Talk:Gamergate (harassment campaign)

RFC: Can an article be too biased in favor of near-universal sourcing of one side of an issue? (Gamergate controversy)

See /RFC1

Is there anyway we could place a sort of warning or notice?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

A lot of information in this article is biased and much of it is very opinionated. Rather than continuously argue about who's right and who's wrong, is there anyway we could place a sort of warning to alert readers that these events are ongoing and that a definite conclusion hasn't been reached, and that the contents of this article are highly susceptible to change? It's apparent to me that the information being provided is too subjective and the premature conclusions one draws from reading the article do not adequately cover both sides of the story. Even if one side is misogynistic or the other side is devoid of ethics, both need to be given fair treatment despite how the other side feels. --Digman14 (talk) 04:36, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

We already have one: the "neutrality is disputed" message at the top. Random the Scrambled ^(?) 04:44, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

That is incorrect. The notice that is on there at the moment is intended to highlight immediate and serious concerns with an article, that the tagger is then expected to raise on the talk page. It is not meant to be used as it currently is being used, as a sort of Scarlet Letter to express a minor it point-of-view. Almost 2 weeks ago I noted this, and stated that the tag would be removed on the 6th. That has no passed, and I will give it until tomorrow, then it comes off and it will stay off. The majority of reliable sources at present show "Gamergate" as a controversy about harassment of women in the gaming industry, with a counter-argument of "it's about ethics" to be a secondary and minor point-of-view. Several editors have presented arguments to reverse that, but they have failed to achieve consensus. Tarc (talk) 05:00, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

No it wont, if you take it off, i will put it back in again. Because you DO NOT DECIDE that. --Torga (talk) 05:20, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Editors, especially ones not here for a valid purpose, will not be allowed to misuse project tags to advance their point-of-view agendas. As I noted above, the tag is used to draw attention to an immediate concern, bring it to the talk page, where the matter is resolved. The article cannot be moved away form its current focus on misogyny and harassment, as that is based on solid reliable sourcing as this project requires. Those who have tried have had over a month now to make their case, but have failed to achieve consensus. 1 month is far, far, far more time than is generally allowed. Tarc (talk) 05:27, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but the bullying tactic where you guys go ahead and do whaterver you want, and then when people changes it, you say that they need concensus and discussion is not working anymore. The biased sticker will stay. --Torga (talk) 05:33, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

What is a "bias tag"? Artw (talk) 05:46, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

• The tag should stay until there is consensus that the article is neutral. I very much doubt that there is such a consensus. Sure, the reliable sources depict a lot on harassment. But the key question is, does the article reflect the sources in a neutral manner? starship.paint ~ regal 05:39, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

@Mr. Random: What exactly are you looking for? "We took gamergate to the lab and under the electron microscope we determined that gamergate has a rating of 127 on the Lepine Misogyny Scale and a PR Success value of -3 Drapers" Of course an article about a hashtag is going to consist of analysis and commentary. And per WP:NPOV#UNDUE the analysis and commentary will be reflective of what the reliable sources say about the subject. Which bundle of reliable sources is lacking or misrepresented in the article? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:19, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

No we should never endorse opinion no matter how popular. "The tone of Wikipedia articles should be impartial, neither endorsing nor rejecting a particular point of view. Try not to quote directly from participants engaged in a heated dispute; instead, summarize and present the arguments in an impartial tone." HalfHat 12:41, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Where specifically are there "endorsements" or these "tone" issues? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:57, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

NPOV tag removal, Nov 10th, late

Just so it is a bit more prominent, but not really worth of its own heading, since it was touched on above...

Per my comments a few weeks ago, it has now been five weeks since this article was tagged for NPOV concerns. User have had thirty-five days to raise their concerns above neutrality, and while things may not have resolved to their liking, this project operates on consensus, and one was not reached that these concerns have merit. If anything, there is consensus that the article as it stands and the direction it goes is a neutral reflection of what reliable sources say on the topic. I'm sorry, but the sources do not support the contention that Gamergate is a controversy of ethics in gaming journalism

The NPOV tag is not a raised fist of protest, nor is it a Scarlet Letter. It has had 5 weeks, and now it is time to go. Unless someone does so beforehand (as I am heading to bed) I will be removing it in ~12 hours, and if editors unwisely choose to edit-war over the matter, we will go to WP:ANI, where I'm fairly confident that the protests of "I disagree!" and "It's biased!" will have many sympathetic ears. The single-purpose accounts should be especially wary here. Tarc (talk) 05:47, 10 November 2014 (UTC) −

• Nope - what's the point of this ultimatum ... do you have consensus that the article is neutral? There is a significant number of editors who believed that the article is not neutral. See Talk:Gamergate controversy/RFC1#Q2: Is the current Gamergate article too biased in this manner?. starship.paint ~ regal 05:52, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
• NoIt is biased and the tag should stand. There is clearly no concensus to remove it--Torga (talk) 05:56, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
• Re. removal of NPOV tag. The neutrality issue hasn't been resolved. I've been watching the TALK page the last 5 weeks and there has been no progress. There are two editors who have set the tone of the article. There are two others who protest the neutrality of the article. The tone of the talk page is adversarial and sufficiently hostile that other people are loath to be involved. There has been no progress. The NPOV should not be removed. The first sentence makes a judgement of one group in the controversy rather than providing an impartial introduction to the participants of the controversy. The remainder of the article is similarly written. The article is unreadable to the casual reader. IMO the article appears so biased that the casual reader will ignore it. This does not benefit anyone, and it doesn't benefit those editors who are being accused of bias. Jgm74 (talk) 06:01, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
• No, per Starship and Jgm74's remarks about the dispute. Random the Scrambled ^(?) 06:07, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
• How about no per starship, there is an ongoing dispute, IT STAYS Retartist (talk) 07:23, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

  This "dispute" has been going on for a month.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 07:47, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

• No. I'm still finding multiple violations of WP:Say, the intro is also very questionable.HalfHat 08:51, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
• Nope consensus hasn't been reached jet per Starship.paint, the intro still has to be worked on. Avono (talk) 09:22, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

It's not a vote. The tag is not to be used as a "scarlet letter." It's been some time since a credible case could be made that the article doesn't substantially reflect the consensus of reliable sources. It's long past time the tag came off. --TS 12:02, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

• Per the tag's instructions ["The editor who adds the tag should discuss concerns on the talk page, pointing to specific issues that are actionable within the content policies. In the absence of such a discussion, or where it remains unclear what the NPOV violation is, the tag may be removed by any editor."] Given that not one of the !votes above has articulated an actionable issue, and it remains unclear what the NPOV violation is, the tag should go. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:10, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

  Well I went ahead and removed the tag with an edit summary explaining why. It's back. What next? Don't we have discretionary sanctions to deal with this kind of SPA-related problem? --TS 12:40, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Well done. You have ignored an entire RFC on concerns about the neutrality of the article. Talk:Gamergate controversy/RFC1. I do acknowledge the majority of reliable sources do depict harassment, etc. But, to quote Masem, we are instead giving the antiGG side far too much coverage, to the point of being preachy on how "right" the antiGG side is, and how bad the proGG side is. This is evidenced by certain phrasing, excessive use of the negative words "harassment" and "misogyny" (and forms thereof), and overuse of near-full quotes from antiGG sources when they are not needed for explaining the key parts of the narrative. That is the specific neutrality problem in the article. starship.paint ~ regal 13:05, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

The RFC, though correct in form, is clearly an inexpert attempt to perform an end run around policy. The first question, "Can an article become too biased in the favor of the side with the plurality of sources?" has a clear answer in Wikipedia policy: no. This is not the wiki you are looking for. --TS 13:20, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

You seem to think that your "no" answer is fact, but it is instead an opinion. Many other editors answered "yes" in the RFC. Plainly put, you're not the boss. starship.paint ~ regal 13:31, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

It's a fact that follows from our policy. The overwhelming consensus of reliable sources is that Gamergate is a misogynistic harassment campaign, and so that's what we have to write about. We're not about to relax NPOV just because some editors disagree with it. --TS 13:39, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

The overwhelming consensus of reliable sources (which so far happens to be the media) is that Gamergate is a misogynistic harassment campaign. I don't deny this. The problem is not the sources. The problem is how the article is using the sources. Please read the green words above, by Masem. starship.paint ~ regal 13:49, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Again, NPOV tag requires "The editor who adds the tag should discuss concerns on the talk page, pointing to specific issues that are actionable within the content policies. In the absence of such a discussion, or where it remains unclear what the NPOV violation is, the tag may be removed by any editor." Your assessment "The problem is how the article is using the sources. " Is neither specific nor actionable. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 14:05, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Note; this wasn't a vote, this was posted to be informative. 3 hours to go, and as I said last night, I'd advise careful thought before making a stand on this. Already, editors with no part in this topic area at all easily recognize this as an abuse of project tagging and have attempted removal. Tarc (talk) 14:06, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Editors here saying 'no' need to do stop re-instate the tag with vague reasoning. Specific and actionable reasons are needed to be helpful. — Strongjam (talk) 17:13, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

• No, as per Jgm74. The tone of the article and talk page is adversarial and sufficiently hostile to repel both reader and editor alike from this article. It is also astonishingly that WP:BLPSTYLE is being so thoroughly ignored in every aspect. What reader would describe this article as written in a dispassionate tone, in a non-partisan manner, and that it is avoiding both understatements and overstatements? Criticism and praise is not added conservatively, or written in a disinterested tone, and that is the main reason why the NPOV tag should stay up until resolved. Belorn (talk) 16:56, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
• Lolno Per WP:NPOV --DSA510 Pls No Hate 17:05, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

• Remove: There is no remaining NPOV issue, merely a vocal group of POV pushers, openly collaborating a campaign on 8chan to make this page more favorable to GamerGate. AN/I is going to be needed. MarkBernstein (talk) 17:14, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I'm not pushing a POV, as this is going to be weighing on the antiGG side, but there is a huge impartialness problem with this article that falls under NPOV as well that I'm arguing for, and the NPOV Tag has to stay until that is addressed. --MASEM (t) 17:21, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
    • Yes, but you have to allow for the possibility that your opinion on what is or is not NPOV may not carry the day. The tag doesn't remain until you are personally satisfied with a result. Tarc (talk) 19:11, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
      • If it was clear I was the only person fighting for it, yeah, that's TE, I'd not fight its removal. But it's clear (even discounting SPAs) that there's issues with the NPOV-ness, and any attempt to discuss with via consensus building is shot down immediately. --MASEM (t) 19:14, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
• Remove: Tarc is right in saying that saying "actually, it's about ethics in gaming journalism" a thousand times doesn't make it any more true. The idea that it's about ethics in gaming journalism simply isn't bourne out by the sources. Sceptre ^(talk) 19:50, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
• Keep tag until the situation is resolved. SPAs or not, clearly a number of established editors are seeing a problem, and the discussion on this page proves it. Thargor Orlando (talk) 15:06, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

  quite clearly, per the tag instructions, someone claiming to see an issue is not a valid criteria. they must be able to articulate a specific instance of NPOV issues, where the content does not appropriately reflect the sources available. there is not an option "if enough people are vaguely whinging , they must be appeased by hanging the NPOV as a 'warning'." (in fact the instructions say quite the opposite.)-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 22:03, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

  Reading the article and the talk pages, I see the problem. This isn't vague whining, it's a problem of the sources, of the tone, of the point of view of the article. When that's sorted, I agree the tag should be removed. Thargor Orlando (talk) 00:39, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• Just looking at the first source, it seems clear to me that Gamergate refers to both the original GamerGate movement - which was based on ethical concerns, however misguided or unsubstantiated those concerns might be - and the subsequent backlash prompted by the harassment and perceived sexism. So to begin the article by saying "The Gamergate controversy began in August 2014 and concerns misogyny and harassment in video game culture" is to take a point of view that the former usage of the term is not worthy of coverage. I do think the article has gotten a lot more NPOV recently, but I think it still has a way to go, so Keep the tag for now. Λυδαcιτγ 14:49, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy

ANI filing

Well, if I were to draw a football analogy, I'd say I was just tripped by some grudge-bearers, so someone else is going to have to scoop up the ball and run with it, if you want this article to be less Hester Prynne-ish. Tarc (talk) 19:25, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Per the discussion there, I have closed this thread as well. [1]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Gamergate winding down

Focus should be given more to the decline of the pro-Gamergate narrative, as noted here; Has Gamergate Finally Burned Itself Out?. Take note of what they discuss, the matter a judge who jokingly said he she would vote against all male-oriented games at the Independent Games Festival. The judge resigned briefly in the wake of the Gamergate complaints, til the IGF actually examined the merit (or lack thereof) the complaints, and swiftly reinstated him her. The article, as well as many others, notes Sarkeesian's appearance on the Colbert Report, as well as the co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment saying "Over the past couple of months there’s been a small group of people who have been doing really awful things. They have been making some people’s lives miserable and they are tarnishing our reputation as gamers. It’s not right." A high-profile game industry person speaking out on this is rather notable. Tarc (talk) 00:35, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

But ethics!-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:46, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I only read the first link because I don't have much time, but the Slate piece is a blog. Also, the judge was of the Independent Games Festival, instead of a real judiciary. starship.paint ~ regal 00:51, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, no dice. The blog-esque sections of reliable sources are treated no differently, i.e. you don't get to do the "just a blog" dismissal.

Assuming they have the same editorial policies. HalfHat 14:09, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

If you're referring to Mattie Brice (and I think you are), she's a her, not a him. -- TaraInDC (talk) 01:05, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Derp, sorry...saw the name, assumed short for Matthew. Fixed. Tarc (talk) 02:02, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Winding down is the appropriate phrasing. Gamergate is not "dead" and will never be dead. It means too much to those who are involved in the movement (or consumer revolt, whatever) that they will continue to work on GG issues into the future. It's like a campaign, those who are marginally involved have now moved on already, there isn't really anything "newsworthy" that has happened recently so it's not in the mainstream media and gaming journals are, for sure, tired of discussing the topic. It will never go away completely but, barring any flash fires, activity will lessen in the coming weeks and months. Ideally, this will provide some much needed perspective that will help this article. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:02, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

You people do realize that the media churns out yet another "GamerGate is Dead! Pls stop stealing our monies ;-;" every week or so? I'm so pissed off that you actually fall for this that I'm not even going to bother linking to the 20+ stupid "GamerGate is dead" shit. --DSA510 Pls No H8 05:35, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Yeah one from weeks ago is actually in the references here. I've heard Dyson pulled their advertising recently which doesn't really fit with this, though I've not seen any RS report on it. HalfHat 08:56, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

They didn't even report on Mercedes Benz, only when they got back, and only one outlet, and even when Gawker denied they were advertising with them. Loganmac (talk) 14:04, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Reliable sources drive our narrative. As the frightening and horrific events that characterised the first two months recede into the past and public attitudes to Gamergate solidify, it's not surprising that some of those reliable sources are now talking about Gamergate being over. It certainly isn't Wikipedia's task to act as a booster for a movement that the vast majority of reliable sources regard as hateful and violent. That's just not what encyclopaedias are for. --TS 12:34, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I would say that since the author cannot even do a little fact checking about when a website was created ("Gamergate organizers at 8chan—a site set up for Gamergate after 4chan booted them—" a simple Google search will tell them the site was created in 2013), and is instead parroting the views of those who wish people to believe that 8chan was set up just for those involved in GamerGate, that the actual piece is not reliable. If the author can't take 5 seconds to find out if a site was made before or after what they're writing about, then they aren't worth the read. Also, we are well aware that this line "Gamergaters knew an opportunity when they saw one and put on a great show of being offended by this tweet, which they read, or pretended to read, as literal." in referring to Mattie Brice's comments would have been called sexist, misogynistic, etc. had a man said the same thing about any game with women. It is intellectually bankrupt, and hypocritical, to deny that many feminists, etc., do take those types of things literally when men say them; and then turn around and say that no one should take those kinds of statements literally as long as they come from a woman. The article, itself, is of no value to the page. UncleThursday (talk) 05:20, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

tag, again

My removal of the tag was reverted by User:Mr. Random with the following edit summaries:

" A case has been made that this article needs a tone rewrite, if nothing else. Possible sources to fix this have been ignored"

"misrepresentation of sources and lack of non-anti-GG sources are two separate issues. The former, per Masem, is why the notice stays"

"per Masem and the ANI page. None of the three conditions for removal is currently true"

I'm sorry, I'm new to this mess, so maybe I'm missing something. But I've been on Wikipedia for a very long time and this to me looks like a classic case of certain editors fighting to keep a tag on the article as a badge of shame (as the ANI page says) because they they don't like what the article says. In particular they don't like that the article is based on reliable sources and reflects what reliable sources say.

Specifically:

1. an article "need(ing) a tone rewrite" is NOT a reason to keep the tag on the article. And frankly, that sounds like some weasel bullshit obfuscation. "Oh, the article is POV! Why is it POV? Well... it's the tone!". Come on, you got to do better than that. Keeping the tag requires that the tag is substantiated and it is explained precisely how the article violates Wikipedia policies. From what I can see (I skipped some of the wall-of-text-rants) this hasn't been done.
2. "Possible sources... have been ignored" - I'm sorry, that doesn't make sense. What the hell are "possible sources"? If there are some "possible sources" out there being ignored, and you feel that they shouldn't be ignored, then for goodness sake, include them, don't spuriously tag the article. "Possible sources have been ignored" is just NOT a reason to include a NPOV tag in an article. *At best* it's a testament to someone's laziness, at words, weaselly excuse making.
3. "Misrepresentation of sources" - Ok, this one is actually substantial. If true. But I'm not seeing where this is explained. Which sources are being misrepresented? Where? How? Be specific. Just asserting that sources are being misrepresented doesn't make it so. An assertion is not an argument. Let's see the list. If no such list is forthcoming, the tag goes.
4. "per Masem" - first, this isn't an argument, unless Masem is some kind of authority here, whose views have been widely accepted by the general community, or at least on this talk page. This isn't the case. In fact, if one looks at the discussion right above, it's pretty clear that User:Masem has a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of Wikipedia policy, and in particular of what "neutrality" means. "Neutrality" does not mean "for every negative statement we must include a positive statement". It does not mean "we cannot include negative statements". It does not mean "we cannot include opinions (from reliable sources)". This is being pointed out to them. The fact that they - and apparently couple of others - fail to get it is not a reason to include the tag. Not understanding Wikipedia policy is not a reason to include the tag.
5. "per ANI page" - I have no idea how this makes sense. The discussion at ANI does not support including the article at all.

Either specific, detailed explanation is made of how the article violates WP:NPOV - as required - or the tag goes. Soon. Volunteer Marek  05:04, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Your "per Masem" is a gross, incorrect statement of what I am trying to argument for. Impartiality, not balance. Huge difference. --MASEM (t) 05:57, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

As to the points:

• #1 (and same as #4) - Several editors including myself believe this suffers from impartial tone, which is a WP:NPOV consideration. The first sentence is the primary point where this absolutely violated, as the harassment is a consequence of the controversy, but not the cause/reason (which, actually, is unknown or unclear). The rest are issues on phrasing and ordering that, presently, ridicule any point given by the GG side; while technically in line with policy as to not intend to give it the voice of WP at any single phrase, as a whole it is a problem. There's small bits of reordering that can be done to improve the language without changing the content or the ratio of sources. This also applies to the excessive use of antiGG pull quotes in full to keep hammering that the harassment and misogyny is bad, but without contributing to the factual substance of the article. It is not like the article has to be trashed, 95% of the content is good, but there just needs some rewrite, quote trimming, and reorganization to speak in a more impartial voice.
• #2 and #3 are non-starters; I prefer if we could even get away from weaker RSs to source most of this to high quality ones, but the sources that are claimed to be ignored or mis-represented are very weak or not even reliable to start. So yes, that's not an argument. #5 As the time I write this, the ANI discussion has no obvious consensus either way so that's also a non-starter. --MASEM (t) 06:12, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

As noted many times, you are not allowed to keep the tag in place as a warning to readers or a shame badge. Tag the article, make your concerns known on the talk page, and discussion ensues. You and your friends have failed to achieve consensus for your concerns, thus your proposal FAILS. Thirty-five days is more than a generous amount of time to grant for this sort of thing, and as people keep ignoring this, I'll use shouty-bold caps: REMOVAL OF THE TAG DOES NOT MEAN THAT ALL DISCUSSION IS HALTED, it just means there is nothing dire that necessitates the solicitation of outside opinion. Moveon was initially created to prod Republicans to drop the Monica Lewinsky stick and...wait for it...move on. Tag proponents need something similar. Tarc (talk) 13:19, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Given that people have refused to partipate in consensus developing debates (the mediation request, and the two prior ArbCom ) on the basis of SPAs being the issue and not addressing concerns of established editors, there is no way to say that we can talk about "failure to get consensus". --MASEM (t) 14:01, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

It would be nice if we could drop all the "SPA" stuff, and judge arguments, not backgrounds. starship.paint ~ regal 14:10, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I think it would be nice if we could all just use this page to talk about rainbows and kittens. As it happens, though, the presence of SPAs is a serious problem here and we need to discuss it. In particular we're facing severe opposition to the implementation of Wikipedia's clear and longstanding policies, driven in part by SPAs. We cannot ignore that elephant, sorry. --TS 12:23, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

More Obvious Bias

Under "Political Views" or whatever (the absolute shit quality of it makes me forget section titles like that), there is only one sentence regarding the charities. It should be expanded on. --DSA510 Pls No H8 05:52, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Feel free to be WP:BOLD and expand it based on reliable sources. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:55, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I would argue that even the current sentence is too much. One donation made by a few random people who use the hashtag is not, itself, a political view; the editors who want it included in the article seem to be trying to make the argument that this has implications for the political views of Gamergate as a whole (arguing, in other words, that because certain people who also use the GamerGate hashtag have donated money to a particular business, this means that we can conclude things about Gamergate as a whole), but that argument is WP:OR -- covering that in such a context requires reliable sources not just stating that it happened, but that it is significant. We don't note, for example, every political or personal donation made by other individuals or groups -- they're only worth covering once a reliable source has made an issue of them in some way. Otherwise, mentioning donations in an article to imply things like "he can't always be a bad person, he donated money to XYZ" or "he is clearly affiliated with this political movement, he donated money to them!" is original research, because it's an editor trying to force readers to draw specific conclusions rather than relying on reliable sources for interpretation. This is particularly true for Gamergate (which is diffuse and therefore hard to characterize) and for, if I recall the story correctly, these particular donations, which were made to someone who had constantly had a dispute with one of Gamergate's primary targets. Some editors might want to say that the donations show the milk of human kindness, or that it was just another form of harassment, or that it was purely a cynical ploy to deflect criticism; but any of these statements would have to be cited to a reliable source indicating the relevance of the event in that context. Without such a source, again, my feeling is that they can't be included because we have no citations for how, exactly, they're relevant to the discussion. Remember that the article is already massively-long -- it cannot hope to cover every particular thing that anyone claiming to be a part of Gamergate has done over the past few months. So any such inclusion needs sources indicating not just that they happened, but that it is relevant to the overarching coverage of the controversy. --Aquillion (talk) 07:28, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Willhesucceed (talk) 10:27, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Thousands of pounds have been donated in the name of GG, so it's more than a few, at the very most though I think it should probably a short paragraph. Preferably shorter, it could probably be better placed in another section, I think it used to be in TFYC section. HalfHat 11:30, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Given that there are tens of thousands using the gamergate hashtag, and one of the sources indicating that a single donor gave several thousand dollars, thats much less than a pound a person. they really put their money where their mouth is. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:47, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. Those sources aren't useful, because they only state, effectively, 'some people who say they identify with GamerGate have given some money to other people'. They don't actually assert relevance, and therefore can't be given any particular weight over the thousands of other things that have happened over the course of this controversy. Conversely, there are countless reliable sources asserting in detail that harassment is core to what Gamergate is; that's the sort of sources that are needed to give this more than a sentence of attention at best. "A few people using the GG tag did something, which we will drop here without context for users to draw their own conclusion" is not encyclopedic writing; "here are a large number of reliable sources discussing what Gamergate is and what its defining elements are" is encyclopedic writing. This is especially true because the article is far too long and therefore cannot possibly cover every single operation, post, or action that people claim to have accomplished in Gamergate's name -- we need to focus on overarching core coverage produced by reliable sources, and avoid trying to cobble together our own original-research narratives out of disparate events like the donations referenced above. Obviously some editors here feel strongly that these (comparatively tiny) thousands of pounds of donations offer some deep insight into Gamergate, or are representative of it or otherwise would improve our article if we gave it more coverage; but I don't think that there's reliable sources backing that assertion up, so I think it's fair to dismiss it as generally not-very-relevant. --Aquillion (talk) 06:36, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The "charity work" of a particular person or persons is not relevant to the topic of the article. Please keep in mind that this article is not about Gamergaters themselves, nor about their beliefs or their movement or whatever one wishes to call it. It is about the controversy generated by people who harassed (and continue to do so) Quinn, Wu, and others under the #Gamergate hashtag. Tarc (talk) 13:13, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Since they donated under the hashtag, more clearly than many of the threats, that argument would apply just as much to the harassment. It also did garner a decent ammount of attention, with accusations of weaponizing charity. HalfHat 13:16, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Again, irrelevant. This is not an article about Gamergaters, this is an article about Gamergater-fueled controversy, time to accept that and move on. Tarc (talk) 13:21, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

This just looks like POV pushing. It is part of a controversy, there were accusations of weaponizing charity. HalfHat 13:32, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

My admittedly-brief search doesn't find a single reliable source which even mentions the phrase "weaponizing charity." NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 13:50, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I thought it had, maybe it hadn't, it was hot topic for a bit. I'll have a look, but I don't think that phrase itself was used. HalfHat 16:38, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

A random thought

Just considering some past discussions, I'm wondering if there are points that we all might be speaking past, on the core nature of what this article is, which in turn might reflect how to write this to address issues.

