Talk:Gamergate (harassment campaign)

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Hot take

Instead of writing in the lede "Gamergate is used as a blanket term for the controversy, the harassment campaign and actions of those participating in it, and the loosely organized movement that emerged around the hashtag.", we could instead be writing "Gamergate is used as a blanket term for the controversy as well as for the harassment campaign and actions of those participating in it." I think this would A) jive a lot better with more contemporary, informed sources and B) be a lot clearer for the reader, given that there's no distinct seperation between the harassment campaign and the identical but sometimes differently marketed 'movement'. I could be completely wrong! I haven't done any edits yet, so let me know if I'm terrible? PeterTheFourth (talk) 02:28, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I think your version is vastly preferable. I also feel (for all the good that does) that it is representative of the current state of play, so to speak. Count me as a supporter. Thanks. Dumuzid (talk) 12:58, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Concur. Go with $GOD.--Jorm (talk) 16:07, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Third. Zero Serenity ^{(talk - contributions)} 21:08, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback people. I've gone ahead and made the edit. PeterTheFourth (talk) 11:52, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Other parts of the article may need to be edited as well in order to keep it neutral and free of bias. Editing articles about things like this is always risky. We can’t make it appear that we are taking sides. Neutrality is key. A lot of allegations were thrown at people on both sides of the issue, and based on the sources I’ve seen, this wasn’t just a simple harassment campaign as some people have claimed it was. I’d also think you need to elaborate on what you mean by “more informed” sources. I also can’t help but notice you put the word ‘movement’ in quotation marks. There was a lot of variation amongst posts tagged #gamergate. Some of these were harassment and trolling, while others appeared to be more concerned with issues within the gaming community. It appears there was indeed a sort of movement beyond the harassment campaign. There’s also the related hashtag #notyourshield, for example, in which minority, women, and LGBT gamers stated that they stood with the gamergate movement against the anti-gamergaters. I think this article needs some work, as well as to be patrolled frequently, as the issues raised by Gamergate are still a hot button issue. Anasaitis (talk) 20:30, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

"the issues raised by Gamergate are still a hot button issue". No, they're not, and they never were. They were artificial issues raised as a smokescreen and everyone knows it now. We're not going to be revisiting this chestnut again.--Jorm (talk) 20:32, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Good afternoon! And I think I speak for most everyone when I say we are all for positive changes and improvements to the article, so suggest away. As for #notyourshield, that's a bit trickier than you present it. See, e.g., this article: [1] Other than that, cheers! Dumuzid (talk) 20:34, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

I understand it’s complicated. That’s part of the reason I mentioned it. As for Jorm’s Accusations that the issues were a smokescreen, I would have to disagree. Gamergate was a complicated controversy. It involved such issues as representation in video games/the gaming community, online harassment, journalistic ethics, and corruption, among other things. Those issues are still very much relevant today. My major concern is that the article remain neutral. I know a lot of people are very opinionated about this issue, but we need to keep such biases out of the articles. One thing I noticed, for example, was that several references were deleted. Some of these references seem important. One of them was one of the articles which angered many of the people that started using the gamergate hashtag. One thing that was important to the controversy was the accusations that the gaming community was being personally attacked. This article, titled “Death of the ‘Gamer’ Identity”, is one of the Articles the pro-gamergate people cited as evidence. The title alone makes it clear why such accusations were made. Articles like this appear in many pro-gamergate videos, with some calling it ”proof” that they were right. I think this article needs to be restored to the references. Anasaitis (talk) 22:21, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Do not re-implement your BLP violations.--Jorm (talk) 22:27, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Jorm, I am well aware of the BLP policy. There was no need to post that on my talk page. My concerns with the article aren’t related to a specific individual. I am concerned with neutrality. Neutral Point of View is one of the three core content policies of Wikipedia. Nothing I am proposing violates the privacy of living people. I am not making sensational claims about the people harassed or those who used the gamergate hashtag. I am not trying to prove or disprove any accusations made about the women who were the targets of harassment. I just want to make sure the article has a neutral point of view. If you feel that I have violated BLP policy, then please explain to me why you feel that way. Anasaitis (talk) 22:49, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Your edit violates BLP by removing the impeccably-sourced statement that the accusations against Quinn were and are false, among other things. To imply an accusation is not false, when in fact it is, is a clear misrepresentation of the sources and thus portrays Quinn in a false light. You obviously have not read BLP, or you have not understood it. Either way, your edit is improper. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 22:54, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation. I was not trying to imply that the accusations were true. I felt that the fact that the claims were labeled “accusations” was sufficient to imply that they were not proven facts. I was in no way attempting to state whether the accusations were true. I merely felt that the article didn’t have an entirely neutral point of view. Thank you for actually trying to discuss this with me. Anasaitis (talk) 23:40, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

