The case against Gwen Gale

After Gwen Gale got her administrative tool she quickly turned the mop to a witch's broomstick. Now she uses this broomstick to fly around Wikipedia to collect heads of innocent editors while allowing trolls to troll.

Heidi Wyss was born in 1975 in Geneva, and got her education in Great Britain. She describes herself as "a word witch and a lesbian separatist, third wave feminist". That "witchy" theme is very close to Heidi Wyss. In an interview she gave about her book Gormglaith (novel) she said that she wanted her readers to understand that "Witchy girls have more fun." "The Witch" was also a user name of one of the socks Wyss used to violate her topic ban, the ban that was described like this "Wyss is banned from making any edit related to a person's alleged homosexuality or bisexuality. The clauses "any edit" and "related to homosexuality or bisexuality" shall be interpreted broadly; this remedy is intended, for example, to prohibit correcting the spelling of "gay"."

A "witchy" girl Heidi Wyss became the Wikipedia's witch, when she became wikipedia administrator Gwen Gale.

One of the biggest problems with Wyss is that she always has been treating herself differently than others. Probably one of the most striking examples of such behavior is a story about Wyss writing two articles on wikipedia about herself:Heidi Wyss and Gormglaith (novel). One problem with that is that Wyss's notability is way below wikipedia's standards for inclusion (she wrote a single one to read novel that is available absolutely free of charge on the NET.) Another problem is conflict of interest: for example a person writing about herself could be not neutral. As it is seen from her contributions Wyss was well aware about these policies. She was very active in voting on deletion requests of articles written by others,often claiming that a subject of an article is not notable: "*Delete. Ad, vanity, and doing off-colour versions of covers isn't notable." (the article was kept);*Delete not notable Wyss 18:08, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC) (the article was kept).

Then she herself nominated an article for deletion. She wrote:

“

Conflict of interest, subject of this biographical article is not of encyclopedic interest meyerj is an SPA who created this article to memorialize his father. The subject is not encyclopedic (a routine military career), not widely noted, the article amounts to original research and its creation raises many COI worries.

”

This article was kept. Two articles that Wyss wrote about herself were deleted. So here we go: the same person claims that Leo J. Meyer, who was one of only three hundred and three men who have been awarded three Combat Infantryman Badges out of more than the twenty-three million, "is not of encyclopedic interest", writes two articles about an absolutely not notable person - herself. The same person who writes two articles about not notable herself sees "many COI worries" with a user writing article about his notable father.

Heidi Wyss's wikipedia story

Heidi Wyss's wikipedia story begun in 2004, when after making a few edits as IP (without making account) Wyss made an account, giving it her real life name "Wyss. User Wyss started a few articles, but in November of 2005 she became involved parties in the Wikipedia requests for arbitration named "Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Wilkes, Wyss and Onefortyone".

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Wilkes, Wyss and Onefortyone

Most evidences against Wyss presented at this page and at this page were removed either by herself, when she became an administrator, or by another administrators. For example one of the evidences was:

“

Wyss is still showing a lack of insight. On 16 December 2005, he/she says on his/her talk page: "Too many active Wikipedians are wankers, fiddlers, fools and trolls which includes several members of arbcomm who are more interested in publishing unsupported gay celebrity gossip than they are in writing an encyclopedia to academic standards." See [63]. Onefortyone 23:50, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

”

but if one is to click on the link with the number 63, one will get a page that states: "The relevant page of the wiki was "User:Wyss" and the requested data (for error checking purposes) was: (Diff: 31558060, 31560139)". Such deleting of the talk page history violates basic Wikipedia policies.

Wyss expresses her opinion on wikipedia and wikipedians

In this discussion Wyss said in particular:

“

Wikipedia generates the litter, lots of it. Think of Wikipedia as a drunken lout speeding down the "information superhighway" tossing all kinds of sundry codswallop out the car window for others to pick up after. Lots of its dodgy content gets picked up by scraper sites, the Google bots and others, hence multiplying the trash and by the bye, last I heard, littering was a crime in the states (sometimes a serious one). Meanwhile the well-meaning Wikipedia volunteers who try to clean up after Wikipedia's "dark side" generate even more traffic for the site, enhancing its popularity and contributing to Mr Wales' ability to raise millions of dollars for Wikipedia's commercial spin-off Wikia: Their time is utterly wasted in an editorial sense, since Wikipedia's systemic flaws are easily correctible, but nonetheless very helpful in helping Mr Wales with his wider goals (whatever they may be).