Imaging if there was no harassment at all involved in this: Gjoni posted his blog, the people that are GG accussed Quinn, and then went on to find other ethics concerns and did their advertiser campaigns. At the core, this is the controversy from the side of the GG, this is what their movement is (as they claim, as we can cite). In considering it as a controvery, it has the two sides and all normal facets one would expect: here is what one side that wants to see change wants (proGG) and here's the other side (gaming journalists and indie devs, or more specifically, those that push political views in games). I don't know if we'd have an article on it if it was just this, but I'm just setting up.

But what did happen is the addition of harassment and the like. Consider that this is another controversy separate from the above. This is the mainstream press criticizing the use of harassment that appears misogynic by those that claim they are part of the other controversy.

What the problem may have been is that by calling this as the "Gamergate controversy" is potentially misleading because it relates to the first one (the gamers vs gaming press), while another way the press have used it to describe there side. So we are starting for all readers (pro and antiGG alike) from a point that could be taken either way by title only.

There is no question that the bulk of sourcing is on the second controversy, the mainstream press vs the proGG side, because of the harassment. As such, I wonder if consider calling this "Gamergate movement controversy" to accurately reflect that this is primarily about the issues the harassment has called around the movement, more than anything else. What that would mean would be a bit of reorganization to frst explain what the GG movement is, their goals, and the critical responses to that are (probably a whole 4-5 paragraphs at most, we have most of the material already) and then going into the actual line of the events that are part of this larger controversy, which at the end of the day is primarily going to be the predominate mainstream critical assessment of the GG tactics and the bulk of the rest of the article. Calling it by the "Gamergate movement controversy" makes it 100% clear we're not covering the movement in detail but the issues that those using the "GG" banner have caused. Alternately, we could keep this as "Gamergate controversy" and make sure in the first sentence of the lead, to explain that the article is going to about the second controversy, and not the movement. Either way, I can see a path that keeps nearly all sources but makes it clear that WP's article is not about the movement but the actions they caused. I'm not 100% on this approach, but it was something that struck me when reading some of the replies overnight. --MASEM (t) 16:10, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

per the AFD, this article is about the harassment. Gamers and forum trolls being upset about something is not itself notable because that is the usual state for those people. Artw (talk) 16:14, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Which is what I'm saying, which might make this easier to write to isolate the part about the movement's aspects and "their" controversy into a single section per FRINGE, and then go on about the harassment. The approach would make it clear that outside of that section, the rest is about the harassment events and media's reaction to it. --MASEM (t) 16:28, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Interesting, I'll get back to you on this. HalfHat 16:27, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

There isn't any "movement". That's a figment of people's imagination. RGloucester — ☎ 17:37, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

A quick Google search suggests otherwise. I agree with Masem. Reframing the discussion could be a helpful first step in addressing the structural problems of this article. Pollinosisss (talk) 18:16, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, there are reliable (high quality) RS that recognize that there is a movement, and if we follow that and treat that as a small FRINGE subsection where all their "ethics" items are described and leave the rest of the article about the harassment that has done in the name of the GG movement, then we can clear up a lot of the issues here. But we have to recognize that the press does recognize a movement. The problem right now is trying to group the concerns of the movement and the concerns of the press about harassment in the same subsections which the collision is causing much of the non-impartial language. --MASEM (t) 18:18, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

There are also high quality sources that say it is not really a movement, just a unorganized rabble under a hashtag, and purposefully so , so that there is no culpability for the harassment. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:39, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

...which we can add to the larger part of the article that show the press questions if this really is a movement without leadership, or even using the ethics as a front for harassment. (It would be improper to call the GG a movement in the FRINGE area and then not include these complaints elsewhere). --MASEM (t) 20:17, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Why would we privilege the sources that see GG as a "movement" over those that say its just a ravaging horde via implementing a WP:STRUCTUREal bias? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 22:01, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Again, you are privileging the "some" sources that give credence to a "movement" that other equally reliable sources say is not a "movement" at all but merely a gaggle of hashtaggers whinging about this and that and the other thing and using it as cover for harassment. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:29, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

We have high quality sources that are critical of GG, with some that acknowledge GG as a movement before speaking ill of it, and some that doubt or denounce that from the start. As such, two viewpoints with about the same weight and balance means we should present both points, and by presenting the movement as a FRINGE topic of the main controversy instead of trying to mix it into it will simplify the article's approach by making it clear it is about the harassment issues. --MASEM (t) 22:45, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

We have just as many high quality sources that dispute any claims that gamergate is an actual "movement". Privileging the structure of the article as if the "but ethics 'movement'" is the valid perspective is not WP:STRUCTURE appropriate and certainly not something we will do to try "appease" ranting tolls and satisfy their desire for attention and acknowledgment. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 02:51, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The point of this approach is not to appease the proGG, but to be 100% clear that this article's main topic is the harasment of the actions under the GG movement and there is no NPOV issues in how we cover the harassment given the predominate sourcing in the press. In the current version of this article, by mixing the ethics concerns with the harassment, there are difficult NPOV/impartial issues that are entangled. Separate out and isolate the brief amount of ethics aspects we already have, and then there's a clear delination, and it will be much clearer that once we start getting into the harassment aspects, there is zero way we can give the GG aspects any positive aspects there given the overwhelming negative attention they have in the press when it comes to the harassments. This is an approach supported by NPOV and required by FRINGE, (given that the movement is a fringe view, to give it the weight that sources give little coverage of). --MASEM (t) 06:50, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

It might be noted here that there are many controversies surrounding Gamergate, but Gamergate itself is not a controversy. The current title is misleading. Pollinosisss (talk) 18:27, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

That's why thinking "Gamergate movement controversy" as a title might be better, as 1) it's not about the movement, and what would be about the movement would be its a short section to give just the only backgrround we can source) - as such, at least I think, that those proGGs that are asking about the POV of this article but recognize the issues with not being reported in reliable sources will recognize we can't do any more for them in coverage and thus cannot complain of POV of the article, and 2) separate out the two very different issues that are difficult to write in the same logical thought. --MASEM (t) 18:31, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I think people are having trouble with the English language. The suffix -gate is attached to words to indicate a scandal or controversy. The addition of "controversy" is thus unnecessary, and only done to disambiguate from the type of ant. "Gamergate movement" doesn't make any sense. It means "Gamer scandal movement" or "Gamer controversy movement", which is a nonsense phrase. There is no "Gamer scandal movement". There is a scandal about harassment and misogyny in the video gaming sphere, hence "Gamer" and "-gate". This meaning trumped the original reference to the so-called "corruption" involving a one Ms Quinn. The suffix "-gate" indicates that scandal. Perhaps a so-called "movement" has arisen amidst the scandal, but that doesn't change the fact that the scandal itself is not about any kind of amorphous movement, but about the contemptible behaviour of certain people. RGloucester — ☎ 18:40, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree generally, but would caution against being so prescriptive. I don't think there's need to worry about the lexical precision of "Gamergate" (as movement or controversy) since that's basically the common term and what we're stuck with. However I don't object to anything else in the above. Protonk (talk) 18:51, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

What I've recognized when I came to this idea is that the people on the proGG side think that "Gamergate" is about them, and thus the fact we bury their ethics concerns (work with me on this) is why they come to this article to want change. The press treat "Gamergate" as the larger harassment issue. There's clearly a communication issue here that we really have two different things happening that are kludgy when trying to treat it as one. We don't necessary have to change the title to separate it, but the lead is going to have to be super clear. If we kept it as "Gamergate controversy", then the lead would likely need to come out as : "An ongoing controversy involving the actions of supporters of the hashtag #Gamergate broke out in the video game industry in August 2014. The #Gamergate supporters have claimed they seek to challenge issues of ethics in journalism within the video game industry. Simultaneous to this was a prolonged series of harassment and threats against several video game industry figures, primarily female, using the #gamergate hashtag. The harassment was condemned widely by international media, and condemned the actions as sexist and misogynistic, and questioned the true intent of the #gamergate movement." (I running that off the top of my head, so it absolutely needs wordsmithing) But putting it in that tone makes it 100% clear, this is going to be about how the press saw GG, and not about the GG movement. There would be no way that the POV (of trying to make this proGG) could be challenged in that manner. We'll have the small section on describing the GG movement with only criticism of their ethics complaints, but we'll get to lack of organization, the "but ethics!" aspects and the like later in the larger part of the article. --MASEM (t) 19:44, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

So what you really wanted to do was muck about with the lede? Nope. Artw (talk) 20:34, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

No, because there would be a more significant revision to the overall structure; the point of redoing the lead (and that's certainly not a perfect rewrite) is to make it 100% clear that the article is about the controversy around the harassment issues, and not about the proGG's controversy with the gaming press, so that if the proGG side continue to say "but this is baised!" we can say that their issues are the clear FRINGE point to the larger harassment ones, and dismiss those concerns by nature of the structure. --MASEM (t) 20:46, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

On this page, there is no "proGG" or "antiGG". There are only Wikipedia editors, writing in the encyclopaedic voice. There is no "controversy with the gaming press" according to reliable sources. RGloucester — ☎ 21:39, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

"Media: "We are ethical n' stuff XD"[1] Source: Said Media." --DSA510 Pls No H8 23:25, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

It is silly to claim there are no sources to ascribe what the proGG wants, even if, as some sources believe, this is only pretense for something else - we have what the proGG has claimed to be already sourced in the article. We don't have to necessarily believe that the proGG's claims are true (the press by and large doesn't) but by making it a separate discussion as a small FRINGE section, we can easily separate out arguments that right now are mixed together and make it difficult to undue the two issues. --MASEM (t) 21:54, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

There is no controversy about "but ethics"- other than the fact that those claiming it as an issue apparently cannot identify actual "ethics issues" when it hits them on the head. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:09, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

If a side of an issue says they have a problem with X, and that source is claimed by a strong RS, then we can say that in the article; in this case, we have all the sources that make the necessary claims of the GG's issues with the press already in the article and would not have to scramble around for re. GG supporters say they have an issue with the gaming press (we can source that), and they have a few things like conflicts of interest (sourced) and "objective reviews" (sourced). However, everyone recognizes these as FRINGE view, so we have many more sources that counter the COI and the "objectives review" points, and we have numerous criticism about how the GG side has managed itself, it's lack of message or workable mess, and of course, the whole harassment side. This proposal is just to call out the little we can source about the GG movement in a small section as FRINGE to the main topic of the harassment which is what this article should be clearly about; this is avoid all the mingling of issues that give it the appearance of POV.

Let's consider this from the opposite side; hypothetically, consider if all the GG complaints about ethics were removed from this article, (excluding the press's "but ethics!" commentary and the like); what is left is really what this article needs to be about, and written to that point. However, as a note in the overall history, we should, per FRINGE, have a short section to explain where GG came about and their fringe viewpoint, and why it is a fringe viewpoint. Because we've made this hypothetical article clearly about the harassment, we have no "responsibility" to do any additional work to speak positively towards GG (until more sourcing to give them that comes about), as per NPOV. Meaning that the claims this is an NPOV article coming from SPAs can be nullified because the article is not about the GG movement itself, but about the harassment done in the name of the GG movement. It's a way to move forward on this article that I think would satisfy my issues with it. --MASEM (t) 23:26, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

No "ethics issues"? Our very own article would disagree "Hill instead wrote that AAA games publishers "coopted [games journalism] as a marketing arm" and said that many games journalists agree that those publishers hold too much power over the media." It is widely established that ethics issues exist within gaming journalism, and that has been a running joke since before Nintendo reviewed their own games in Nintendo Power. What people are arguing over is whether or not GGers are using the legitimate issues of game journalism ethics as a smokescreen for misogyny, which the overwhelming media supports, and not whether or not legitimate issues of game journalism ethics exist which the overwhelming media also supports.AioftheStorm (talk) 00:10, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

This is exactly right. There is no "controversy over ethnics issues", because those issues are acknowledged universally. The controversy surrounds how these people used that widely-acknowledged problem as a front to spew hate. RGloucester — ☎ 00:33, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The concern that some claim to have with journalism ethics is a minor aspect of Gamergate. It is given adequate coverage in proportion to its minority point-of-view. Tarc (talk) 00:37, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Which is why I'm suggesting that we group all the existing parts that focus on the ethics arguments into a small section to isolate that from the larger, majority topic, and make it clear we are only giving the appropriate WEIGHTed coverage to the GG side, and then get into the larger criticism of their methods/approach. --MASEM (t) 00:48, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

You're willfully misquoting Hill's point, which is that Gamergate isn't talking about AAA game publishers at all, and therefore they cannot claim those legitimate issues as an issue of journalism ethics that they're discussing. Yes, there are issues of ethics in video games journalism. No, Gamergate is not doing anything meaningful to discuss or address them. Instead, they're talking about indie game developers' sex lives, sending death threats to a cultural critic and attacking an academic group for being taken over by "feminists" — none of those things have the least shred of connection to journalism ethics. The movement can't claim to be about something it demonstrably has no interest in. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 00:58, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

They can make the claims all they want. It's their PR that fails when their actions do not speak anywhere close to what their claims are; Scientology can claim it's a religion, but most people consider their actions fraudulent. We absolutely need to cover the mainstream perception that gamergate it not about ethics, but we also can report from sources that they claim are about ethics. --MASEM (t) 07:17, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

and we do state that they claim that. but there is no "controversy" over "but ethics" except on this page. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:30, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Go back to my original thesis on this post: there is clearly the controversy about the use of harassment and other tactics by those claiming themselvs as GG supporters that is the focal point of this article, why this whole thing is notable, etc. Very little of this - save for the "but ethics!" charge - has anything to do directly with any claimed ethics charges that the GG side has stated they want (from our existing sources). To a proGGer's eyes, they think the "Gamergate controversy" is their ethics charges, and the stuff with harassment is not for various reasons, some which go further down the FRINGE route (this can be seen by reading the various boards). I think everyone on this talk page recognize that this view of what the "controversy" is cannot be the primary focus, and only qualifies as FRINGE. But to understand the main controversy over the harassment, we still need to lay out the FRINGE view of the GG supporters - as well as direct commentary and criticism of those concerns. We write the rest of the article to be 100% clear to a new reader that we aren't calling the "controversy" around what the GG's ethics concerns are (we won't even call that a controversy), but solely on the harassment. We make crystal clear that the primary topic of this article is the controversy over the harassment, delegating the little we can source about the ethics charges to a small section. --MASEM (t) 15:56, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

And again, we DO state that some of the GG hashtag posts are "but ethics" - but we CANNOT claim there is any "controversy" around the "but ethics" because their aint. And we dont give a damn that anyone may feel that our article is not advocating appropriately for their cause. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 17:03, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Maybe I am just misunderstanding what you are suggesting. Can you make a draft article that would show what you are actually proposing would look like? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 17:10, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I'll try - the suggestion here is not to boost the GG signal any more than we already have, but simply group their ethics claims and the counterpoints directly to those claims in one section, so that everything else in the article is focused on the harassment and dubious nature of the movement; the resulting articles, following the lead, would be Background (like it is), a brief summary of the moment and their claims, and then from then on out - the events around the harassment, the death of gamers/GG's email campaigns, and then criticism and analysis of the whole situation including the nature of sexism and misogyny and the criticism of the "but ethics!" aspects. --MASEM (t) 17:18, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Culling substandard sources

This is a controversial article which deals with very specific WP:BLP topics, but is plagued with substandard sourcing. There is really no need to have 153 sources detailing the minutia of the controversy. I suggest removing all the sources labeled as op-eds, and all of the gaming press sources. That would leave mainstream outlets like the BBC, public radio, PBS, The New Yorker, Slate, The New York Times, The Independent, The Boston Globe, Le Monde, Salon, CNN, Mother Jones, The Guardian, Wired, Time, LA Times etc, so long as the sources were not to their editorial page. This would mean removing sources like Venture Beat, Ars Technica, IGN, Polygon, The Daily Dot, Kotaku, PC Magazine, The Verge, Gamespot, Gameindustry.biz, Re/code, Eurogamer, etc...

The question of the RfC: Shall we limit the sourcing of this article to mainstream secondary sources, removing all niche game journalism sources, niche tech journalism sources, opinion/editorials columns, and personal blogs?

We just don't need to use niche publications to create an article for this topic. aprock (talk) 19:27, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

discussion

• There's a case to be made for some of the sources you've suggested dropping, but it might be a valuable exercise to cull the sourcing in general. There are all ready too many footnotes to marginal or situationally useful references. Protonk (talk) 19:41, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
• There will be a few "substandard" sources I think we need to keep, such as Tolito's Kotaku rebuttal to the initial Quinn charge. But I do think that a few step of seeing what claims made by substandard sources can be moved to a good RS should be done first, and then see what the next step (eg how many statements only sourcable to substandard ones are left). --MASEM (t) 19:47, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Sources like that are reasonable to keep if they are referred to in the mainstream press. Thus if his rebuttal is discussed, in say the Wall Street Journal, the primary source can be included. aprock (talk) 19:49, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's reasonable. But I think that determination should come after we do, wherever possible, replacement of weak RS to strong RS that support the same fact (eg what should be non-issue as that's just general improvement) What's left will then have to take a more cautious approach. --MASEM (t) 19:57, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

• the request is too broad. as a purely cultural event, opinions/analysis/commentary are necessary to understand the controversy's place and impact in culture. removing the items that place it in context is inimical to a good article. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:51, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

No one is suggesting removing analysis and commentary of the event. In fact, per WP:PSTS we rely on secondary sources to perform topic synthesis. However, per WP:RSOPINION, opinion pieces are generally not reliable sources for much beyond what the author thinks. If a mainstream source indicates that the editorial is of particular interest, then including it might be reasonable. Including it simply because it exists, is contrary to WP:DUE. aprock (talk) 19:54, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Are you reading a different proposal than I am? Shall we limit the sourcing of this article to mainstream secondary sources, removing all ... opinion/editorials columns, and personal blogs? yes, there is not only the suggestion but actual statement we remove from consideration some of the prime locations to derive high quality , in-depth opinion/commentary/analysis to be left with soundbites culled from "news" articles. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:08, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I suspect that your definition of "high quality" is considerably different that that of the mainstream. Which "high quality" source would this proposal affect? aprock (talk) 22:19, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

"high quality" relative to the sources available for an issue that is 3 months old. When the academic reviews come in, then the editorials are likely to be the second tier of quality. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:05, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

• Eliminating tech sources for an article about a technocultural controversy seems arbitrary or WP:POINTY. In some cases, though perhaps not in all, the technical press will offer expertise or detail not available to more general sources. Often, requests for source purges of this nature are really seeking to eliminate sourcing for critical sections of an article, which can then be removed, or preparing for a fresh visit to AfD. Neither is likely to be effective here. Moreover, if all this pruning will be done while the article remains capped with an NPOV template, we’ll continually be wrangling over whether each change is a further attempt to deskew the article. I do not see this as a productive path forward. MarkBernstein (talk) 20:07, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "pointy". If the tech sources are high quality mainstream sources they are probably reasonable. Which tech sources do you think are particularly high quality mainstream sources? aprock (talk) 22:17, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

• This seems like a good broad principle and an absolutely terrible hard and fast rule. Oppose. Artw (talk) 20:10, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
• Seems incredibly overbroad to me to suggest that we can't use well-known tech/gaming journalism sources, which are those which have covered this matter most extensively. The Verge and Polygon in particular are run by noted journalists with a pretty significant history of quality work. Also, if we remove all of the sources you suggest, we will be left with far fewer "pro-GamerGate" voices — no Erik Kain, no APGNation, no MetalEater, no CinemaBlend, no Cathy Young, no Christina Hoff Sommers, etc. The ramifications of the fact that the only pro-GamerGate sources are of such marginal quality is an exercise left for the reader. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 20:36, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Which of the tech/gaming sources are particularly "well-known"? aprock (talk) 22:17, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, as I said, The Verge for one. As per its Alexa rank (426), it receives more traffic than Slate (611), Wired (623), Salon (1,088) or Mother Jones (3,700), just to name a few of those you named. Its staff consists of well-known tech journalists including Nilay Patel and its reporting is widely cited and commented upon beyond its site. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 22:30, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

