User:ColorOfSuffering/GGLead

Lead Proposal Round Two

The lead sentence consists of ten words. Two of the words are the name of the article, and five of the words are a Wikilink to another article: Sexism in video gaming. The other three words are "is; a; regarding". Personally, I've never seen a ten-word sentence say so little. Please take the time to compare this lead sentence to any other featured article to see how grossly inadequate it is. Here are three featured articles about controversies: Nature fakers controversy, 1996 United States campaign finance controversy, and John the bookmaker controversy

Now let's look at the purpose of an opening sentence, from WP:BEGIN:

"The first sentence should tell the nonspecialist reader what (or who) the subject is."

If I'm a nonspecialist reader, I will come to the GamerGate article, read the first sentence, and I will immediately know nothing about the subject, other than GamerGate has something to do with sexism and video games. The article could very easily be an article about hiring practices in the video game industry. It could be about the sexist depictions of video game characters. It could be about repeated episodes of gendered harassment at video game conventions. It could be about anything related to women and video games. It's non-specific, and it does not function how a first sentence should.

"The first sentence should give a concise definition: where possible, one that puts the article in context for the nonspecialist." The current sentence contains no definition and zero context, other than "video games" and "sexism," which are two words about as far from "concise" as you can get. This is another reason why the sentence is dreadfully insufficient.

The problem I made in my initial post addressing this issue was that I tried to clearly define GamerGate only using reliable sources. Unfortunately, reliable sources disagree on the definition, and even whether GamerGate can be defined at all. Fortunately the GamerGate Wikipedia article does define GamerGate in the lead, just not in the opening sentence. So what I propose we do is just take that definition and bump it up a bit.

So I will now propose a new lead that answers the question: What is the GamerGate controversy?

I had attempted this feat before, posting three options for an improved opening sentence, but these sentences were largely ignored and discussion bogged down in whether or not the sources call GamerGate a "movement," and if it's important to state what GamerGate thinks it is (Dennis Green would be proud) and other nitpicks. Those debates are heavily-tread ground that shows little agreement from reliable sources, and it distracted from the topic-at-hand which was the inadequacy of the opening sentence and only the opening sentence.

So rather than try to incite another lengthy discussion, I will simply put forward my own proposal. I had to rewrite the entire opening paragraph, but I think it works much better. Truth be told, it's not terribly different than the current lead -- it's more of a reordering of the content than anything else, as you will hopefully see. Anyway, on with the lead proposal:

The Gamergate controversy refers to a campaign of threats and harassment, beginning in August 2014, and targeted at several women in the video game industry, primarily game developers Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, and feminist cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian. These attacks were initially performed under the twitter hastag #gamergate, a name that was adopted by members of an anonymous and amorphous movement, and variously coordinated on the online forums of Reddit, 4chan, and 8chan. The attacks included doxing, threats of rape, and death threats including the threat of a mass shooting at a university speaking event.

Here's why I think it's better:

1. There is more of a focus on threats and harassment, which comprises the bulk of the reliably-sourced reporting on GamerGate.
2. The instigators of the harassment are more clearly defined earlier, if the words "anonymous and amorphous" can be used to clearly define anything.
3. Focuses more specifically on the three women who have received the bulk of the coverage related to GamerGate harassment, and places their names higher in the lead.
4. Clearly explains why GamerGate has received the coverage it did.
5. Removes the ambiguous, unhelpful language and replaces it with language more specific to the Gamergate controversy.

Ways the lead can be improved:

1. Obviously there needs to be a discussion about the disparity between GamerGate's stated objectives and their actions and/or public perception. I think this is covered aptly in the second paragraph of the lead, which goes into the "culture war" aspect of the controversy. I'd like to put it in the opening paragraph, but I just don't think there's enough room at the moment.
2. That the movement's ethical concerns are widely debunked, and it's widely viewed as an effort to obfuscate their true intentions which are to harass women. The problem is that we have to somehow mention "ethical concerns" in order to debunk said concerns, which means we must establish that GamerGate is interested in ethics...which is a viewpoint that very few are comfortable including in the opening paragraph. Once again, I feel that this aspect is covered well in the second paragraph.
3. Gooder writing. I'm not a copyeditor, and I will have probably make mistakes somewhere in that paragraph.