No. I'm done giving Gamergators my time or explanations. The onus is on you to convince people that your edits are "neutral" and supported by reliable sources. I'm done talking with you now.--Jorm (talk) 22:55, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

I am not a “Gamergator”. I do not appreciate your baseless name calling. This is a talk page, not some forum where we talk trash to each other. Please explain why you think I am violating the MLP policy. Anasaitis (talk) 23:09, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

The claims are not only "not proven facts", they're also false. By deleting "falsely" in this sentence "#gamergate hashtag users falsely accused Quinn of an unethical relationship", the implication is that the accusations might be true (they are not). You claim to be making the article more neutral, but you're skewing it towards the POV of Gamergaters. --ChiveFungi (talk) 23:48, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Anasaitis, just a quick note on our Neutral Point of View policy. It doesn't mean that we're supposed to tell every side like those ProCon books. NPOV says that we as editors are supposed to neutrally summarize (i.e., fairly, accurately, without bias, etc.) what reliable sources say about the subject, and that we're supposed to do so in a way that is roughly proportional to the weight of those sources. Our article reflects what virtually all reliable sources discuss, which is (a) harassment of mostly women in the games industry, (b) ethics claims that have been dismissed as trivial, conspiracy theories, or groundless, and (c) that this is a right-wing, anti-feminist and anti-diversity cultural backlash. Whether you or I or anyone actually agrees with that assessment doesn't matter. We're here to summarize what reliable sources say, that's all. Woodroar (talk) 00:00, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Nuclear take

Rename the article from 'Gamergate controversy' to 'Gamergate harassment campaign'.

Pros:

• More descriptive.

Cons:

• Less direct use in sources. (somewhat due to Wikipedia's own article being titled as such I'd imagine.)

There are likely other pros and cons, and I think 'more descriptive' has a lot more weight as an argument than my two word sentence gives. Thoughts? PeterTheFourth (talk) 00:09, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Endorse.--Jorm (talk) 00:29, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

...seriously? That's like saying WW2 should be renamed "Nazi invasion of France". Massive underselling of the content of this article, or the focus of a significant amount of the content. Koncorde (talk) 00:50, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I think the current title is a bit like labeling WW2 (the event) as 'Nazi controversy', if that makes sense. PeterTheFourth (talk) 00:54, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I'll be the first to say "fucking horseshit" and get it over with then. I really can't believe this is even a suggestion, it's so fruit loop and utterly disconnected with any discussion over the last 4 years that I actually cannot fathom what has prompted it. Koncorde (talk) 01:46, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Ouch, dude. PeterTheFourth (talk) 02:11, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't think I can make my opinion of this any stronger. To reduce this down to "harassment campaign" ignores a significant level of the content. This seems like an attempt to force a POV. I can't see how anyone else can see this as anything but that. If this passes via straw poll then you will have single handedly fucked any pretence at 'balance'. Koncorde (talk) 10:13, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

"If hundreds of thousands of suns were to rise at once into the sky, their radiance might resemble the effulgence of this take." -- Bg 11.12, basically. I'd like to support the change on some level, but I don't recall seeing the phrase very much. I have been known to be wrong, however! Dumuzid (talk) 01:02, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

How about simply 'Gamergate', which is what it is widely known as? The 'gate' part is a derivative of Watergate, and Watergate has always been known as Watergate, not 'The Watergate controversy'. It is popular shorthand that encompasses the notion of controversy, notoriety, etc. Gamergate accomplishes that entirely in just the one word. Anastrophe (talk) 01:48, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

There is already an article called "Gamergate", and in 20 years this little harassment campaign will be a footnote but the Ant will remain.--Jorm (talk) 01:52, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