It's not at all clear that Alexa traffic is a good barometer of mainstream. The Verge is just barely three years old. I personally don't have any issue with the site, and know nothing about it's editorial practices. Is there any reporting there that is crucial to the article, and which can't be sourced to other mainstream sources? If so, it may be reasonable to use it, but it's probably not a big loss if it's not used. I could be wrong though. aprock (talk) 22:35, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

OK, then what is a good barometer of mainstream other than just arguing by assertion that tech sites can't be mainstream? And why would Wired be mainstream and The Verge not? More people read The Verge than read Wired, at least based upon available traffic stats. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 22:42, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

That's a good question, but again I don't think website traffic is the way to answer it. There may be some insight at mainstream media if you're curious to investigate further. aprock (talk) 23:00, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

It's not up to me to answer it — you're the one making the claim that Wired is "mainstream" and The Verge is not. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 23:18, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

It seems to me that you're trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. I don't really care one way or another about The Verge. If it is generally considered a high quality mainstream source, then it should be included.aprock (talk) 23:28, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

OK, that's all I needed to hear. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 23:32, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

• Seems a bit too sweeping to be practical, but it's hard to say sight unseen. Could a version be worked on as a subpage here, to see what the article would look like if such sources were pruned? Tarc (talk) 20:47, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support: as nominator. The quality of sources in the article is extremely low. Erring on the side of higher quality sources is a much better course to tack. aprock (talk) 22:23, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose: It's a cultural issue surrounding games, I'm pretty sure game and tech sites are relevant --Frybread (talk) 22:45, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support: Kotaku is unbiased.[1] Source 1: Kotaku. --DSA510 Pls No H8 23:10, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Oh, and if you're going to whine that Gawker is a bastion of gold journalism, [2]. Just a few months after the "Fappening", they do a hard 180, and use (semi)nude pics for traffic. Don't bother reporting it, I have a local copy. --DSA510 Pls No H8 00:08, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose until nominator describes a meaningful process for defining which sources are "mainstream" that amounts to more than WP:IDONTLIKEIT. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 23:22, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Allow me to suggest that WP:BLP, WP:RS, and WP:DUE be our guides. aprock (talk) 23:25, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Then you agree that The Verge is a perfectly-acceptable reliable source for this article and not "substandard" in any way? I don't object to looking at replacing The Daily Dot, CinemaBlend, etc. where possible, but The Verge is a pretty vital source which has extensively covered this issue. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 23:26, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't agree or disagree with respect to The Verge. It's up to the community to determine that this is a high quality mainstream source. It's not my call. Personally, I have no real experience with it, and have no clue how often it is used by other media. aprock (talk) 23:34, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is a bad idea. Mainstream sources are being incredibly lazy with regard to this topic. It would further exacerbate the problems the article's having. Willhesucceed (talk) 23:50, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
• Support, to some extent - I don't think it should be strictly limited to "mainstream only" as some of the industry-specific sources may give insight into the greater "chilling effects" on the industry. "Mainstream" will also ultimately be an arbitrary criteria. I'm not sure I agree with the assessment of substandard v standard - is it ultimately saying that if something is mentioned in a smaller source instead of mainstream sources, it is less reliable? I guess I tend to agree with that. But - if something is mentioned in mainstream and lesser-known both, and both are cited here, I definitely agree that the lesser-known can be culled, especially in a long article like this one (as Masem says below). And if there are details used in this article that are only cited in one (or maybe two) niche sources but not in the major press coverage, those should probably be reconsidered for inclusion. Either way I will be watching this with interest, as a related article I've been keeping an eye on uses almost exclusively what aprock describes here as "substandard sources," but that is a much more industry-specific article, while comparatively this issue has broken out into a higher level of media awareness so there are more sources to choose from. Hustlecat ^{do it!} 23:54, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose as rather arbitrary. The technical press is not automatically of low quality, and in many cases it's the best source. I'm not completely opposed to suggestions that redundant sources should be trimmed. And where we do this, we should always take care to select the best source for the context. --TS 23:31, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Support This has gotten a lot of mainstream coverage, we don't need biased journals. Mr. Guye (talk) 02:27, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Partial step: Replace low quality with high quality sources supporting same point

This is basically what I describe above, but to repeat, and highlight , I do suggest that a partial step that should not be as much of an issue is to replace any weak RS that is not tied to a quote or specific opinion with an high quality RS that can source the same point, if one does exist. If there doesn't exist a strong RS replacement, leave it for the time being. After we do that, we should be able to make a better judgement of what the quality of sourcing looks like if we need a further step. --MASEM (t) 22:31, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

What are these weaker sources that you suggest be replaced?—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 22:34, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

The same list given above. But again, to be clear, this is only if a better quality RS can source the exact same point; there's definitely points where the writing in the finer details would require a specific source to be used and that couldn't be changed out. --MASEM (t) 22:41, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with this. Tarc (talk) 22:44, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Seems like an easier first pass to take. aprock (talk) 22:48, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Sounds sensible. No objection here. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 22:48, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Specifically: IGN, The Daily Dot, PC Magazine, Gamespot and Gameindustry.biz can go. Ars Technica and Kotaku should stay. The former because they are generally reliable (and widely relied upon in tech articles) and the latter because it is unavoidable. Protonk (talk) 23:02, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I would add TechCrunch and CinemaBlend to the list of those we can look to replace. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 23:33, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose Reliability must always be evaluated on a case-by-case matter. As someone who works in IT, I can say that the mainstream can sometimes be a poor source about technical topics, as it may be written by journalists who don't understand the topics they are writing about. Sources who specialize in a topic can often provide better coverage since it is what they specialize in. If we eliminate the technical press from technology-related articles, what's next? Should we stop citing astronomy sources in articles about astronomy? This is a bad idea. Each source must be judge individually, not by sweeping assertions. See WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:16, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I was not aware that there were any technical aspects of this controversy. As best I can tell, you are arguing to use primary sources above secondary sources. Given the degree of misuse that primary sources can cause, it's pretty clear that secondary sources should be used for the greatest part. To the extent that using primary sources makes sense, that should be determined by the secondary sources. aprock (talk) 00:35, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

There may not be technical aspects to the controversy, but the gaming industry and community can be abstruse to those not part of it. The topic's not going to be served by handing it over exclusively to mainstream sources. Willhesucceed (talk) 05:05, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

This doesn't make sense given the suggestion. If we have a point sourced to , say, ArsTech, and the same point can be sourced to NYTimes, we should use the better quality source. On the other hand, if ArsTech goes into some detail on a technical point we have, and the NYtimes touches but glosses over the details, we should keep the ArsTech in this first partial step. The only suggestions I'm saying is when the 1-to-1 replacement is obvious. --MASEM (t) 06:53, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

What Is Gamergate? What Is Gamergate Controversy?

After some reading and analysis, it occurs to me that part of the problem with this article is (as mentioned above) that Gamergate has multiple meanings. It is said that the Gamergate controversy is a controversy about the video game culture, involving misogyny, harassment, and sometimes even threats, and that is true, but there are really two controversies masquerading as one, because one side in each of the two controversies uses the hashtag #Gamergate. The first controversy (the misogyny and harassment) is well-documented. The second controversy, which is not really related, is about journalistic ethics. This controversy is not as well documented as the first, and consists largely of tweets and other posts by individuals. That is, there is no direct relationship between those who defend the traditional video game culture against claims of misogyny and harassment, and those who argue that there are issues about journalistic ethics. On the one hand, reliable sources give much more weight to the harassment controversy than to the ethics controversy, and to give the two equal weight would be false balance. On the other hand, reliable sources do document that there is a population of gamers using the Gamergate hashtag who argue that there is an issue of journalistic ethics, and so that issue cannot be ignored.

The complication is that there are two controversies, one of which is mainstream and one of which is largely fringe, with the same name. It is as if the same word referred to both astronomy and astrology, both of which must be described, and we couldn't disambiguate them.

Is there any way that we can describe the two controversies, one of which is taken by mainstream reliable sources to be a real problem, and one of which appears to be that of a population of individual posters, while preserving Wikipedia policies? (Can this issue, of how to describe two controversies that are not even very related except for their name, even be discussed seriously with the current high volume of repeating the same arguments?) Robert McClenon (talk) 23:40, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

This is what I'm trying to suggest at #A random thought above. The controversy over ethics (prior to applying the "but ethics!" criticism) can be delegated to one small 3-4 paragraph section of this article as covered as a FRINGE topic, and then keep the rest of the topic focused on the harassment aspect that is the more common application of the controversy. --MASEM (t) 23:44, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

To counter Red Pen's assertion of it 'not being a movement'. All of these articles cite it as a movement in some way: [3], [4], [5] (Yes, even Gawker), [6] (Erik Kain), [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13] Please do tell me all about how 'RS don't treat it as a movement, it's a hashtag'. Tutelary (talk) 02:35, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The "movement" is not notable; the harassment that has been done under the guide of a movement is. Focusing the section title on the hashtag and not the non-notable movement is appropriate. Tarc (talk) 02:42, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Elaborate on how you are able to do such without the support of RS. I've just listed about 11 sources each describing it as a movement. Where is your citations? Tutelary (talk) 02:50, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I would envision the section to be called "Gamergate hashtag/movement", because regardless of what RS say about the nature of the movement, there exists a concept of a "gamergate movement" - whether it really exists as a group, a movement, or a front for something else is what can be described more in the text. But "Gamergame movement" is definitely a searchable term by WP's standards. --MASEM (t) 06:57, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

lets just take a look at the sources that you posted that use the term that are on the more reliable end of the RS scale

• "some in the industry say it's a much broader movement," at best its couching it as an opinion held by a particular set of people "some in the industry say", but even that couched usage is surrounded by "many observers say they think Gamergate is all about attacking women in the video game industry" and " bullying by anonymous trolls" - the article then goes on to quote a number of developers essentially saying "you shouldnt consider the stuff that goes on under gamergate to be what gamergate is about" - not really a strong endorsement the definition of a "movement"
• "the freewheeling catastrophe/social movement/misdirected lynchmob " kind of speaks for itself in how much of an "endorsement" it is for calling it a "movement"
• The Slate article uses the term quite a bit, but also states Gamergate’s own members can’t stop their movement, since there’s no central authority "There are no less than 16 factions actively involved ... each with their own particular agendas and resentments" essentially equal evidence that it is not a "movement", simply the use of a term for simplicities sake.
• Vox uses the term "There's also a substantial, vocal movement that believes" but it also says "#GamerGate has come to mean about 500 different things to thousands of different people." and "What do the #GamerGaters ultimately want? This is what isn't as clear, and it really differs based on which #GamerGate supporter you talk to. " That is not a "movement"
• If you are going to claim "movement" you would need to use it in context " a shadowy and threatening gaming movement called GamerGate"

Thats not even looking at the sources that explicitly state "its not really a movement"-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 04:40, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

If the primary source uses a specific term to describe itself, that's a term we should use for it first and foremost to stay in a encyclopedic tone. The opinions on how legit that term is can be discussed after that and in much more detail why some think that term doesn't likely apply here. --MASEM (t) 07:00, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

no, simply because sources cannot use the term " clusterfuck" and some sources find that we dont have some other word or short phrase that means "an incoherent anarchic group of people each with their own particular agendas and resentments under a hashtag" and so sometimes use the shorthand "movement" does not mean that we frame the article as if it were a "movement"; particularly when we have several reliable sources that specifically state "its not actually a 'movement'" -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:26, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

But we also have several high quality sources that call it a movement - without, at that point in their prose, critiquing anything - and then later going into how their actions and behavior belie the movement. We are going to have a discussion on the article about how a bulk of RSes think the movement is bogus, etc., but for purposes of framing the discussion to get to that point, we have sufficient sourcing to say "GG consider themselves a movement". We can be clear that it is a self-describe "movement" and make sure that WP's voice does claim that, but the fact consider themselves a movement needs to be stated for a logical flow of the discussion and arguments against GG. --MASEM (t) 15:41, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

that is where you started - yes, some people have used the term. This use of the term is often frequently in context also stating, "but not really" -either explicitly or by the context of the use. We have reliable sources specifically analyzing and stating "'Movement?' Nope". There are not however sources have analyzed and specifically come out with "Does this make a 'movement'? Yep" . -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 01:23, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

If a critic says "This group says they are X, but I don't believe their motives/they qualify to be called X", that at least means there is a source that acknowledges that the group self-identifies itself as X - no one has to actually believe that, because we're talking the self-identifier. What that means to our writing is that 1) we can call the group as a "self-described" movement from that source, and 2) we can include all the critical commentary about that self-described designation from the source (and others), and finally, as long as we have cleared points 1 and 2 in the article, we, in WP's voice, can continue to use the word "movement" if that helps to simply our phrasing and wording, as we have it clear this is not a term WP came up with and that others disagree with. Using "Gamergate movement" is a much simpler phase than "supporters using the #gamergate hashtag", in terms of running prose. I do want to stress that as along as near the first usage of the term that we are clear that it is a self-ascribed term, and not something we (as Wikipedians) came up with ourselves, we are not ascribing any validity if they really are a movement, but just using the term for simplicity. --MASEM (t) 01:33, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't mind using the word "movement" as shorthand (to my eyes, it's better than "hashtag"), but we do need to be clear when using it that it's disorganized and uncontrolled, and thus there's nobody who can "speak" for GamerGate — we can't attribute views to it. We can only attribute views to people within the movement who are claiming to fly its flag. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 12:36, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

It could be that gamergater's most lasting impact other than setting the image of hardcore gamers back 15 years, is the contribution to the vocabulary "gamergate = n. a ineffectual clusterfuck of anarchists on the internet who cannot get their PR shit together and just ranting angrily under the same hashtag. Usage: Is that trending hashtag a group that will have impact? No, they're just a gamergate. " -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:13, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Article about Gamergate and the Digital Games Research Association

Would this be suitable for new section under "GamerGate movement'?

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/11/11/gamergate-supporters-attack-digital-games-research-association

The above also has quotes from DIGRA's president.

How would you gauge the reliability of this source?

https://www.insidehighered.com/content/about-us

https://www.insidehighered.com/about_us/who Sookenon (talk) 00:08, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Inside Higher Ed's a pretty good source, and this is a pretty good article to discuss how loopy GamerGate's conspiracy-theory claims are. I think there are some people within Gamergate who are honestly interested in gaming journalism, but among the people who are really suspicious of DiGRA, there is a large group that are very anti-feminist. Some of them are probably misogynist. They’re afraid that for some reason feminists are going to come in and change their game. ... I don’t know that I can blame them, but they have no real knowledge of how academia works, how research works, how things get published, how colleagues in academia relate to each other, know each other and cite each other. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 00:15, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I think I was adding the start of that section before this was added, but yeah. There's one GGer quote in there that believe spoke for itself. Also, unrelated to this immediately, but one additional aspect is that this article says we're going to have journal articles coming down the pipes which (assuming peer-reviewed) are going to be good sources. --MASEM (t) 00:30, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Not sure where you get the stuff about journal articles being worked on, but at any rate I am not sure why this one source is enough to justify a lengthy section. This may indeed warrant a sentence or two since it pertains to the "Gamers Are Dead" article, but I think what is presently included is excessive. Certainly, calling the criticism "anti-feminist" in the heading on the basis of what the DiGRA president says is not exactly appropriate.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 02:10, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

No, it's based on what the movement itself says, and the fact that a self-described anti-feminist video blogger is leading the charge. As the movement evolves, some Gamergate supporters have pledged to scrutinize research produced by DiGRA’s members for proof that the association has been taken over by feminists. ... "I’d like to show you how the Digital Games Research Association became co-opted by feminists to become a think tank by which gender ideologues can disseminate their ideology to the gaming press and ultimately to gamers." That's, by definition, anti-feminist. You can't be explicitly opposing a group because they're "feminists" and then complain when you're described as anti-feminist. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 02:17, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

And as I've been tracking the GG threads, DiGRA was the next major campaign for the last month-ism similar to the previous Operations (it even has an internal name but I can't recall it ATM and not given in that source). --MASEM (t) 02:32, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

On further articles: At least one paper written about Gamergate is already undergoing the peer review process, Consalvo said. Once the controversy dies down, she said, she expects many more will follow.. --MASEM (t) 02:29, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Some Gaters have given this a name: DiggingDiGRA. This name isn't cited by any reliable sources that I've seen, though.

It's interesting to see what happens when specialist press reports on this stuff. There will be more as Gaters seek to reconcile their core dogma with the real world. In time it could become a significant part of our coverage. I can only imagine the papers this will fuel, as studying gamer culture is well within their academic scope. --TS 05:32, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Tooooooo long

Whoever tagged this, "This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably", was absolutely right. I offer a barnstar for the first editor who in a non-vandalistic way manages to cut this article down to 80k. [Psst: I understand you want to stick everything in here, but the result is that no one can read it.] Drmies (talk) 02:35, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I will take up this challenge --Guerillero | My Talk 04:23, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

@Drmies:The current size is 61K would a size of 50ish K be good? --Guerillero | My Talk 04:30, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Guerillero--wait, 61K? I see 127,386 bytes. Drmies (talk) 16:05, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

127,386 bytes includes wiki markup, comments, etc... The recommendations in WP:SIZERULE are for the size of the prose, sans-markup. According to User:Dr_pda/prosesize the prose size, text-only, is 61 kB (9723 words). Article is basically on the edge of what is recommended. — Strongjam (talk) 16:11, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Alright, forget what I said about numbers: the article is way too long and too detailed. Drmies (talk) 22:28, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

One of the things that is beefing up the size are lengthy quotes from various sources, which, rough estimate, take about 33% of the prose length here. I've tagged the article with {{quotefarm}} to indicate this but this is probably just a matter of review each of the longer quotes and culling down to core statements from each. --MASEM (t) 07:12, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Simply cutting down redundant attack quotes would make this article much shorter and easier to follow.AioftheStorm (talk) 20:45, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, there are way too many quotes. The reason there are so many quotes is that every attempt to write a paraphrased summation of the mainstream POV based on those sources was summarily rejected as "introducing bias." If we could work toward expressing the mainstream POV in Wikipedia's voice, we could get rid of a lot of quotes. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 22:36, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Trimmed article by Totlmstr

I made a separate page for testing based on Drmies's recent edit (the one on whether Let's Players were mentioned), and I trimmed the article using Notepad++. It cuts the article down from the above 61 kB (9723 words) to 44 kB (6944 words). Note that I barely added anything on there and most of the work was deletions. You can check the abbreviated edit comment on there as an insight. I removed some of the references, and these were commented out at the bottom of the article. Totlmstr (talk) 04:17, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Wow. That's a huge difference. I tell you what, lots of people or not going to like it, but I do. (But I am not as familiar with the material as some others.) Thanks! Drmies (talk) 04:24, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

You're welcome. It is a huge difference and the focus on this article is much better. There were at least three paragraphs dedicated to one source and multiple quotes in the same line that were too extraneous (a double quote by Anita in one sentence and three quotes by Kain in a row in three sentences; both were knocked by one each) and articles that focused on a blip in the controversy (An entire paragraph dedicated to a blogger and is not mentioned anywhere else in the article? How relevant is that?). Totlmstr (talk) 04:35, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I feel like this is a fair place to start working, but there's several removals that I think unnecessarily weaken the narrative, particularly in terms of addressing the movement's claims re: journalism ethics and DiGRA. Also, the "Attacks on women" section should not be smaller than "The Fine Young Capitalists" section, given the relative weight of the two issues in mainstream reliable sources (lots and lots of attention to the movement's attacks on women, not really any at all on TFYC). NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 04:44, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

At this point, I'm allowing the mods to just go ahead and edit this page as they need. My original edit was the base requirement I would like to see on the page proper. Also, I do not see how size comparisons are important here. Shouldn't it be the content? Totlmstr (talk) 04:59, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

We weight content based on its relative prevalence in reliable sources. That is, stuff that's discussed a lot in reliable sources should get more space than stuff that isn't. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:11, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

By following that at the general level, DiGRA has only mentioned GamerGate as a blurb on their website as far as I can tell with my simplistic Google searching. I can't find anything else that has a better leaning than TFYC, which organization was deeply involved with Zoe Quinn, at the center of a controversy for at least a solid month, amd part of the 4chan debacles involving Vivian James and several other things that are/should be in the TFYC article proper. I believe that until DiGRA releases their full length articles directly about GamerGate (they must have released something of note about the topic directly), their section really should be that short in the article in my opinion. Totlmstr (talk) 05:30, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

My objection re: DiGRA there is that you dramatically shortened DiGRA's response while leaving the attack entirely intact.

