I’m starting to think that some writing classes would really help the EA/LR crowd.
lol @ r/subredditdrama
I’m noticing that people who criticize him on that subreddit are being downvoted, while he’s being upvoted.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, as part of his prodigious self-promotion of this overlong and tendentious screed, he’s steered some of his more sympathetic followers to some of these forums.
Actually it’s the wikipedia subreddit thread I meant to refer to.
It occurs to me that, intentionally or not, he’s probably steering TESCREAL types to Wikipedia itself as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if accounts were coming out of the woodwork to post multi-kiloword screeds about Wikipedia being soooo unfairrrr…
He is transparently trying very very hard to start a gamergate and it’s pathetic.
as, indeed, has started to happen https://xcancel.com/thezahima/status/1811495742894408065
Huh. OK, so I boiled away more of my precious time on this plane of reality chasing links and reading old Wikipedia arguments instead of doing something healthy, like discovering a new genre of porn. Anyway, one of TW’s complaints is that “outlets like PinkNews […] are treated as reliable despite long histories of misconduct”. He points to a discussion thread where PinkNews was supposedly deemed to be terrible, horrible, no good and very bad despite David Gerard saying it was basically fine. But the analysis proving that PinkNews is terrible, horrible, etc., is itself weirdly bad. I mean, take a look at this:
Another example of a dodgy source is at is [11]. where the claim “Queer-coding has affected many fictional villains. These evil characters are generally either shown as flamboyant and overly dramatic, like Disney characters Scar and Hades, or written as having a deep fixation on the main character, like Jafar, Kim Possible villain Shego and Catra from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. In the past few decades, Disney fans have seen Governor Ratcliffe and Professor Ratigan—as well as Scar, Jafar and Hades—being portrayed as queer characters.” The source for this claim? A Twitter tweet by “Jay, a self-described ‘transmasc enby’ who uses they/he pronouns”.
But the story doesn’t actually use that “Twitter tweet” as the source. It just springboards from a viral tweet to talking about the larger picture. The tweet didn’t say any of the specifics that PinkNews supposedly sourced to it. And the claim that Disney villains have been queer-coded is … not exactly shocking. I mean, just look up any of the authors that James Somerton plagiarized.
Or consider this article,[12] with the breathless headline “Star Trek: Picard season finale sees iconic character finally come out as queer, inspiring a million new fan fictions. The Star Trek: Picard season finale has confirmed a same-sex romance for iconic character Seven of Nine, and fans are thrilled.” The evidence? Two characters holding hands. In a series that already had more than one openly gay couple and thus no real reason to be ambiguous.
Well, actually, Star Trek: Picard did not “already” have “more than one openly gay couple”. Star Trek: Discovery had one, and the Kelvin timeline movies had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it implication of one. The PinkNews article didn’t just go aflutter over two characters holding hands, but also pointed to an interview with showrunner Michael Chabon:
There are hints that both Seven and Raffi are bisexual.
Oh yes. […] With a character like Raffi, to the extend we imagined her history in a fair amount of detail, her history included all kinds of sexual partners. There’s a father of her child, but that was far from her only sexual or life partner. She’s had relationships with all kind of people. If it was ever to come up, it was always going to be organic. […] Same thing with Seven of Nine, having to catch up after such along absence from the human race. If you think about that, it almost seems unnatural that she wouldn’t’ have had partners of other genders. It seems clear she would have. So even if we didn’t see that on Voyager, years have passed. In that time, she’s continued to explore the spectrum of human relationships in a broader way. So in our show, there are echos and implications of that.
And it’s not like the article was actually wrong, was it? Jeri Ryan said that Seven is “canonically bi”, and the Seven/Raffi romance went on to become a whole thing.
I won’t go to bat for PinkNews being good, but this investigation of what’s wrong with it is itself irritatingly flawed and superficial. As, apparently, somebody at Wikipedia has already pointed out.
Moreover, when TW makes the flat statement, “Wikipedia currently treats PinkNews as a Reliable Source”, he conveniently elides the caveats that naturally come when people who LARP at building an encyclopedia try to summarize the results of their own arguments:
There is rough consensus that PinkNews is *generally( reliable for factual reporting, but additional considerations may apply and caution should be used. Most of those who commented on PinkNews’ reliability for statements about a person’s sexuality said that such claims had to be based on direct quotes from the subject.
