Talk:Nolan Bushnell/Archives/2018

An issue to watch

In light of Bushnell's Pioneer Award for GDCA this year, a number of industry ppl have spoken out against it [1]. Right now, I'm not sure to include it per BLP (they are claims) but this might develop as at least one person has tied it to the #metoo movement. --Masem (t) 03:15, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

More [2] --Masem (t) 05:29, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

More [3] --Masem (t) 14:28, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

For the time being, I oppose inclusion of the “GDCgate” affair on the Wikipedia page for Nolan Bushnell. I oppose the inclusion because I think it’s important that we do not silence the voices of women, especially that we do not silence the voices of women who were there and who worked for Atari while Nolan Bushnell was president. That in mind, here are some women’s voices:

Former female Atari employee Elaine Shirley wrote:

I worked for Atari from 73-99. I was there during the Nolan era.. It was the 70's, we had fun. To my knowledge, no one ever did anything they did not want to do. At Atari, there was NO hostile work environment. The GDC should ask the women that actually worked there during that time. I support Nolan getting the award. Geez, next they will be pulling awards given to the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and the WHO.. It was a different time.

#istandwithnolan source

Another woman’s say on the matter:

Former female Atari employee Loni Reeder wrote:

So.... let’s take a step back and look at the overall situation:

It started with a 38 year old disgruntled ‘uber feminist’ woman/game designer from Massachusetts running for Congress who had a less than stellar experience in the predominantly male-dominated video game space, resulting in what came to be known as ‘GamerGate.’

Using the ‘MeToo’ movement and a moment in time for which she had no firsthand knowledge............

And with zero complaints lodged against Nolan or complaints about the work culture by employees working at Atari during that time...........

And based on archival newspaper and magazine interviews with Nolan and others chatting about a work environment, time and culture that existed 40 years ago.........

A work environment everyone - men and women - happily worked in TOGETHER... and partied in TOGETHER (or didn’t party in - there was no pressure and no judgement).... an environment that has resulted in decades-long friendships, marriages, ‘little Atarians,’ business partnerships and frequent reunions......... providing us with amazing memories, and for most of us, spending the rest of our work careers attempting to replicate the MAGIC of the Camelot that we were lucky enough to work at.

By arming herself with a topical movement and being personally disgruntled and ‘offended’ by an environment existing 40 years ago which she played no part in - an environment she had ZERO first hand knowledge of.......... and ‘intimating’ those of us who worked with or around Nolan, Al (Alcorn), the Gene’s (Lipkin and Landrum), Joe (Keenan), Steve (Bristow) and the rest of ‘Mahogany Row’ had been sexually assaulted, abused and disrespected by (in her estimation) abominations to the male species.......

Yes, based on her political aspirations, personal assumptions and libelous accusations against a man where no complaints have been raised or filed - she made a big, unfounded noise against Nolan - and the ‘Pioneer Award’ honor was withdrawn.

Atari was a large corporation with many facilities... but I worked in Corporate Headquarters, interfaced with every department in the company as a part of Communications, Security and Facilities groups....... and in being ‘adopted’ by the Coin-op and Industrial Design groups, I also spent a great deal of time in the Engineering (‘hot tub’) building, which would be the two locations where most of the fun and craziness occurred.

From my vantage point and having a first-person perspective of this time and the Atari environment, what has been done to Nolan is falsely mischaracterizing him for a lifestyle that did no harm or wrong to anyone.

Nolan created a company environment which opened the doors to many women into a field where they were never included before: HI TECH. Nolan never discriminated on any level and gave everyone a chance to prove on their own merits that they could be a part of Atari. From soldering boards to building arcade cabinets, drawing schematics and artwork to working on the assembly line.

For me personally, Nolan was the final word in my being hired at Atari - my first full-time job after college... he continued his belief in me years later, when we cofounded uWink in Los Angeles where I became an ‘equally compensated’ Vice President.

Nolan never profiled a person by their gender as to whether or not they were a fit for the job. He based his decision on the person’s skill, ability and passion for the job - because of that belief, we always rose to the occasion! We were a bonded teamship... AND A FAMILY.

Atari also saw a woman - the amazing Carol Shaw - go on to fame!

For me, and I’m sure for other women who will weigh in....... while this ‘feminazi congresswoman wanna-be’ may believe she is doing ‘Atari womankind’ a favor, in reality, she has done us a disservice by creating victims where there were none.

Personally, I am extremely angered by her words and conduct in this matter... not just for Nolan, but for the women of Atari - all of us!