As for TFYC, they are, as per the reliable sources, more or less a minor footnote in this issue. While perhaps deserving more space than Anil Dash's incident, they don't deserve much more. They certainly don't deserve more space than the discussion section on "Attacks on women," for which Gamergate is far more notable. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:34, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

My point still stands. By all means, if you want to add something in, do so in the page I created. Totlmstr (talk) 05:47, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Totlmstr is just another zombie account. No edits for months and then right into Gamergate as if he's a neutral party. The fact that his draft of the article is removing more content critical of Gamergate and leaving in the stuff supportive of it is proof as such.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 05:38, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I explicity mention I am a lurker on Wikipedia and I follow my interests on my page. I normally don't go on Talk pages and I don't contribute that often to Wikipedia due to most of the pages I am on already have enough edits or sections. Additionally, I am more active off-site than on here, so "zombie account" may as well be half-correct. You are free to not listen if you so desire. Totlmstr (talk) 05:47, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

You're here from KotakuInAction though.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 05:50, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Do you even sometimes assume good faith? This article needs trimming and everybody knows it, but when someone tries to do it, people from either side shoot them down.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Skeletos (talk • contribs) 08:30, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

You removed the entire Anil Dash paragraph when there were multiple sources discussing it and using it as an example of how trolling and right wingers were exploiting the Gamergate movement.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 04:47, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Anil Dash (I do not know enough about the person) was, at the really basic level, threatened by an anonymous poster on her blog that she posted on a random day. It is not even known if it was even related to GamerGate at all, so I thought it would be best to hold on putting it up there than impulsively adding it in. It was explained in the earlier paragraphs that anyone could make threats of any kind and anyone can use the hashtag at will, but, so far, nothing of merit or confirmation as far as I know of has come out of it. And it was, like I said, a very small blip in the entire controversy; it is not mentioned anywhere else in the article as of my edit. Totlmstr (talk) 04:59, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm willing to say the Anil Dash thing was a flash in the pan that we can trim. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:11, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Anil Dash is a man who got harassed by that "lawyer" we're not allowed to talk about due to vague BLP violations who made himself to be a "leader" of Gamergate.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 05:40, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Generally agree on Totlmster's trimmed version, which primarily aimed at the quotes, and that helps a lot. I do agree that we should be focusing on a broader narrative and not get into weedy details like Anil Dash's aspect. --MASEM (t) 05:06, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Not at all. Totlmstr's just another Redditor from KIA trying to pull the wool over our eyes. His edits almost exclusively remove content critical of Gamergate while leaving lengthy sections that prove it right.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 05:43, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I am not entirely sure how my posting history off-site is relevant on Wikipedia. Totlmstr (talk) 05:50, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

It shows that you are not a neutral party here. And your proposed cuts show that as well.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 05:54, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

True, I am not a neutral party at all. However, I am judging the article based on the content and context of the article itself, not on the premise of whether or not this fits with me. I also wanted to take this challenge because the article is really way too long and needs to be compressed somehow. It is, however, a strange coincidence that the majority of the lengthy quotes (especially the paragraphs that I have deleted) were from that same side and had what would be redundancy in the paragraphs themselves. For example, the MetalEater paragraph in "Legitimacy over Ethics Concerns" section says, at the lowest level, the same thing as the paragraph right above it, and that has two articles referenced. Another example is the Grant remark in "Nature and Organization" is more concise and direct than the quote and remark combination before it. In both cases, these references can be moved to another location so that way the article doesn't talk about a single subject for too long (which you can edit in the page I linked, and I'm letting you do so without any interference from me as of that recent edit). Does Wikipedia really need multiple lengthy quotes back to back just to explain one point when an even better reference can do it that easily? Shouldn't some of these quotes be compressed so that way they fit the narrative? Totlmstr (talk) 06:20, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Finding redundancies is one thing. And as stated multiple times on this page (and in its archives) the quotes have been used because there have been a large contingent of users who have argued that the paraphrasing of these sources has not been adequate as it presents the information within that they have generally disagreed with as being written in Wikipedia's voice rather than the voice of the writer. While it may be useful to cut out some of these (and the Anil Dash paragraph/sentence) it just seemed odd at first glance. TFYC should be given less prevalence on the page if we are cutting out some of this other content (and I am still convinced we should merge the separate article to this one).—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 06:33, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I made this its own subsection, by the way. starship.paint ~ regal 06:37, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and WP:BOLDly created a subpage working draft, at Talk:GamerGate controversy/Working draft. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 06:13, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Remove Gawker as it is "proudly a tabloid"?

A few sections above editors were talking about replacing low quality sources due to the controversial nature of the article. Therefore I propose removing Gawker from any section which is not about Operation Baby Seal. Why? Because it's "proudly a tabloid", as admitted by this Gawker article, article is recent, from September 2014. Gawker reporter writes that Like Gawker, TMZ is proudly a tabloid, so it’s not worth judging the site by the same standards of mainstream outlets. The article talks about how TMZ edited raw footage to "amplify its visual impact", and the writer says "I don’t think TMZ did anything wrong here". They've essentially sold themselves down from being a reliable source. The only thing that would be removed would be a single sentence in Political views... Gawker's Sam Biddle also raised the issue of the right-wing external forces "exploiting" Gamergate, noting the presence of Sommers, Yiannopoulos, Adam Baldwin, and others who have had nothing to do with video games prior and have only joined Gamergate to be anti-progressive. starship.paint ~ regal 05:48, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

It is an op/ed piece by Sam Biddle after he made the tweets that led to "Operation Baby Seal". You cannot pick some single statement from some random article on the website to completely discount it as a source as the whole.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 06:17, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• Ah. Even worse, it's an op/ed piece from a tabloid site. By the way, Gawker's tabloid status was noted by the Columbia Journalism Review at this link. Also, a cursory search brought up Gawker celebrating a "Sensational Tabloid Journalist"
• Either that Gawker reporter was telling the truth about Gawker being a tabloid, or not. If not, then there's obviously a lack of editorial oversight for that article to be published, which also points to a lack of reliability. starship.paint ~ regal 06:41, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

biddle is not the only one who has made the analysis that the right wing talking heads for gamergate are not in it for the "but ethics" or the love of games , rather just the chance to bash feminists for a new audience. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 07:01, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

That's great. Then use the other sources. No need for Biddle. starship.paint ~ regal 07:07, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Biddle's opinion after being made into a reason for GamerGate to continue is arguably notable as is his analysis that Yiannopoulos, Sommers, et al. are not in it for ethics in video game journalism.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 07:11, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Could you clarify? I don't really understand. I'm not fine with Biddle's opinion preceding the Operation Baby Seal section. IMO, it's either delete or perhaps we could move it to the Gawker Media section. starship.paint ~ regal 07:24, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The placement of his piece in this article as outside of his presence as a target should not mean anything. The piece was written after he tweeted and Gamergate started the "operation". Just because it has relevance to another part of the article should not in any way detract from his points.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 08:33, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

OK, then I have clarified his notability in the controversy. starship.paint ~ regal 09:23, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

That wasn't entirely necessary when we can just link to the section on the article to give more detail, which I've changed it to. We don't need to constantly bring up his "Bring back bullying" tweet as a reason of anything.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 09:37, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to leave it except for a minor rephrase. I still oppose any future potential additions of Gawker beyond Baby Seal. starship.paint ~ regal 09:43, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

NPOV tag removed

Wait, why was the NPOV tag removed? HalfHat 08:51, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Because the community at large, and not the vocal minority of editors on this talk page who believe the content of the page is biased, came to the conclusion that it was against Wikipedia's policies and guidelines to have this article persistently tagged as being "biased". Four separate editors who had never edited this article or its talk page before removed the tag and have been reverted time and time again by users heavily involved in editing the article rather than anyone who as any actual points as to how this article is biased (outside of Masem's arguments that it needs to treat both "sides" of the "debate" equally).—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 08:54, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Ryulong, please tell me why 5 limited editors at WP:ANI decide that a tag should be removed, it should suddenly be a consensus even though 5 other editors decided it should stay. That's absolutely gaming of the consensus policy and as such I've restored it. Tutelary (talk) 11:23, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

And I've removed it. Please contest the closure through the usual means, not through revert-warring. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 11:34, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

For what it's worth I strongly support this removal. After over a month without any substantial POV issues being raised it's time to drop the stick.

The RFC is a good example of how far awry the campaign to retain the tag has become. Essentially the RFC is attempting to suggest that we make an exception to our NPOV policy in order to produce an article more sympathetic to something nearly all of the reliable sources see as a misogynistic campaign involving very real harm to named people. I hope it's obvious why this is never going to fly. This is not the encyclopaedia you're looking for. TS 12:07, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I've seen this kind (This is not the encyclopaedia you're looking for.) of comments before on the talk page, not necessarily by TS. The impression I'm getting is that this is a comment aimed at SPAs and possibly implying the other editor is not here to improve the project. Just my two cents. starship.paint ~ regal 12:28, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• LOL, this article and its editors have been taken before ArbCom three times already, editors here are constantly pointing to off-wiki discussions about this article and its editors, and there are continuous efforts to get editors banned from this article, and some of you are actually saying the NPOV tag shouldn't be here? This is one of the most disputed articles in Wikipedia, and some of you are trying to say there isn't a dispute over its tone? Cla68 (talk) 12:32, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
  • By the way, I haven't made a single edit to this article but I don't agree that it complies with our NPOV policy. So, I'm going to read the NPOV tag and I request that no one edit war it out until there is a true consensus on this talk page that the article's language has been made in compliance with our NPOV policy. Cla68 (talk) 12:39, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
    • a claimed "dispute over tone" is not one of the valid reasons for use of the tag. "The editor who adds the tag should discuss concerns on the talk page, pointing to specific issues that are actionable within the content policies. In the absence of such a discussion, or where it remains unclear what the NPOV violation is, the tag may be removed by any editor. ... This template should not be used as a badge of shame. Do not use this template to "warn" readers about the article. The neutral point of view is determined by the prevalence of a perspective in high-quality, independent, reliable secondary sources, " There has been no articulation of "specific and actionable" issues and no valid claim that the article is not reflective of the reliable sources. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:44, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
      • and a determination was made at ANI that there was no valid claim on the talk page. Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#POV_tag_at_Gamergate_controversy_being_used_as_a_scarlet_letter "No ongoing discussion, so tag removed per consensus below. " -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:52, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

This is what Gamergate looks like to the world beyond 8chan and the POV represented in this Australian Broadcasting Corporation news segment broadcast yesterday, the mainstream POV of reliable published sources, is what Wikipedia articles are based on. Hint: "but ethics" gets precisely one mention, death and rape threats get many. Attempts to argue that our article is "biased" because it largely reflects the mainstream POV must fail. NPOV does not mean no point of view, it means we reflect points of view in proportion to their prevalence in reliable sources. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 12:57, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

"Gamergate sort of became an issue where people wanted to discuss ethics within games journalism, but because of the reaction towards her, it also became an issue about misogyny and the way women are treated in games." Can I just point out that one of your quote in one of your articles is that. HalfHat 20:14, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I don't see the article has having a NPOV because of the the structure. Yes, there has been harassment and misogyny, yes, this is the majority coverage in reliable sources. But the article doesn't fit the timeline, and the lead does not either. The journalism ethics part came first, then the harassment was a consequence. Yes, I know that the allegations against Quinn were proven false, but that didn't stop people from protesting against what they thought was journalism ethics. I feel that we should present the journalism ethics parts first, both in the lead and the body of the article. If you look at these three reliable sources (BBC, Boston.com and CNN, when they started explaining what is GamerGate, they've all gone into journalism ethics first. We can then discuss the harassment after framing the background of journalism ethics, because the harassment is a consequence to people reacting to a supposed breach in journalism ethics. [[User:Starship.paint|starship].paint ~ regal 13:02, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

No, the "journalism ethics" part didn't come first, because the alleged "ethics" concerns were foundationally illegitimate and a 10-minute "investigation" to determine that Nathan Grayson never wrote a review of Depression Quest would have revealed that. Moreover, even if there had been an ethical violation, it would have been committed by Nathan Grayson, not Zoe Quinn — yet Grayson was not targeted for anything. It is patently clear that there was never an intent to dispassionately and reasonably discuss journalism ethics — it was an excuse to go after Zoe Quinn with slut-shaming third-grade-level sex jokes, vicious abuse and unfounded personal attacks. Proving this is absolutely trivial — all I have to do is point to the IRC channel name and hashtag that were used. They had nothing to do with journalism ethics and everything to do with cheap chanboard lulz. Sorry, your argument doesn't even begin to pass the smell test. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 13:06, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree that ethics concerns were foundationally illegitimate. But that doesn't mean that the "journalism ethics" part didn't come first! Quinn was bombarded because people thought she slept her way to a review, right? Therefore she was attacked because people thought there was a breach in journalism ethics, even if the people thinking so were wrong. starship.paint ~ regal 13:15, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

No, the concerns were never about journalism ethics. If you're going to discuss journalism ethics, you don't do it in an IRC channel called #burgersandfries and spend all day making jokes about "Five Guys." If you're going to discuss journalism ethics, you criticize the journalist who allegedly wrote an unethical article, not his girlfriend. If you're going to discuss journalism ethics, you don't send death threats to that journalist's girlfriend. If you're going to discuss journalism ethics, you spend 10 minutes on Google to make sure you're not falsely accusing someone of something that didn't happen. A movement is not judged by what it says it's about, it's judged by what it actually does, and what Gamergate actually did is a matter of public record at this point.

Moreover, if this is about journalism ethics, where are all the apologies to Zoe Quinn for falsely attacking her? It is patently clear that the attacks on Quinn were false, ill-founded and made in bad faith, and that neither she nor Nathan Grayson committed any violation of journalism ethics. If Gamergate is truly interested in a conversation about ethics, they ought to start by having some ethics of their own by owning up to their colossal, catastrophic misjudgment. No, they simply doubled down on "LW1."

I'm sorry, this is a settled argument as far as the sources are concerned — GamerGate was built upon a foundation of specious allegations about a woman's sex life that led directly to misogynistic harassment and abuse of women in gaming. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 13:18, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue much further beyond this post. GamerGate started due to the allegation by Gjoni. The allegation, while false, presented a scenario of a breach in journalism ethics by Grayson, as well as a more general breach in ethics by Quinn. Therefore Gjoni started GamerGate regarding journalism ethics. The reaction to Gjoni were in two directions. The article itself states that Although the accusations of favorable coverage were refuted, the incident led to broader allegations on social media that game developers and the gaming press are too often closely connected and that cultural criticism of video games has led to an increasing focus on social representation and cultural meaning in games by some video games writers. Parallel to this, a campaign of harassment started, targeting Quinn and other female game developers, but this was still a consequence of Gjoni's post. "Five Guys" was a consequence, it was not the beginning. There would be no #burgersandfries without Gjoni's post, which presented a scenario which was indeed about journalism ethics. starship.paint ~ regal 13:34, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

if the Gjoni rantfest is the basis of your "but ethics" then you are sooooooo far out there that you need to turn your starship back towards earth. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:58, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I've conducted my arguments in a civil manner, I don't see the need for your "witty" snark if you're not really saying anything useful. starship.paint ~ regal 01:48, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

The same points are being raised again and again and again regarding this issue, showing to me useful discussion has stopped. I would advise anyone reading this who has become focused on GG to take some time out, go and maybe help to clear some of the backlogs, then come back later as and when there is new material to discuss. I was uninvolved when I closed the discussion, and I did look through the talk page and history before I made my close, which is how I reached my conclusion earlier. --Mdann52talk to me! 13:44, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

What are we to do when useful discussion has stopped? Dispute resolutions, RfCs, ANI filings, ArbComm cases have all been tried at this point. Can this really be only settled in ArbComm? starship.paint ~ regal 13:52, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The specific issue of the tag abuse had to go to ANI, because editors here were edit-warring to retain it in express contradiction to how it is supposed to be used. Now that we're past that, we can all get back to discussing actual content again. Tarc (talk) 13:56, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

@Starship.paint: Unfortunately, nothing. I suspect ArbCom will have to go through this and sort it all out, because community sactions have failed to resolve this all. --Mdann52talk to me! 16:35, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Oh well, that sucks. Maybe I should take a break from this article, and maybe some extremely-involved editors should as well... starship.paint ~ regal 01:48, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Community sanctions were barely given a chance, Mdann52.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 02:20, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Actually, if you reread the discussion at AN/I, most uninvolved editors (such as myself) believe that the tag should remain until the NPOV issues can be resolved. If editors of this article cannot fix these problems, I suggest that they walk away from the article and let others try to fix it. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 14:01, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The problem there is, sometimes things are resolved, but not to everyone's satisfaction. A minority of actual (non-SPA) editors cannot be allowed to stymie the moving on from an issue that most editors no longer feel is an issue. This is reminiscent of Obama article editing circa 2009, when a tiny handful of very loud individuals wanted the parent article to be much, much more critique-based than it is now. Tarc (talk) 14:07, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

It would be helpful if editors who thought the tag should remain would give specific and actionable reasons. To date most of what I've seen as arguments range from the almost useful, but not specific "tone of the article" to the useless "delete it all." I see no current discussion on any specific POV issues. Unless one exists the tag should be removed. — Strongjam (talk) 14:12, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

There wasn't even a hint of a consensus. The tag removal should be reverted until the article meets a NPOV by most editors. Loganmac (talk) 15:25, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

{ping|Loganmac}} A discussion happened on ANI (one of the most watched pages on Wikipedia), and the comments there formed a clear consensus. If you wish to differ, I am sure you are aware of the relevant avenues to appeal this. The consesnsus was secured for me by the same issues being raised again and again; If no new issues are being raised, it is not really a discussion on the issue, more a tape stuck on repeat. --Mdann52talk to me! 16:35, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

@Mdann52:, what consensus? Tell me, which editors did you see particularly decide that made you close it as such? I 5 agree, 5 disagree, and a rambling discussion. I see no such consensus. Tutelary (talk) 20:25, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Another admin weighed in on the closure as not a matter for ANI. Probably best to just drop the issue of the closure in ANI as getting Mdann52 to revert will still leave the issue closed. You may have a case for WP:WRONGVERSION, or maybe a protected edit request requesting the addition of the tag outlining the reasons it's needed per WP:NPOV. — Strongjam (talk) 20:36, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Consensus does not require that we wait until the last bitter-ender and the final zealot agrees that they were mistaken. If that were the case, consensus would seldom or never occur. What is clear is that (a) the page reflects the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence; (b) those who believe the article lacks neutrality reflect a vocal WP:FRINGE movement; and (c) that fringe movement is being orchestrated and coordinated off-wiki as part of a political/public relations campaign. Assume Good Faith is not a suicide pact.

To those concerned that the article leans against Gamergate, I would argue that the narrative it adopts is actually too sympathetic. At this point, the best sources for the controversy have arrived at a rather difference narrative from the one proposed above:

1. A faction of gamers, unhappy at trends they perceived in game design, decided to attack specific game designers and scholars in order to punish them, frighten them into silence, induce them to leave the field, or convince their employers to dismiss them.
2. The ensuing campaign of vituperation included publishing details of the sexual histories and home addresses of prominent women in the industry, as well as email campaigns urging advertisers to withdraw business until the group’s targets were silenced.
3. This campaign was poorly received by the press.
4. In order to improve their image, the campaigners invented a claim that the press had behaved unethically, that it was (literally) in bed with their opponents, and therefore should be disregarded. (This argument is repeated many times above.)
5. This new claim that "it was always about ethics" was exploded because (a) few or no ethical questions were raised, much less proven, and (b) neither the timing nor the tactics adopted were consistent with these ex post facto talking points.

I would suggest that a neutral article might adhere more closely to the narrative above -- and expect that a year or two from now, it will. But for now, GG supporters should take comfort that the article is actually more favorable to their crusade than the sources justify or than their crusade deserved.

Finally, many thanks for the full page protection. Though I would argue, as I have done above, that the article departs from neutrality (though not in the way argued at such great length above), it is neutral enough, good enough, and well enough sourced to stand for the time being. Let things cool down for a few weeks (or, better, a few months) and we can return with fewer single-purpose accounts, less lobbying, and cooler heads. MarkBernstein (talk) 15:48, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Firstly, let's understand that tropes and characterization of women in games was criticized long before GamerGate. Second, concersn about journalism ethics in game reviews were around long before gamergate. Loosely, the battle was already being waged by gamers and major developers ("gamers") against so-called "Social Justice Warriors." The flashpoint came when a true allegation about Quinn (an Indie game developer that created games along social justice lines) having an undisclosed relationship with a journalist (also perceived as sympathetic to social justice causes) was made public by a third party (who, incidentally is also in the social justice camp and called out hypocrisy, not misogyny). While journalism impropriety was denied and no link between the journalists work and quinn was found, the relationship did exist and has the appearance if impropriety nonetheless. Gaming journals tightened up their policies as a result and other journalistic fields have always had these measures in place (as have other industries). Gamergate was born out of the belief that social justice was encroaching games and there was an active alliance between SJ game developers and journalists. Outspoken women in the community had already been targets of misogynistic campaigns and when Quinn was revealed as being involved with a journalist. "gamergate" started with the outing of Quinns relationship. When she pivoted away from defending the relationship to a position of being victimized, the "NotYourShield" campaign started. There's no question that these women were subjected to horrific outing and abuse by certain elements and gaming journalists have covered that aspect very heavily but it was also occurring before gamergate so that's not what gamergate is about. Gamergate is the point in time where gamers received information about a relationship between SJW and Game journalists. In its course it also uncovered GameJournoPros which also had an appearance of impropriety. This is all well sourced and documented. Gamergate certainly contributed to the harassment of Quinn but Sarkheesian had been harassed for a much longer time and it's rather myopic to tie her dispute with games to GamerGate. In any case, the Vox piece about politics in gamergate is an excellent reference as was the piece by a prominent mainstream game developer in the archives. It is on it's face, a false claim to say that gamergate started with misogyny when misogyny was occurring way before gamergate. --DHeyward (talk) 20:11, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

It is on it's face, a false claim to say that gamergate started with misogyny when misogyny was occurring way before gamergate. This doesn't parse for me. I'm also not sure what this has to do with the content of the article. — Strongjam (talk) 20:24, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Bupkis. Yes, women have been harassed and threatened with rape and violence well before Quinn and Gamergate; in some cases (e.g. Sarkeesian), that has been notable. Yes, anonymous men on the internet have been griping about "social justice" creeping into their gaming culture and about issues in gamer journalism, but neither of those were notable. "Gamergate" came about when Quinn's jilted ex posted a blog tirade, anonymous internet denizens saw that as grand proof of their latter 2 issues, and harassed (and continue to harass) the ever-living bejeezus out of Quinn and anyone who has defended her. These anonymous internet men can scream from morning to midnight that all they ever cared about was ethics, but what reliable sources have overwhelmingly taken note of here is the fact that women were threatened with rape and murder by people waving the "Gamergate" banner. That is what is notable, that is what the focus of this article is. It's great that others wave the Gamergate banner for ethics, but no one actually cares about that except for them. Encyclopedias are not platforms to right great wrongs, they are here to discuss topics factually and neutrally. It is a factually neutral thing to say that the predominant view of Gamergate is that it is about harassment, while mentioning "ethics" as a secondary aspect, i.e. the counter-claim. Tarc (talk) 20:33, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

When she pivoted away from defending the relationship to a position of being victimized... This is total garbage victim-blaming, DHeyward. Moreover, the belief that social justice was encroaching games is not an issue of journalism ethics. It's an opinion held by some people who don't like "social justice."

