Wikipedia bans five editors from gender-related articles amid gamergate controversy

Wikipedia editors have been banned from topics relating to gender and sexuality. Photograph: Wikipedia

Wikipedias arbitration committee, the highest user-run body on the site, has voted to ban a number of editors from making corrections to articles about feminism, in an attempt to stop a long-running edit war over the entry on the Gamergate controversy.

The editors, who were all actively attempting to prevent the article from being rewritten with a pro-Gamergate slant, were sanctioned by arbcom in its preliminary decision. While that may change as it is finalised, the body, known as Wikipedias supreme court, rarely reverses its decisions.

The sanction bars the editors from having anything to do with any articles covering Gamergate, but also from any other article about gender or sexuality, broadly construed.

Editors who had been pushing for the Wikipedia article to be fairer to Gamergate have also been sanctioned by the committee

Mark Bernstein, a writer and former Wikipedia editor, said that, This takes care of social justice warriors with a vengeance not only do the Gamergaters get to rewrite their own page (and Zoe Quinns, Brianna Wus, Anita Sarkeesians, etc); feminists are to be purged en bloc from the encyclopedia.

The conflict on the site began almost alongside Gamergate, a grassroots campaign broadly targeting alleged corruption in games journalism and perceived feminist influence in the videogame industry. Even the title of the article was fought over: Gamergate itself is taken by an article about a type of ant, leaving the article about video games to move to Gamergate Controversy.

At one point, Wikipedias founder, Jimmy Wales, was drawn into the debate, telling a student who had emailed him over perceived bias in the article that Gamergate has been permanently tarnished and hijacked by a handful of people who are not what you would hope.

Wales advice for Gamergate supporters who wanted to change the Wikipedia article was to be constructive, and present a vision for the article which they wanted to read rather than engage in a war with feminist editors who were trying to maintain their vision.

Arbcoms rulings dont mean the war is over, but for some editors its still giving cause for concern. Abigail Brady, a former Wikipedia editor, left the site over its treatment of the page for whistleblower Chelsea Manning, which was kept under Mannings old name, of Bradley Manning, for months after she came out as transgender.

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Wikipedia bans five editors from gender-related articles amid gamergate controversy