Wikipedia edits Men's Rights section

Submitted by anthony on Sat, 2011-10-29 19:23

Article here. Excerpt:

'Earlier this year, we learned that men greatly outnumbered women among Wikipedia editors. But now the site's article on men's rights has been through a controversial edit, and some men are calling Wikipedia "feminist propaganda."

The trouble seems to have began late last month, when editors, including one Kevin Gorman, began rewriting Wikipedia's Men's rights page. Gorman explained the rationale for his edits thus:

"...
I'm not going to be removing these completely, but will also be looking to repair:

Any section where MRA positions are presented as mainstream positions, or sections where most of the section is talking about MRA positions [...]

Any section that talks about issues that are specific to the global north that makes statements like "A primary concern about men's rights is..." [...]"
...
It's true that people coming to the "men's rights" page looking for information on men's rights activism may be disappointed or confused — Wikipedia might consider adding a disambiguation directing users to a page on MRAs. Such a page exists, in nascent form, under the title "Men's movement," but there's certainly room for expansion. Men's rights activism, however disturbing some of its proponents are, is a real movement deserving of (neutral, unbiased) coverage on Wikipedia. But this doesn't mean that efforts to root out biased or poorly sourced material are part of some sort of feminist conspiracy, or that attempts to close Wikipedia's gender gap are an evil matriarchal plan to take over the world's information. In fact, women in particular and rational people in general may be scared away from Wikipedia entirely if the most basic efforts to make the site "a professional and respectful environment" are recast as meddling by "dykes and dweebs."'

Wikipedia Contact: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us

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Ed. note: Re the Wikipedia Volunteer Response Team: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VRT

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Comments

"In fact, women in particular and rational people in general may be scared away from Wikipedia entirely if the most basic efforts to make the site "a professional and respectful environment" are recast as meddling by "dykes and dweebs.""

Can someone please explain that one to me...

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2011-10-29 19:48

@matt: It is the standard rhetoric that an MRA is a misogynist, turned around so as to presume MRA's presume feminists are dykes and dweebs. It's just another attempt to paint us in a hateful manner.

I'd also like to note, as one of those attempting to fix the damage done, I ran into a great deal of resistance. The wiki policies were used to the letter of the law on any content that showed men were not (always) in the dominant, privileged position, but anything that showed men as privileged or in the wrong, or worst, anything that showed women as less privileged (despite not being relevant) was left intact, even when it failed to have a source, let alone meet the requirements other content was expected to meet. And the definition of "men's rights" kept shifting to whatever was most beneficial for those wanting to remove content. It was unbearable.

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Submitted by Kratch on Sun, 2011-10-30 02:57

I read through the talk page, it's totally nuts. Jezebel is considered a reliable source, but AVFM is not?

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Submitted by raven88 on Sun, 2011-10-30 14:37

They are asking/begging people not to point out that Wikipedia is run by male hating bigots.

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Submitted by Korathin on Mon, 2011-10-31 06:23

Really? Where is this?

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Submitted by Kratch on Mon, 2011-10-31 11:17