Loosely, the battle was already being waged by gamers and major developers ("gamers") against so-called "Social Justice Warriors." This is hilarious, given the clear and unambiguous stance of a wide range of "major developers" that Gamergate is a toxic cesspool of vicious trolling with a major negative impact on the industry. What "major developer" are you citing as opposed to these "social justice warriors," Brad Wardell? Or "RogueStarGamez" who has been sitting on his Kickstarter game project for two and a half years now with no apparent progress? NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 20:43, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Actually, traffic to pretty much all the major gaming sites is up or flat, which is verifiable through Alexa. In fact, Kotaku's traffic has skyrocketed. GamerGate is having effectively no impact on viewership, as would be expected from a "movement" made up of maybe 10,000 people at most. Intel pulled out of Gamasutra, then backpedaled at 10,000 mph and a (non-RS, but viewable) Twitter post by Gamasutra's editor implied that Intel is already planning future advertising with Gamasutra. And that's it, there hasn't been anything else in weeks now. "Keep sending e-mails" doesn't work when everyone knows the score. The "impact" that GamerGate thinks it's having just isn't there, DHeyward. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 21:56, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Everybody please cool down. Highly questionable material about living persons will be removed. --TS 22:03, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

And please remember this is WP:NOTFORUM. If you dont have specific change you wish to discuss, please consider NOT posting. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:36, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Requested moves

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not to move the pages at this time; the proposed move has no chance of gaining consensus through the current discussion, WP:SNOW. Dekimasuよ! 19:36, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

---

• Gamergate controversy → Gamergate
• Gamergate → Gamergate (ant)

– The video game culture controversy, and not the ant, has become the primary topic for "Gamergate", by quite a large margin. That is, "it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term." — Mudwater ^(Talk) 14:09, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The article is called "Gamergate controversy" because that is the focus and scope here; the controversy caused by people who initially harassed one woman, then others, under a common twitter hashtag. It wasn't named as such for the sole purpose of disambiguating it from an ant article. Tarc (talk) 14:24, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose on grounds of long-term significance. This situation is only a few months old. Will anyone still care about it in a year? That remains to be seen. Somewhat premature, at least. Egsan Bacon (talk) 14:30, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

A year from now, when you say "Gamergate", how many people will immediately think of the ant, assuming that you're not sitting in the department of invertebrate zoology of a college or museum? — Mudwater ^(Talk) 14:40, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

WP:CRYSTAL but I will bet dollars to donuts far more will think of the ants than than who will remember or think of "harassment of women" /"but ethics!". there is no evidence this trollfest based on nothing will have any lasting impact. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:33, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support, with apologies to the ants. Protonk (talk) 14:38, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I'm a bit flummoxed by some of the opposition. There's vanishingly little doubt as to whether or not the bulk of sources (reliable or otherwise) mean the events covered in this article (and not the ant) when they say "Gamergate" or "#Gamergate". Disambiguating the ant from the controversy as we do right now may feel good, as we can say "we're not subject to recentism, the ant came first and all this will blow over", meanwhile a reader looking to learn about gamergate will either not find the article (because the title is different) or will find the ant first. No doubt this hypothetical reader will praise us for our commitment to lexical precision and not feel grumpy or put out that they didn't get the article they wanted. Protonk (talk) 19:26, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• There is a hatnote on the other article that directs those looking for Gamergate controversy to this article. Dekimasuよ! 19:30, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• Yes, thanks. I'm aware of that. But now we're two clicks to the article itself (provided we use wikipedia's search). If we use google, searching for "gamergate" brings this article up first regardless (the ant is nowhere to be found). Protonk (talk) 19:37, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. Per Egsan Bacon, and we also have a precedence of the ant article being on Wikipedia first, and being a topic before this controversy came about. Gamergate controversy accurately describes this current article. On the crystal ball comment, scientific information tends to have a bit more staying power, while controversies like this often get blown up early on only to later become just a tiny blip on the radar in terms of encyclopedic content. Also, this is currently a hot button issue amongst editors as evidenced by edits here. I'm a bit concerned about editors who are passionate about this topic bringing that into discussion on a completely unrelated topic and trying to weight which one should get precedence. Best to close this and let the dust settle first to avoid WP:RECENTISM issues. Kingofaces43 (talk) 14:44, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. Echoing the comments of Egsan Bacon and Kingofaces43. — Strongjam (talk) 14:51, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose per the AFD and GamerGate's lack of notability outside of controversy. Artw (talk) 15:08, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. Gamergate controversy is fine. Kaciemonster (talk) 15:09, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose The scientific term will have indefinite value; GG as the controversy will likely remain a bad memory of the gaming industry once it's over. Just because now "Gamergate" may be more reflective of the controversy, we consider the long-term aspects. --MASEM (t) 15:35, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. Recentism makes us all think of this as a major topic, but back in reality the article currently called Gamergate is of great significance, being a link target for about a score of articles about ants. Search engines are still perfectly capable of suggesting appropriate choices and the name "Gamergate controversy" is more descriptive. Moreover, like many "-gates" the original claim of some sort of scandal and cover up has evaporated in the light of day, so calling it merely "Gamergate" without a qualifier might not be the best move even if we didn't already have a perfectly good entomology article of that name. --TS 15:40, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• oppose- the "controversy" has received coverage and notice, not the "movement" /clusterfuck. In 3 months when there is even more evidence that this was just a trollfest, it will fade from view and relevance other than the dingiest corners of 8chan . The ants will still be around. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:47, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• Support Because opinion!=fact --DSA510 Pls No H8 19:20, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

I suggest adding the Controversial tag to this talk

It just seems odd to me it's not here there's been a lot of arguing on this page. Template:Controversial HalfHat 20:54, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• Weak Support - Adding the tag to the talk seems non-controversial to me. A little concerned about template overload though. — Strongjam (talk) 20:57, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

On reflection and taking into consideration other comments, amending to weak support. I think a better solution might be to move the general sanctions template higher up so that it's more noticeable. Perhaps right below the BLP notice. I do share TRPoD's concerns about the load and save times which can be pretty bad at times. — Strongjam (talk) 16:56, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support - Much better than edit-warring over the NPOV tag. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:58, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose until supported by policy. This seems to be simply another attempt to attach a badge of shame to the page. MarkBernstein (talk) 21:12, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I have no idea why you'd think that, it's little more than a warning to editors. HalfHat 21:18, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support --DSA510 Pls No H8 21:16, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Something we can all agree on. (maybe) Tutelary (talk) 21:20, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support - This controversy is ongoing and while I disagree with the NPOV tags removal, it's more important to me that readers at least be notified that the editors are not at a consensus on the topic. Digman14 (talk) 21:35, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose as this seems to be yet another attempt to beat a dead horse. The sanctions notice tells everybody here we've got a severe conduct problem; going back to pretending it's merely a matter of lack of consensus within policy would be misleading. --TS 21:42, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• Support Even though NPOV discussions are still ongoing that tag was not producing consensus as the article is too controversial. Maybe when it dies down, the controversy will fade and neutrality will be achievable. --DHeyward (talk) 21:58, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• in theory, why not, but every transclusion increases the load and save time for this already very long and slow page, and so for practical reasons, no, unless some of the other tags are removed/replaced -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:26, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
• Support The decision to remove it was clearly made with no concensus. We tried to vote on it before. But then someone just said "this is not a vote" and removed it anyways, and those who protested got banned.--Torga (talk) 11:32, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

To clarify. This isn't for the NPOV tag, but for the controversial article tag and applies only to the talk page and hasn't be added or removed in the past to the best of my knowledge. — Strongjam (talk) 16:56, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

• Support If an article is such a hot potato that labeling it controversial is controversial, then we have a controversial article. Also one in need of a rewrite. Skeletos (talk) 08:12, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales approaching GG people to suggest to write their version (offsite)

Keeping in mind that Jimmy Wales cannot force any issue on WP outside of WMF office actions, he does have a vision for how WP should be. And he's asked the proGG side to write what they think this article should be like. (His tweet to them). I have very strong doubts we'd be able to us much they will create but it might be interesting if they have sources that we would take as RS that we have otherwise not used. --MASEM (t) 21:37, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

And in the first hour, they call the harassment of Quinn "alleged" and make a factually false statement about Quinn and Grayson. Pass the popcorn. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 21:40, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

inviting people whose edits here had to be oversighted so much that both the talk page and the article page are protected from open editing to make their baseless claims elsewhere off from reddit/8chan seems to me to have been an idea that was not quite thought through. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:30, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Yep, and it's going about as expected — doubling and tripling down on the accusations about Zoe Quinn's personal relationships, zomg Patreon, and nonsensical MSPaint "infographics." Because it's about ethics in gaming journalism, alright. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 00:11, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to interject, but AFAIK the use of "alleged" in this context would be appropriate - all real and potential misconduct illegal behaviour in this controversy will remain "alleged" until the conclusion of an investigation by the appropriate authority or until an appropriate judicial body has passed judgement upon the veracity of the claims or the guilt of any involved parties. This applied equally and fairly to any people involved in this controversy. To avoid "victim blaming" one could say, "ZQ was the victim of harassment. It is alleged that the perpetrators are aligned with the GG hashtag." Furthermore, "false statement" is harsh IMO. Why don't you (Baranof) say that they make a statement which is inconsistent with a specific RS that you have used.Jgm74 (talk) 01:13, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

tl;dr, "ignore the reliable sources because they're mean to Gamergate." Nope, we're not going to ignore the reliable sources. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 01:16, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

That really isn't a good argument, I doubt all the websites had fair trials against the people of GG where it was proven beyond all resonable doubt. HalfHat 09:43, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

No, but Wikipedia is not a court of law and we don't operate on a standard of proven guilt or innocence. Rather, we reflect the perspectives of mainstream reliable sources in proportion with their prevalence in said sources and let the chips fall where they may. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 09:54, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

If they do a good job of explaining their POV it could be referenced by RS we could source. HalfHat 21:48, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

No. Wikis, by definition, cannot be reliable sources for Wikipedia. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 21:52, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, no way that raw claims from that wikia or the other GG wiki sites can be used here. A reference we can check as an RS, sure, but not uncited claims. --MASEM (t) 21:55, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Which is why we site the RS for the opinions. HalfHat 21:56, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Wikia is a business founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. It has no connection with Wikipedia and sites can have their own policies. He's quite a clever boy sometimes. --TS 21:50, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Notice

Please be aware that a sanctions enforcement page has been established at WP:GS/GG/E. This page can be used to request enforcement of sanctions against an editor or for some other administrative action. Please follow the appropriate guidelines when making a report. Administrators will be watching the page, ready to respond to your requests. RGloucester — ☎ 21:46, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

My comment got moved, but let me be clear, admins should be blocking edit warriors rather than locking the article. - hahnchen 00:33, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

@Hahnchen: If you want someone to be sanctioned, make a request at the page I linked above and provide evidence. RGloucester — ☎ 01:11, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

@Future Perfect at Sunrise: - If an admin sees an edit war on this page, why does it require a report? - hahnchen 01:24, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

commentary about locking and blocking

Admins should just be blocking anyone involved in edit warring instead of just protecting the article. The article has been fully protected for 10 days because of an edit war over a NPOV tag, it's pathetic. - hahnchen 22:20, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

It had to be protected because people wouldn't accept that a consensus formed against them.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 22:48, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I'll assume for a sec, Ryulong, that you're entirely right. Where was this consensus determined and how exactly how was it determined? Tutelary (talk) 22:53, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The ANI thread where at least four separate uninvolved editors agreed with Tarc's summation of the events and removed the tag from this page amongst the other editors who have had zero participation in this article seeing the same thing.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 23:06, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

here [14] -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:43, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

No no, I see that, but are you aware of how consensus was determined in that heated, large discussion? Or how it was gauged at all? Tutelary (talk) 23:54, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

i am not a mind reader, but one would guess the closer compared the weight of the arguments based on policies. there is however, no reason to re-re-hash it on this page as nothing will come from yet another side bar off topic discussion in an inappropriate forum. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:10, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Getting very off topic and rehashing finished (?) business. Isn't the tag being discussed elsewhere on the page? If so, can we please keep it confined? EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 00:04, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

The references

Can we {{hat}} the reference list? I know it's unconventional but until the article gets pruned it will make navigation easier. Or will that break wikipedia? Retartist (talk) 22:55, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

MOS issue. Can't hide it w/o printing problems. --MASEM (t) 23:12, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Australian TV news report

This report from ABC (transcript) includes footage and Vox Pops that were probably filmed at PAX Australia in Melbourne the weekend before last. It gives a clear account of the widespread fear produced by Gamergate, and includes commentary by notable gaming personalities including Stephanie Bendixsen of the Australian gaming TV programme Good Game, developer Brianna Wu, and Rebecca Fernandez of the IGDA.

It may be useful as a source for some of the abuse and death threats, as well as giving an Australian perspective. --TS 22:57, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Australian perspective? Doesn't seem like a national issue. HalfHat 23:05, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The international dimension is why non-US sources should be considered for inclusion. --TS 23:12, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

It seems largely the same, it probably better to focus just on the quality. HalfHat 00:28, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Auerbach

Auerbach has tweeted about some issues he has with our use of his articles. He has so far only explained one specific concern, but more could be provided. Specifically he criticized Ryulong's material regarding the Salon response to Auerbach's piece on GamerGate moderates. Hanchen's change to another detail was not mentioned, but I think the previous wording is likely to be seen as a better reflection of what he wrote.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 23:23, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

This is what happens when editor drive the narrative away from a clinically neutral stance. The less we try to read between the lines to stack up the case against once side, the less likely will misinterpret the sources. --MASEM (t) 23:29, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Masem, please don't turn this thread into yet another extension of an argument over editors' motivations and POVs, because we have plenty of those already. Let's focus on looking at Auerbach's critiques and addressing them. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 23:32, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Why am I being called out at all?—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 00:15, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Having taken a look at the source material, I agree that the wording prior to Hahnchen's change ([Auerbach] argued that gaming culture is changing, with the ordinary video-game journalist being phased out in favor of video game enthusiasts and amateur Let's Play commentators who use YouTube and Twitch) is probably a better paraphrase, and it avoids the pointed word "accused." If we can get consensus for this change, let's throw up an editprotected request and get that fixed. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 23:32, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

In September, I tweaked Auerbach's statement in the article, because it had been edited to make it look like he was agreeing with Alexander.[15] I further trimmed bits of the article to make his stance stronger. Saying stuff like "gaming culture is changing" is the same as saying nothing at all. Instead of "attacking", we could use "alienating" which is what he used in his article.[16] - hahnchen 00:55, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd say this certainly warrants a proper checking. HalfHat 23:37, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I always wondered why we bothered with the Auerbach material; much of it is just this guy's opinion (and for what it's worth, we don't have an article about him). Do we need that material? --TS 23:41, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

To clarify, I think the problem is that we include a lot of he-said, she-said which is just pundits imposing their own predefined views on an unfolding situation. Looking back, much of the stuff from Kain, Auerbach and others seems almost surreally misplaced in the midst of all the death threats and all the slimy creatures that were parading themselves before our eyes on a daily basis. There's a place for media analysis, but it's possible to go overboard. --TS 23:50, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

You're basically advocating for the removal of opinions because they don't conform with your POV. HalfHat 00:02, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

No, I think this is just too much inside baseball and the article is very long. Why should Auerbach's opinions be mentioned in the article? --TS 00:57, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

This could be said for many other of the singular opinions made in this article. We are citing a lot of random people (journalists, yes, but with no skin in the game). It's fine to quote people like Quinn, Wu, etc. who are directly involved, and people like the DiGRA present (name slips mind) who's organization is being affected by this. It's also sometimes necessary to quote key RSes to give a "colorful" description that summarizes a point made by many sources. But there's a lot of other random quotes pulled into this article just to boost signal. --MASEM (t) 01:10, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Broadly speaking, I agree that there is rather too much chatter in the article. I can see how it happened. In the early stages the mainstream sources hadn't quite made up their minds what was going on and all the defaults kicked in. These voices have subsided in importance now that the true nature and origins of Gamergate have become more widely known. --TS 11:09, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Auerbach's tweets appear to be without merit, as this article is simply citing Elias Isquith's opinions of Auerbach's Slate piece. Remember the old "venerability, not truth" Wiki-standby. He has no leg to stand on, and argumentum ad Jimboem is just as much of a logical fallacy off-wiki as it is on-wiki. Now if we wish to have a discussion on whether to include any of this in the article at all, that's another matter entirely. At first glance it does seem like we're straying too much into opinion-of-an-opinion-of-an-opinion. If we're looking to slim down the article, this may be the edge to start at. Tarc (talk) 00:10, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Agree, an admin should probably close this section. If there are actually any issues, anyone David or Jimbo included, can post to the talk page. aprock (talk) 00:29, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Probably shut it, but I think it was right to post this anyway. It was worth looking into. HalfHat 00:31, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

This is a BLP issue. When you attribute a statement to a living person, and then that living person objects to your interpretation of that statement, that's a BLP issue. Tutelary (talk) 00:32, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

If you think there is a BLP issue, feel free to take it to WP:BLPN. aprock (talk) 00:35, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Or we could just clarify the statement. Take to a noticeboard when no need / fix the statement itself. I wonder which one... Tutelary (talk) 00:40, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

A subject disagreeing with an article isn't automatically a BLP issue. It's something to be concerned about, but expressly not dealt with in the same manner as BLP violations. If you disagree and feel this represents an issue covered under BLP, you may consider asking for help at BLPN. Protonk (talk) 00:49, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

• Let's start by cutting the "In Salon, Elias Isquith..." paragraph: as Tarc put it, an opinion on an opinion on an opinion. Drmies (talk) 02:22, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

  I don't think complete culling is necessary. It's a point-counterpoint situation.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 02:29, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

• Well, I disagree. It's rather counterpoint-countercounterpoint. I don't know who wrote that awful paragraph, but "actions in making himself a neutral party" is barely English, and "criticizing him for saying that women harassed and threatened and men attacking those who challenged their privilege should both be held responsible" doesn't look like proper English to me at all. Drmies (talk) 02:36, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

• I'm down with significantly chopping the Isquith paragraph. We could go down the rabbit hole with point/counterpoint. Perhaps just cut it to Isquith criticized Auerbach's analysis, calling it an appeal to moderation "that negates any group or individual responsibility" for Gamergate's behavior. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 02:49, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

• "and to better present the concerns of the Gamergate hashtag to the public at large"--I do not see that in the cited article. Unless someone can point me to the original sentence/section from which this comes, I'm going to remove it by executive privilege. Drmies (talk) 02:36, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
• "Auerbach criticized the Brandwatch study as being "defective quantitative analysis" aimed at stopping GamerGate" is now removed: the "How to end Gamergate" article doesn't mention Brandwatch at all, and the direct quote "defective quantitative analysis" is not given the appropriate context. Who added that sentence to the article? That person should not be editing sensitive articles on Wikipedia. Drmies (talk) 02:41, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
  • "WHAT DIDN’T WORK...Defective quantitative analysis." which links to this. That's the Brandwatch mention. Also that's in the full article view.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 02:51, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
    • Ryulong, I think I'm having a Javascript issue, which is why I didn't "see" that link--no, I see it now: Slate needs to read WP:COLOR; I can't see the difference, only when I hover over it. I still don't like the original sentence: I don't like how the Brandwatch study isn't explicitly mentioned in Auerbach's piece; I don't like that no real critique is offered in his piece, just the naked statement that it is supposedly defective. If someone feels a desperate need to stick that sentence back in, I suppose they have my blessing and all they have to do is ask some admin, which could be me, to stick it back in. Now, I don't know if Auerbach is watching this--hey, Mr. Auerbach, I don't have a Twitter account and it's much easier for us to respond here to specific points than it is to guess what you're pointing at. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 03:06, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
      • These are the reasons why I removed it in the first place, dubbing it a throwaway line. Right now, I think you should just remove the Salon paragraph, it's a badly written counter-point to an opinion that isn't even represented. - hahnchen 03:13, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
        • I'm about to look at that again; in the meantime I had to put a sick kid to bed. This Twitter stuff, that's fun. I just saw the whole page, this weird alternating sentences conversation, with someone yelling "kike" thrown in. Is that normal? Hey Jimbo, Wikipedia is not as bad as Twitter--I would have blocked that idiot on 6 November, which is the earliest "tweet" I saw from them. Drmies (talk) 03:22, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
• OK, by now Tutelary is telling me off on my own talk page and Tarc is yelling at Auerbach via Twitter. Great! I tell you what, I am happy I don't have many opinions, and the ones that matter, I prefer to keep to myself. In this thread, I see Tony Sidaway, Hahnchen, and Tarc (I think) agreeing that the Isquith on Auerbach paragraph could/should go, in varying degrees of emphasis. NorthBySouthBaranof offered a sort of compromise, and if you don't mind, I'm going to go with that--I have the feeling that Ryulong would like to have something kept. If anyone disagrees they can protest loudly here, and maybe Mr. Auerbach can tweet a few more tweets so we can see if he thinks this is OK, but NorthbySouth's brief comment has the benefit of a. being close to the source and b. being in digestible English. So I'm going to instate that, somewhat boldly, and we'll see what happens. Let's not have an RfC and a series of edit requests that will take forever to resolve. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 04:02, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
• Done. I've also moved it (what is now a sentence); why it was in the "Attacks on Women" wasn't clear to me. IM me if you got a serious problem with it, or call Jimbo (he can send me a carrier pigeon), or leave a note here. Thanks. Ryulong, I hope you're not too pissed at me. Drmies (talk) 04:08, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

  I'd go "At Salon" or "For Salon" rather than "In Salon" but that's just me.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 04:43, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I think it worthwhile to summarize what one part of what happened here clearly so that other Wikipedians reading this talk page are better able to understand the situation. David Auerbach, who writes for Slate (magazine), expressed a concern on twitter that "@jimmy_wales 152: "women...should both be held responsible for what Gamergate had become" = Isquith does not say I said this, and I didn't." [17]. This refers to the paragraph wisely removed by Drmies after the complaint. It is important that we be really clear - this is a BLP issue. Saying that a writer for a respectable publication was criticized for something as awful as saying that victims of harassment were responsible for that harassment is a serious claim, and it is a claim that was never in the source provided. Meanwhile, Tarc claims that his tweets were "without merit" and further, in Drmies words "Tarc is yelling at Auerbach via twitter." This is a disgrace. I am recommending that Tarc step away from this article permanently, and that if he does not do so voluntarily and continues with this kind of POV warrior behavior that he be topic-banned from this article. There are plenty of good Wikipedians here to look after the article - those who have been engaged in this as a battleground need to leave now.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:08, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I did not "yell" ant anyone via Twitter, I responded to someone who is in serious "doth protest too much" mode, that is all. What I do off-wiki is, quite frankly, not your business. @Drmies:, yes, I am in favor of the entire passage being removed if it is this problematic. Tarc (talk) 12:45, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, Tarc, I think you did, but I suppose it was nothing out of the ordinary for Twitter, and I don't think it has a bearing on your editing here. Jimbo Wales, I beg to differ; Tarc and I don't always agree, and I didn't agree with those tweeted comments, but I still think he's a net positive here, in the little that I have seen of this article and its talk page. Still, if we could all tone it down that would be helpful--then again, this was a lot worse a few weeks ago.

