Talk:Gamergate (harassment campaign)/Archive 17

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Where did the actual ethics issue go?

At one point we covered an actual ethics issue where a AAA company gave out free swank to independent reviewers under the condition they only give positive reviews to the game - an issue that GG studiously ignored because thats not the kind of ethics they are concerned about, apparently, because its not about SJW ethics or something.

Where did that go? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 01:24, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

This appears to be what you're referring to (kudos to EthicsInJournalism for the linked content). I don't think you can actually keep the phrase that "GG studiously ignored" this issue because the people writing the link covers it in depth and identify themselves with gamergate. Now, you might very well have a reliable source in the press that claims "GG studiously ignored it" so obviously that would trump the obvious proof in the link that these self-identified gamergaters are very much looking deeply into it. But do you have a reliable source that says that the link I just posted is nonexistent? Bramble window (talk) 13:24, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

This is so obvious WP:FORUM that it's sad no action will be taken against you yet other people are forever banned for reverting a button size twice. You're referring to the Shadow Of Mordor thing? You came to know about it because of TotalBiscuit, he's pro-GG, the story was broken on The Escapist a fairly neutral site that allows GG discussion. It was later resolved, there were threads on KiA about it [1] Those "reviewers" were YouTubers, not journalists. Loganmac (talk) 06:18, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

This question is clearly about article content. Content that was there and is not now -and I am asking when it disappeared and why because i did not see any discussion. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 11:46, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

There seems to have been a little rewriting of history here. This is Erik Kain, at the time, tweaking the Gamergate people for their very muted response to the Shadows of Mordor scandal.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/10/08/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-paid-branding-deals-should-have-gamergate-up-in-arms/

--TS 14:05, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Another contemporary report from Damion Schubert appears to corroborate Kain.

http://www.zenofdesign.com/what-games-journalism-integrity-actually-is-and-what-it-isnt/

Note that both of them credit Jim Sterling (who acknowledged John "TotalBiscuit" Bain's role in breaking the story) with obtaining and analysing one of the contracts at issue. Sterling has been steadfastly critical of Gamergate. --TS 14:16, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

References

and here [2] (belated sign) -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:16, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Workshop

I suggest we add/restore to the end of the first paragraph in [Gamergate_controversy#Debate_over_ethics_allegations]]

• Commentators including Zaid Jilani and Erik Kane discussed the lack of any significant response from Gamergate supporters regarding the ethical issues surrounding the release of preview copies of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor tied to conditions which included reviewers having to give positive reviews, restricting the mention of any bugs, and requiring the publisher to approve the review in advance.

References

-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 14:42, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

John "TotalBiscuit" Bain's come out and stated "Shadow of Mordor was not only not an issue of journalistic ethics BUT it had the whistle-blown it by someone pro-Gamergate (ie. me) and the PR company in question was pressured into changing their contracts. The idea that "Gamergate" did not care about this issue has no basis in reality. Revisionist history, nothing more." Seeing as Mr Bain broke the story, is the reason it is publicly known, his statement needs to be in the section. If the whistleblower's viewpoint is to be excluded, then I don't support covering the Shadow of Mordor affair as the POV would be unacceptably far from neutral. Bramble window (talk) 14:44, 26 December 2014 (UTC)11

content not directly related to article improvement/the suggested content under discussion. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 17:46, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

in order for a "consumer revolt" to be taken seriously, they would have to , you know, not buy things. if GG were actually a "consumer revolt" against ethical violations, this would have been the flagship case - massive air time, boycotts, etc. It didnt happen.instead they went after intel and BMW. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:14, 26 December 2014 (UTC) Are you serious right now, first what does this actually have to do with the article and second how exactly is "being a consumer revolt" mean not buying things? GamerGate that we know of, isn't a consumer revolt against actual video games, it's against journalism sites, guess how you make a boycott against these sites? By not visiting them, hence the use of archive sites which is/was sourced on the article. You do know other boycotts against TV stations/programs consisted of pressuring advertisers to drop out of said network right? You seem to have a personal mission to convince everyone on this talk page that "GamerGate isn't about ethics" to further a meme even outside of article suggestions, and in this way you show off as being extremely personal and involved in the topic. Loganmac (talk) 07:25, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

