Essay talk:SJWiki

So what?

It's a wiki with different views than RW so therefore it's a crank site. Myopia, what's that? Stop hero worshiping reactionaries like Harris and Dawkins. — Oxyaena ^Harass 22:54, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Oxy, I'm pretty sure that

A: Nowhere in this article does it explicitly state that SJWiki is crank site

and B: This article doesn't even mention Harris or Dawkins.

@Oxyaena Twodots (talk) 05:44, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

It does mention Harris in the 3rd bullet point under "The Bad" header. Also 8th and 9th references are related to Harris apparently.

Nothing about Dawkins that I noticed though. Knight Commander^{In Service}_{To Her}^Goatness 08:39, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't hero-worship anyone in the atheist community, let alone either of those people- who, while I do not despise them as much as you do, they do indeed have a few features I don't really like. While I may not entirely agree with this site's and the press's rationale for calling them out (as there are legitimately condemnable aspects of their views on certain issues- as in, not just a benign criticism like "Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas" that aren't really problems)- I do dislike that they support the Iraq war, for instance. Now, before you spew your usual toxic rhetoric about how horrible I am for not denouncing them enough, the reason why I (at least at the time of writing) don't think they're as bad as they're cracked up to be is because nowadays, with so much outrage and deceit everywhere I look on the Internet, I just don't know who to believe anymore. --Goatspeed. _{How's my editing}CircularRasoning^{Prototype lab} 06:27, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Context

So I was actually editing RW with a different account at the time this schism or whatever happened. I don’t want to act like an expert/authority/whatever, bc there’s a lot I don’t remember or wasn’t actually involved with. Plus, I haven’t even thought about SJWiki since like, 2015. However, there are some minor context things I do remember which you may find useful (assuming you weren’t also active at this time, in which case, no worries, like I said my memory isn’t perfect)

1) The first blogpost, from Sphericalbullshit, wasn’t actually made by an SJWikian (to my knowledge) — rather by an RWikian who was more or less apathetic to SJWiki but was disappointed with how RW handled social justice issues at the time. From memory, they were an EXTREMELY “old guard” user and also just generally cool and respected, not some Weirdo crank who showed up to complain about RW

2) This was in the middle of a fairly significant cultural change for RW. While RW had, to some extent, written about social justice issues before, it was previously much less of a focus, and mostly centred around religious and pseudoscientific arguments (eg evangelical homophobia, race science), rather than just “hey, this stuff is also important”. This was also around the time of deepening divides in the wider “sceptic community”. The Dawkins/Hitchens/whatever types felt that SJ issues were irrelevant or even actively stupid, whereas the SJ people thought that, as well as debunking creationism for the 1000000th time, it might be a good idea to talk about social issues too. This especially intensified when GamerGate started getting big. If even just you look at, say, YouTube, you can see these divides with figures like, eg Thunderfoot vs Hbomberguy. Saying that SJWiki were just a bunch of ppl who didn’t “get” rationalwiki or whatever is a huge oversimplification imo.

3) It’s also worth pointing out that a lot of the SJWiki arguments came from the fact that RW’s users, ideas etc were, from my understanding, relatively less diverse then — there were not as many users who were, say, women/POC/trans etc as there are now (though I may be wrong in this perception). Likewise, the ideology of the wiki was much more kind of “liberal centrist” and focused on “rationalism” without as much reflection on what these things actually meant. In a lot of ways, there were some relatively serious issues with how rationalwiki treated social justice — the Sphericalbullshit blog post is actually a fairly decent explanation of this imo. While we can look at RW now and say, “look, we have all these SJ articles etc.”, I think it’s worth remembering that it wasn’t always like that — and, that the arguments and users and divides and debates that created SJWiki were actually necessary for the wiki to get to where it is now.

