Infected RationalWiki - Whiny hugbox for spergs and a clusterfuck of neverending drama on a rapidly declining website.

PantsOfDesire said:
He turned up back in 2008, which was a few years in to the life of the wiki. He came in with the message of "yes, I'm THAT David Gerard", and was greeted as "wow, it's THAT David Gerard!". He's been very active in RW, and has a lot of wiki experience, so it's not surprising he'd climb. While Gerard isn't the sole reason for RW's decline - that's been inevitable almost since its inception - he's certainly a leader they deserve. His obsessing over SJW stuff, and being sneaky in his methods, hasn't helped. His war on Carpetsmoker certainly resembles those curious earlier incidents where "technical issues" caused a number of irritants to lose access to their accounts. His strangely protective attitude towards Ryulong certainly damaged RW, but it is in keeping with RW tradition. One of the problems was that, with the wish to not be like Conservapedia, that it was very difficult to deal with trolls and lunatics. And he wasn't alone in that, with Gooniepunk strangely unblocking Ryulong, his rational being that Ryulong wasn't coming back. Obviously their methods have evolved a but, as we see with Gerard banning for spurious reasons, as with Carpetsmoker. Their use of the super secret mod account was another sign, as was the memory holing that's been happening.

It seems they want to maintain the freedom of speech and liberal veneer, when in reality they are increasingly comfortable with adopting Conservapedia's playbook. Gerard isn't their leader. He wields a lot of power because he's THAT David Gerard and also because he he can do the tech stuff for the site. He's one of two people with root level access to the server, which is also why he's a prime candidate for the unfortunate technical issues that conveniently disabled a couple of accounts.
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Well the thing is, DG does have plausible deniability for "technical issues" as the software RW currently runs on is antediluvian...
 
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RW election thread starts with warnings against "ageism" from Hillary supporters: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ration...e_year:_Campaign_season._Plus.2C_useless_poll

Well, firstly, it's mostly superfluous: It doesn't matter, as I live in New Zealand, and can't vote, though I do pay attention to the election. Honestly, I find both Sanders and Clinton pretty reasonable, and the sides against both parties haven't made any convincing arguments, not the least because Clinton has mostly been subject to BHENGAZI and EMAILS and YOU'RE ONLY POPULAR BECAUSE YOU'RE A WOMAN, and... Well. Yeah. Lots of bullshit, basically. I kind of err on either side, because they both seem like reasonable people. It's no surprise to me that they're in a dead tie. - Kitsunelaine 「Beware. The foxgirls are coming.」 02:14, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
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Ageist RW sperg starts crunching numbers to see how many years Bernie Sanders has left to live.

I have no intention of changing my registration. I'm a registered independent because that is how I feel. I'm one of those weird people who googles every person/measure on the ballot and votes on them individually, so I've never voted down party lines or even close to it. Yes, I know that, in theory, he has 11.5 years left to live, statistically. However, 6 years (HRC is 68 to his 74) does make a difference. I don't think we need a president elected in over 70. I know you can do math so I won't do it for you, but assuming he runs again (which generally is how it works), he'd be over 80 leaving office and that's not the age I want of someone making these decisions. Maybe that's ageist of me. If so, I'm totally ok with my biases. As for your assertion, we had one president elected at 69 and he spent the last several years of his presidency going through Alzheimer's. I'd say that's a pretty bad situation to be in. AyzmoCheers 21:13, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
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I don't really know why RW branched off into politics. I thought it was meant to be about debunking pseudoscience.
 
Moexlibu said:
http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php..._left&curid=180372&diff=1625944&oldid=1625943
Hiding talk page opinions you don't like - RW style...
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That's just reverting, they didn't start "revdelling" (a.k.a. hiding article revisions from public view) or banning people. This is just a very minor editing war with a mod stepping and freezing it for 24h.
xT3iKUQ.png

(direct link) (archive.is)
 
Abethedemon said:
I don't really know why RW branched off into politics. I thought it was meant to be about debunking pseudoscience.
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They did not "branch out" into politics. They started with politics. They started out as "let's make fun of Conservapedia" - that's obviously gonna be politic. Unfortunately it seems to be a feature, not a bug. Including the Israel-Bashing...
 
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Adam spergs and tells more lies as Cuckstain and Tielec tell him to stop autistically editing. http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php...rid=172819&diff=1626125&oldid=1626119#Editing

For the love of god, please take 5 extra minutes before you post a message rather than adjust it 10 times after it has been made. Edit conflicts caused by you changing a few words in a post you have already made are going to give me a stroke; especially when I'm on a mobile. Tielec01 (talk) 03:59, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Your message has been received. Please leave me alone. I have no desire to talk to you, as we do not get along. - Kitsunelaine 「Beware. The foxgirls are coming.」 04:01, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Really must agree with this. --Castaigne2 (talk) 04:02, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

The edits were necessary, as, unlike others would have you believe, I am not here to cause drama. Leaving the post as-is would have been bad. I have a certain anxiety about these things that is hard to contain. Regardless of the edits necessity, you're all still correct. It is a problem, and one I will have to continue to work on. The fact that it was necessary in the first place is what's the problem here, and I understand that. - Kitsunelaine 「Beware. The foxgirls are coming.」 04:03, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
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"I am not here to cause drama, I only came here to help Michael Cohen sperg out against My Little Pony and then attack his enemies."
 