The Gamergate ant won that competition on day 1. It was then a debate between "controversy" versus "movement" with entrenched editors ignoring the very sources used to avoid referring to it as a movement at all costs (when I did the raw pull-up of the first 60 or so articles, a significant majority used the term in some fashion). As such it stayed a "controversy" as the only thing notable about it was the controversial aspects of GamerGate. Koncorde (talk) 01:55, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Then I'd say the current name is entirely accurate as-is. Anastrophe (talk) 01:57, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I'd support that rename. Calling it a "controversy" is vague and makes it sound like it wasn't purely a harassment campaign. I imagine it was named "controversy" in an attempt at being balanced, but it seems like false balance to me. --ChiveFungi (talk) 03:04, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Are we reading the same article? It clearly was not "purely a harassment campaign" according to the article. Attempting to reduce it to that seems like an attempt to introduce 'false balance', rather than keeping it neutral according to the sources. Anastrophe (talk) 03:22, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

The history section has three headings; 'origins', 'further harassment', and 'coordination of harassment'. Sounds like it's about a harassment campaign to me my guy. PeterTheFourth (talk) 03:51, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Interesting. I see quite a lot of actual content other than just three article headings. Let me double-check....yep, there's an actual article here, not simply a select subset of all of the article headings used reductively to imply that they are the whole of the article. The article would be much more readable if we got rid of all that superfluous content. Anastrophe (talk) 03:58, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

They're also about the harassment campaign, and the responses to it. About the only section that isn't is the 'Debate over journalism ethics allegations' - I could be wrong in the article primarily being about the harassment campaign, but I'd need something more convincing than 'nuh-uh', y'know? PeterTheFourth (talk) 05:06, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

The article is primarily Gamergate as a whole, however the 'notable' element of Gamergate was the 'controversy' that came about due to the allegations of harassment and the wider uptake on the social aspects within the industry. That this article is written like a bunch of navel gazers got together on their lunch break to write about their pet peeve is why this article is a hot mess (and has been for so long). Unfortunately since day one it was made quite clear that any attempt to include anything but the narrative harassment would not pass the reliable sources test, which is fine. However when the same sources used a particular phrase (movement) the most bullshit arguments ever seen appeared and / or those arguments were never even taken seriously.

Now after 4 years of gerrymandering the content, there is an attempt to reduce again the scope of the article purports to be about (because that what this does).

This should have been written as an encyclopedic article from day 1. Koncorde (talk) 10:13, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Is your issue the current state of the article, or the proposal to change the article? It's unclear. If you have concerns about the article beyond my dumbass take, you should start a new section probably. I'd rather keep this one about my suggestion. PeterTheFourth (talk) 10:46, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Both, they are one and the same thing. Article has always been a hot mess built around a perpetual edit wars and POV push rather than encyclopedic content. It's always been gerrymandered into its current catastrophic version that reads like a laundry list of internet drama. Changing the article to "harassment campaign" does not fix the underlying issue, it just emphasises how truly terrible this article is and has been since SPA and co were allowed to drive wikipedia. Koncorde (talk) 12:26, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

@Anastrophe: Could you point to some content in the article that indicates Gamergate was anything more than a harassment campaign? The "Debate over journalism ethics allegations" section talks about the claims made by Gamergaters about ethics, but the general gist of the section is that the claims were unfounded ("Many of Gamergate's claims have been rejected as ill-founded and unsupported."), the claims were only there to provide an excuse for harassment ("After analyzing a sample of tweets related to Gamergate, Newsweek concluded that it was primarily about harassment rather than ethics, stating that the sample "suggests that ... contrary to its stated goal, Gamergate spends more time tweeting negatively at game developers than at game journalists"."), and that the Gamergaters were ignoring actual issues with AAA games in favor of targeting indie developers ("Alex Goldman of NPR's On the Media criticized Gamergate for targeting female indie developers rather than AAA games publishers"). --ChiveFungi (talk) 11:48, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Don't look to the current article if you want to get a sense of ground truth for the sake of discussion. The current article is a poor, incomplete, biased, erroneous, and misleading presentation of the topic. A much improved version can be found at [2]. An RfC on the draft found no consensus for replacing the article all at once, but a general sense that it could be improved by importing text piecemeal. I've had no time for that project, but it should get underway this summer. Rhoark (talk) 15:28, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