4) I’m not going to deny that SJWiki has some problems. Its articles aren’t always great, its philosophy/ideology isn’t always well thought-out, and while its registration process was somewhat understandable given the whole “harassment of feminists” that was going on (and still goes on ofc, but this was more or less the Gamergate Era), it’s also not a good strategy for sustaining the active editing and debate necessary for a wiki to survive. However, I do think that focusing only on its flaws really misses a lot of very important historical context, and ignores what I would consider the more interesting question — how did this wiki come to be, why/how did it succeed and/or fail, and what does this mean for rationalwiki and the wider “sceptic” community? Now, obviously, I can’t really answer those without spending ages and ages going through old diffs and everything, but I would definitely recommend reading into it.

Anyway hope that’s all useful — and if I made any factual errors or whatever please correct me! I just find the history of RW and internet communities in general, to be strangely fascinating in a way, so I thought this would be a good excuse to talk about it. Anyway, thanks and sorry for the rambling paragraphs! 💝 ASELA^कुरा 💝 04:56, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Somewhat irrelevant addendum: I once tried to sign up for SJWiki, bc I thought the project was a good idea, I wanted to get a better understanding of social justice, and bc it seemed like they needed some help with copy editing (lots of typos and whatnot). However, as a requirement to join, I had to send a piece of writing to be evaluated, preferably published (even if on a blog), and preferably about social justice in some way. Bc at that point, I had never written anything outside of school essays, I wasn’t able to meet that requirement and wasn’t allowed in. I think that’s an interesting thing to consider, and one could argue that it may in some ways be somewhat questionable in terms of ableism or language barriers depending on context, but yeah. Not really interesting or relevant I guess, but whatever. 💝 ASELA^कुरा 💝 05:00, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

3 isn't true, RW has always been relatively diverse when it comes to gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation. IDK about POC. And yeah, I'm skeptical that Armondikov would seriously edit a website like SJWiki--Hastur! (talk) 06:10, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

As for the correction about that blog, I already know I was wrong about it; I didn't have much sense back then. That blog belongs to Armondikov, an OG who has not made an edit for 3.5 years as of the day I am writing this comment and so far has expressed no intention to return due to being busy with work. And as for the rest of the article, you're right, it's no longer that representative of my current views. Heck, I feel so embarrassed by the shitstorm I cooked up when I made this essay, that I haven't even bothered to reread it since. You'll find that most (if not all) of my other essays, not counting the recently-buried turd that almost ruined my mod campaign, have been occasionally edited and revised by moi every now and then over my past two years of editing on this site- and thus, I don't completely remember all of what's in there. But from what I do remember, I stand by some of my criticisms of the site's views on certain topics that I didn't fully agree with, e.g. allyship. --Goatspeed. _{How's my editing}CircularRasoning^{Prototype lab} 06:17, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

@Hastur — that’s fair enough, thanks for correcting me. I do remember it being relatively diverse in terms of LGBT users, but also having more of a sort of “blokey” vibe than it does now? But you’ve been here for longer than I was and whatnot, and also (from what I gather) it seems relatively likely that you have not fried your brain with drugs as much as I have lmao, so I figure you probably remember better. Thanks for letting me know.

@CircularReasoning — yeah true all good! Sorry I didn’t realise it was old until after I typed this up, I just saw it pop up in recent changes and assumed it was new-ish. Sorry. Yeah I completely get that views change over time, and yeah, Armondikov was a fuckn legend imho. But also, I agree there’s a lot of valid criticisms of SJWiki, though I personally might put them down to the fact that the social justice movement was not yet quite as well organised then??? (from what I remember, anyway — again, my memory is very bad). Like it seemed like SJWiki was still getting a handle on the philosophy/ideology/rhetoric and didn’t have a large userbase to help with that, e.g. thru debate and discussion. That’s just what I think anyway. But yeah it’s all good! I just kinda wanted to talk about this bc for uni I recently did an essay that had a big part about how GamerGate affected media platforms and the social justice/“sceptical/rationalist” movement so it was on my mind lmao. 💝 ASELA^कुरा 💝 06:30, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