We ALL were, and remain to this day extremely strong and intelligent women...... and there isn’t any ‘man’ who would dare take advantage of us (not if they intended to procreate in the future!).

My other anger is the callous and unnecessary hurt I’m sure this matter has inflicted on Nancy and their kids and grandkids.

Finally... by not doing their due diligence before terminating the honor, the GDC did a disservice to Nolan, to my fellow Atarians - and to the truth.

Nolan was extremely gracious in this matter via his tweet… Hopefully the GDC will right this misstep on their part at some point in the future.

source

That in mind, I do not see Nolan Bushnell being someone who harassed women nor someone who made women feel uncomfortable. If we start putting up the accusations, we will also have to put up the rebuttal from women who were there and saw the culture first hand, because otherwise Wikipedia will be silencing women’s voices.

(Note that I will change my mind about this matter if a female Atari employee from that era comes forward and says she felt uncomfortable working for Atari.)

Samboy (talk) 21:36, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree we need these counterpoints about the nature of the world at the time he was at Atari; I have already include Elaine's as it came from a published magazine, but the facebook account unfortunately is unusable as a source. That said, I also saw another source at VentureBeat that discussed the issue both ways.

We do actually need to included as even those that wanted GDC to pull the award were not ignoring Bushnell's contributions, they were more worried about the GDC's timing with the matter relative to #Metoo. --Masem (t) 21:48, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

I do not like the fact that we are silencing Loni Reeder’s voice on the matter. While we prefer not to use primary sources, this is a case where a pedantic following of Wikipedia’s policies causes a negative result. We should include her voice, and we should use her Facebook posting as the source until such time comes that someone in the press feels inclined to no longer silence her. WP:IAR Samboy (talk) 22:00, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

I just added the VentureBeat article I saw, which listed out how several former Atari employees spoke out at Atari Museum to counter the original complaints, including their reasons. Also just found Le Monde mentioned Loni's stance (though not her full statement). --Masem (t) 22:44, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Excellent. It looks like we are coming up with a balanced and neutral look at this issue. Samboy (talk) 23:06, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

I have edited the part that quotes Loni’s Tweet to be her own words, instead of being an English → French → English double translation. See https://twitter.com/lonireeder/status/958922473101078529 for the original (as per Wiki bureaucracy, this is indisputably notable because it was published, in French, by a reliable source) Samboy (talk) 23:34, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

As a personal note, while I think the way Atari was handled in the 1970s was reasonable considering the culture that existed at the time, I also feel what was OK then is not OK today and would not condone a company being managed that way here in 2018. Samboy (talk) 19:06, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

@Masem: If you believe information is missing from my edits, please add it. Do not revert wholesale. Adraeus (talk) 19:38, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Your edits put a spin on the issues not representative of the issues at play. Workplace gender makeup is not mentioned at all in sources. There are no specific accusations aimed at Bushnell, only that he ran his company in a very sexist manner (from those making the statements), and that it was the timing of the award that they had issue with (in light of #metoo), not Bushnell himself. I fully support making sure that those former Atari employees that stepped forward to defend Bushnell spoke out, it's just that we have to reflect what the issue presented by Wu and others properly. --Masem (t) 22:01, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I removed the spin. I didn't add it. A few things:

1. The Game Developers Conference and the Game Developers Choice Awards are two very different things.
2. It is redundant to specify why he was chosen to receive the Pioneer Award in the very article about him. The reader knows what he did by this point.
3. There are plenty of specific accusations—by the uninvolved, distant third parties—aimed at Bushnell. Do your research.
4. There is plenty of evidence he did not run his company in a sexist manner. You stating otherwise indicates the spin you want to add to the article.
5. It was not just the timing of the award that caused Brianna Wu to make up shit. Read all her tweets, not just the ones you cherry picked to make your case. Hell, just read her end quote in the first passage. The argument that she made is that Bushnell personally created a toxic work environment for women that carried over to the present-day game industry and birthed the industry's diversity problem. It doesn't seem like you're making the connection to the heavily reported issue of diversity in games (i.e., institutional sexism = less women in games), so maybe that needs to be called out explicitly.
6. Per WP:NPOV, it is not necessary to give equal validity to Wu's extraordinary claims, which have been proven false.

