Following Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger’s ban from the site he helped establish and sought to reform, site editors took to maligning him on his personal discussion page in what is commonly called “grave-dancing” on Wikipedia. Some editors argued Sanger’s proposed reforms should be discarded with his ban. Other editors expressing support for Sanger received mocking responses, including comments related to Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s assassination last year.
The attacks came even as site admins barred Sanger from responding, which he states he requested to discourage comments. On the personal discussion page for fellow Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, editors mocked media criticism of the ban with mention of Breitbart’s reporting even being censored.
Sanger was banned last week after a community discussion. Editors accused him of seeking to rig Wikipedia debates through a “WikiProject” group he proposed to advocate for policies protecting intellectual diversity and off-site comments related to that group. The effort was an attempt to advance reforms Sanger proposed in his “Nine Theses” last year, which were initially promoted in an interview on Tucker Carlson’s podcast that went viral due to clips of Sanger discussing the site’s ongoing purge of conservative media, including Breitbart News. Carlson’s interview invited response from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) who later inquired to the Wikimedia Foundation that owns Wikipedia about the site’s bias.
Following the interview, Sanger proposed circulating a letter for those wronged by Wikipedia to sign as a way to pressure government leaders into addressing bias on the site. He also started a Change.org petition to advocate for the Wikimedia Foundation to implement multiple reforms derived from his theses. Sanger’s proposed group, called WikiProject Intellectual Diversity, was another step in advancing those reforms through the online encyclopedia’s internal mechanisms. Sanger contended his efforts were not different from other WikiProjects that have been previously approved and that promoting the group off-site was not prohibited under policy. Co-founder Jimmy Wales generally agreed and criticized the ban.
Under site policy, banned editors are only permitted to edit their personal discussion pages. During a unilateral ban imposed before the official one, Sanger was threatened with having even that access removed for comments objecting to the ban, though the unilateral ban was eventually overturned. Following the official ban, Sanger engaged editors challenging him continually on his personal discussion page. He eventually suggested himself that this access be revoked so he would not be tempted to respond to further attacks. On X, Sanger stated he hoped him being unable to respond would discourage further comments towards him, but editors continued to attack him on the page:
While some comments people left were sympathetic and encouraging towards Sanger or lamenting his ban, many editors kept making derisive or critical statements to Sanger on his personal discussion page. Though one comment attacking Sanger as insane was removed repeatedly, others remained. One comment posted by Tim Davenport, who edits as “Carrite” on Wikipedia, agreed with some of Sanger’s proposals, particularly abolishing the source blacklist used to purge conservative outlets, but generally sided with the community criticism and only objected to an indefinite ban as the solution. Responding on X, Sanger noted Davenport had joined WikiProject Intellectual Diversity and criticized him as “pretending to be friendly.”
In the discussion responding to Davenport’s comments and an earlier discussion, some editors questioned the ban. One editor criticized the ban being subject to such brief discussion, lasting roughly just three days. Editor “consarn” responded with a long, derisive, vulgar, and mocking attack on Sanger’s proposed reforms and conduct. This included accusing Sanger of “doxing” editors, referring to disclosing people’s personal information, an accusation Sanger refuted and Wales rejected. Responding to another editor’s objection, he made similar comments and asserted Sanger’s reforms could “kill people” in reference to his proposal that high-ranking figures on Wikipedia be required to use their real names.
Editor “Ahri Boy” commented to seemingly advocate applying a kind of damnatio memoriae to Sanger, stating none of his suggestions would happen and to forget him, later claiming Sanger was “deluded with Breitbart nonsense” and “will not be engraved in Wikimedia achievements.” When an editor objected to these comments, Ahri Boy responded by stating Wikipedia was “not a free speech platform.” Ahri Boy, self-described as “left-wing to far-left” on his profile page, previously sought to delete Sanger’s Nine Theses from Wikipedia by claiming they called for indirect “enabling of fascism” and citing essays that advocate banning “queerphobia” and “Nazis” on the site.
Following some of these attacks, editor Steven Slater called for editors to “stop grave dancing” on Sanger’s page, referring to a widely-held standard on Wikipedia that attacking banned editors can violate policy. Slater had previously suggested locking the page to prevent further comments, but this was rejected by an admin at the time, stating many constructive comments were being made. Ahri Boy responded to Slater’s criticism by stating discussion anywhere else would be a potential “magnet for off-wiki canvassing” of Sanger’s supporters, referring to attempts at rigging discussions through biased notifications outside Wikipedia. Sanger criticized this comment and noted his ban would actually make “canvassing” easier for him.
After one editor expressing support for Sanger said others would “carry the torch” for him, several editors responded with mocking comments referencing a Kirk tribute song released last year after his assassination that contained a similar line. One editor even linked a YouTube video mocking Kirk’s assassination and shows Kirk dancing with late convicted child molester Jeffrey Epstein. The editor posting that video in a previous discussion had supported having “Gaza Holocaust” redirect to Wikipedia’s “Gaza genocide” article. When the “Gaza genocide” article began treating the claims as fact, the editor argued for also treating general allegations of Israel committing genocide against Palestinians as fact.
