November 18, 2014
MarkBernstein.org
 

You’ve GOT To Be Kidding

A Wikipedia admin is trying to help whitewash the GamerGate article, which is currently critical of the effort to threaten women in the video game industry with rape and murder. He argues (with respect to the Vivian James cartoon) that

one static image cannot readily imply rape

This will probably surprise my readers who are art historians or semioticians, as well as the shades of Picasso, Goya, Rubens, Bernini, and plenty of others.

Besides, he says, the underlying meme was just a “locker room joke.”

Meanwhile, another editor (whose screen name is Japanese) was denounced yesterday as “Shlomo Sheckelstein” and instructed to go back to editing articles about Israeli homosexuals. On 8chan, they’re talk about that editor sitting in his room and counting his “Jew gold.”

What a charming bunch of volunteers! In Wikipedia, I guess you can accomplish great things with the aid of a rogue administrator. How in pursuit of The Wiki Way did we come to this?

Tell me again about the wisdom of crowds, and how the net routes around damage, and how this will end well? It’s been a lousy week: I need a bubbe meisse.