Wikipedia Incel article

The Wikipedia Incel article on the world's third largest online encyclopedia should cover the topic of involuntary celibacy, i.e. the condition of not being able to get laid, but in its current state (2021), it is, in fact, the highest-profile virgin-shaming article on the world wide web, beating even Encyclopedia Dramatica's incel article in terms of sensationalism. It is typically the first or second search result on Google when searching 'incel' in Anglo-Saxon countries. The politically biased representation of incels, broad-brushing them as terrorists and misogynists, lead to the creation of this wiki which aims to provide actual information on inceldom.

Wikipedia's incel article used to be more on-topic and accurate, but the tone shifted substantially and useful information and references have been removed since 2010:

• First involuntary celibacy article on Wikipedia from 2004
• First archived article using the shortened word 'incel' from 2010
• Incel article from 2019
• Incel article from 2024

The Wikipedia article on inceldom is by far not the only one that has recently been effectively captured by politically motivated admins.

History

The first English Wikipedia article on Incel came about half-a-decade after the very beginnings of the self-identified community back in the late 90s. Wikipedia debuted on Jan. 15, 2001 and the Incel page was made on July 29, 2004. Using archive.org, you can see that the idea of Incel was presented as a neutral term as well as gender-neutral. It was nicely unbiased. For the next decade, incels could find IncelSupport through Wikipedia and see that it was a place for anyone. Here is an example from 2006: "Yes, hickoryridge, Cernan posted a link to this site on Wikipedia! He's doing a great job, isn't he?"

The incel article was deleted on 13 August 2015, and then again on 8 October 2015, and then finally on 29 December 2015, at which pointed it was also protected against re-creation. After the Toronto van attack, english Wikipedia admin GorillaWarfare re-created the article against broad Wikipedia consensus on 24 April 2018, after it was protected from re-creation. She overrided the protection using her administrator permission. She wrote most of its content from scratch over the course of 5 months as of mid-2018. This was after they couldn't change the 'involuntary celibacy' article enough as the Wikipedia admin's edits on that article were breaking countless wiki rules so it was moved to 'Incel' so they could break less rules. However, the incel page seems to break a rule just from the name of the page alone, specifically, WPNID which says to avoid neologisms if longer terms can suffice.

One of the biggest fights on Wikipedia around the time of Angela Nagle's (the only real academic authority on incels pre-Minassian) BBC appearance was whether or not to keep the wikipedia incel article as describing a real life circumstance, or change it to describe 4chan culture (instead of just having a fucking article on 4chan culture and not politically denying that involuntary celibacy is a thing). On Wikipedia, the anti-science folks won and incel was re-labled as a subculture causing Wikipedia to purge and revert citations about inceldom from the journal of sex research and other peer reviewed articles which took the concept of involuntary celibacy seriously from an academic perspective. However, people generally revert citations from Nagles work or appearances on the wikipedia incel article because they cant have anyone sympathetic cited, only criticism.

GorillaWarfare owns (not just stewards) the incel Wikipedia page as of mid 2018 against wikipedia conduct policy, writing most of the article and constantly reverting unorganized registered users on technicalities about sources like the Donnelly Study, but then allowing those sources to be used later as long as it was introduced by editors she liked. Her actions were alerted to Wikipedia's Arbcom team. After the person went to ANI as told to complain about individuals involved, the person was accused of harassment. [1]. Gorilla had served as a member on Arbcom before, as well as the Wikipedia ANI board, which revealed that the only Wikipedia admins or high-profile editors who hadn't given up on the incel article were explicitly and proudly anti-incel, including former senior designer of the Wikimedia foundation Jorm and fellow Wikipedia admin Gamaliel who posted this misandrist and activist banner on Gorilla's talk page after the Arbcom submission was rejected for review. diff

The degree to which 'anti-incels' are open about their internal Wikipedia activism, shows an internal bias and perhaps an internal coordination (maybe not involving Gorilla) to keep the article non-NPOV that extends to the very top of Wikipedia, empowering anti-incel wiki editors to be open about their article bias. Which would be remarkable given the encyclopedia has over 5 million articles. But nonetheless it is a hot-topic now.

Wikipedia editor DaveDial threatened a topic ban on gender for editor thylacoop5 despite not having admin privileges after thylacoop5 made the following comment: "The following editors: Dave Dial, Jorm, and GorillaWarfare have recently suggested that this article should primarily focus on misogyny and violence and exclude other topics; with the rationale that this is where media coverage primarily focuses. By analogy, Islamism in the media primarily focuses on terrorism by groups such as ISIS/AL-Qaeda. Yet the islamism article has 14 subsections that do not mention militancy. Doesn't that show that there is a precedence on Wikipedia of broadening the focus?".

Post-Minassian Attack Article Content Bias/Tone

Against Wikipedia conduct policy, Wikipedia admins changed the tone of an entire article due to a news event.

The mention of the SPLC article in the intro tries to make all incel communities seem like moral equivalents to the taliban or the KKK, even communities like Incelswithouthate, Incelistan, Braincels, and love-shy.com. This is political smearing of incels. The intro also makes it seem like most self-identified incels encourage violence, when this is a vocal minority of users on 4chan related sites. There is a negative feedback loop where authors for incel pieces come to wikipedia first, get the notion that all communities advocate violence, write another piece, which wikipedia then cites again as another citation of evidence of incels advocating violence. This is also why anti-incels jumped so hard at the chance to re-write the involutary celibacy article, stuff the entire article with news against wikipedia policy, then move the page when they couldn't change it enough.

Much of this problem with the page lies in the faulty assumption that "incel" is a subculture rather than a life circumstance. Because if it's a subculture than it can only be defined in it's relation to 4chan culture and the PSL scene, when it's usage expands beyond 4chan culture and the PSL scene.

Ultimately, if something has been written about incels in an online magazine like the Huff Post that has an lead editor who still hasn't been fired (but was barred from an anti-suicide organization) for tweeting, "Kill all Men", it will be included in the incel article without much investigation.

The article stated for all of 2018 that, "Self-identified incels are mostly white", a claim many incels find dubious given internal demographic research done by forums has shown their forums are almost or at least half non-white. As well as a peer reviewed study that concluded that incel forums were highly ethnically heterogenous. The mods of incels.co are pretty much all non-white for the record. This has since been somewhat corrected.

Wikipedia editor Wopr wrote on the village pump complaining about bias in Wikipedia articles against Wikipedia policy writing, including the incel article in his complaints:

Or take, for example, the article on "incel". Again, the lede is excessively long, and a full-on no-holds-barred assault on these people. The lede feels the need to mention, among other minutia, that these people are "mostly white, male and heterosexual"…Specifically mentioning "white, male and heterosexual" in the lede is quite clearly pushing a certain socio-political agenda. Anybody who denies this is either delusional or deliberately lying. Anybody who is even slightly intellectually honest will admit that there is a political message being shoved in there…" --Wopr

The article also implicitly softboy-shames.

Admin conflict

In late 2018 Wikipedia admin Acroterion challenged GorillaWarfare on the neutrality of the article in the talk section of the article.

See also

• List of Wikipedians
• English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee

External links

• A big shitfest on Wikipedia on whether of not involuntary celibacy is a thing [2]
• Incel, Wikipedia
• Declined Arbcom case about those involved with the 'incel' page breaking Wikipedia rules