The above thread is pertinent to the matter of how to cover the Shadow of Mordor issue within the article. It is also inappropriate for @TheRedPenOfDoom to collapse a discussion in which he/she is a participant. I call on TRPOD to reverse the collapse. Rhoark (talk) 04:11, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

make up your mind already. "first what does this actually have to do with the article " or not? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 14:28, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Not everyone who disagrees with you is the same person, and this section is all about how GG reacted to the Mordor situation. Resolving that is tributary to improving the article. Rhoark (talk) 16:38, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

We over-weight Kain already in the article and we really have plenty of 'not-really' ethics. I don't think this paragraph is needed. — Strongjam (talk) 15:00, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

We cover the "objective reviews" et al is not "ethics" (false positives)in the article but we dont cover the aspect where actual ethics issues coming from AAA sites are ignored (the false negative). Multiple people not just Kain have covered this. It paints the full picture - if GG were actually active in issues of actual ethics and had non ethics issues, that would be a different "organization" / "movement" - but no, they dont even have that. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:10, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

If you want to use the Shadow of Mordor affair, you have to include the statement by the Gamergater who exposed it. Otherwise it would be an outrageous breach of neutrality. I agree with covering this affair, including the powerful pro-Gamergate statement by the whistleblower who brought it to light. Bramble window (talk) 15:27, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

• 2) Commentators including Zaid Jilani and Erik Kane discussed the fact that even though a Gamergate supporter brought an issue of ethical concerns regarding the release of preview copies of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor to attention of the media and Gamergate, the lack of any significant response from Gamergate supporters to conditions which included reviewers having to give positive reviews, restricting the mention of any bugs, and requiring the publisher to approve the review in advance were more evidence that the supporters were not actually concerned about ethics.

Does that satisfy your issues? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:30, 26 December 2014 (UTC) You have to include the whistleblower's riposte if you're going to mention the Shadow of Mordor affair. Anything else would be an extreme violation of NPOV. That's all there is to it. Bramble window (talk) 18:32, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

At this point I think this very long-winded argumentation is less an attempt to improve the article, more yet another pointless attempt to relitigate Gamergate's lost PR campaign. As such we probably should ask the editors to take the argument off-wiki. --TS 00:37, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

No, this is actually incredibly relevant to the article and should be discussed here to figure out how to appropriately deal with it on the article. Discussion is how we do things here. Thargor Orlando (talk) 01:21, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, without actually addressing your argument, I apologise for that misplaced comment, which I intended to append to the sub-thread below. --TS 10:09, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Getting back to the original proposal, the idea seems to be that we should cover a particular affair which is marginally related to Gamergate. In early October John "Total Biscuit" Bain, who is broadly sympathetic to Gamergate but has kept his distance and has sometimes condemned, sometimes dismissed, concerns about the attacks, raised the topic of conditions being imposed on YouTube commentators in return for early access to Shadows of Mordor. Others such as Jim Sterling carried the investigation further. Multiple commentators about Gamergate at the time remarked on the evident lack of interest in this scandal displayed by Gamergate supporters, who were more concerned with attacking and vilifying independent developers, women, journalists, and game commentators.

I think the issue here is that the whole affair is a little inside-baseball. We have an article that focuses on some events that had a pretty severe effect on the victims, and here we have an event that clearly had little to do with Gamergate and was largely ignored by Gamergate supporters. A few commentators tweaked their noses about it, and openly wondered why this clearly unethical behaviour by a major software distributor wasn't raising a ruckus among Gamergaters. But that's about as close as we get to the relevance to Gamergate. Yes we could put it back, but I don't see its absence as an editorial failing on our part. We have to draw the line somewhere. --TS 14:49, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

So as far as the "controversy" goes, this is essentially a non-issue - it is merely evidence of the hollowness of the GG "but ethics" mantra? OK i can see that. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:00, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

