I usually do not consider articles which blame the evils of the world on a group of people identified by gender or race or skin tone to be "fair". But that's just me.
One could maybe fault the article for bringing up names and personal information about an issue that the Foundation clearly wanted to keep out of the public discussion.
But it also presents a sizable amount of information that the complaints against Fran could very well have had merit, without drawing any kind of conclusion.
"A picture has emerged over the past half decade of a platform controlled by a small group of white men that is unwelcoming, if not hostile, to newcomers and women."
I still don't have much insight into this issue, but I worry about "too white, too male" being used as a standalone reason that change is needed. When race and gender make-up leads to bias, conflicting interests, or myopia on some issue, then it's a problem that needs addressing. It very often is, but it has to be demonstrated --we can't reason by analogy that all things demographically imbalanced are unjust.
This particular - mostly US centric - discussion is something that is best kept off Hackernews, IMO.
While discussing an individual, nuanced community upheavel in a important part of the modern web is interesting, there are better public forums for generalized, socio-political topics.
(You also picked a single quote , while, as I stated, the article provides much more context)
After re-reading my comment above, I feel I need to clarify that the "But that's just me" quip was directed at the article. But even to me it looks now as if I was directing it at you, which was not my intention. Sorry for that.
"On June 10, the Wikimedia Foundation did something unprecedented in its decade and a half history: It banned a user from the English-language Wikipedia for a year."
No they didn't. From editing it, perhaps; and using one specific persona. Anyone can read wikipedia without being logged in, and it's trivial to create a new account on any site.
That's nitpicking. When someone says they're banned from Twitter it means their account can't be used to make tweets, not that they cannot read Twitter while logged out, or that they can't make a new Twitter account.
Well, from where I sit, it's a huge difference in terms of how much I should care about it. I have a limited amount of outrage and try to ration it to the issues that are the largest societal problems.
The point isn't that there isn't a difference between the two ideas: it is that clearly the word "banned" means the latter, not the former, and so it is strange that anyone could possibly have misinterpreted the sentence.
