women harassed and threatened [by GamerGate] should both be held responsible for what Gamergate had become"; this material is not found in the source he cites. [246]
• Falsely accuses David Auerbach of threatening him [247], then tries to get an admin to revoke his autochecked permissions. [248] This is the post from Auerbach which beget Ryulong's response. [249]
• "David Auerbach is enabling my harassers." [250]
• "[Auerbach] is enabling a group of homophobes and anti-semites." [251]
• "Are you going to go running to Jimbo over something like this too? [252]" [253]
• "Georgina [Young] wants some more ad revenue." [254]
• "That would require ethical journalism [by Young]." [255]
• The ryulong67 Reddit account and @Ryulong Twitter account are admitted by Ryulong to be his. [256]

Ryulong has been a recidivist problem editor for years

Concerns about Ryulong's lack of decorum, hostility towards newcomers, edit warring, inappropriate off-wiki behavior, and failing to address community concerns have been voiced over a period of years. [257] [258] [259] Ryulong has been blocked for edit warring 15 times since 2009. [260]

There are two sides of warriors here

It is apparent to me that

is not only under attack by an organized caucus of new editors (meatpuppets, in crude terms), but also is being tag-team "owned" in a tendentious manner by a group of emotionally involved Wikipedians which include Ryulong, Tarc, and NorthBySouthBaranof (probably among others). Arbs, please do read the following link as part of your due diligence trying to understand both sides of the issue:

• Gurney Halleck, A People's History of Gamergate. www.historyofgamergate.com/

The article is now locked down in favor of House POV, which portrays the ProGG side as more or less a caucus of cyber thugs systematically making terroristic threats against women. To some extent, this is part of it. However, any external link to this temperate source cited above explaining the Pro-GG "side" has been tossed aside on the clearly specious claim of being a blog [261] (Tarc) — as if all links to blogs are prohibited from external links! — or on bogus BLP gounds [262] (NorthBySouthBaranof).

There are two warrior sides on this issue, the Gamergaters are obvious, but do not fail to take a look at the House POV which is being systematically defended by a handful of Wikipedians who in their fury seem to have cast aside

]

Off-wiki efforts to (1) dox users and influence the article and (2) SPAs and zombie accounts

As with the request to take the case, my only comments are that:

1. The ARBCOM should consider the off-wiki organization and attacks occurring. Searching "Ryulong gamergate", for example, shows the vast off-wiki effort to dox editors and to influence the article in a pro-gamergate light. I can find no such behavior from anti-gamergate editor.
2. This case and page is plagued by SPA and zombie accounts (those that were inactive for years that suddenly came to life for this one issue). See this archived ANI as an example of discussions of SPA and zombie accounts.

The drafters of this case have my sympathies. Best of luck.

]

@

re}} 23:38, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply

]

Evidence presented by CIreland

Wikipedia's Gamergate article was recommended by BBC News to its readers

Regular readers of BBC News will know that BBC News is not in the habit of explicity directing its readers to partisan coverage, nor is it in the habit of describing non-neutral accounts as "factual":

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29642313

This BBC News article, whilst noting our internal disputes about "objectivity", describes the article as "what looks like a factual account", linking readers looking for comprehensive coverage to Wikipedia.

The current system has proven itself biased. Now it's just a question of how unfair it really is

The preferential treatment demonstrated by certain admins is in itself cause for concern. However, when I discovered involved admin PresN admitted he was "very much on one side of the issue" (he has also demonstrated this) and yet had not recused himself before being called out, it just all just snapped into place. How many other involved admins have undisclosed conflicts of interest?

For instance, in the process of a topic ban appeal/call for the review of an admin's actions,

]

Rebuttal to PresN

"I have taken no admin actions in regards to this case, only submitted evidence that was later withdrawn after the arbs said they would not consider off-wiki posts."

PresN closed a discussion here. While the arbitrator later endorsed the closure, it was inappropriate for PresN to be the one to close the discussion, given his lack of objectivity in the matter. However, that even one admin failed to disclose his COI is very troubling given some of the statements and sympathies expressed as well as the selective enforcement of sanctions in this case. How many more admins are compromising their and Wikipedia's objectivity to push a certain narrative? I find it difficult to believe that these exclusionary beliefs form in a vacuum, and find it likely that this is indicative of a larger issue of cliquishness within certain segments of the administration.--ArmyLine (talk) 18:40, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To specify, PresN was posting on a known anti-Gamergate subreddit and fraternizing there with Ryulong. While I understand off-site evidence will not be considered, I find it egregiously disingenuous of him to try to frame this as "having an opinion". Additionally, the fact that he has this power and this COI is, combined, very problematic. He has done what could be construed as a threat against Tutelary when he stated "Don't sit here wiki-lawyering about whether I can close an off-topic thread or not, especially since you're topic-banned from GamerGate on-wiki.". Everything he does is as an admin and that power is enough to intimidate many other parties out of reverting or contradicting him.--ArmyLine (talk) 00:17, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"ArmyLine is making, as other editors he agrees with have (supported by evidence by other submitters here), a series of tendentious arguments designed to drive away editors that they disagree with: to wit, that the mere act of not supporting the actions taken by GamerGate supporters inherently means that an editor should be forbidden both from editing the article and from expressing that opinion anywhere related to GamerGate on-wiki."