On abstract opinions and judgements

It seems it's gotten to be habit to simply close off dissent by abusing Wiki tools. The issue here is that any suggestion of revision to be more objective or belabor less about the speculative ethical nature of a controversial subject is immediately shot down. Anyone can make a direct suggestion for a revision, but none are accepted unless said revision leans towards a condescending tone against Gamergate. This particular edit request was established to once again harp on Gamergate for things editors or journalists think Gamergate isn't doing, which is just plain madness. The article would be never ending if we had to list every aspect of politics that could be tangentially related to this group but potentially wasn't. The article is really just very stupid. It focuses so much on these abstract opinions and judgements, ascribing motives where there are none. Discussing this problem isn't really far afield of content. YellowSandals (talk) 18:27, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I think what's actually happening is fairly clear. Some editors are unhappy about what the vast majority of reliable sources say about Gamergate. Continual attempts to move coverage away from reliance on reliable sources are inevitably rebuffed on grounds of due weight and verifiability. In fact, over the months the article is visibly converging on a narrative that has coalesced within reliable sources. That's pretty much how the encyclopaedia is supposed to be written. --TS 18:50, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

see WP:TPG and WP:NOTFORUM and the 15 pages of archives. What is happening is that people go off on wild tangents that are not directly discussing specific article content and how best to represent the reliable sources in the article. Anything else doesnt belong here and should be cut off. there are whole forums on reddit and 8chan for ranting about how wikipedia is not being fair to gg. if you want to join them, feel free. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:16, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Demonizing Groups on Wikipedia

far afield from any direct discussion about article content, WP:NOTCHAT -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 05:45, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