So, yeah, just because the table puts it in green doesn’t mean that editors will use it uncritically.
Oh, and look, a lie by omission!
Between 2019 and 2020, Gerard repeatedly fought to make the “Known for” box on Eich’s page mention opposition to same-sex marriage and avoid any mention of Eich’s projects beyond JavaScript.<sup>14</sup> After all, Gerard pointed out as he added a PinkNews reference to the claim—it was in a Reliable Source.
He cited Reuters too.
Winning sentences of the day so far:
Conservapedia is 100% true and correct. Evidence: https://www.conservapedia.com/Garfield_(comic_strip)
Whoever wrote that deffo wants to fuck Nermal.
Classics in the replies:
If you think wikipedia is bad see arstecnica chat. On covid immunity chat I respectfully said natural covid immunity as good got ad hominem reply. I cited ars policy against ad hominem. 5 min later moderator kicked me out for 2 weeks
Btw, I saw on Reddit how the people of r/wikipedia attacked you for being a nazi and supporting the “conspirational theory” of cultural marxism
Midwits at best
If I had fans like these, I’d like to think that I’d re-evaluate some life choices.
Conspiration should totally be a thing. “Omg, your 30,000 word Grassy Knoll post was conspirational!”, “Just the conspiration I need while I drink my defluoridated coffee and put on my tin foil hat to not go to work every morning!”
https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1811602818614133141
Just posted this banger song
I hate that you made me know this exists, but I thank the acausalrobotgod that you cannot make me listen to it.
I tried to actually put it to the tune but it only barely scans, to say nothing of how impossible to follow it is if you dont already know the story. If you’re going to express your terminally online frustration through a lousy parody song I’m going to insist that you put in the effort to do either the parody part or the song part well.
Hurt Feelings – Flight of the Conchords
Someone has recently posted this article to /r/wikipedia: https://old.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comments/1e0rb3p/reliable_sources_how_wikipedia_admin_david_gerard/
Not as much traction elsewhere: https://www.reddit.com/domain/tracingwoodgrains.com/
Doesn’t seem to have set HN on fire either:
The most interesting thing about the HN comment section is the link to a post about rumors that wIkipedia has its own sexual harassment scandals wherein checkusers have abused their power to see IP addresses and stalk other editors, supposedly in one case sharing a female editor’s location to her stalker. That said, this is all hearsay of hearsay. Still… oof.
Yeah, wikipedia editor is weird and has long history doesn’t come as a huge shock to most people (im looking at it from the neutral side here). Doesn’t help that the format is a hugeass long blog, and Rationalist writing tends to feel very off-putting to normal people (“Feels obsessive if you need +20 pages to make a case.”). Think people would care more if this wicked editor was the head of some group which feels like a large cult, and has weirdly large influence on the tech industry, or linked to a large scam. TWG is also quite a weird guy himself. Or this part of his defense “Sure. Given that, do you endorse the choice of outlets like PinkNews and Huffington Post as reliable sources given their history of fabrication and errors, as discussed in the article?” Being against PinkNews makes you look weirdly anti-lgbt, and being against the huffington post in the current year is weird as their era of clickbait bs articles is long behind them and they actually write news.
So yeah no big surprise that when it breaks containment nothing happens and nobody really seems to care. There is a funny parrallel between TWG’s post and our sneering at LW. If you forgive me quoting Gaiman: “It it is the prerogative of the fool to say the emperor has no clothes. But in the end the emperor is still emperor and the fool is still a fool.”
E: It prob also doesn’t help TWG’s case that when people look up David they see he is an anti-cryptocurrencies person.
E2: what is interesting is that this place seems to be the best documentation of all the different arguments going on about the post. We seem to link all the various places it is talked about, none of them seem to actually point back. (And of course it was posted on r/destiny and r/kotakuinaction2 (no idea why it is nr 2 now). And remember how we joke about how Rationalists have high school traumas?
“setting HN on fire” is an unfortunate phrase that one might otherwise wholly be able to get behind
damn english and its imprecision!