That is... somewhat contested. The linked draft has major POV issues and constitutes an attempt to minimize the harassment campaign. It is not usable. Artw (talk) 21:06, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Also have misgivings over this version, it repeats much of the issues this existing version has in many ways. Koncorde (talk) 21:32, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Also, the conclusion only supported improvements to reflect the less controversial aspects like simplifying the language and structure, which to my knowledge have already been implemented. That was, after all, a year and half ago, and the article has seen significant progress since then. More importantly, the core conclusion of the RFC was that the draft itself was biased (not the current version - only the stylistic complaints were supported): However, there is a huge, colossal, immovable objection to this draft, and it is that the draft is seen as a whitewash. I don't feel there's anything useful to be gained from it at this point. --Aquillion (talk) 21:57, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I'll grant that there have been improvements, but there's much more yet to do. Rhoark (talk) 22:56, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

• FWIW I did track coverage for a while last year with the aim of doing an article update. I fell behind on that a little but I think it shows that as time goes on coverage has pretty much settled on discussing Gamergate as a harassment campaign and as an online trolling wind of the 'alt-right [3]. I doubt results would be much different if we did a similar survey of coverage in current sources today. Artw (talk) 00:41, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Best sources

There are certain lines of argument that have been rehashed so often on this page as to become predictable. Almost every difficult question eventually comes down to aspects of the NPOV policy. One or another person will feel some thing is false balance, or some other thing is cherrypicked. Often these allegations are made without any serious effort to substantiate the truth of the matter. Luckily, most of these arguments can be tested and subjected to falsification. We have the sources. The prescribed treatment for NPOV disuputes is WP:BESTSOURCES.

In particular it seems that the only way to really settle questions of weight will be using the best sources' assignment of weight. What I mean is, there are claims multiply attested by the likes of CNN, BBC, and NPR but are still alleged to be cherrypicking and false balance. What can anyone say to that? The environment is such that an editor's subjective assessment of weight across the whole body of sources will never find a consensus. In contrast, the weight given to a claim within any single source is much less subjective. It's right there on the page. The question of what the best sources are still has an element of subjectivity, but there are policies and guidelines for that. The theory that I'm working under is that a two-step process of identifying best sources, followed by identifying weight within those sources, still affords much less ground for subjectivity than making an argument about due weight out of the blue.

So what are the best sources? I laid out my thoughts on that about a year ago[4]. This included some scholarly articles, as well as many journalistic sources "of record" like the New York Times and The Guardian. There was pushback on that selection. Actual substantive criticisms were hard to elicit, but a few principles could be gleaned from the community's feedback.

1. Scholarly journal articles are to be preferred over journalistic sources.
2. Journalistic sources are to be preferred over online supplements or other scholarly output outside main journal articles.
3. Sources recent enough to form a broad overview are to be preferred over those in the thick of the controversy's origin.

Again, since I know what a suspicious lot editors can be, these are not rules I devised to give my arguments an edge. This is the feedback I got from the opposition last year. The take-home message is that our best sources will be recent journal articles.I add to that another stipulation on what it takes to be a best source for the particular purpose of assigning due weight: the source needs to actually be principally about Gamergate. An article that mentions the controversy in passing on the third page might have something useful to say, but it does not and cannot say how much weight to give that one thing in relation to everything else in the topic area.

To my knowledge, there are just four sources that pass all hurdles:

• Mortensen, Torill Elvira (2016). "Anger, Fear, and Games: The Long Event of #GamerGate". Games and Culture. doi:10.1177/1555412016640408.
• Perreault, Gregory P.; Vos, Tim P. (September 30, 2016). "The GamerGate controversy and journalistic paradigm maintenance". Journalism. doi:10.1177/1464884916670932. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• Braithwaite, Andrea (October 7, 2016). "It's About Ethics in Games Journalism? Gamergaters and Geek Masculinity". Social Media + Society. doi:10.1177/2056305116672484.
• Salter, Michael (February 14, 2017). "From geek masculinity to Gamergate: the technological rationality of online abuse". Crime, Media, Culture. doi:10.1177/1741659017690893.