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So this just went up on KIA, but apparently, Ryulong and Gerard are causing massive unrest amongst the moderators, who are starting to ragequit. Why? Because they won't stop whitewashing Nyberg:

Well, I mentioned in another thread that I and some other RationalWiki editors had issues with how the site was being run. I think it's time for some venting...

I started editing there about a year back, and my first contributions were about racist groups. I then decided to chip in with their Gamergate coverage. I should mention that I'm not a supporter of Gamergate at all, and my first edit on the subject was a criticism of one of the campaign's figureheads.

Now, most of RW's Gamergate material was written by a member called Ryulong. He's pretty infamous even amongst other RW members for how zealous and protective he can be; if I understand correctly he's since been banned as a vandal. But one of the moderators, David Gerard, has Ryulong's back and pitches a fit when people try to correct his claims.

Ryulong and I ended up butting heads when I objected to RW's coverage of the Sarah Nyberg affair. For those unfamiliar with Nyberg, here's an article:

Leading GamerGate Critic Sarah Nyberg Claimed To Be A Pedophile, Apologized for White Nationalism

And yes, I know, it's Breitbart and it's Milo Yiannopoulos. I'm aware of the issues with the source. But the article is based almost entirely around Nyberg's own words; I checked the chatlogs in question (before the Breitbart article went up, I should mention) and can confirm that, yes, she said that. She identified herself as a paedophile. She expressed sexual interest in an eight-year-old cousin.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Nyberg specifically names her then 8-year-old cousin using the latter’s real name and describes in detail how they are related. Using the information Nyberg posted online we were easily able to locate and contact Alice’s parents, who said they knew nothing about these logs but had made sure that Nyberg and their daughter had never been left alone together. Alice’s father preferred not to elaborate on why he and his wife took the decision to make sure Nyberg [...] was never given unsupervised contact with Alice, 8.

As the following logs reveal, ten years ago a then-twentysomething Nyberg developed an obsession with Alice, when the latter was just 8 years old.

“I used to think 5/6/7 was too young, but Alice changed my mind,” Nyberg writes.

In another FFShrine post, Nyberg boasts about how she plans to “finally get pictures of her,” telling chatroom members that “it’s all about Alice man.”

Nyberg kept her promise, and later, shared a folder of images of Alice with a fellow chat room member. The folder was hosted on FFShrine’s servers.

In another exchange on FFShrine, she goes on to talk about Alice wearing a bathing suit.

In yet another post about her cousin on the same site, Nyberg refers to herself as a “pedophile” who is attracted to Alice and seems to admit that she may get an erection if she spends time with Alice. Nyberg is a male-to-female transsexual, and at this point was presumably still able to achieve an erection.
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But the version of events given by Ryulong over at RationalWiki completely whitewashes all of this. It calls the accusations against Nyberg "baseless", "myths" and "libel" and takes every opportunity to sweep the details under the carpet. I mean, to pick just one example from Timeline of Gamergate:
Sarah Nyberg writes about her experiences with Gamergate for Ravishly for the first time with her name rather than as @srhbutts. She touches on how Gamergate dug far back enough to find her birth name by means of her parents' obituaries and when they could not find anything against her otherwise, began to spread false rumors instead.
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Gamergate "could not find anything against her"? No, Gamergate found postings by Nyberg in which she expresses a paedophilic attraction to an eight-year-old. You don't have to be a Gamergate supporter to see that her words are beyond the pale and deserving of condemnation, or at the very least questioning.

But yet, David Gerard is intent on preserving all of Ryulong's drivel. I've tried to make the article more balanced, as well as removing the flat-out incorrect statements (such as Rylong's BS claim that all of Nyberg's paedo postings were just her innocently copy-pasting other people's roleplays, which even Nyberg herself says is untrue) but Gerard has responded by reverting my edits, temporarily blocking me and smearing me as a Gamergate supporter. I made a userspace page (which is an acceptable place for personal opinion at RW) pointing out factual inaccuracies in the article, including statements that contradict each other and even contradict Nyberg's own testimony, and Gerard twice tried to get it deleted - thankfully another moderator, FuzzyCatPotato, restored it each time. I spoke to a member who recently left the site, and he told me that Gerard's actions in this case were partly responsible for driving him away.

