March 22, 2015
MarkBernstein.org
 

Flying Circus of Zombies

March 17 begins at the Gamergate Talk page, as many do, with the arrival of a fresh new editor. Galestar joined Wikipedia in 2009 and last edited 14 months ago. Today, he’s here to fix a problem: the Gamergate page says "misogynistic," that’s an opinion, and Galestar announces "I will be removing these adjectives as per WS:RSOPINION" .

Galestar doesn't have much editing experience and he might be excused for being rusty after 14 months away, but no: he’s got policy at his fingertips in virtually his first post. Discussion follows -- 2500 hundred words of discussion in this section alone.

This topic – the use of “misogynistic” – is not new. According to my informal survey of the million-word archives, it was discussed before on: Feb 24, Feb 11, Jan 27, Jan 25, Jan 22, Jan 9-11, Dec 22, Nov 24, Nov 13, Nov 2, Oct 27, Oct 12, Sep 19, Sep 16, Sep 11, and Sep 6. As here, the discussion is often launched by a new or zombie account; often, this account knows a ton about WikiLawyering but pretends to be unaware of all the prior discussions.

This is not the only recurrent topic. It’s just one of a half-dozen arguments which can never be settled because zombie accounts return to restart them every two weeks. This isn’t their favorite topic: those involve the sex lives of Gamergate victims. But it’s today’s topic, so away we go.

This is against Wikipedia policy, obviously. But that doesn’t matter because Wikipedia policy effectively prohibits any complaint about this kind of collusive editing. Anyone who complains – even through an indirect allusion to the existence of the phenomenon, is promptly punished. These accounts are not fresh new editors; they’re personae cultivated by Gamergate for a purpose, built from the compost of abandoned and zombie user accounts. But everyone else must pretend that brand-new editors arrive every two weeks, armed with a fresh knowledge of WikiLaw and jargon, determined to changes the consensus. Wikipedia: the encyclopedia any manilla folder on the closet shelf can edit™.