That is not to say there are not or cannot be other sources considered best. If there are, I just don't know of them. Nor are these selected according to my personal preference. The criteria are exactly and only what I outlined above. The latter two in fact are not at all in alignment with my personal views on the topic. The first order of business is to find some consensus on whether these four are our best sources.

Rhoark (talk) 00:42, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

• Haven't we been down this line of argument before? Other than in the rejected RfC? At any rate, I reject any bulk rejection of the current articles sources. No reason you can't make concrete suggestions based on them, of course, but I think if they're suggestions that go contrary to other, less obscure sources you are indeed going to meet some pushback on that. Artw (talk) 01:02, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Yeah, I think wanting to remove mainstream, high-quality news coverage from an article about a (comparatively) recent event - which I assume is the gist of this suggestion? - is an obvious nonstarter. And, as I've been pointing out elsewhere, it is not always true that recent academic papers are strictly superior sources to everything else. WP:RS warns against relying too heavily on individual recent papers, for instance, especially in a rapidly-evolving field; often, secondary sources reporting or covering them are preferable. They're very valuable, but they still have to be used with some caution (like any source.) And WP:BESTSOURCES itself certainly doesn't support the idea that eg. the New York Times, Inside Higher Ed, etc. are not best-quality sources (it suggests looking "online, in books, and in journals", not exclusively in journals.) That said, there's no harm in looking for more academic sources, since many new ones have appeared recently. Here's a few from a quick Google Scholar search. I haven't looked at these (or where they were published) in-depth, so they may not all be ideal, but... well, just glancing over them should give you the general idea. If anything they are far more blunt than our current article. Also note that these aren't cherry-picked; I did a Google Scholar search for articles from this year referencing Gamergate and grabbed the ones from the first page or so that seemed relevant (ie. not about ants, and not just mentioning it in passing). --Aquillion (talk) 01:49, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
    • This is not about removing anything, least of all the NYT. This started because of people copping the attitude that claims straight out of NYT were inherently undue or cherrypicking - that they could not be included in the page, regardless of what other material was brought along with it. You can look back to the beginning, "The instigators of the campaign are allied with a broader movement that has rallied around the Twitter hashtag #GamerGate, a term adopted by those who see ethical problems among game journalists and political correctness in their coverage. The more extreme threats, though, seem to be the work of a much smaller faction and aimed at women."[5] Or you can go with the post-Trump epoch, "But as #GamerGate, as it came to be called, grew, it coalesced into a movement that looked awfully political. Despite their self-presentation as ciphers, trolls have always had a point of view, and #GamerGate offered a platform for a whole coalition to express its distrust of media, resentment toward women and anger at progressive critiques of racism and misogyny."[6] Either way, the story is the same. Gamergate contains harassment, but Gamergate is more than harassment. It is and always has been a political movement. I'll put it to you straight, I want this article to reflect all of the sources mentioned in this thread, and right now it's not doing that. Knowing that, how would you like me to define best sources or due weight? Rhoark (talk) 03:24, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
      • Rhoark, I'm not sure you're making a useful distinction. Throughout the history of this mess, ideology/politics has served as "justification" for harassers and haters. --Orange Mike | Talk 03:39, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
      • I’ve not read the papers you mention, but glancing at the abstracts of them I’m not really seeing much to support the “Gamergate is bigger than a harassment campaign” angle you seem to be going for here. Quite the opposite TBH. Would agree with OrangeMike that the culture wars/alt-right politics angle are an aspect of the harrasment campaign, not something that makes it something more. As a “political movement” its only really notable as a precursor to something else. Artw (talk) 04:01, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
      • You're the one who asked for me to find up-to-date sources, though. Let me go over the ones I just found and, for the ones with easy-to-find descriptions, pull them out. (And, I'll reiterate, this is every relevant result I found within the first few pages of a Google Scholar search for coverage from this year):
        • In 2014, there was an escalation of online harassment against women involved in gaming. In a phenomenon that came to be known as #Gamergate, female gamers, reviewers and developers were targeted by often-anonymous participants within the games, as well as on a number of websites and through social media. First sentence of the abstract.
        • Nieborg and Foxman discuss the event known as Gamergate, a niche misogynistic online movement primarily targeting female game developers and critics. First sentence of the abstract again.
        • The 2014 harassment campaign known as GamerGate initially targeted... It then goes on to briefly cover the same stuff as our history. First mention of Gamergate in the article.
        • Gamergaters, a group predominantly made up of the industry’s constructed gamer identity, organized on anonymous message boards like 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit, as well as social media site Twitter. They planned a misogynistic harassment campaign against Quinn that included rape and death threats. Main description of Gamergate.
        • In this article, we examine how GamerGate trapped both its unwilling targets and willing participants in an unending cycle of rhetorical invention through a mechanism of aggressive, hostile, mob-like activism (Ames 48; Massanari 334; Mortensen 4-5). Influential elements within GamerGate, we argue, specifically subverted the functionality of Twitter as a corporate media platform in order to test a variety of loosely connected arguments to see what would resonate within whatever aggrieved audience the GamerGate collective could find - first sentence. (This article is particularly interesting because it analyzes the underlying tactics behind the campaign; more than the others, I think this one could add useful stuff to the article, unrelated to this broader big-picture debate over framing.)