Look, I was happy to take Auerbach's points and apply them here, and even happier to see that we gained consensus quickly on what are simultaneously minor editing issues and major tone issues. I do not think that such matters are automatically BLP issues (as I saw somewhere else), but in this case incorrect (and/or inept) paraphrasing can amount to a BLP problem. If it hadn't been for a. serious editorial concerns about representation of sources and b. BLP issues I would never have edited this through protection. Anyway, all's well that ends well (for now)--let's look at this glass as half-full, shall we. Drmies (talk) 16:39, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

• I think the quotes aren't worth keeping because they're mostly tangential commentary and the article is already far too long -- journalists commenting on other journalists' specific pieces probably doesn't belong here unless it somehow becomes central to the controversy. But I don't think they were (originally) an entirely inaccurate paraphrase, either. The quote Auerbach is objecting to seems to refer to this line in Isquith's piece, which says, at the end: "The women bombarded with violence and abuse, the men hurling invective at anyone challenging their privilege; spurred by his unexamined need to find common ground, both, Auerbach writes, should share in the blame." The quote from the Wikipedia he's objecting to originally summarized that as: "...criticizing his insistence that women harassed and threatened and men attacking those who challenged their privilege should both be held responsible for what Gamergate had become." The only real issue in that is the words "...for what Gamergate had become", since the article doesn't explicitly state what it's accusing Auerbach of saying they should share the blame for, but I think that Ryulong / Tarc's reading is at least somewhat reasonable given the context (it's how I think I would have read the article, at least), and every other part of the quote is basically just Isquith's conclusion run through a thesaurus. Looking over the logs, the real problem started when Halfhat changed 'criticized his insistence' to 'criticized him for saying' here, which shows the problems with applying WP:SAY carelessly -- while it could technically be read the same way, that small tweak dramatically changed the sentence's meaning, since it changed what had been an accurate paraphrase of Isquith-presenting-his-interpretation-of-Auerbach ('Auerbach's article was insisting this') into something that could be read as a claim that Isquith-said-Auerbach-literally-said-this, which was not the case. I assume Tarc missed the fact that Halfhat had accidentally changed the quote's meaning -- it's easy to skim over something you've read many times before and impose a meaning on it in your head based on what you know it's intended to say from having seen previous versions, without noticing that that's no longer the most obvious reading. Anyway the main upshot of it is to please be more careful when replacing text for things like WP:SAY, because sometimes you'll be introducing different meanings; and please read the current version carefully when someone complains about it, trying to clear your head of how it used to read or what you know it's supposed to be saying. --Aquillion (talk) 13:27, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

This is the single worst article on Wikipedia

You people ought to be ashamed of yourselves. This is the farthest thing from encyclopedic; it's regurgitated feminist propaganda masquerading as neutral information. It's the calculated exploitation of editors' highly legalistic and rigid interpretation of Wikipedia policy to create a POV article. The initial sentence isn't even free of clear bias; "The Gamergate controversy began in August 2014 and concerns misogyny and harassment in video game culture". Misogyny? Of course, no explanation given, no discussion as to the broader context of the controversy, no differentiation between trolls and seriously disconcerted, frustrated gamers. It's just "misogyny". A garbage article. This is why WP:IGNORE is such a crucial principle to follow; so articles like this cannot be maintained, endorsed, and all critics and dissenters sanctioned by admins and various other groups of individuals bent on imposing their intellectually vacuous and intransigent perception of rules onto an open, supposedly unbiased medium such as Wikipedia. JDiala (talk) 08:30, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

So do you have any suggestions for changing the article that meet WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, WP:BLP, WP:RS, etc.?—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 09:07, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

There has been litteraly thousands of other versions that was better, however they did not stay long. --Torga (talk) 11:17, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

This is not an answer to my question.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 11:38, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

The first sentence (and others) don't conform to WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, WP:BLP, WP:RS, etc so objecting to it is perfectly reasonable. --DHeyward (talk) 17:26, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Why are you concerned about feminism? --Frybread (talk) 15:59, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

For what it's worth, we used to get similar comments on the global warming article talk page. In those days the scapegoat was "government scientist/United Nations propaganda", and here it's "feminists". Leave aside the death threats, that's all "propaganda." Those harmed are "professional victims", not even real people at all.

It's our job as an encyclopaedia to not ignore the facts presented to us by reliable sources. Advice on how we could do that better is always welcome. --TS 12:23, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Noone said we should "leave aside all death threats" even Wikis by proGG people mention harassment, this is a strawman. And you're comparing it to a conspiracy theory Loganmac (talk) 14:30, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Well to be fair, when I wrote that I was thinking of the alternative version on the Wikia site, which refers to all the harassment and the death threats as "alleged". I hope you're right to say that nobody here is involved in that horrible mess. --TS 15:00, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

GamerGate concerns

There is now a page on what is as close to an official GamerGate site as it gets giving an overview of various GamerGate issues.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 08:43, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Hasn't this been heavily criticized by another source in the article?—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 08:45, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I doubt it: "Released: November 12, 2014" Racuce (talk) 10:22, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Well I recall something very similar to this having been found and then heavily criticized by an actual reliable source. Also there is really no way that we are going to include this as a source in the article because I'm fairly certain that the various screen caps of peripheral people's Twitter accounts is a no go for BLP when that Buzzfeed piece was thrown out completely without us even mentioning any of the people mentioned within. Also Gamergate.me is a wiki site or something isn't it?—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 10:35, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

someone earlier had posted a "manifesto" to show that GG was all about ethics and then a site posted a markup version showing how every demand and claim was essentially anti-actual ethical reporting. (ie "If you dont like a game, you should give it to someone else on staff who does like it for them to review") i think we cover it, or we did at one point-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:01, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

its in the Debate over legitimacy section, paragraph starting "Blogger Kelly Maxwell,"-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:06, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I would recommend looking at the source first and then decide if it can be used. I don't know who you classify as peripheral people, but this source is highly focused on the corruption in gaming journalism and the involved parties. GamerGate.me is a site to inform the community, it has a blog,a wiki and now also a press section. Racuce (talk) 11:10, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

If any of this material ever shows up in reliable sources, then it may find its way into the article. What I find most amusing is that, after a few paragraphs insisting that it's all about ethics in gaming journalism, they switch to discussing Metacritic and start accusing developers of submitting "perfect" user reviews for their own game. --TS 11:19, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

It's also interesting to read the accusations of developers gaming reviews in one breath, and 10 words later find an attack on a review site for posting its honest opinion of a game, because according to Gamergate, its honest opinion was wrong. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 11:53, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Please stop this kind of soapboxing here, NorthBySouth. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:56, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

It's not intended as soapboxing, FPaS, it's intended as an observation about the quality of the source and the potential validity of its content. Lord knows there's been plenty of observations here about mainstream reliable sources being "biased." NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 12:03, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Discussion of a proposed source is appropriate here. I think the problem in this case is that it's a putative primary source. Discussion of its merits will almost inevitably descend into soapboxing. Fortunately our policies mean the merits are largely immaterial here. I am withdrawing my comments on the merits. --TS 12:37, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd like to see a press source point to this to show it exists and acknowledged (it may take a day or two to get out), and perhaps comment (Either way) on it, but agree that we should only be looking for their primary claims to report here (several which I know we can corrobate w/ reliable sources such as Doritosgate), and not get too far in the weeds on their reasoning. --MASEM (t) 16:05, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Grammar error

In the third paragraph under "False allegations against Quinn and subsequent harassment", the quote from Zoe Quinn's BBC interview doesn't have a closing quotation mark. A quotation mark should be added after the phrase "she had sex with someone."—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 08:53, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Done. I've also demoted that section to a third-level heading below "history", as that seemed to be implicitly intended; let me know if that was mistaken. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:12, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Yeah that was a mistake. The "history" section is for events that took place before Gamergate was a thing. That header is the beginning of the discussion of the actual events rather than "history" which was previously a "background" section if I recall correctly.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 10:38, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Ah. Well, I can certainly revert it, but it just looked weird to me. Are "Further harassment and threats" and "Industry response" really meant to be sub-sections to "False allegations against Quinn and subsequent harassment", rather than to "History"? If that previous bit was called "Background", it would be a bit more transparent. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:43, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain it used to be Background rather than History at least.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 12:01, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I found another weird error. There's a reference that has "Gamergate is dead" repeated twice for its title. It's from the verge and it's written by Plante.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 10:47, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

In this correction by Fut.Perf., somehow he finds a duplicate reference and converts it to the <ref name="whatever"/> format in the {{reflist}} list. Can it be removed?—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 21:25, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Working draft

Since this is probably going to get lost in the thread above... I've set up a working draft at Draft:Gamergate controversy, and invite folks to work on potential improvements that might gain consensus for a protected edit request. My first series of edits have been trims in the vein of that above thread, working to reduce redundancy and tighten the prose. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 09:31, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Can it be moved to Gamergate controversy/Working draft? It would make it easier for discussion about the draft. Or is full protection cascading? Retartist (talk) 09:53, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

If it's in the article space it gets treated as an article rather than a sub page and that means it gets indexed by search engines and such.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 09:58, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, as per Ryulong above, unfortunately it has to be stuck in the talkpage space. Would be nice to have a better solution for article working drafts... maybe that's something the WMF could look at for a MediaWiki update *cough*Jimbo*cough*. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 09:59, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

There's a draft space for articles for creation submissions, last I checked.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 10:06, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Opposing this because this shouldn't be used as a way to avoid discussion of the topics and a reaching of consensus, and that's exactly what's happening with overly pushy editors to the draft. I like some of the changes and editing, but this is too open to abuse. I made a number of reasonable changes, and someone went in and undid them all. It's a nonsense effort. Abandon. Willhesucceed (talk) 15:00, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

That's how wikis work. Have you tried reverting the changes and discussing why you disagree with them? --TS 15:24, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I've moved the page to Draft:Gamergate controversy so it has its own talk page. Also, Willhesucceed, you can't do what you did either.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 21:51, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I know we don't see eye to eye, but thanks for taking the time to set this up, it allows some semblance of continuous editing to occur. I wish the regular article wasn't locked, but this is the next best thing. Any idea on if/how changes will come over from the draft to the actual article? Skeletos (talk) 08:30, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

When a consensus forms.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 08:33, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

The best bet is to take it section by section... so make some edits to a section and then open a new subsection here for discussion, like the above discussion on the Mike Morhaime deal. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 08:52, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

That sounds good. I was worried that there would be a lot of reverting by people who didn't participate in the draft. Skeletos (talk) 08:54, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

ESRC researcher Amanda Potts on the importance of industry leadership in the opposition to misogyny

Here is a neat little trade news piece about an ESRC report on the importance of industry figures taking the lead in attacking sexism and misogyny. Attitudes in a gaming community were studied in the presence and absence of inclusive video presentations, with predictable results. The report's author, Amanda Potts, relates it to Gamergate as follows:

“What we are seeing with #GamerGate is that the more powerful video producers and professionals are divided in their points of view, and are taking up arguments for both sides of the story. So this leads to divided opinions amongst the different fan communities, who aren’t being given a strong enough message that abuse of women and other groups perceived to be in the gaming minority is wrong.”

This could probably find a place alongside the account of Morhaime's almost solitary stand, amongst comparable industry figures, directly against the violence and hatred indelibly associated with Gamergate. As time passes this section is slowly acquiring more prominence than the minutiae of who said what on 4chan. --TS 13:06, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Time to revisit and revise

I agree with Jimmy Wales that all reported speech comes under the BLP and must not be misrepresented. But there's another issue here: our analysis is often tainted by recentism. While that's inevitable and part of what makes Wikipedia such a popular source for ongoing events, it does entail a need for continuous curation, so as to revise the emphasis in places where the news cycle concentrated on whatever new shiny object was presented to it. We probably shouldn't give so much to the opinions of individual commentators where they deviate from the thrust of reliable sources.

In the early days, for instance, Erik Kain's well written essays became popular with some of the article editors and so he's been used as a principal source in many parts of the article. That kind of historical accident suggests to me that, while there's nothing wrong with sourcing an individual commentator on facts, sometimes we may want to go back and revisit sections where we reproduce their opinions.

In the end, to take a prominent example, only Breitbart thought there was anything scandalous about journalists communicating with one another by email, and so we discuss the non-story of the GameJournoPro mailing list through the lens of Kain gamely attempting to rationalise a non-existent controversy. Surely many other sources have discussed this in a more measured way, and the fact that the vast majority of sources don't even consider mailing lists controversial at all seems to be lost in our article. Yet that's the important story, if there is one--that no reliable source regards GameJournoPros as the smoking gun Gamergate insist it is. So why does it get a section of its own? How best to summarise a mild fuss over the fact that journalists use email to communicate with one another? That's one example of where I think we could improve our coverage.

The big slew of death threats and wild accusations of impropriety that characterised Gamergate is now largely over, so we now have time to revisit sections like this. It's a normal function of Wikipedia editing. --TS 12:08, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Kain is given way to much weight considering ever piece we cite from him is WP:NEWSBLOG and not subject to Forbes editorial oversight. — Strongjam (talk) 14:03, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

If that is true then he may not be such a reliable source. --TS 14:26, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

He's also a salaried paid Forbes writer, and has a good history, so the Video games project considers him a situational source for video game related matters, but I don't think it's a good source for a controversial topic like this. I'm fine with citing him for his opinions, but we need to be careful not to give him undue weight. Might be a matter for the WP:RSN though. — Strongjam (talk) 14:37, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

He is a Forbes "Contributor" which means while he might be paid by Forbes, he is not in their direct employ (we've looked at this at the VG project long before GG started). Their work is not part of the normal editing process, and while likely checked for any outright problems before posted under Forbes name, it is basically a glorified SPS. Now, Kain's remarks prior to GG have been recieved and recognized by other RSes before, so him, like Paul Tassi, are considered situational sources, such as commentary on a video game. However, in this specific scenario, Kain's weak reliability may not make him a good source unless he has brought a unique opinion to the table. --MASEM (t) 16:15, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

With that in mind, there are a couple of places where we should be more clear about what his role at Forbes is. For example In Forbes, Erik Kain described the character, could leave the reader thinking Kain was writing for the magazine. The first sentence in the "Social Criticism" section as well seems to give him too much weight, but that whole paragraph is basically a quote farm and we should probably deal with that first. — Strongjam (talk) 16:31, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Yet sites like Boing Boing are given space. Why something tells me Erik Kain is getting rid off of the article because of what he writes and not where he writes Loganmac (talk) 14:45, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I did point this out before, Boing Boing is an admitted group blog. Ryulong argued for it because 1) many other WIkipedia pages use it 2) the author of the article is the managing editor of Boing Boing. I'd still advocate for its removal anyway. starship.paint ~ regal 14:50, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't consider Kain's reliability to be an issue as were not using him as a sole source for any fact (or shouldn't be). I just think we can spend time rearranging the coverage to eliminate the effects of recentism, as I discussed above. Erik Kain's excellent early coverage was very important in the early stages of the article, and he's just the primary example that came to my mind when thinking of this. I certainly don't think we should eliminate references to his work. --TS 14:47, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

On the Boing Boing thing, the whole Vivian James thing seems overdone to me. I'd rather see a much smaller section on this icon with a few well picked sources, than one that seems destined to blow up because of the rape meme that forms its colour scheme. We've already got lots of material on the Gamergate supporters' seeming imperviousness to bad optics. --TS 14:54, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I tried removing it, but NBSB reverted me back. Since I don't want to violate 3RR, I didn't revert the reversion. --DSA510 Pls No H8 17:27, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Concerning imperviousness, these are gamers. People who grind a level for hours on end to get that final coin, get that esoteric achivement, etc. To put it in their own words, "Gamers don't Die. They Respawn". --DSA510 Pls No H8 19:48, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

On the prior arbcom case that was rejected, one non-involved user did suggest this articles suffers from recentism, and also suggested that the best way at the present is to eliminate much of the opinions and stay closer to the facts, only coming back to the opinions once the whole GG thing has settled or died down. This is in that vain - at least when it comes to an opinions that were try to make broad statements during, say, August and September. (This would include Kain's pieces) There are some parts of the history of events that are tied to opinions (And vice versa) that have to be kept but a lot of the opinions presented in the latter half of the article are in the recentism vein. --MASEM (t) 16:01, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

• Masem, what do you think of cutting the second and third paragraph of "Support for The Fine Young Capitalists"? It has a main article, so all this is quite excessive. Or at least cut the second paragraph and condense the third (one-sentence) paragraph. Drmies (talk) 18:34, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I've been arguing for a culling of that part for a while (there's things on both sides of the issues that can be trimmed out), TFYC has always seemed like a minor point here that we can't really fit well into the narrative but not to remove entirely. --MASEM (t) 18:37, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Well I won't pretend three editors makes consensus, but we do seem to be agreeing on removal of some of the minutiae, particularly commentary. It may be worth exploring that further to see if we can broaden consensus on that. -TS 18:35, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

We could trim the GameJournoPros paragraph, taking out Erik Kain and James Fudge's back-and-forth. Also probably we don't need to give Zaid Jiliani a whole paragraph in "Political views." NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 18:44, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

The fate of the GJP section might depend on if that press statement by the Gamergate side is covered in any detail, since that is one of their specific complaints that can be addressed. I'd hold off on that for the moment, though agree without any other sources to highlight it, it's bulky. Agree on the Zaid part. --MASEM (t) 19:23, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Reliable sources, atmosphere of intimidation

I haven't read the entirety of this article; it is so long and cumbersome that just glancing at it gives me vertigo. Unless I'm missing something, it deals with the harassment of female gamers and journalists rather the factual accuracy of the claims made by Anita Sarkeesian and other critics — right?

As a disclaimer from a gamer, I'm critical of Sarkeesian's work. I initially came out in full support of Tropes vs. Women and I think she raises numerous valid points, but I feel these are grossly undermined by the tactics that she has used in conveying her perspective. To give an example, her coverage of Hitman: Absolution. I'm sure most everyone here is already familiar with Thunderf00t, one of the more prominent supporters of GamerGate on YouTube (Redacted). I'm not going to conduct a character assassination against anyone and I know that Sarkeesian is not the only woman targeted by the GamerGate controversy, but let's face it: she's probably the one who has received the most attention for her views. As for the situation with Zoe Quinn, I've yet to play Depression Quest so my perspective on the matter is somewhat limited. I have struggled with severe clinical depression for a very long time. The notion that someone is trying to give people a better understanding of the condition is very appealing to me (whether it can actually be conveyed is another story). It doesn't really matter though; harassment is always wrong (Redacted).

So now that my biases are out in the open, I'll say what I feel must be said. I've been hesitant to speak out about this particular issue because I have strong and conflicting opinions about it. I'm worried that if I criticize Sarkeesian's misrepresentations (as outlined by Thunderf00t and others), then I'll be shot down by other editors for promoting a fringe view that doesn't have very many reliable sources to back it up. It would also associate me with the misogynist element of the gaming community, and I want no part of that. Conversely, if I say that I support the merits of her activism and consider the harassment levied against women in the gaming community to be vile, then my words could be taken as a ringing endorsement of Sarkeesian's methods and the perennial OR catch-22 (i.e. knowing the facts, yet presenting sources that run counter to them because of their credibility). I can't be the only one who is uncomfortable even posting on this page for that very reason. What's there to be done? Kurtis ^(talk) 17:15, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Good. Please don't, then. I've removed (per BLP) a large amount of material from your comment that sounds like the same kind of vile nonsense that gets out given as an excuse for the hate campaigns against women in gaming. There is no reason for that to be here, because the hate mongers who spread this nonsense are not reliable sources. If you feel that you cannot comment here please undergo dispute resolution. TS 18:26, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't believe anything I posted in my original comment violated BLP in any way, although I'm sure most others would disagree with me on that point (your removal appears to have the implicit support of all other participants in this discussion), so I won't re-add my original text. I feel my comments were well-substantiated and targeted the crux of her criticisms, rather than making baseless accusations and casting her in an unduly negative light (which is what you've implicitly accused me of doing). I find the equivalence you've drawn between my words and the "vile nonsense"/"hate campaigns against women in gaming" to be absolutely disgusting and a complete mischaracterization of my original post. In all my years of editing this site, I have never felt so offended as I do now. Kurtis ^(talk) 20:27, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

A large problem here is that the viewpoint towards Quinn/Sarkeesian's views (prior to GG) are not well documented. I know I can read lots of forum threads about how come see that, but we have very little reliable sources about them. We have some that extend from the Depression Quest commentary on Quinn which are already in the article, but that's pretty much the extent that I know I've found. As WP can really only work on what is reported by reliable sources, we really cannot express those views further until they are properly covered. --MASEM (t) 17:26, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

This article is not about Sarkeesian and any potential "misrepresentations" some may attribute to her. It is about the gamergate controversy. and "no matter what the victim has done to attract it" WOW! -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:04, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. There is no justification for harassment, which was my central point. Please do not take my original comment out of context. I'm not trying to suggest that she "had it coming" or anything like that. Kurtis ^(talk) 20:27, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

• I just watched part of that video and read some of the comments, and now I'm going to wash my eyes. Drmies (talk) 18:43, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the source of harassment isn't known fully. In before le No True Scotsman maymay. And, again, "The harassment obviously came from the all the males of gamergate"[1] Source: Gawker. --DSA510 Pls No H8 18:41, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

au contraire, my dear friend. Sarkeesian's threats are explicitly sourced from those claiming affiliation with gamergate. When you run a "movement" that's only identification is the use of a hashtag, you get "credit" for all done under the name of the hashtag, something the next generation of "movements" will probably keep in mind. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:48, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I'll see your link and raise you a [18] [19]. --DSA510 Pls No H8 19:01, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the largest newspaper in the state of Utah is "propaganda." Sure, makes sense. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 19:11, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

There were two specific threats at USU. The first, the one that inferred the Ecole Polytech shootings, had no explicit GG attachment, though it is assumed by most to be a GG one. The second was specifically from someone claiming to be GG, but it wasn't the same type of threat that the first one had. And no, we as WP editor cannot write this assuming that if someone did it under the hashtag, that everyone supporting the hashtag is responsible - we do have plenty of sources criticizing anyone that wants to actually discuss ethics to either get away from GG and use a new tag, or clearly call out condemnation of harassment in a unified voice so everyone knows its trolls usurping the hashtag. --MASEM (t) 18:55, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

This might be related to my previous section about reorganizing the article. The topic of this article is not clear, because what the phrasing "gamergate controversy" is one person will be different for another, even if the way the phrase is taken in the way to mean "the ethical issues" is a fringe view, it still is a far different meaning. We really need to have it determined by consensus and reflected in the article what this article is specifically about. If it is about the movement (which would then be heavily weighted necessarily by its criticism) then yes, the issues about Quinn/Sarkeesian before GG started are valid if they can be reliably sourced. --MASEM (t) 18:45, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Back to the topic at hand. what specifically do you wish to change in the article and what sources are you basing that recommendation on? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:24, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for the unclear original post, I had an appointment to attend and was in a bit of a hurry.

My problem is with the overall atmosphere of anything related to Gamergate, Sarkeesian, Quinn, or gender equality. Whether you agree or disagree with one side of the dispute, I don't think anyone would deny that it's a patently toxic editing environment. I feel as if Tony Sidaway's post above is emblematic of exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about: being critical of Sarkeesian (or any other activist) in any way, shape, or form is equated to misogyny or a character assassination. Even if you agree with the merits of their position (that women are given unfair representation in the media, particularly in video games), you can still say that you disagree with some aspect of how they are representing their case. Surely there must be some academic sources that delve into detail about a more critical perspective, sans the abject sexism. The same can be said of being fully supportive of Sarkeesian's position, where those who back her are accused of pushing a "feminist agenda" or the like. This sprawling talk page and its archives are so intimidating that no one in their right mind would willingly subject themselves to the pressures of editing this article unless they were willing to pick a fight. I'm trying to get the ball rolling so that we can take a good, hard look at ourselves and realize that these gender wars are a corrosive influence on our ability to act rationally. I don't think dispute resolution has yet achieved a satisfactory editing environment.