I find it odd that PresN, and many other involved admins and editors have reiterated this, is so concerned about "driving away editors" when only the anti-Gamergate side has demonstrated a systematic drive to harass dissenting users and game the system on wiki to drive away or to block/ban anyone who does not fit their narrative. Since we are now discussing coordinated efforts, however, here is the proportion of contributions made by editors to the Gamergate controversy article who have made statements against GamerGate or Eron Gjoni on-wiki for the last 2500 revisions: Ryulong(21.68%), NorthBySouthBaranof (15.36%), TheRedPenOfDoom (4.12%), Tarc (1.84%), and TaraInDC (1.08%). That is 44% of the contributions and reverts by a single coordinated and opinionated block of editors, upon a very cursory analysis. As seen by the current state of the article, there has been a coordinated effort to push a very narrow and targeted narrative, and it hasn't been by the "Gators".--ArmyLine (talk) 04:20, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As I said previously, I don't consider myself a party to this in any way, but I suppose I must refute TDA's rather silly allegations.

• Canvassed Gender Gap Task Force to deal with "misogynistic" edits on the pages for Quinn and her game.

• Irrelevant to this case, this was a straightforward BLP issue with Quinn's article. At the time the GamerGate article was a minor stub.

• Proposes topic ban or site ban for Tutelary based off WO piece

• Irrelevant to this case, other that the fact Tutelary later became a major editor of the GamerGate article. And I don't think I was wrong, either.

• Removes material about a DDoS attack on The Escapist's GamerGate thread.

• ...correct, because it was UNDUE, original research and in no way sourced to be even relevant to the article. You'll note that at least three different editors reverted
  User:Bosstopher
  's attempt to edit-war it into the article.

• Claims said attack is not relevant to GamerGate article because there is no proof of responsibility.

• ...correct, it was original research.

• Removes the NPOV tag from the article disputing its basis.

• ...because you have to provide a good reason for a tag like that, not a vague rant.

• Reverts a change to the lede by ArmyLine due to "no consensus" from previous discussions.

• ...well, you've explained that one yourself.

• Has performed revision deletions on relevant articles ([263]).

• So, let me get this right - your claim I have used tools whilst involved comes down to the fact that I removed BLP-violating vandalism? The Quinn stuff was simply unpleasant vandalism, whilst the GamerGate revdel was yet another editor claiming that the incident referred to as "false accusations" in the fourth line of the article was true. Black Kite (talk) 11:43, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Closed ANI case against TD four hours after the case opened after Future reimposed TD's topic ban despite minimal discussion and at least one objection to the sanction.

• Um, that's what you do with an ANI case when it's resolved (in this case by a topic ban being imposed).

• States in arbitration request that he "reserves" the "right" to take further admin action on the subject.

• Quite right, because I'm not involved. Actually though, I haven't touched it since, because I haven't been that active and I frankly got sick of reading the repeated nonsense from swathes of single purpose accounts. Black Kite (talk) 11:26, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Rebutals against Weedwacker et. al.