And that's just from the sources I found just now, for just this year, putting aside all the ones already in the article. Meanwhile, that particular NYT article is from October 2014 (when events had only just gotten started), and, partially because of that, goes into far less depth than our other sources. The other one... look, I'd probably classify First Word as an opinion column, and it only discusses Gamergate in passing, but even if you don't, are you sure that's what you want to go with? Do you want the article to say that some of Gamergate's main driving forces were "distrust of media, resentment toward women and anger at progressive critiques of racism and misogyny" and that one of their main goals was to "silence feminist critics?" (In fact, I'd argue that that cultural dimension is mostly covered already in the existing article in our "social and cultural implications" section.) --Aquillion (talk) 05:23, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

• As I expected, when rubber meets road we switch from, "I don't see why we wouldn't consider NYT among the best sources," to "here's why NYT is not the best source." That's why this section exists. I want people to participate in forming a rubric for best sources that is independent of what the sources say. Several of those you linked looked important, and I'll be diving deeper into those in the coming days. Rhoark (talk) 14:21, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

This appears to be some dorky point scoring excercise and not a good faith attempt to improve the article. As such this conversation should probably be closed. Artw (talk) 15:47, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

• I mean, we've discussed that particular article over and over ad-nauseum, so you cannot be unaware of the problems with relying as heavily on it as you want to. The New York Times is a top-quality source, but obviously we're not going to write the entire article around a single line from a single piece from near the very beginning of the controversy, especially when it only touches on things in passing and makes it clear it didn't do much research into that point; "...seem to be the work..." doesn't carry much weight when contrasted with the extensive in-depth analysis later sources did into how the campaign was structured. That said, if you're going to read one in particular, I strongly recommend the Dark Patterns one, which seems particularly insightful with regard to how the whole thing was structured and why. It ties together a lot of the observations older sources made at the time (with regards to the ever-shifting claims and vague demands and the like) and explains why it was that way - like a few other sources, it notes that well-meaning people ended up getting dragged into it, but it goes into much more detail on the specific tools and methods that were used to manipulate them. My feeling (based on reading it) is that a lot of the "political" stuff you think you saw was really just what that paper describes as the result of how Influential elements within GamerGate, we argue, specifically subverted the functionality of Twitter as a corporate media platform in order to test a variety of loosely connected arguments to see what would resonate within whatever aggrieved audience the GamerGate collective could find. You saw things within it that appealed to you because the goal was to use those as bait for the purpose of instituting an us-versus-them environment from the outset. The targets of GamerGate quickly become a captive audience in GamerGate’s activist supraplatform with little choice to exit the GamerGate experience short of leaving Twitter. The hostility also created a bait and switch scenario for any in GamerGate who expected productive activism and engagement as the complete lack of consensus making tools within GamerGate kept the activism within a perpetual stage of invention, constantly churning loosely related arguments with no capacity for resolution. That is, people did, in fact, enter their sphere with the expectation of productive activism, but that this was always intended by the instigators (from the start, in the original planning documents) as a bait-and-switch intended to push towards not some set policy outcome or achievable condition, but rather the unconditional defeat and apology from an ever-growing list of enemies for behavior that is almost omnipotent as described above. --Aquillion (talk) 21:20, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

