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.
Violating of Golden Rule
One of the biggest problems with Wyss is that she always has been treating herself differently than others, violating the Golden Rule: "One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself." 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 hard 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:
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). | ” |
Wyss especially did not like members of Arbitration Committee:
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
Gwen Gale insulted everybody who dared to vote against her.
Gwen Gale - a bully administrator
Gwen Gale made hundreds of bad blocks, many of which got overturned. Here are just very few examples:
- was blocked at 23:03, 29 December 2009 for making $1,000 donation to wikipedia. Gwen Gale issued the block after she was asked by another administrator to leave the editor alone: Gwen,you have gotten too personally involved. I urge you to leave further admin actions with respect to this editor to other administrators. DGG ( talk ) 20:28, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
- was blocked indefinitely at 22:16, 14 February 2010 for requesting a blocked user template. This block was overturn by another administrator.
- was blocked at 20:36, 21 November 2008. She removed the editor talk page access. Two hours later another administrator restored the talk page access. At 20:10, 29 November 2008 one second correction block was added to the editor block record: "Noting the block was at least somewhat questionable, enough to have a note in the block log. See blocking admins talk page."
- was blocked indefinitely at 21:03, 9 August 2008. The block was overturned by another administrator.
- at 20:51, 23 July 2009 Gwen removed his talk page access. The talk page access was restored by another administrator.
- was blocked at 20:56, 9 November 2011. Another admin questioned the block, saying in particular "I don't think BLP concerns are a carte blanche for disregarding AGF like this and especially not BITE since we can't expect newcomers to understand these complex policies within their first 10 edits. I would appreciate if you would be more polite and welcoming towards new editors in the future, and not be as quick with the block-hammer, if you feel you don't have the patience for giving adequate explanations to a newcomer feel free to contact me and I'll gladly take over", but Gwen failed to clarify her position.
Recent misuse of administrative tools
Admin Gwen gale deleted the last surviving pieces of her sock user Wyss talk page history. "User request to delete page in own userspace: user thought this had been done years ago". Interesting she refers to herself as to some unknown to her user: "User request to delete page". She lies that this page is in her "own userspace". She deleted the only page that had talk history of Wyss. She frlrtrd many other archives of user Wyss as well.
Gwen Gale - Fred Bauder a strange relationship
User Fred Bauder is an administrator and a former arbitrator of English Wikipedia. Wyss and her socks used to make personal attacks against Fred:
| “ | an apparent liar who pursues a strictly unencyclopedic agenda. | ” |
| “ | With all the recent bad publicity, can't decide if you want the same old gang of troll coddlers re-elected, eh Mr Wales? :) | ” |
| “ | The more I learn about you, the more I think you don't want to help people write an encyclopedia. Why are you here? | ” |
Yet somewhere along the way Fred Bauder everything has changed.Fred Bauder was no longer "an apparent liar who pursues a strictly unencyclopedic agenda", "(in effect, apparently disbarred) lawyer Fred Bauder", not even one of "wankers, fiddlers, fools and trolls", he suddenly became "Mr Bauder", and Gwen's best friend.
- "I got very worried and asked Mr Bauder to wipe out the talk pages, which he immediately did." By wiping talk page history "Mr Bauder" violated basic wikipedia policy and deleted most of the evidences used against Wyss in her arbitration case.