• Weedwacker claims that my possible off-wiki comments make me "involved", but even he admits that I have not worked on the article in question and have stayed out of the content dispute; having an opinion does not invalidate me from submitting evidence.
• ArmyLine says that due to my having an opinion on the issue, I should have "recused" myself. From what? I have taken no admin actions in regards to this case, only submitted evidence that was later withdrawn after the arbs said they would not consider off-wiki posts. Apparently, having an opinion that does not agree with the GamerGate position means that one should be banned from making any edits, admin-related or not. --PresN 16:09, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• ArmyLine further states that my closing a thread on this talk page when it went off topic was an admin action. It is not- any editor can be bold and close a thread; admins have mops, we are not given super-editor permissions. The Devil's Advocate closed a thread on the talk page a week before, and they are not an admin- no disagreement was (or should have been) be raised. ArmyLine's statement betrays a lack of understanding of what powers admins have compared to regular editors, as well as the difference between "having an opinion" and "conflict of interest". Admins are still editors, and are able to act in that capacity like everyone else as long as they follow the same rules. --PresN 19:16, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm going to stop responding after this comment, but for one last point- ArmyLine describes posting on Reddit threads and talking to other editors as "fraternizing there with Ryulong", causing a COI. I can only assume, however, that he does not consider posting on a pro-GamerGate offwiki forum or talking to pro-GamerGate editors off-wiki to be "fraternizing" or a "COI", since he has not accused any editors who agree with his position of the same. Admins are not forbidden to have opinions or talk to people, on or off-wiki, and while they may need to remain neutral while editing articles, they are not forbidden from providing evidence in an ArbCom case or from closing off-topic threads in an ArbCom talk page. ArmyLine is making, as other editors he agrees with have (supported by evidence by other submitters here), a series of tendentious arguments designed to drive away editors that they disagree with: to wit, that the mere act of not supporting the actions taken by GamerGate supporters inherently means that an editor should be forbidden both from editing the article and from expressing that opinion anywhere related to GamerGate on-wiki. --PresN 00:58, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have been maligned above (and in other places) regarding GamerGate. I am not a "GamerGate supporter". I don't play them. I don't participate in off-wiki disputes nor care about them.

The first error that is often repeated is that Kotaku (Grayson's employer) never reviewed Depression Quest (and is the basis of an unfounded complaint above). That is false. Kotaku reviewed it here[264]. Kotaku investigated whether Grayson reviewed it after the disclosure of his relationship with Quinn[265]. Grayson did not review it. Kotaku has apparently updated their policies regarding disclosure as the original review did not have a relationship disclosure statement but one was subsequently added after GamerGater erupted and there apparently was a disclosable relationship between the Kotaku reviewer and Quinn. [266][267].

Related to GamerGate was another twitter hashtag campaign called #NotYourShield. This came about when the focus of GamerGate pivoted from an accusation directed at journalistic integrity to focusing on harassment and the personalities involved simply stopped addressing any concerns other than harassment. This is part of the history of gamergate and acknowledging it is not malicious or one-sided. --DHeyward (talk) 18:17, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To Ryulong

I presented only because my edit [268] was listed under a heading "Repeated attempts to present false claims about living people as true or disputed" and characterized as "DHeyward suggests that we ignore the documented fact that there was no unethical behavior in favor of embracing the idea that because Quinn had a "relationship with a journalist," the allegations are meaningful." There is no reading of my edits that can be construed as any attempt to present false claims about anyone. In fact, I say explicitly that there was no link between Grayson's reviews and Quinn. Nor did I suggest ignoring any facts. It's simply an untrue and strident misrepresentation of what I wrote on the talk page as I don't believe I've even edited the article contents at all, let alone "repeatedly attempted." It is quite obvious by the journals reaction (i.e. the addition of disclosures - even 11 months after the fact) that they considered it unseemly to not disclose and it is not irrational to investigate allegations about relationships. Kotaku certainly didn't just dismiss it as a personal relationship.

Whether you wish to call it a review or a plug is up to you but the gaming journalist put a disclosure on the bottom after GamerGate and 11 months after it appeared in Kotaku. August 2014 version pre-GamerGate (original was December 2013) : [269] New and Improved with disclosure (added October 2014): [270] --DHeyward (talk) 19:46, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It should be noted that Tutelary has made entirely contradictory assertions regarding evidence in this case, in a manner which can only be seen as battleground behaviour and/or Wikilawyering with the clear objective of painting an opponent in as negative manner as possible.

For the specifics, see for example this statement made by Tutelary in evidence concerning Ryulong "Ryulong has repeatedly gotten away with edit warring even 15RR by administrators primarily indulged with sanctions"[271], and contrast it with this statement later in the same section: "Ryulong is not related to GamerGate. I proposed on WP:ANI for experienced users and administrators to look at Ryulong's conduct, decide if it was alright, and accordingly, sanction if it was not. I proposed a topic ban due to his pronounced WP:COI in the area. None of this is related to GamerGate edits, but a COI with the tangential topic of a GamerGate forum". [272]

This is blatant Wikilawyering - either Ryulong is involved in the Wikipedia Gamergate affair, or he isn't. Given the evidence so far presented, the former is evidently true - and Tutelary's attempt to argue the contrary when (and only when) Tutilary's behaviour in relation to Ryulong is in question almost beggars belief. I hope and expect that ArbCom will take this duplicitous behaviour during arbitration proceedings into account when considering sanctions. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:01, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see that Tutelary has responded above by repeating the ridiculous assertion that asking for action to be taken against Ryulong concerning to a supposed COI in relation to our GamerGate article was "not about GamerGate". [273] I am sure ArbCom can decide for themselves the correct response to this - personally, I can't think of one that wouldn't breach

WP:CIVIL. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:19, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply

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