• I knew full well it would not be accepted to use NYT in that fashion. Apologies for any gamesmanship, but it seems the quickest way to head off the idea that I'm engaging in some kind of subterfuge by suggesting some sources are less authoritative than others was to provoke someone else to argue the same line. Maybe we can agree there are suboptimal sources, including some from the NYT. Two things that can mark sources as not being the best are that they are opinion or that they are from 2014. Right now, such sources are carrying more than half the article. That includes every source cited for a claim of the form "Gamergate is..." or "Gamergate was..." It's possible to do better at this point. We can do better at using sources that have the authority to outline the controversy, and we can do better within the article about making clear statements in place of insinuations. I've listed some sources that can help, and you have as well. Scholarly orientation is an edge, but if people can cite more recent news publications that can hang in the same crowd as these journal articles, all the better. Rhoark (talk) 23:16, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
• I don't want to soapbox about the topic, but in response to speculation about where I stand on things: the first thing I ever heard about Gamergate was when the "Gamers are over" articles came out. From the start, there was already a "them" who seemed to have knives out for "us". I don't see how any 4chan trolls could have done anything to engineer that unless they managed to ghostwrite for Leigh Alexander. I think that people who say women are not gamers or who say women are not accepted by gamers are wrong. I also don't think people who share this view are automatically aligned with harassment. My view is a view that's represented in the best sources, and it's a view I want to see echoed in the Wikipedia article to the maximum extent policy will permit. Rhoark (talk) 23:29, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

• Do you have any concrete suggestions for changes based on the academic articles you provided initially? If not we should probably re-hat this. Artw (talk) 23:36, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

• Rhoark, I honestly don't doubt your good faith. But do you see why "I measure the chronology from my own awareness" is troubling as a basis? Moreover, the entire concept of "best" sources strikes me as not particularly useful. While some sources are undoubtedly better than others, robbed of context, the whole discussion seems a bit unmoored to me. That being said, if you have any suggestions for improvement, I am all ears. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 00:17, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

• I understand what you're saying about "us" vs "them", which was very central to the mindset that Gamergate was structured to encourage. Again, the Dark Patterns source describes that as exactly the tactic that the people who organized this used to rope people in. GamerGate’s use of operational and community-building tweets reflect a platform with a clear us (GamerGate) versus them (feminists, critics, the media) nature. By roping people into this, they ensured an experience that would keep people in the fold: Each event would become its own happening, serving to fuel the cycle of news-promotion-discussion again and again without any move toward resolution nor any expression of achievable goals or end game. Over time, this cycle of accusation and amplification would result in a noisy hashtag where dozens of targets and claims of purpose existed: anti-feminism, media criticism, personal vendetta, and opposition to any number of progressive policies and beliefs that might feed the accusation-amplification model. In this way, GamerGate existed in a perpetual state of invention, spinning off argument after argument with no interest in selecting a consensus cause other than maintaining its amplified, aggressive, combative, and noisy existence. An initial wave of harassment resulted in responses that were then spun as corrupt collusion in order to draw people in; and by intentionally encouraging unity under a banner that continued such "noise", the organizers ensured that anyone who signed on to the "Gamergate experience" would face criticism drawn by that behavior, tying them further and further into the backlash against this vaguely-defined group of enemies. An initial wave of harassment prompted a backlash that was spun as an attack on all gamers and was used to draw people in, who were then encouraged to represent themselves as part of a faceless anonymous mass; then, when some members of this mass behaved badly, the backlash was further used to solidify the "us-vs-them" mindset. Through this process, the end-state of Gamergate essentially became (as that paper describes) the absolute humiliation and defeat of this vast, nebulous, ever-changing other - a goal specifically intended to be unobtainable and to keep the noise machine running for as long as possible. Not everyone who was roped into this intended to produce a wave of harassment, definitely (and our current article doesn't imply that that that's the case); but the larger structure (as laid out in the planning documents) was intentionally constructed to produce noise and harassment, not to actually achieve any coherent or meaningful goals. The people who were drawn in by those goals were being used as part of a campaign of harassment (and, later, once conservative media personalities latched onto it, recruitment) that meticulously spun together a web of fictions that would continuously justify further entrenchment and escalation. The organizers spun together a vague "them" for you out of a random smattering of articles; but this was mostly a rhetorical invention aimed at pushing buttons in your head (and was the result of an ever-changing assortment of arguments to see which ones would mobilize the most people), not something that reflected reality. And on this point, I feel the sources are in near-unanimous agreement. The only disagreement I see is the degree to which some sources emphasize that it was entirely directionless, with the goals being purely about harassment; and those that emphasize that it was the first move by what would eventually become the Alt-Right, testing a random assortment of lines of attack that would mobilize people towards their general goals and against their perceived enemies. That, we could probably go into more detail on in the article. But... look, I honestly, truly appreciate the fact that you were willing to lay bare the way you got roped into it yourself, since it does directly relate to what you want to add to the article and why it can't happen. The "other" you're talking about isn't real, not in the sense you mean. It was intentionally nebulous and poorly-defined, and at this point we have many sources detailing how and why that was. I get what you're trying to add to the article now - this nebulous "us-vs-them" feeling, this idea of Gamergate as a grand crusade against a poorly-defined but infinitely malicious Other - and while, yes, we can cover that in some form, outside of maybe "anti-feminism" (which is already well-covered in the article, I think), the sources that really take a hard look at that "grand crusade" feeling describe it as a tactic that was used to manipulate you. --Aquillion (talk) 02:14, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