”

“

"Wikipedia's systemic flaws as an encyclopedia are widely documented. However, if one wishes to participate in an alphabetized meta-blog/online social community with a Byzantine bureaucracy which encourages sock puppets, trolls and endless references to pop culture beliefs which have naught to do with scholarship, yeah, then "pfft," I think, would be the appropriate response to any criticism that Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. "

”

Wyss especially did not like members of Arbitration Committee:

“

"Truth be told, according to freely available public records, he was suspended for soliciting a client's wife to work in a prostitution ring, then refusing to attend his hearing on it. Many would interpret this as "disbarred" but he denies the term applies. Bauder disclosed none of this to Mr Wales when he was asked to join lawyerish arbcomm.

”

“

"Anyway I disagree that I ever disrupted Wikipedia or ever had the personal potential or whim to do that. My contribution history speaks for itself. I've been slapped hard by arbcomm for expressing my opinion that among them lurk wankers, fiddlers, fools and trolls who coddle their own kind.

”

The Witch

On 18 December 2005 Wyss created a sock account, which she named "The Witch". As a matter of fact one of the arbitrators called this account "Vandal". The Witch contributions were short living, but some of them were personal attacks:

• "# Oppose, an apparent liar who pursues a strictly unencyclopedic agenda."
• "# Oppose, Intellectually unqualified and the worst of roleplaying."

All talk history of "The Witch" was deleted in the violation of wikipedia policies, and then a period was added to it. Every try to redirect the Witch user pages to the owner new account "Gwen Gale" were deleted, sometimes even by Gwen Gale herself.

Wyss reaction on being blocked

Some reactions were lost with the deletion of the talk page histories, but a few still could be found.

Here is her reaction after 24 hours block for violating of her topic ban on editing articles referring to people's homosexuality: Your block was a misinterpretation of both the arbcomm ruling and its present status. You have been manipulated, at best. The wording of the block notice was equivalent to harassment. I was unable to edit my own talk pages or send emails to admins during the time my block was in force. This represents further negligence on your part and was a violation of Wikipedia policy. The block notice itself was ineptly formatted and represents further negligence. Finally, I find your user signature both disruptive and deceptive since it hides your true user name. In the future, please sign your posts in the normal way, with four tildes. If you wish to communicate with me further concerning these matters, please do so only via the email link on my user page. Thanks. Wyss 21:05, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Here is her reaction for 24 hours block for edit warring There are too many of them for me here, too many role-playing troll admins, too many troll sockpuppet editors. Bye then. Gwen Gale 06:29, 1 April ,2007.

In a year after this rant was written Heidi Wyss became one of wikipedia administrators under user name Gwen Gale.

Wikipedians about Gwen Gale

• By administrator Mike Halterman

“

Gwen Gale wasn't even on my radar, positively or negatively, until this week, and then I was involved in an incident with her and her judgment gave me such pause. So for that, I oppose, and suggest she looks into how she deals with disputes. Like it or not, this is the highest community "court" or what have you that we have here, and after what I saw, I don't want her on it, probably ever.

”

• By administrator David Shankbone

“

I'm sorry, but you really sunk it for me on Talk:Rush Limbaugh. I found your arguments and sources on there to be a disgrace, frankly. Or, User:Avruch said, "I think some of your arguments have been disingenuous, and beneath what I believe your intelligence and perceptive ability to be."

”

• By administrator East718

“

aka Wyss. Formerly placed under editing restrictions by ArbCom for unseemly conduct; evaded these restrictions with a sockpuppet... Zero-tolerance attitude towards adminship makes them wholly incompatible with a role of higher responsibility that requires more creative solutions.

”