When another editor supported Sanger and noted Wales opposing the ban, editor “Wound theology” replied by calling Sanger’s proposed reforms “batshit alternatives” and falsely characterizing his thesis advocating site leaders use real names as “we should doxx these 62 editors” when Sanger rejects doxing in the same thesis. The editor further claimed Sanger wanted Wikipedia giving “undue weight” to Christian Zionism and dismissed Wales as a Zionist, concluding “we . . . built Wikipedia” and “we trump all” before adding “Kill your heroes (figuratively).” An admin subsequently closed down the discussion. Last year, Wound theology suggested Wales was “compromised” by “lobbying interests” when he objected to Wikipedia treating “Gaza genocide” allegations as fact.
On the personal discussion page for Sanger’s fellow co-founder Wales, Davenport posted various articles covering Sanger’s ban, including a New York Post editorial condemning the ban. Editor “Carlstak” responded by mocking the piece. Davenport also posted Breitbart’s piece on the ban, having to add brackets inside the link as links to Breitbart News are blocked on Wikipedia due to the outlet being on the site’s spam list. Carlstak raged about the article being mentioned, calling Breitbart readers “addled incels” and labeled the article “degenerate 4chan garbage.”
The broken article link was subsequently removed by administrator “Primefac” and the edits deleted using the “oversight” tool, which prevents even regular admins from viewing material. Such tools have previously been used even to censor outlets deemed reliable on Wikipedia when they used the real names of Wikipedia editors. Primefac claimed in censoring Breitbart News that “there’s usually a good reason for blacklisting things, this is one of those times.” In fact, Breitbart’s addition to the spam list was a unilateral action by then-admin Guy Chapman, who also proposed blacklisting Breitbart using false claims.
After Breitbart’s blacklisting, Chapman systematically removed Breitbart links even when still permitted under the blacklisting despite opposition and cited accounts suspected of belonging to a banned harasser undoing his removals as pretext for the spam list addition, prompting accusations he abused his admin privileges. Chapman later unilaterally changed policy to back his behavior. Breitbart’s reporting about Chapman having advocated banning Donald Trump supporters prompted Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee, often likened to a Supreme Court, to advise Chapman against using admin privileges on political topics. He later resigned as an admin after banning an opponent of the violent far-left Antifa group, though claimed his resignation was unrelated.
Despite the corrupt and erroneous basis for adding Breitbart to the spam list, editor “Newslinger” sought to retro-actively justify it by falsely claiming Breitbart engaged in “doxing” editors. Breitbart has included real names of editors when those names have been prominently disclosed by the editors themselves on Wikipedia or its affiliated sites, which is consistent with Wikipedia’s doxing policy. Newslinger later invoked these false claims against Breitbart when arguing for banning Sanger, citing his support for ending source blacklists. Banning Sanger saw increased support after Newslinger posted about an interview with India’s CNN-News 18 and made numerous false representations about Sanger’s comments during the interview.
Further comments on the personal discussion page for Wales also maligned Sanger. Paul Lee, who edits as “Valjean” on Wikipedia and is the primary author of Wikipedia’s page on the anti-Trump Steele dossier, started a discussion repeating false claims about Sanger supporting an alleged doxing effort by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Wales rejected the same allegations earlier on the same page after Sanger refuted them. Lee cited Sanger’s “support” for the Heritage Foundation to argue he shouldn’t be trusted, labeling the Foundation a “Christian Taliban-type organization” and baselessly claiming they wanted to reinstate stoning for adultery. One editor suggested banning Sanger from all Wikipedia-affiliated sites in response.
Although some editors attempted to discuss reforms of Wikipedia’s disciplinary process in response to Sanger’s ban, these suggestions have shown no signs of gaining ground. Other editors trivialized the ban’s significance, such as in a discussion on mentioning the ban in Wikipedia’s front page “in the news” section. Discussion about deleting a “PolicyScanner” page Sanger created for his proposed WikiProject that editors claimed would “canvass” policy discussions ended with the page blanked and marked “historical” with editors arguing to preserve it as “evidence” against Sanger. The dismissive hostility Sanger has faced mirrors previous attacks he endured for his reform efforts and criticism of Wikipedia’s left-wing bias and are consistent with prior attacks on Wikipedia critics.
(Disclosure: The author has been involved in disputes with several of the parties mentioned in the article)
T. D. Adler edited Wikipedia as The Devil’s Advocate. He was banned after privately reporting conflict of interest editing by one of the site’s administrators. Due to previous witch-hunts led by mainstream Wikipedians against their critics, Adler writes under an alias.