Oh, and in case it wasn't clear, I want to reaffirm that I do not in any way condone the vile harassment campaigns that women within the gaming community have been subjected to. To repeat what I said above, I didn't mean to imply that the victim of harassment had it coming or anything of the sort. That was a mistake on my part. Kurtis ^(talk) 20:45, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

It's been established nobody here condones the harassment. --DSA510 Pls No H8 20:53, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I had assumed as much. Kurtis ^(talk) 21:09, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

If you have a user conduct issue, take it to the board set up for user conduct issues Wikipedia:General sanctions/Gamergate/Requests for enforcement do not whine or cast aspersions here.

If you have a specific article content edit, be clear about what should be changed and supply sources.

If you just want to comment and discuss, go somewhere else, this is NOT a chat forum -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:23, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't think the general sanctions are doing enough. Do you not notice the level of rancour that has taken hold on this talk page and in any other discussion pertaining to Gamergate? There's an open request for arbitration right now, and honestly, I'd like for them to accept a case. If not, then I think we need to seriously consider discussing ways in which to tone down the atmosphere of this page and others. No one wants to edit an article whose talk page is on fire.

I'm actually going to disengage myself from this topic. It's clear that I feel too strongly about it to contribute impartially. Sorry I wasted your time. Here's hoping you can all find a way to collaborate effectively on this subject. Kurtis ^(talk) 21:35, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

This page is not for whining the the general sanctions arent doing enough when you are making any effort to use them but are just whining about editors here. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:44, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

TheRedPenOfDoom, take it easy please. There is no need to browbeat everyone who comes along. Kurtis's comment may be seen as forumposting to some, but there is no denying that this is not a pleasant work environment, and you're not helping. Drmies (talk) 03:07, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. I suggest that TheRedPenOfDoom take a week or so to cool off. I'm trying to minimalize my snark, at the very least. --DSA510 Pls No H8 04:05, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

• My original comment was restored by The Devil's Advocate (with the link to the video redacted).[20] Just thought I should mention that for reasons of disclosure. I'm sorry if I offended anyone; looking back on it now, this post was probably ill-advised. Kurtis ^(talk) 21:39, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

For what its worth I've archived it. --DSA510 Pls No H8 04:05, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

If you're just a user you should never be cutting away other people's comments, even people higher up the food chain should be cautious with this, the only person that can just cut away a comment is the user that posted it. HalfHat 21:49, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

All editors are urged to remove content that might violate WP:BLP even if it's a talk page comment.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 21:55, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Okay never was too strong. But BLP applies to almost none of that, cutting all that away to a sentence that looked like it's only purpose was to take a dig was out of order. HalfHat 22:11, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Kurtis, I think I understand what you're getting at. From my perspective, here is the issue. There is no way to put this delicately, so I'll just say it. Gamergate is demonstrably a fringe POV. While their supporters are very vocal on a few Internet social media forums (most of them entirely anonymous) their actual numbers are small and their claims have garnered no mainstream credibility — to the contrary, in mainstream sources their claims have either been widely refuted or widely dismissed as nothingburgers. The weight of mainstream reliable sources is simply indisputable at this point, and so many Gamergate supporters have retreated into a conspiracy-theory realm where all sources are biased against them, except for those which agree with them. (A self-fulfilling prophecy.)

I am neither a "gamer" nor a "social justice warrior" — I first took interest in this issue when the community was made aware on a noticeboard that Wikipedia pages were being used to spread unfounded claims about living people and, as became obvious, further a campaign of vile harassment against them. Rather than acknowledge the movement's foundation in specious slut-shaming trolling, Gamergate is now attempting to whitewash the past and portray itself as a noble crusade for "journalism ethics," despite the fact that reliable sources all but universally view it as a purveyor of misogynistic harassment and retrograde culture warring. It is difficult to collaborate to build an article when there is insistence on portraying a group not as the overwhelming weight of reliable sources portray it, but as it wishes to be portrayed for public relations purposes. This we simply cannot do. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 22:07, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I was initially anti-gamergate, then after digging for stuff myself, I'm very skeptical of the claims. Also I started using adblock again. I'm a skeptic, and there's something massively wrong about all this. In before "the misogyny". On a personal note, if anything, I should be pro-gg, since they don't reduce my condition(s) to some fashion statement on tumblr. --DSA510 Pls No H8 22:16, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

What annoys people like me is the gross-generalisation of everyone in the movement. I know that a lot of harassment has happened but it is annoying when everyone in the movement is labeled (or implied) as a woman-hater when it can be seen that quite a few people on the other side are misandrist and the media ignores that. Retartist (talk) 22:34, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Your "personal annoyance" is COMPLETELY irrelevant. You need to toss it out the window and start editing from Wikikpedia policies WP:UNDUE and the WP:RS sources. Period. END OF STORY. If you keep tendentiously editing based upon your "personal annoyances" rather than the sources, you will be banned from the subject or the site. The choice is yours - shape up or you WILL get shipped out. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:51, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

It’s not clear that DSA510 's, or anyone's, personal beliefs or inclinations or skepticism or afflictions is pertinent here. We're discussing the improvement of an encyclopedia article, based on reliable source. NorthBySouthBaranof's summary, on the other hand, nicely explains the problem: It is difficult to collaborate to build an article when there is insistence on portraying a group not as the overwhelming weight of reliable sources portray it, but as it wishes to be portrayed for public relations purposes. But this is precisely the torque that is being repeatedly applied here. MarkBernstein (talk) 22:29, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

At present, the article's introduction starts with a conclusion about the nature of an ongoing event. The article then goes on to search for proof of this conclusion. If this were an academic paper, it would be failed. The intro should really start with the questions and run down a quick discussion of the key elements of the debate. Not the key conclusions of the debate. The key events and people, with info about why the reader should even care. The first sentence opens up and it declares Gamergate is misogynist. Like it's just open and close - we've got this statement about the group's morals before there's even any evidence to support the conclusion. People aren't frustrated with this article for PR reasons exclusively. It's also because the article is very badly written and it's unpleasant to read. YellowSandals (talk) 07:33, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

There isn't a "question" here, though. The conclusion is drawn from the reliable sources, and the reliable sources are virtually unanimous in describing the key point of this controversy being misogynistic harassment of women in video gaming. The front page of The New York Times, The Colbert Report, NPR, PBS NewsHour, on and on and on and on... the focus of those sources is the misogynistic harassment, with "journalism ethics" receiving little more than a throwaway mention that Gamergate supporters claim it as a justification. I know Gamergate supporters think all of those reliable sources are biased and conspiring against them and so forth... but Wikipedia does not traffic in such theories. Our articles are weighted with the mainstream POV predominating, and the all-but-unchallenged mainstream view of the key points of the Gamergate controversy is as this article describes. That Gamergate supporters disagree with these mainstream sources' portrayal of the issue is of no consequence. We can, should and do mention the POV of Gamergate supporters, but at it is demonstrably a minority POV, it will not be given the prominence or credence its supporters wish it to have. If at some future point, all of those reliable sources reverse course and embrace Gamergate, then, thanks to the handy editing features, we can edit the article to reflect that change. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 08:06, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

It's weighted with crap writing, unsubstantiated personal opinions several editors here hold, laughing dismissals of all outside perspective, and slanted quote farming. The article is basically just an anti-GG echo with very little real substance in it. Take the final paragraph of the intro even. It doesn't mention misogyny, but it states, in factual manner, that Gamergate is mad because games are closer to art now. This in spite of the fact that discussion about games as art has been going on for maybe a decade or longer, with notable commentary from Roger Ebert, and hardcore fans are not explicitly against the perception of games as art. Why does the article say that? I'm pretty sure it's because the article lacks all sense and perspective, and it has basically no idea what in the heck it's talking about.

The article is stupid because it contains all these convenient explanations and theories on human behavior. As though you could just look at people and say, "Yeah, this is the reason everybody does things". It's one of the biggest earmarks of ideological writing, since an ideology often believes it can classify people by assigning absolute good and evil as motivations. It seems like many editors here just kind of vaguely heard about Gamergate but don't really understand how the conflict came to develop, and they don't want to know. The conflict is "because mah soggy knees", and Wikipedia needs to tell everyone that, oh yes, all THESE people are misogynists. We done figured it out. Jury is in. Everybody do the ridicule. YellowSandals (talk) 16:55, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

In the sense of the saying "better to light a candle than curse the darkness", I'd like to cordially invite you to join the discussion of specific ways to improve the article within Wikipedia's content policies. Strictly speaking, just saying the article is all wrong because some of the editors are bad people with wrong opinions and no willingness to listen to alternative interpretations is a conduct issue and should be taken to appropriate venues already set up on the wiki. --TS 18:16, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Consider writing a factual account of the controversy, the events in it, and how it relates to the reader. As opposed to a useless, lengthy, ideological piece full of purple prose about misogyny. I didn't say anyone's opinions were wrong. I said the writing is ideological, substandard, poorly organized, and all around just kind of deconstructive. YellowSandals (talk) 18:53, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

In fact, if this article wasted less time talking about misogyny and instead just discussed some of the events without embellishment or quote farming, you could probably shorten this to a few sections no longer than a couple paragraphs each. As opposed to five paragraphs about the "false allegations against Quinn and subsequent harassment", then another five paragraphs go on to explain not only extra people who were harassed, but people who weren't harassed (because some of the people not harassed are men, which PROVES "muh soggy knees"). Then we have three paragraphs about how the media doesn't like Gamergate. You could easily rename the header to "Online Harassment and Media Response" and probably shorten most of that to five paragraphs that just establish harassment and the response to it.

Then we have eight paragraphs that briefly touch on some things Gamergate complains about, only to extensively rebuke them by quoting as many negative opinions on it as possible. Calling it all "conspiracy theories" and so forth. Reading through that section, I'm really not sure what any of you think Gamergate's motives are except "muh soggy knees". Eight paragraphs to that section, and it's still completely unclear why Gamergate has happened. You could shorten the ethics concerns down to like a paragraph, and we have a few sources discussing where some of Gamergate's anger likely stems from. In the GameJournoPros section we have a full paragraph dedicated to numerous perspectives on the mailing list, virtually none of which are substantial or important to the reader.

That's only half way through the article. Need I go on, or do you think it's most prudent to continue in the fashion the article is going? This ideological tripe is nothing but frustration and doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. This is blog nonsense. It's not informative. YellowSandals (talk) 19:06, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

My sole action on this discussion was to remove yet another dumb off-topic attempt to drag this article talk page, which is about Gamergate, back to a spurious attack on one of Gamergate's chosen victims. The poster provided no actionable problems, but did introduce severely problematic material. This material has been restored. It should be removed again and never restored. It is a gratuitous personal attack and has no place on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a forum. Wikipedia has a policy forbidding personal attacks on living people. --TS 01:12, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any stop at attacking Milo or Sommers reputations subtly. --DSA510 Pls No H8 04:07, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

"It is a gratuitous personal attack". TS, that is subjective opinion of yours and I disagree with it. It is great that you have such opinions but please don't delete text of others. Please be objective. I'm not sure that the judgemental terminology is helpful. IMO unfortunately this talk page is now a chat forum because the article is crippled, the contributors deadlocked, and new contributors get a frosty reception (eg. Kurtis and TRPoD interaction above).Jgm74 (talk) 07:46, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Blizzard entertainment stance on Gamergate

Mike Morhaime full quote at BlizzCon is "Over the past couple of months, there has been a small group of people doing awful things,"They're tarnishing our reputation as gamers. It's not right.", therefore the claims that he especially denounced GamerGate are false and therefore be changed to mention that.(per Wikipedia:Synthesis) Avono (talk) 17:24, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

@Tarc: It was Geoff Keighley who asked at the Direct Tv stage if Gamergate was responsible,he did not return any clear answer Avono (talk) 17:53, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

He never specifically mentioned Gamergate so you would need a source that interprets it that way and we would note that as the opinion of that author. Assuming he is talking about Gamergate here is WP:OR. Muscat Hoe (talk) 17:30, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

for reference the specific request is to change "co-founder Mike Morhaime denounced GamerGate at BlizzCon 2014" to "co-founder Mike Morhaime denounced the ongoing harassment at BlizzCon 2014" Avono (talk) 20:42, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

The media has made the attribution to GG, so we do need to be careful. The current text is Blizzard Entertainment president and co-founder Mike Morhaime denounced GamerGate at BlizzCon 2014, saying that "a small group of people have been doing really awful things. They have been making some people's lives miserable, and they are tarnishing our reputation as gamers. It's not right." He called on attendees to oppose hate and harassment and to "be kind and respect one another., I would suggest Blizzard Entertainment president and co-founder Mike Morhaime denounced the ongoing harassment at BlizzCon 2014, saying that "a small group of people have been doing really awful things. They have been making some people's lives miserable, and they are tarnishing our reputation as gamers. It's not right." He called on attendees to oppose hate and harassment and to "be kind and respect one another. (change in bold) This does not name GG, keeps the implication in the sources (even if obvious), but still reflects properly on the quote. --MASEM (t) 17:30, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

The sources cited all say it was in reference to Gamergate. Morhaime himself confirmed he was speaking about Gamergate. As a final note, the DirecTV stage with Mike Morhaime as a guest confirms he was speaking out against GamerGate during the introductions of the opening ceremony. The group is mentioned by name. [21]. WP:SYN is not involved. — Strongjam (talk) 17:34, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

the specific faction was not named. --DSA510 Pls No H8 17:54, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

to be specific, he might be talking about it as a whole, harassment from both sides, as Gawker valiantly proclaims to be false, since 20k+ white males are doing it purely for "misogyny". wheras the media "RS" says that there is only harrasment coming from the pro-gamergate side. --DSA510 Pls No H8 17:58, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Postaddendumaddendum: The validity of that article is being disputed in the comments section. Someone get a copy of the actual event rather than some 3'd party's biased version. --DSA510 Pls No H8 18:04, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Doesn't matter. Comments on an article aren't RS. Also, even if we remove that source there's still MCV saying Mike Morhaime dedicated a part of his Blizzcon 2014 opening ceremony speech to slam GamerGaters and urge people to redouble their efforts in trying to promote a friendlier, more welcoming gaming environment.. — Strongjam (talk) 18:12, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

however that is Ben Parfitt's interpretation, no where in that source is it claimed that Morhaime mentioned GamerGate Avono (talk) 18:19, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

No, this request should be denied, as Morhaime was indeed speaking directly about Gamergaters. If we need to add the additional specificity from the joystiq link above, then that is fine. Tarc (talk) 17:43, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Prove that Morhaime was speaking directly about Gamergate (and I mean, use HIS words, not what others INTERPRET). Omegastar (talk) 17:57, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

We follow WP:RS here. Us proving anything would be WP:OR. — Strongjam (talk) 18:14, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

This is either a case of incorrect information (from joystiq), or an attempt at smearing (yet again). Wouldn't the actual conference/convention/powwow be a better source? --DSA510 Pls No H8 18:20, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

thus the joystiq claim cannot be used unless a secondary source is found that Independently states the same thing.Avono (talk) 18:22, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Then we can at least agree that Morhaime has only "denounced the ongoing harassment" and not anything specific. --Super Goku V (talk) 21:59, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

That is the aim of this request, to only state what was said by Morhaime without third party interpretations.Avono (talk) 22:05, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Consider this is in the section about the "Industry response" which is after the section outlining the established harassment towards Quinn/Sarkeesian/Wu, and the reports of harassment the other way. In context of his actual speech, and not the clarification afterwards, it makes sense to point out the "ongoing harassment" (per my suggestion above), which in no way weakens the importance of his statement at that venue. Even if he knew and stated later he was speaking to the harassment attributed to GG, saying "the ongoing harassment" is just as true a statement. --MASEM (t) 18:25, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I propose Masem suggestion to be used until the information from joystiq can be backed up Avono (talk) 18:30, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

It's very clear that he was referring to GamerGate, as per the sources covering the event. Oppose. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 18:32, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Does it matter if he was speaking to harassment under the GG banner, or harassment that has been going on in general? --MASEM (t) 18:41, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, actually it does, for reasons that should be intensely obvious at this point. Stop trying to create a two-sided issue where the reliable sources are all-but-unanimously on one side. This wasn't on the front page of The New York Times for no reason. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 19:36, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

There is a major difference if he was condemning the harassment, in general (which most everyone, including GG supporters, would likely agree with), and if he was condemning specifically the Gamergate movement, which add yet more weight to the article. The latter is a much more charged statement that we cannot say in a WP voice, and so we have to verify if this is truly what he said in the sources. If he actually said "GG" during the speech, I would not have an issue at all; it might add more imbalance but its impossible to get away from since we'd have it sourced as such. But the analysis below is clear that we're resting the validity of the statement (that he was talking about on the non-verbal nod to a question asked by Kingsley. That is a huge WP:SNYTH problem considering the change in POV of the statement and the balance of the article. --MASEM (t) 23:49, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

The cite sources have made the connection:

• BlizzCon’s opening ceremony started with a bang this morning, as Blizzard Entertainment president Mike Morhaime spent the first part of his speech denouncing GamerGate [22]
• Mike Morhaime dedicated a part of his Blizzcon 2014 opening ceremony speech to slam GamerGaters [23]
• Mike Morhaime as a guest confirms he was speaking out against GamerGate during the introductions of the opening ceremony. The group is mentioned by name. [24]

No WP:SYNTH is involved. — Strongjam (talk) 00:00, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes it is, if we are saying it in WP's voice; if we say that the speech was believed to be about Gamergaters by some sources, that would be fine but clunnky. But we cannot say he was talking about it when we can clearly tell from the direct primary sources that the only thing that connected his speech directly to the "condemning of Gamergaters" (and not to the harassment resulting from the situation) was a nod in reply to a question, and the question not being specific as to which part of his speech. --MASEM (t) 00:11, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

"if we say that the speech was believed to be about Gamergaters by some sources, that would be fine but clunnky." We don't know that though. The sources don't say they believe he meant Gamergaters based on the speech. They could have gotten clarification from Blizzard. In the end we have to trust WP:RS and not do our own research. — Strongjam (talk) 00:27, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Why can we just cite the speech in general and then in the next sentence state that it "was believed to be about Gamergaters by some sources?" --Super Goku V (talk) 00:37, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

We could, and that would at least avoid the OR, but then that also begs adding one more bit of weighted coverage to the article. There's zero issues with saying what he actually said in his speech (which, "last few months" make it clear its surrounding GG events, no SYNTH there) in a section called "Industry response" that follows from the harassment aspects. --MASEM (t) 00:48, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I've just about lost interest in the health of this article. From top to bottom it's a wash. However, I did want to point out that Blizzard's PR team constructed a pretty careful statement that condemned harassment without specifically implicating anyone. In fact, most figures that have come out of this with clean hands have been places that aren't attacking anyone, like Escapist Magazine who allowed discussion to continue on forums while they made certain nothing got out of hand. Twisting what a rep for Blizzard said about a movement - especially an ideologically heated controversy with people in it who don't care about other humans - is not only damaging to the reputation of that rep, but also to Blizzard itself. Any editor here looking to victimize people or groups they disagree with should take some serious reflection on their own morals. I know this advice falls on deaf ears. But do consider: Blizzard constructed their very neutral statement for a reason, and Wikipedia should not be going out of their way to twist that neutrality into a statement of support for one side or another of some vitriolic, misanthropic, attack-oriented ideology. YellowSandals (talk) 18:42, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Considering Gawker is a reliable source now, it seems the standards of Wikipedia are falling greatly. Thank god gawker doesn't talk about KDE/Ubuntu/FOSS (hopefully). --DSA510 Pls No H8 18:55, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Not sure what this has to do with this request. None of the sources for this statement are owned by Gawker Media. — Strongjam (talk) 19:01, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I am giving an example of the standards of wikipedia in recent light. --DSA510 Pls No H8 19:06, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

There has only been one group engaging in harassment and tarnishing the reputation of gaming over the past couple of months. Reliable sources are perfectly capable of checking with Blizzard to make sure Mike Morhaime meant what it sounded like, and conversely he could easily put out a press release explaining that he really meant the Jehovah's Witnesses or whatever. This is why we use reliable sources. --TS 18:58, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

No, that's not true. We have sources (one from Salon/Aurdbach) that says that the GG moderate are fishing out trolling using the GG hashtag to stir the pot, and there's the harassment by unknowns towards proGG supporters. So it's not proper to say the harassment is only coming from GG supporters; at best we can say it is primarily coming from those using the GG banner/hashtag. Now, whether Morhaime was aware of that or not, we can't be sure, but we can be certain he was talking about harassment in general (per his exact quote), and that's still fine to leave it at that for the "Industry response" section (Even the ESA's statement didn't mention GG by name but referred to harassment). --MASEM (t) 19:03, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Considering the definition of "Reliable Source" has been reduced to muckraking web tabloids run by supporters of bullying, Gawker Media, I'm not so sure the "Reliable Sources" should get the free reign they once had, I.E. everything should be verified thoroughly. --DSA510 Pls No H8 19:06, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Come off it, Masem. The vast majority of reliable sources discuss the threats as coming from Gamergate supporters essentially exclusively. We're aware of Auerbach's POV at this point and his viewpoint is interesting, but it is not the predominant one in reliable sources. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 19:33, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I still fail to see how gawker is reliable for anything. --DSA510 Pls No H8 21:50, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

You're wilfully ignoring information I've provided in the past. You can look through the archives for sources on harassment of Gamergate supporters. Here's the newest one, which I've linked to before, which is still not in the article, I'll note.

Oh, here's an SJW endorsing the gas chamber for Gamergate supporters, among other lunacy. Social justice is great! Willhesucceed (talk) 20:20, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

@Willhesucceed: can you please stay focused on reliable sources and article content? Thanks-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 14:41, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Get out of the brambles of the debate for a second. There are two groups slandering gaming right now and they're both extremist elements. There are the people trying to publicize the sexual fetishes of Gamergate supporters in the hopes that it will smear them. There are people sending threats, syringes, or whatever to Gamergate supporters. Then we've got people sending threats and airing out the sexual history of the Social Justice set on the other end. The Social Justice has declared all "gamers" dead, and they call gaming misogynistic. Meanwhile, other people are sending death threats, presumably in support of "gamers". All the while we've these political figures stepping in, and they have nothing to do with gaming. Now you tell me - who's tarnishing gaming? The people saying it's dead? The people harassing others for gaming? The people saying that gamers are misogynistic?