• It's definitely a phenomenon that has happened. As a source, Dark Patterns is probably a good explainer on that. It should find its way into the article. As I've tried to explain, you miss the mark using the second person to towards me w.r.t. manipulation by 4chan trolls - unless you conjecture that the trolls are in the driver's seat when it comes to Leigh Alexander or even more mainstream sources that continue to this day to try to cast a very wide net of collective guilt for what happened to Zoe Quinn. Don't overlook how much that kind of behavior contributes to polarization, without which the trolls would have very little substance to work with. This is something that sources do touch on, and should be addressed better (within the confines of due weight). That's beside any edits immediately on the table, so if you'd like to continue on this theme it might be better on my talk page. Rhoark (talk) 19:57, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

suggestion per sources

Rather than talking about the sources, make some suggestions towards edits with the proper citations. I don't think anything appropriate will be turned down. I, also, think that some of your suggestions have the potential to compress some of the overcitations. -- ForbiddenRocky (talk) 04:15, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Honestly, based on the above description, I'm wondering if it might be worth combining and revising the "Gamergate activities" and "Debate over ethics allegations" sections into a single section describing Gamergate's broad tactics, structure, and membership. We have much better sources on those than we did when those sections were written (and a lot of the latter-day academic coverage seems to focus more on that aspect) - less talking heads arguing back and forth, less blow-by-blow from individual 2014 activities, more "these things were used to move these people; these are the core channels where it was planned; these are the buttons it pushed at various times to get people moving." And, also, we could probably stand to remove / replace some of the "talking head" quotes throughout the article - that is, quotes from people who are neither directly connected to the controversy nor relevant experts nor major figures in a relevant field. There was a period when people would drop op-eds into the article to argue points back and forth by proxy, which I don't think really improved it. --Aquillion (talk) 06:27, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. Artw (talk) 06:50, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I wish I shared your optimism on that point, but I'll continue on a cautious timetable. I understand the sentiment of "just show me the edits" when conversation gets abstract, but it will be easier to navigate the inevitable disagreements if we maximize safe common ground. Clearing out some cruft like Aquillion has started to do is a great step in the right direction. It won't take long though to pick all the low hanging fruit, and then we'll need answers to some thorny questions. As I've mentioned, most of the article is supported by suboptimal sources. There are better sources that can re-support essentially the same claims, but doing that properly will involve re-contextualizing in places. Realistically, that's going to cause some fights.

Some things I've tried to introduce in the past have been called cherrypicking, and I want to make sure I'm responding to those concerns by having an open and transparent conversation about sources. I'd like us to develop a set of sources that we can agree is not just high-quality on an individual source basis, but also as a collection is reasonably complete coverage of the topic. If the set is trusted as a set then there's no cause for saying any source in that set is cherrypicked. A claim can still be cherrypicked out of a trusted set, but then there's an easily verifiable process to solve the cherrypicking by pulling in whatever else it takes to contrast or contextualize the first claim.

For now I will digest the additional sources Aquillion linked. I'll be watching the pruning with interest. Rhoark (talk) 20:50, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Sources