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Wikimedia UK trustee finds his hands tied

Photo of a man who is likely a Wikimedia UK trustee
Photo of a man who is likely a Wikimedia UK trustee
User:Teahot, on Wikimedia Commons, released under terms of GNU Free Documentation License

Earlier this month the new charitable organization, Wikimedia UK, received its government clearance to operate as a non-profit in the United Kingdom. The mission of the Wikimedia UK, a spin-off from the San Francisco-based Wikimedia Foundation, is to promote access to free and open content of the user-generated variety.

However, over the past two days, only a week after Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner paid a visit to London to help kick off the new subsidiary, an alarming series of discoveries have been alleged about one of the trustees who sits on the board of Wikimedia UK. According to the available evidence, Mr. Ashley Van Haeften began his Wikipedia editing career known as User:Ashleyvh. "Ashleyvh" is also the handle that Van Haeften uses on Twitter, LinkedIn, and MyOpenID. After some time, he decided to change the name on his account, so he migrated over to a new account, User:Teahot.

12:09, 15 April 2009 Anonymous Dissident (Talk | contribs) moved User:Ashleyvh to User:Teahot (Automatically moved page while renaming the user "Ashleyvh" to "Teahot")

Van Haeften, as "Teahot", then contributed a photo to Wikipedia of what appears to be himself in a dirty shower, wearing a blindfold, stripped to his underwear, hands bound and chained above him. Teahot then used this image to help illustrate Wikipedia's very important article about "suspension bondage". Reason being, that article had only images of women strapped up in suspension bondage, so a photo of a man would help "balance" that article. Teahot would also discuss how the Wikipedia article about "hogtie bondage" could use a male-focused image. All in the name of free and open content, of course.

A few months later, Teahot would change names again, becoming User:Ash.

02:43, 27 July 2009 Kingturtle (Talk | contribs) moved User talk:Teahot to User talk:Ash (Automatically moved page while renaming the user "Teahot" to "Ash")

Ash -- who, according to all editing patterns was still the same Ashley Van Haeften -- would busily work on adding more and more content to Wikipedia. One article that he started and added to feverishly was called "List of gay bathhouse regulars". Its title would be changed to "List of notable gay bathhouse attendees", but little concern was given to whether or not the people who appeared on that list actually wanted to be memorialized this way. As long as the list was "carefully sourced with good quality published reliable sources", Ash and his editing partner "Benjiboi" tenaciously defended the need for Wikipedia to have this article. (Benjiboi was also infamous on Wikipedia for expanding an entire paragraph in the article about Crisco, extoling its virtues as an anal fisting lubricant.) Content must be free and open, remember? Respect for Crisco's brand managers be damned.

After a while, it was time for another identity switch, and out faded Ash, and into focus came the "new" User:Fæ. "Fæ" was above board about his identity as a trustee of Wikimedia UK. Not surprisingly, with so much experience editing Wikipedia, the purportedly "new" account Fæ was able to achieve Wikipedia Administrator status, because cohorts of his were willing to vouch for the usefulness of the prior accounts, while at the same time agreeing not to disclose them.

What's wrong with a little bondage?

Both the United Kingdom and the United States are free and tolerant countries. What's so wrong about a man chaining himself half-naked to a shower ceiling, scrawling the date and the word "Slave" on his torso, and taking pictures if he wants to? Nothing wrong with that, really, especially when it was all for the promotion of free and gender-neutral knowledge about suspension bondage. And what's good for suspension bondage is also good for hogtie bondage. Wikipedia is all about creating and preserving open and free content for all humanity, of course.

The problem resides in the hypocrisy that accompanies the behavior.

In March 2010, Ash had prominently displayed on his Wikipedia User page (a User page is Wikipedia's equivalent of a Facebook profile) a photo that some might call "artistic", but others might call child pornography. The turn-of-the-century image is that of an adolescent Italian boy, stark naked save for a straw hat, sticking his finger in the mouth of a flying fish. The photo is there for shock value, to be sure. However, in November 2011, Fæ issued a 180-degree about-face, saying that "users on Commons with user space galleries of sexual photos of girls ... seemed a very poor reflection on this project". So, it's okay to post a sexual photo of a boy, but not of girls?

The problem is magnified when deflection and cover-up are the responses to regular people asking simple questions like, "How did you get to be an Administrator so quickly?" and "How did you get selected to be on the board of that new charity that promotes Wikipedia?" and "Didn't you have several previous User accounts?" When Examiner contacted Mr. Van Haeften about this issue, he did not respond. When a Wikipedia editor asked User:Fæ about his previous accounts, Van Haeften dodged the question. And, about that important free content -- the image depicting blindfolded bathhouse suspension bondage -- it was hastily deleted from Wikimedia Commons by a cooperative Administrator only hours after Examiner reached out to its subject with a few questions. Technically, it should have gone through a "content deletion request" discussion process first, but not in this case. Poof! It disappeared from Wikipedia when a reporter had a question about it. The thing is, you can't undo a free and open license, once it's attached to legitimate content like that photo. So, Van Haeften's portrait will live on, and on.

Of course, cover-up and deflection are nothing new for Wikipedia. When the Wikimedia Foundation's Chief Operating Officer was discovered to have been a long-term, multi-count wanted felon, her story appeared in Fox News, on the ABC World News television broadcast, and in various newspapers from Australia to Washington, DC. But when a team of Wikipedia editors sought to memorialize her biography on Wikipedia -- poof! -- the article was made to disappear. When the Wikimedia Foundation's chairman was caught misusing the charity's credit card, Sue Gardner quickly got on CNET News and -- poof! -- "Jimmy has never done anything wrong". When Gardner herself was asked in an online chat by a reporter how much was spent on a research study of donors to her Foundation -- poof! -- the reporter was booted from the chat room, and the question went unanswered.

So, in effect, Ashley Van Haeften's bondage episode and the ensuing cover-up are really just another chapter in the Wikimedia Foundation's long legacy of trying to make bad news disappear. Rather hypocritical for an organization that purports to uphold "free and open" information.

Your comments are welcome below.

Update: Six months later, Van Haeften would go on wiki-trial, where he would ultimately be blocked from participating on the English Wikipedia.

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