Talk:Gamergate (harassment campaign)

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A CJR article that identifies the problem with this article's tone

Following a brief discussion on my talk page about the recent NYTimes source I added, I came across this Nov 2015 article from the Columbia Journalism Review by one of its staff writers. Why some SPJ leaders are engaging Gamergate.

Of itself, discussing about SPJ and Airplay, this has some points we could add, but I would like to stress what is discussed in the latter half of the article, specifically on CJR's observations on the reporting of GG (to explain why SPJ is involved). Specifically, this section: Muddled identity aside, mainstream observers have little inclination to revisit the issue. A number of top journalists in the field declined to speak to CJR on the record because they feared validating Gamergate as something more than a collection of trolls. One described the hashtag not as a movement with goals, but rather as a platform “used by anyone who wants to say something.” Another feared it would inject false equivalency into the debate: “There is no Gamergate and anti-Gamergate,” he says. “That’s like saying people who don’t collect postage stamps are anti-postage stamps.”

What this says aligns with what many of the right-wing political sources have said as well as the concerns several editors like myself have raised before: that mainstream coverage of GG is not neutral for our purposes of writing an article under NPOV. This stresses the need that much of what the mainstream press has had to say are claims, rather than facts. The media wants GG to go away and give them no credibility, so as CJR reports, they have no interest in neutral coverage, but we do, or more specifically we are required to do so to be a neutral work.

Now, this doesn't mean we bury the actual harassment that has happened, nor ignore the various other ways the GG movement has been criticized and condemned ("bullying tactics" and "aggressive" are completely fair terms to describe their actions), nor give extra time and weight to some of the GG claims particularly those that venture into BLP territory. But what we have to be aware of, going off Rhoark's previous source analysis, is that when you dig into the most reliable sources, we cannot take the mainstream press's claim that the movement is a harassment campaign, and recognize that the only evidenced and factual association between the movement and the harassment is the common #GG hashtag. There is very likely a vocal minority of the GG movement that likely engaged in harassment as well as third parties trolling everyone, these hypotheses we can source to RSes. But repeating as fact the press's desire to paint the entire movement as an harassment campaign does not work given the above CRJ comment and our NPOV policy. We at en.wiki need to play the middle ground, where we can attribute the claim that GG is a harassment campaign to the mainstream press but we cannot write the article with that tone that they the movement is guilty of harassment as a whole.

And to keep this in mind, citing the press's claim that GG is a harassment claim and citing the movement (and other sources) that they are not does not tie us to any factual stance on the matter; we are only documenting "He said, she said" parts of the controversy without committing to who is right or wrong.

To take up a more neutral tone across this entire article does require redrafting a lot of the article, so at the present time I can't propose any single change, only that we must recognize that this article is not an appropriate encyclopedic neutral article in light of what we know the press has treated this issue. It is important to identify the central nature that harassment has played in GG, but we have to be fully aware that the agencies that have engaged in that is very much unclear and certainly should not be attributed to the movement in WP's voice and tone as the press has done. --MASEM (t) 16:36, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia is supposed to be a reflection of what the reliable sources say on a given issue. You say "[w]e at en.wiki need to play the middle ground." That is, in and of itself, advocacy. We should play the ground given us, and keep on reflecting the reliable sources. Dumuzid (talk) 16:44, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

No, we don't repeat advocacy nor tone when we know that's an issue; striving to keep a topic's coverage neutral is not advocacy. If I were arguing "We should present GG as completely innocent of any wrongdoing", that would be inappropriate advocacy.

Nowhere in policy does it say "reflection of sources". We summarize sources in a neutral manner, meaning that we have to adjust the tone if it does not present the topic in an encyclopedic manner, hence all the advice in NPOV about how to handle contested statements. Now per WEIGHT/UNDUE, the mainstream's opinion of GG will receive the most coverage but we have to make sure that's asserted as opinion. --MASEM (t) 16:54, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Best of luck with your advocacy, Masem. Dumuzid (talk) 16:57, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Neither the quoted section nor the full article say that mainstream coverage isn't neutral or fact-based. It does say "[a] number of top journalists" made some statements about GamerGate that, as far as we know, are based on fact-based research and reporting. Or, you know, mere opinion. We don't know because the source doesn't say. And since these "top journalists" aren't even named, their work may or may not be used as references in this article. Again, we don't know because the source doesn't say. Woodroar (talk) 20:14, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Nothibg here of note, "opportunist latches on to GamerGate as means of self promotion" being half the history of GamerGate. As for the notion that it's grounds for a rewrite along the exact same lines that Masem always suggests: No, Masem, just no. We are simply never, ever, ever going to decide to suspend Wikipedias policies for this one article, and you really need to drop that WP:STICK. Artw (talk) 22:49, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

The mainstream media's bias has been often overstated. High quality mainstream sources don't dance around the harassment, but they are cautious about connecting it with people who self-identify as Gamergate. A very neutral and balanced encyclopedia article can be written without the slightest bending of reliable sourcing or due weight policy. If anything, the average stature of sources used could stand to be higher. I'm continuing to work on doing just that. If there's any problem in the mainstream, its that they fail to understand chan/gaming/meme culture so can't for example distinguish a legitimate threat from navy seal copypasta. That's why a lot of key facts have to be mined out of more specialized publications like Polygon or Game Politics. Rhoark (talk) 05:49, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

I have made this suggestion elsewhere, but I'll repeat it here. There is a fair bit of evidence, theoretical, practical and anecdotal (see for instance this), that NPOV on Wikipedia is usually achieved by forking, not within-article revisions. Most articles change little from their initial slant. This article was initially based on press reports, and they were overwhelmingly negative, for good reasons. If you wish to change things, I suggest forking off stuff to concentrate on and hopefully expand on some aspects. The readable prose size for this page is 57kb, which is rather large side (the recommended size for readability is 30-50kb). I am sure, if people are interested, some of the aspects can be expanded in a more nuanced way. However, my feeling is that changing this article itself would be a rather uphill task, if not impossible. Kingsindian ♝ ♚ 07:53, 2 June 2016 (UTC)