You see how Blizzards statement can go any direction. They condemned the harassment. It's a careful PR statement, and you are supposed to be able to interpret it either way. Nobody supports the harassment. Nobody in their right minds anyway. That's what Blizzard came out against. If they wanted to condemn Gamergate directly, that's what they would have done, but apparently they don't want to bait additional controversy, and Wikipedia should not be doing it for them. Do not spend so much energy attacking people that you bring misery and harassment to people who want to focus on the specific problems and not on a group with people they've never met or spoken to. YellowSandals (talk) 19:13, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Yellow Sandals puts it the best. --DSA510 Pls No H8 19:29, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Shorter YellowSandels: “Both sides have always been at war with EastAsia.” I’ve seen no credible evidence that Sarkesian, Quinn, Wu, or their supporters have threatened to murder or rape anyone, only that some interested parties claim to have received anonymous parcels. There is no question at all that Quinn was smeared, Sarkisian threatened with murder, and Wu threatened with both murder, rape, and assault; a police investigation into the latter is ongoing. MarkBernstein (talk) 19:35, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Oh, knock it off. This very Wikipedia article has been a party to the harassment and you know it. It has struggled with numerous BLP violations, including but not limited to criticizing whether or not it's appropriate for certain forum moderators to like BDSM. The article begins with a derogatory conclusion about people, and then spends its duration trying to prove the conclusion. Innocence is not granted by the virtue of rhetoric when the actions speak for themselves. This much is apparent, and something consistently reiterated by several editors here who are on the war path. Many editors are here to attack and hurt people, and they are as wrong as anyone who has set out to attack and hurt people in this controversy. YellowSandals (talk) 19:47, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Is the post by YellowSandals immediately above fully consistent with the General Sanctions in place on this topic? MarkBernstein (talk) 19:59, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

we have Wikipedia:General sanctions/Gamergate/Requests for enforcement to discuss editor conduct and sanctions, which is probably where both YS's and MB's comments belong.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:04, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

To be fair, MB instigated it. --DSA510 Pls No H8 20:31, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

If you have a user conduct issue, take it to the appropriate boards - DO NOT USE THIS PAGE TO WHINE OR CAST ASPERSIONS. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:18, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

You're really being quite nasty over very little, chill out man there's no need for that. HalfHat 21:54, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

• Quote what Morhaime actually said, and then note that it was interpreted as targeting Gamergate by Geoff Keighley et al. We've already gotten in trouble for mangling sources above, let's not do it again. - hahnchen 19:43, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

• • It's not "mangling sources" to note, as several sources do, that Morhaime confirmed it with a non-verbal, but obvious, gesture in that interview. If Blizzard puts out a statement saying they weren't talking about Gamergate, we can fix it. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 19:46, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
    • Waiting for someone to complain is a poor way of writing an article, it's pretty much what I said not to do. I don't doubt that he was talking about Gamergate, but there are plenty of sources (such as the gamergate-maligned Kotaku & Polygon) who note that Morhaime did not mention Gamergate explicitly. So it is an interpretation, even if widely held. - hahnchen 20:21, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
      • Apples and oranges, Hahnchen. The issue re: Auerbach was a misinterpretation of a source in paraphrase. Here, we cite multiple reliable sources reaching a conclusion based on their observations. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 20:44, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
        • I've said quote Morhaime, and then explicitly cite those conclusions. Do you have a problem with that? - hahnchen 22:11, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
          • No, I don't. Sounds fine, thanks. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 03:00, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
    • That's original research. Willhesucceed (talk) 20:23, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
      • I don't think you understand what "original research" is. It is not "original research" to cite reliable sources which synthesize a conclusion. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 20:39, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
        • Are Gawker links still being called "Reliable"? --DSA510 Pls No H8 20:44, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

WP:RSN is a better place for that question. Also noted earlier Gawker is not involved in this issue section, I see no Gawker sites being cited for this claim. — Strongjam (talk) 20:48, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Gawker is shorthand for Kotaku since Kotaku is a part of the Gawker network. Anyways, couldn't we just quote the section that is relevant instead of putting it on one side or the other? --Super Goku V (talk) 22:28, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Before I go on, I’d like to take a moment to talk about something serious. Over the past couple of months, there’s been a small group of people who have been doing really awful things. They have been making some people’s lives miserable and they are tarnishing our reputation as gamers. It’s not right. Blizzcon is a great example of how positive and uplifting gaming can be. Let’s carry the good vibes from this weekend out into the world all year round. There is another person on the other end of a chat screen, they are our friends, our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters. Let’s take a stand to reject hate and harassment, and let’s redouble our efforts to be kind and respectful to one another and let’s remind the world what the gaming community is really all about.

— CEO of Blizzard, Mike Morhaime

Why is this still being discussed? Morhaime made a statement condemning Gamergaters, later confirmed that it was the Gamergaters he was condemning, and this s who all reliable sources describe the matter. This is not even a point of contention. Tarc (talk) 21:15, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Because RS isn't so R. Skepticism is not a sin. --DSA510 Pls No H8 21:39, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Didn't he clarify that he was indeed talking about Gamergate and all of this is just complaining that his original statement did not explicitly refer to Gamergate and therefore his clarification should not be used to corroborate his original statement out of some major form of pedantry?—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 21:54, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I think there's some controversy about whether he confirmed or not. The Joystiq report says he did, some internet commentators say that he didn't. Until we have a WP:RS that says otherwise I see no reason to call the Joystiq report inaccurate. — Strongjam (talk) 21:57, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

UNTIL there is either confirmation buy MULTIPLE sources (reliable as in the general definition, not Gawker) that, yes, he said that, I don't think it should be used. Similar should go to all the citations on the page. --DSA510 Pls No H8 22:04, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

"11:52AM As a final note, the DirecTV stage with Mike Morhaime as a guest confirms he was speaking out against GamerGate during the introductions of the opening ceremony. The group is mentioned by name.' is the end of the story. Tarc (talk) 22:09, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

It's well sourced. All of these are WP:RS and non-Gawker as requested:

• BlizzCon’s opening ceremony started with a bang this morning, as Blizzard Entertainment president Mike Morhaime spent the first part of his speech denouncing GamerGate [25]
• Mike Morhaime dedicated a part of his Blizzcon 2014 opening ceremony speech to slam GamerGaters [26]
• Mike Morhaime as a guest confirms he was speaking out against GamerGate during the introductions of the opening ceremony. The group is mentioned by name. [27]

— Strongjam (talk) 22:17, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I've just seen the clips. He doesn't stop or correct Keighley (because I think he's correct), but he doesn't confirm it either. Even the sources that Gamergate hates (Kotaku & Polygon) do not explicitly say (as Wikipedia currently does) that Morhaime denounced Gamergate. - hahnchen 22:25, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Then you would have seen the, how shall we put it, respectful nod and smile from Morhaime at Keighley's statement. Non-verbal communication is a thing, and we helpfully have a number of reliable sources making the connection so that it is not WP:SYNTH in any way, shape or form. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 22:28, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

People nod in everyday conversation. We have a number of reliable sources that state Morhaime did not address Gamergate by name, so any connection is an interpretation. Nothing wrong with stating that. - hahnchen 22:44, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, since I have not seen the video cited, here is a recording of it at the least. At ten seconds in, we can first see the panel with Morhaime at Keighley. At twenty, Keighley is almost done with the intro to the panel as Morhaime is grinning/smiling. At twenty-nine seconds in, Keighley uses the word "Gamergate" in his speech. By thirty-three seconds in, Morhaime facial expression becomes closer to neutral, though not a Blank expression. At thirty-five, Morhaime is nodding as Keighley has mentioned Morhaime being "one of the first execs in the Gaming Industry to address that head on. At thirty-eight, the camera shot changes from a distance shot to Morhaime head-on. The discussion continues on to a different subject and at fifty-one second, Morhaime first speaks. Is that enough to make or break a connection? --Super Goku V (talk) 22:51, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

First one is assuming that he was talking about one side or the other. Second one has the same fallacy. Joystiq's one is still unconfirmed. Again, there is no proof he was talking about one side in particular, but rather condemning all harassment, from both sides... or whatever number of sides there is now. --DSA510 Pls No H8 22:31, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

The only notable harassment...harassment characterized as misogynists, to boot...has come by gamergaters against women in the gaming culture, as evidenced by the reliable sources in the article. The smattering of blowback is I believe documented in the article as well (would have to review), but it is isolated and minor...again, as evidenced by reliable sources. As the Blizzard speech has been characterized and interpreted by reliable sources as targeting Gamergaters specifically, that is what this article should follow. At any rate, this is certainly not something that would ever been changed/edited through full protection by an admin, sao it is best to let this edit request drop, as it simply isn't going to happen. Tarc (talk) 22:54, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

It's only because your No True Scotsman BS. --DSA510 Pls No H8 04:01, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

So the fact that he called out a small element of the gaming community, and then praised the gaming community as a whole, you're going to cherry pick that and say he call out out gamers? Really? Come one. It stands the opening sentence on it's head. --DHeyward (talk) 23:02, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

He didn't "call out gamers," he called out GamerGate, which is by any measure, a tiny minority of the gaming community as a whole. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 23:04, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

20K+ doesn't seem small. --DSA510 Pls No H8 04:01, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. Hayward, I specifically said "Gamergaters", not "gamers" in a general sense. Tarc (talk) 23:20, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

"Those that did the notable harassment" are not all "Gamergaters" (specifically, those that support Gamergate as an ethics bit), it is only by people using the #gamergate tag, which there is RS-sourcable evidence that are trolls out there that are subverting things. This is not to say "no" Gamergater is innocent of being involved in the harassment, but that not all harassers are Gamergaters. --MASEM (t) 23:34, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

You specifically said "Gamergaters" while Morhaime did not. Can't we just say that he said to "reject hate and harassment" and state that publications took the statement as him calling out Gamergate? --Super Goku V (talk) 23:38, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

The problem is that the harassment is from a small group using the #gamergate tag out of a larger #gamergate group. #gamergate itself is a small groupr of gamers. Our article is not so finely tuned to identify the difference and the ignorance of that is the articles opening sentence where misogyny, harassment and gamers are all blended under a single, evil umbrella. If the article was accurate, it would be very clear exactly who this quote is directed at and it is not the Blizzard execs belief that "misogyny and harassment in video game culture" is widely held or believed. --DHeyward (talk) 02:44, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

But le ebin No True Scotsman maymay, which seems to not apply to anti-gamergate, despite someone like myself being able to make 5 twitter accounts and then dox pro-gg under the anti-gg banner, says that everyone who is pro-gamergate is a misogynist. Or something. --DSA510 Pls No H8 04:01, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

If the quote is significant enough to include, we should reflect its tone and content as accurately as possible. "Denounced harassment" is a better characterization than "denounced Gamergate", so why worry if we can find sources to support the latter?--Trystan (talk) 00:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Well said. We get more accuracy by including the original comment here. starship.paint ~ regal 01:30, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

The reliable sources all say the Gamergate thugs are the target. Why is this supposed to be controversial? If nearly every press outlet got the facts wrong, couldn't he just tell them all off with a single press release? No, obviously in the middle of Gamergate he was obviously referring to Gamergate (and not some add yet unnoticed episode of intimidation involving gaming Quakers). So yeah, no wriggle room. Drop the stick and step away from the corpse. --TS 01:22, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

@Tony Sidaway:Was that directed at me? Because that was my second contribution to this talk page, and the first on this topic. I wouldn't contest that he was referring to Gamergate, only that "condemning harassment" is more reflective of the statement that he chose to make.--Trystan (talk) 01:39, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I have set |answered=yes in the edit request. There is obviously not consensus here for this edit, so using an edit protected request template was premature, and even if people here agreed to do so we are obviously not going to make an edit that contradicts what all the reliable sources say about this. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:31, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Then, why can't we just state what he said with a citation? Masem has suggested that we could make a new section called "Industry response" in response to one of my earlier suggestion. --Super Goku V (talk) 01:56, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

The RS here are all gaming outlets for the most part (I can't find a mainstream source), so they are going to have more bias here because for the most part, no RS gaming source has any reason to give GG the time of day (understandably, since GG is attacking their integrity). Take sources that are less biased by their nature like CNet Venture Beat or the Verge and they all clearly establish he's talking about GamerGate, but not accusing Gamergaters. This is a core thing for us as neutral WP editors to recognize when there is a natural bias in the press that we can verify. --MASEM (t) 01:36, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

From Masem's Verge link above: Blizzard CEO says harassment is tarnishing gaming's reputation ... Morhaime didn't condemn Gamergate or its members, but he's clearly talking about problems that have been going on since the movement gained steam over two months ago. Reliable source, hmm? starship.paint ~ regal 01:45, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Was he or was he not spoken to later and did he or did he not say he was explicitly talking about Gamergate?—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 01:54, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

He was spoken to later and he did not explicitly state that he was talking about Gamergate. If you are refering to the Keighley issue, I have already asked my question above. --Super Goku V (talk) 02:04, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I can't believe I still have to say this. Drop the stick. --TS 02:35, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

• Just quote Morhaime, say his words were largely interpreted as referring to Gamergate. This is what most sources say anyway. I don't see how this is even contentious. - hahnchen 02:56, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Works for me. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 03:02, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. We're just saying the same things over and over. We need to get back to the idea above of article pruning mentioned above, the idea of replacing existing and possibly weak gamer industry sources with stronger ones, as long as the underlying point isn't altered. Tarc (talk) 02:58, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I would write "Some assume he was referring to GamerGate, though it is not known whether it is GamerGate as a whole, or one side or the other." That way, everybody wins/loses. --DSA510 Pls No H8 04:01, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

That would be incorrect; as reliable sources have characterized it as referring to Gamergaters, our article will reflect that. My last statement on this tangent. Tarc (talk) 04:05, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

There are alternative ways to render it, but I will take my point below. --Super Goku V (talk) 05:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Proposed rewording

At BlizzCon 2014, Blizzard Entertainment president and co-founder Mike Morhaime said that "a small group of people have been doing really awful things. They have been making some people's lives miserable, and they are tarnishing our reputation as gamers. It's not right." He called on attendees to oppose hate and harassment and to "be kind and respect one another". His statements have been largely interpreted in the media as referring to GamerGate. starship.paint ~ regal 04:32, 14 November 2014 (UTC) tagging people advocating for change... Hahnchen, NorthBySouthBaranof, Muscat Hoe, Avono, Masem, Super Goku V, DungeonSiegeAddict510, Trystan ... sorry if I missed you

Looks good to me, although I'd tweak the last line to add some attribution, "His statements have been widely interpreted in the media as referring to GamerGate." NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 04:48, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

That's even better, yes. starship.paint ~ regal 04:53, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Fair, but keep it that way. --DSA510 Pls No H8 05:19, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

The notification system forgot to message me it seems. In any case, I would agree that this is better. --Super Goku V (talk) 05:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I would be comfortable with that as-well Avono (talk) 10:24, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

"A referral", I believe, is the translation of a legal case to a different court. The word we want if "a reference to GamerGate" MarkBernstein (talk) 12:21, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Referring would be better which is what was suggested in the first place.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 12:46, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I think we could (and should) stop using the phrase "in the media", as if it were some entity with an opinion. Here and in many other statements related to the topic of this article we can just say, for instance, "widely interpreted". Remember that, in an article like this at its current status, all of our facts come directly from media reports, so referring to the media as a third party is tiresome and unnecessary. We shouldn't make the media the topic of the entire article like this. --TS 12:54, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

You're right. The whole point of this is that the movement itself won't acknowledge that he was talking about them when everyone else is going "yep, he means Gamergate".—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 12:57, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Disagree with TS. The (gaming) media is an involved party in this situation, therefore it's important to mention them. In fact, all four of the sources we cite for the BlizzCon stuff have to do with gaming or at worst, computer technology. In addition, I believe that other reliable sources like papers will turn up in the future. "At least one paper written about Gamergate is already undergoing the peer review process... And Ryulong... you can't speak for everyone. starship.paint ~ regal 13:55, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Alter the last line to simply "His statements have been widely interpreted in the media as referring to GamerGate". Tarc (talk) 13:42, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Done. starship.paint ~ regal 13:55, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I meant to chop off "in the media" per TS's suggestion above, but was distracted. We already know we're talking about the media. Tarc (talk) 14:09, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I have to admit your original wording was rather confusing!

I think starship is getting a bit too deeply into an "us versus them" situation. If we didn't think we could trust the press we wouldn't write the article because we'd have no reliable sources. My comment is applicable throughout the article, not just here. We should stop talking about our sources as if they were active entities involved in some dispute, except where this is the case. And if they are involved, we should not really be using them as a source except for recording their opinion. In this case, though, we've got near unanimous interpretation by sources known to check their facts.

Furious attempts are being made, by actual involved parties, to spin this away from Morhaime's actual target and pretend he was talking about, I don't know, maybe the Trilateral Commission or something. We oughtn't to stand for that kind of nonsense. We report according to the reliable sources, and those sources are clear that he was talking about Gamergate. --TS 14:41, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Not opposed to this, but I think we can do without all the quoting. The article is already a WP:QUOTEFARM and has length issues. I'd suggest something like this instead.

• At BlizzCon 2014, Blizzard Entertainment president and co-founder Mike Morhaime denounced recent harassment from a small group. He called on attendees to oppose hate and harassment and to "be kind and respect one another". His statements have been widely interpreted as referring to GamerGate. — Strongjam (talk) 14:43, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Suits me. --TS 14:51, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I would change the last bit to "referring to fallout from GamerGate." --DHeyward (talk) 18:42, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Intel returns to Gamasutra, now with a source

The Mary Sue ain't The New York Times, but it's a (weak) RS, as previously discussed and used on this page, and we ought to update our section on Intel pulling ads with a notation that they began a new campaign on Gamasutra in November 2014. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 01:43, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Gamasutra confirmed it via a tweet, for what it's worth. Jgm74 (talk) 07:24, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I can't help noticing that the article's coverage of the Intel incident is rather larger than I expected. It seems larger than is reasonable, to be honest. I'd expect two or three sentences ending "Intel apologised for giving the perception of taking sides, also renewing its commitment to diversity, and later ran other paid advertising campaigns on Gamasutra."

We probably don't need a blow-by-blow commentary of what various chatterboxes had to say about it. The opinions of Johnson, McCormick, Kain etc aren't needed here. This was a straightforward letter-writing campaign that had a temporary effect. Let's try to stop using this article as a gazetteer of pundits. --TS 13:17, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Agreed — especially given the relatively-short duration, I think we can, in hindsight, view a lot of that as recentism. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 13:32, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I think we should drop everything after ... The New York Times believed it was in response to this campaign, specifically on the aforementioned article by Alexander. And add a sentence saying that in November 2014 Intel started a new paid campaign on Gamasutra citing The Mary Sue link above. The last paragraph I think can just be cut. — Strongjam (talk) 16:08, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

It is not a renewed campaign, a bit of f12ing would show that. --DSA510 Pls No H8 15:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

A look at the article would say it is a paid campaign. Not sure how looking at the HTML source would prove otherwise, or how we could work that into the article without violating WP:OR. — Strongjam (talk) 16:08, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the specific term, but its not a campaign on GS, per se, but on AdSense. I'm not sure how to word this, but they aren't specifically going for GS, if you can understand what I'm trying to say. --DSA510 Pls No H8 16:23, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

The article and the primary source, Gamasutra's twitter, say it's paid campaign. I'm not getting any Intel ad's when I view the site (getting targeted AdSense ads for AWS). It's possible there is a paid ad campaign and users are also seeing targeted advertisements through AdSense. — Strongjam (talk) 16:36, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Especially since Google added an option to deliver direct campaigns through AdSense back in January. - MrOllie (talk) 16:38, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

We don't want to be playing guessing games with HTML code. Intel is back on Gamasutra. I've updated the draft and took the opportunity to trim the quote farm while I was at it. Someone else would have to fix the orphaned references, as my little tablet interface isn't up to it. Go and see what you think. --TS 16:33, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I took a crack at fixing the references. There's still an error about 'bbc_coundrey' but I must be blind because I can't see it in the source. Found it. — Strongjam (talk) 16:43, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm still not happy with the size of the thing, most of which is redundant quotations of multiple pundits. We're spending lots of space promoting the opinions of these professional chatterboxes when a brief summary of events would do. I'd say we overplay the opinionators because we're struggling to explain the vehemence of the response to a few articles critical of the consumer aspect of gamer culture and the violence and misogyny that regularly attend its manifestations.

We need to cover the following: conspiracy mongering about the timing and provenance of "Gamers are Over" and related articles; widespread ignorance of their actual content and the terrifying and violent context in which they appeared and about which they were written; criticism of the articles as "turning against" gamers; the letter writing campaign; responses by advertisers; responses in the advertising industry and business press.

If I've missed anything, please comment. When we've got a structure I think we'll be ready to tame that quote farm further. --TS 17:16, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Telegraph reporting on this now, so a better source. But agree we can cut down that section a bit, perhaps work both "advertizing target" campaigns together. --MASEM (t) 17:44, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

That source also mentions the debate about AdSense as well and gets clarification from Intel. So that looks like a settled issue now. — Strongjam (talk) 17:48, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I was just about to post this! Masem, I'm open to suggestions (out just go ahead and edit as I did). In not sure my proposed framework is feasible, as a lot of the Gamergate rationale is too far under the radar to get reported. News reporters understand the news cycle and don't take accusations of collusion seriously where it clearly doesn't exist. This, alongside GameJournoPros, forms a lot of Gamergate's internal credo or creation myth, but it probably isn't as widely reported as the latter. I'm still working on good, strong sources for this, because without understanding this conspiracy theory about a press that attacked gamers out of the blue it's rather difficult to work out quite why Gamergate activism took the form that it did. -TS 17:59, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

My suggestion would be along the lines (this is a very broad stroke, there can be a few quotes injected and the like,) of "GG supporters were critical of articles that spoke of the "death of the gamer identity" such as Leigh Alexander's piece from Gamasutra. They were also taken back by comments made by Sam Biddle of the Gawker networks that called for bullying of nerds in light of the harassment. In response, the GG supporters organized separate email campaigns to target advertizers that were promoted on these sites to express their concerns as part of a "consumer revolt". "Operation Disrespectful Nod" was aimed at sites like Gamasutra that discussed the end of the gamer identity. Some advertizers did pull their ads, leading some journalists to claim their there getting involved in a larger situation without understanding the full extent. In one case, Intel did pull their ads from Gamasutra but later reinstated them, stating that they had not planned on taking a position in the larger controversy. In "Operation Baby Seal", GG supporters turned to Google and Amazon's ad services which Gawker Media cites had used to point out violations on various Gawker sites against these service's AUP/TOS. The tactic of targetting the ad providers than the advertizers themselves was considered "a whole other scale" and has the potential, if successful, to financially harm Gawker." Much of the quotes given in that otherwise are excessive or just too much detail. --MASEM (t) 18:17, 14 November 2014 (UTC)