"Armondikov was a legend" I know, right? It's a shame he no longer edits on here. I saw his much better blogposts, and he absolutely kicked some GamerGate ass! --Goatspeed. _{How's my editing}CircularRasoning^{Prototype lab} 06:45, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Used to be Facebook friends with him agessss ago b4 I abandoned social media and my old RW identity. Legit one of the funniest and smartest guys I’ve known. Real cool. 💝 ASELA^कुरा 💝 06:51, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Oh so you're a long-time lurker? Cool. In between August 27th of 2018 (when I created my account) and October... 10th? of the same year (when my "contribs" link finally turned blue) I lurked, looking at the CP-related pages that were the reason I found this site. (Fun fact: I first heard about Conservapedia from a wingnut conspiracy theorist in highschool, and learned of RationalWiki from... wait for it... An UrbanDictionary definition for CP!) Before mid-2017 I wasn't even an atheist yet; indeed, up until about early 2016 I was an anti-abortion, anti-secularism conservative Christian, who thought all atheists are immoral and that America's a "Christian nation". --Goatspeed. _{How's my editing}CircularRasoning^{Prototype lab} 07:00, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah lmao, I lurked from 2011-2013. I’d been an atheist since I was 8 (I was raised sort of Christian but my parents are both atheists/agnostic; plus I was exposed to fundamentalist Catholicism at school when I was 10, which was so batshit that it really put me off religion as a whole). Then I created an account in late 2013 when I was in middle school, and used it til 2015. It was around the same time I was learning about politics, feminism, relationships and the existence other human people. I eventually quit bc I kept acting in very stupid ways, making some people very upset, and it was hurting my mental health (also my mental health was already p. terrible at the time for reasons I don’t want to get into) (oh also, you kno how everyone got mad at that CP guy for making a user hate list? I was put on at least 2 of those by Actual Users when I was here lmao). I remained friends with a couple of RW people until roughly 2018/2019 when I deleted most of my social media (except my band Facebook page). That said, I’d lost contact with most of these RW folks by 2016 anyway. In the interim years, I infrequently lurked on RW but tried to avoid it bc I had a lot of bad memories. Then in like 2019/2020 (roughly when I started my fifth university attempt, and also when my relationship was collapsing), I felt the urge to socialise with people I didn’t know and who didn’t care about me so I came back. So yea I been around for a minute or two. Overall RW has really helped shape a lot of my personal views and philosophy, and even though I have to be drunk and/or high to edit here without anxiety, it’s mostly been better now. I’m still a fucking idiot who acts in silly ways, but I don’t get involved enough to upset anyone. I also drifted away from the general “RW consensus”, in that I am now much further left and don’t place as much emphasis on my atheism; that said, RW has done things like, convert me from being an antifeminist, teach me how to make/recognise logical arguments and/or fallacies, and actually understand my religious views in depth, so I appreciate that a lot. Anyway uhhh thanks for reading my life story lmao, RW has been so much of my life after age 13 that I can’t really describe my experience without mentioning these other things, at least not when I’m this drunk. Thank u RationalWiki for existing, I guess. 💝 ASELA^कुरा 💝 08:04, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

(Addendum: I doubt anyone can recognise my old account just from this information, but if ANYBODY does, I would STRONGLY request you do not mention it either publicly or to me. Do not ask me who I am, bc I will not answer and will definitely have a panic attack. Thank you so much.) 💝 ASELA^कुरा 💝 08:07, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

(Addendum 2: RW is also where I first talked to openly trans people, which opened my mind about the situation and made it seem less “alien”. So while RationalWiki didn’t make me come out, it was definitely an important first step to realising that it was actually possible for me to be trans. I don’t think I would have realised my gender ID when I did, if at all, if it wasn’t for RW so that’s nice.) 💝 ASELA^कुरा 💝 08:09, 30 November 2020 (UTC)