If you continue to try to spin this section of the article in favor of Wu, I will fight you. Adraeus (talk) 09:07, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Point by point:

1. GDC runs the awards. They are the same thing.
2. When someone has a long career like Bushnell and they receive a type of lifetime achievement award, it is generally customary to point out what the organization committee focused on. (Same with the Nobels, etc. )
3. Those accusations by other third parties are not discussed in reliable sources. I know they exist but no media gave them serious attention. Instead, they focused at Wu's statements and others around that.
4. We as wikipedia editors cannot make the judgement that there is evidence that Atari was not run in a sexist manner. Personally, from my memory and newer tales, I fully agree it wasn't, it was an era of indulgence of the 70s, etc., but we cannot include synthesis of our opinions here. No one has written a source that disproves Wu's statement, so we cannot presume otherwise.
5. Again, we go with what sources focused on, which was more about the timing. Yes, Wu's statements and others not reported many have tried to paint Bushnell in a darker light, but in the end. the focus of the RSes on this was that these people agreed Bushnell should be recognized, just not at a time that #MeToo is happening. To that end, trying to disprove Wu's statements by using modern stats that no other RS on the matter bring up is more synthesis.
6. No claims have been proven false. Yes, three former Atari people have stepped forward to challenge it, but that still doesn't mean that Wu's statement was false or disproven, they just expressed their own opinion. Those opinions aren't proof that Wu's wrong, just that they are good counter opinions to Wu's statement. Key is that no reliable source has attempted to resolve those statements with Wu's, so we just have to put them in place and let them be.

Overall, the problem is that the coverage of this GDC award focused heavily on Wu's stance (with many sources backing her) and very little on the Atari employees. Unfortunately, we are bound by UNDUE to follow what the sources have done, which means we cannot trivialize or try to disprove Wu's stance. Almost no RS that covered the story touched on what these Atari employees said, which is a shame but we're stuck with what came out, and my version is the best version that follows policy, specifically NPOV and NOR. Any apparent "spin" in Wu's favor is unfortunately the result of following UNDUE on what the sources have focused on. Also, to assert you will "fight" someone - eg intentional disruption - can easily lead to a block to prevent that disruption. --Masem (t) 14:20, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

1. No, UBM runs the Game Developers Conference and the Game Developers Choice Awards. The Game Developers Conference is what it sounds like: a trade conference. The Game Developers Choice Awards is a one-day event that happens within that conference's large schedule of events. They are distinct.
2. Agree to disagree. It is redundant to restate Bushnell's accomplishments.
3. Russell's teapot.
4. Opinions can be ethically wrong, factually incorrect, deceptive, biased, and based on fabrications and misinformation. They are not protected thought. Opinions are not infallible.
5. If you have issues with the current version, CORRECT them, and we can collaborate from there. Wholesale reversion is the wrong approach. I have no qualms with getting into a revert war, but by the way, your reversions are destroying edits to other parts of the article.

Adraeus (talk) 21:45, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

@Masem - On your last reversion 15:15, Feb 9th 2018 - if Medium isn't a valid source, should we be quoting Brianna Wu's claims that Nolan Bushnell is a sexual harasser from her twitter feed directly? (Which is where this whole story started in the media). If so, what happens if they're deleted? Similarly, I find it hard to understand why the gender ratio of the games industry is included in the follow-on sentence without including the fact that Atari had a higher-than-average female-male ratio of 36%. This seems like spin or bias WP:NPOV. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.17.243.217 (talk) 18:25, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

As best as I am aware (when I last read the RSes), none of them discussed Wu's claims of sexual misconduct, and no one has responded to those claims of misconduct in any direction (some of the former employees lean that way but do not address them directly). Because laying yet-proven accusations falls as a BLP issue, so it should be kept out. --Masem (t) 20:10, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm just noting that Kotaku ran the "missing link" piece today, after they sought out a dozen former Atari female employees, plus expanded on their thoughts. I will keep pointing out that no one is calling what Wu said right or wrong, we cannot say she was disproven, but we can say from this Kotaku article that these interviewed women were upset at what they considered a character assassination towards Bushnell. But Kotaku does bring up workplace #s so we finally have reason to include that. --Masem (t) 20:31, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

It still seems weird that we're including Nolan's apology tweet, but not the tweet from Wu that started this whole thing off. As a result of this omission, we're inaccurately stating Wu's original public position on Nolan - which was much more vicious than is currently included in the article. In other words, we're being factually inaccurate here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.17.243.217 (talk) 17:06, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

It's in there - it's not split out as a blockquote, but we have Wu's stance in quotes on the matter. --Masem (t) 17:08, 15 March 2018 (UTC)