It's not just me who has put up with this. A couple of other members expressed concern over how RW was whitewashing Sarah Nyberg, and Gerard responded by making the Gamergate talkpages accessible only to staff members.

Initially, Gerard claimed that he was doing all of this because he was concerned about potential legal action from Nyberg if the site openly discussed the accusations of paedophilia. That kind of made sense, but since then it's become clear that he just doesn't want anybody criticising Sarah Nyberg in any capacity. I specifically avoided mentioning paedophilia in my userspace article, but that didn't stop him from trying to delete it. The fact that he's willing to retain claims that are demonstrably untrue, and silence anybody who corrects them, says it all.
At the end of the day, Ryulong and Gerard are indulging in classic fundie tactics: if someone disagrees with your dogma, smear them as part of the evil conspiracy. RationalWiki should, by all rights, be fighting against them rather than giving them a platform.

We've known about this for a bit now, but it's very interesting to see awareness of this spreading outwards.
 
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So Ryulong is self-destructing and taking Rational Wiki with him.

I probably should go ahead and salvage the one thing on that site worth preserving, which is the mile-long article about explaining everything ever with cows.
 
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Jaimas said:
So this just went up on KIA, but apparently, Ryulong and Gerard are causing massive unrest amongst the moderators, who are starting to ragequit. Why? Because they won't stop whitewashing Nyberg:

Well, I mentioned in another thread that I and some other RationalWiki editors had issues with how the site was being run. I think it's time for some venting...

I started editing there about a year back, and my first contributions were about racist groups. I then decided to chip in with their Gamergate coverage. I should mention that I'm not a supporter of Gamergate at all, and my first edit on the subject was a criticism of one of the campaign's figureheads.

Now, most of RW's Gamergate material was written by a member called Ryulong. He's pretty infamous even amongst other RW members for how zealous and protective he can be; if I understand correctly he's since been banned as a vandal. But one of the moderators, David Gerard, has Ryulong's back and pitches a fit when people try to correct his claims.

Ryulong and I ended up butting heads when I objected to RW's coverage of the Sarah Nyberg affair. For those unfamiliar with Nyberg, here's an article:

Leading GamerGate Critic Sarah Nyberg Claimed To Be A Pedophile, Apologized for White Nationalism

And yes, I know, it's Breitbart and it's Milo Yiannopoulos. I'm aware of the issues with the source. But the article is based almost entirely around Nyberg's own words; I checked the chatlogs in question (before the Breitbart article went up, I should mention) and can confirm that, yes, she said that. She identified herself as a paedophile. She expressed sexual interest in an eight-year-old cousin.

Here's an excerpt from the article:



But the version of events given by Ryulong over at RationalWiki completely whitewashes all of this. It calls the accusations against Nyberg "baseless", "myths" and "libel" and takes every opportunity to sweep the details under the carpet. I mean, to pick just one example from Timeline of Gamergate:


Gamergate "could not find anything against her"? No, Gamergate found postings by Nyberg in which she expresses a paedophilic attraction to an eight-year-old. You don't have to be a Gamergate supporter to see that her words are beyond the pale and deserving of condemnation, or at the very least questioning.

But yet, David Gerard is intent on preserving all of Ryulong's drivel. I've tried to make the article more balanced, as well as removing the flat-out incorrect statements (such as Rylong's BS claim that all of Nyberg's paedo postings were just her innocently copy-pasting other people's roleplays, which even Nyberg herself says is untrue) but Gerard has responded by reverting my edits, temporarily blocking me and smearing me as a Gamergate supporter. I made a userspace page (which is an acceptable place for personal opinion at RW) pointing out factual inaccuracies in the article, including statements that contradict each other and even contradict Nyberg's own testimony, and Gerard twice tried to get it deleted - thankfully another moderator, FuzzyCatPotato, restored it each time. I spoke to a member who recently left the site, and he told me that Gerard's actions in this case were partly responsible for driving him away.

It's not just me who has put up with this. A couple of other members expressed concern over how RW was whitewashing Sarah Nyberg, and Gerard responded by making the Gamergate talkpages accessible only to staff members.

Initially, Gerard claimed that he was doing all of this because he was concerned about potential legal action from Nyberg if the site openly discussed the accusations of paedophilia. That kind of made sense, but since then it's become clear that he just doesn't want anybody criticising Sarah Nyberg in any capacity. I specifically avoided mentioning paedophilia in my userspace article, but that didn't stop him from trying to delete it. The fact that he's willing to retain claims that are demonstrably untrue, and silence anybody who corrects them, says it all.
At the end of the day, Ryulong and Gerard are indulging in classic fundie tactics: if someone disagrees with your dogma, smear them as part of the evil conspiracy. RationalWiki should, by all rights, be fighting against them rather than giving them a platform.

We've known about this for a bit now, but it's very interesting to see awareness of this spreading outwards.
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It was originally posted on fstdt lol
 
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