If you’re a part of the small pro-#GamerGate crowd, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has a message for you: keep your money.
After a concerned gamer emailed Wales protesting the editing of GamerGate’s Wikipedia page and threatening to pull his donation to Wikipedia's ongoing fundraising drive, Wales responded to one in the most measured, perfect way possible. Objecting to the misogynistic underpinning of many GamerGate proponents’ “ethics in journalism” argument, Wales sons the emailer pretty damn impressively.
You can read the full exchange here, but these are the highlights of Wales’ response:
- "My point here is not to say that there is nothing wrong with the article – I actually think it needs a fair amount of work. But I want you and others to understand that threatening people is not helpful.
"I’ve recently seen web pages in which people who are – and I don’t know how else to put it – vicious assholes – are gathering data to attack the personal lives of volunteers. It is very difficult for me to buy into the notion that gamergate is “really about ethics in journalism” when every single experience I have personally had with it involved pro-gg people insulting, threatening, doxxing, etc." - "The contingent of people who are interested in putting pressure on institutions within game journalism to expose corruption need an actual organization – with a mission statement, with a board of directors, with elected people who represent the movement. Barring that, you should very much expect the media to continue to accurately report that the Gamergate community is associated with online harassment and misogyny. But actually, in fact, it is."
- "Bitching and moaning on a twitter hashtag is getting you nowhere, particularly for the reasons I have outlined in this note."
[via UPROXX]
