User:Masem/GGArbCom Statement 2

Statement by Masem

Per a comment I asked on the ArbCom talk page, this request might be too soon (ArbCom suggested giving a month or two for the sanctions to be tested), however, I agree in principle that while there are sanctions in place, they are not able to address the fact that there is experienced editors that have, even unintentionally, working in a manner that creates ownership of the article, dismissing any SPA attempts to contribute (and in fact, claims that they have to work actively against them), and refused to participate in any attempt to reach consensus - specifically but not limited to Ryulong, NorthBySouthBaranof, TheRedPenOfDoom, and TaraInDC.

Part of this is the story - it is one that is extremely decisive in terms of opinion, as it has involved harassment and threats against women. The mainstream press has clearly picked a side, voicing an extremely strong negative opinion that the Gamergate movement is misogynistic. This is unavoidable and necessary to include per NPOV/WEIGHT. However, I believe that the above editors are editing partially blinded by strong feelings they share with the press, wanting to treat the proGG without the necessary fairness/impartial nature that NPOV also demands. We're not going to have a lot of favorable things to say about the proGG due to lack of good RS coverage, but we do have enough to present their case, and then present the press's criticism of them. However, efforts to include this impartialness are reverted by those in this group and then they swamp the discussion, going on clearly showing which side of the debate they want pushed hard. (A specific example from this week [1] which was later changed to be less impartial by North [2] and then later flat out reverted claiming that there are no legitimate GG concerns (which there are, it's just "actions speak louder than words" that they haven't gotten detailed coverage [3]).

Mind you, the SPA aspect is important to consider here, but unlike the days of article creation where they were specifically a problem, most of the SPAs now are simply trying to get impartialness in place, not trying to belie what the press says, but as often happens, the above group argues these groups away, and while I don't believe the sanctions have been used improperly to block SPAs, they will favor the blocking of SPAs instead of considering the basic debate. Further, the above group dismissed participation in a past Mediation case, and their comments in the last ArbCom case showed little interest in trying to discuss consensus or compromise. The current sanctions do not consider this type of "slow" edit-warring behavior and additional intervention is needed.

There is a content issue here (in how WP should cover topics that are near-universially treated with negative opinions by mainstream reliable sources), but it is tied in closely with behavior that refuse to want to work on consensus in that manner, in considering how other WP articles about similar groups/movements are written. I'll also defer to comments I left in the previous case [4]. --MASEM (t) 01:14, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

@DungeonSiegeAddict510 : Um, WTF? I've never posted to 8chan, and I'm decidedly antiGG - I'm just seeking a neutral treatment of a controversial topic. That's a false accusation. Apology accepted. To be 100% open: outside of personal friends prior to the whole proGG thing in August, I have only had one private communication with a proGGer and that was to explain the limitations of WP policies in reliable sourcing/quoting, so they could see if they could find sources that could be used. I otherwise read through the various threads and know they've identified editors by WP name to know who - in their eyes - are the problem ones and who they might be able to work with, as well as any possible sources they might have found that we could use. I do not post at all at these. (And in terms of personal friends, we don't discuss the issue at all since we don't see eye to eye on it, and just let that be) --MASEM (t) 05:40, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Addition: Per edits like this and Ryulong's infamous "list of people I want banned" from ANI, the people above as well as others are trying to effectively engage in censorship of the article or more importantly in the talk page, in that they do not want to talk about any type of consensus-building about the neutrality of the article - they want it their way and no other, despite the faults with it. The suggestion of outright removing SPAs from the picture - while sometimes necessary to minimize disruption - is not acceptable behavior for anyone on WP. --MASEM (t) 05:56, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

@Silverseren: I'm not trying to ask for "balance", which is clearly impossible with current sources, but instead for fair/impartial writing which this article does not do. It might that we really can only talk about the ProGG side is a positive light in 3-4 paragraphs out of 30 to balance the sources, but that does mean we don't write the article prejudging the ProGG side as " wrong", regardless how any editor may feel about it. An impartial take would keep nearly all existing sources but with a different order and tone to avoid ascribing any fault in WP's voice. --MASEM (t) 14:49, 10 November 2014 (UTC)