These arguments of motive are silly. There are sources both for and against Gamergate that explain why the harassment occurred for reasons that make sense outside of "rape culture theory", and yet the impression I get is that the only acceptable option is to write the article as though gamers have a culture of misogyny. Based on the sources we have, we know Gamergate has been motivated by the following: They believe that game journalists were awarding close friends and romantic partners with positive press coverage and press reviews. They believe that Anita Sarkeesian does not like or play video games and that she is using the medium as a platform for activism or for financial gain through activism. They believe, through networking and talking amongst themselves, that game journalists have created an environment to support such activism as described of Anita Sarkeesian. They believe, through said networking, that many journalists have agreed to describe these events as anti-feminist and therefore based on the hatred of women. They know, from repeated complaints and admissions within the industry, that game journalism often gives inaccurate or favorable reviews to powerful advertising partners. They believe they are not supporters of harassment, that they do not oppose women in gaming, and that they are not misogynists. We've seen numerous articles establishing these points and explaining that this is how Gamergate sees things. We've seen pro-GG articles paint this in a positive light, and we've seen anti-GG articles paint it in a dismissive light. Whether Gamergate supporters are right or wrong in their beliefs is one thing, but Wikipedia doesn't exist to ascribe motives to an amorphous group or to condemn them either. This article should just establish what the press thinks, establish what Gamergate thinks, then explain what happened. Although Gamergate believes that certain people did certain things, it's important to remember how much of Gamergate began with and was based around rumors. This constant need to try to describe these people as intentionally evil or full of hate for some group is misguided, incompetent, and frustrating to watch. Could you just accept that pro-GG parties really do honestly and truly care about certain things and that some of them may be honest, empathetic human beings? You don't have to support them, but there's no reason to use Wikipedia to try to degrade and demonize them for every last thing they do, or worse, every last thing you think they didn't do. YellowSandals (talk) 16:29, 26 December 2014 (UTC) Please direct your comments to article content or sources please. WP:NOTFORUM -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:32, 26 December 2014 (UTC) Now this was just crass and disrespectful, Pen. And where we have an article written to specifically undermine some group, it is quite relevant to discuss the motives of said group from their own perspective. You started a thread wherein you questioned the ethics angle, trying to diminish it to justify further calling these people misogynists, and I responded by saying there are plenty of non-misogynistic reasons we have on record to show why people might support Gamergate. Moving it to a new thread titled "off topic discussion" was rude and childish. YellowSandals (talk) 16:38, 26 December 2014 (UTC) We have an article written to cover a controversy - a controversy that began with vile vile harassment against women which led to a more general discussion about sexism in gaming. So yes, in covering vile vile harassment directed mostly against women, the perpetrators are not going to come out looking like good guys. And the sheep who have followed them "buuuuuuut eeeeeethics" are not going to come off looking very good either. Thems just the facts. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:47, 26 December 2014 (UTC) Pen. Like it or not, in a controversy, you are going to have more than one perspective and there is going to be some justification for either side of the controversy. That doesn't mean that either side is being willfully evil or that either side needs to be represented as willfully evil. If you can't grasp that, you shouldn't be involved with a controversial article. YellowSandals (talk) 16:49, 26 December 2014 (UTC) Have you read the article? We cover the "buuuuuut eeeeeeethics" , but we do not and will not give a false balance by giving anywhere near equal credence to "one side" whose positions has always been disregarded by the sources as not meaningful at best ("objective" reviews are not ethics) and disingenuous attempt to coverup at the worst (no no we are not harassers, look here "ethics" Yeah, thats what we are) . -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:53, 26 December 2014 (UTC) You grudgingly admit that Gamergate supporters say they are not in league with the Devil himself, but then you turn around and do everything possible to establish that this claim of good intention is nothing but a ruse motivated by the Devil himself. Then you get on the talk page with this "but ethics" nonsense as if whinging is going to change the reality that the world is gray and humans are just clever monkeys who don't always act with a whole lot of clairvoyance. As far as I'm concerned, this antagonistic behavior is no more respectable or deserving of praise than the rest of the internet drama unfolded around the issue. You are being part of the problem, Pen, when your objective should merely be to catalog information for an encyclopedia. Stop whinging and stop acting like the other people stole your sweet roll. Honestly, we get enough of this from Danish politicians who think the Muslims are intentionally stealing lemon squares from hospitals to spite the Danes - this kind of close-minded garbage is not productive towards anything. It's just ignorant and obnoxious. YellowSandals (talk) 17:01, 26 December 2014 (UTC) Show me any reliably published sources that present the GG claims in a light that we have not presented them in?-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 17:15, 26 December 2014 (UTC) Nearly all reliable sources, as noted in the artice, have dismissed the first, third, and fourth claims as flatly false, and the second claim as irrelevant (as in, they say it wouldn't actually be an ethics issue even if it were true, though no RSes support it.) The fifth claim has many reliable sources stating that GamerGate, as a whole, is notable for not caring about it. And the final claim we do cover, though obviously the near-universal dismissal of all the points before it in reliable sources has implications for how we cover it. Ultimately, we have to report based on coverage in reliable sources; we do, in fact, cover everything you listed here, but we cover it according to what those sources say. I should add, for the final point, that there's something very important you are missing (which explains why you might be confused by some of the coverage here.) From the perspective of the mainstream media, maliciously repeating false accusations against someone is a form of harassment; when they say that GamerGate is harassing eg. Quinn, part of what they mean is repeatedly repeating debunked attacks on these people, trying to insert them into Wikipedia and so on; therefore, most of those reporters would probably look at the history of this talk page and see evidence of constant harassment. Regardless of how we feel about it, we have to take that seriously due to our BLP policies -- it is extremely important that Wikipedia never be used as a platform to attack living people, or to broadcast relatively non-notable attacks against living people to a broader audience (it can be used to report attacks from reputable sources, of course, but if you want to accuse a living person of something serious, you need the highest quality of sourcing available.) Finally, I think it's reasonable to characterize accusations that the media as a whole is part of some vast conspiracy to advance Sarkeesian's agenda as WP:FRINGE; it has little backing in reliable sources, and is repeatedly characterized as a fringe conspiracy theory throughout them. --Aquillion (talk) 17:31, 26 December 2014 (UTC) The article desperately needs to be purged of the words "misogyny" and "sexism" where these words are used in wikipedia's voice. Any reasonably bright 10-year-old child knows that speculation about a person's motives needs excellent proof, or else it's simple prejudice. There are very few people about whom wikipedia can confidently make an informed statement like "X is a misogynist" and in those cases X has been tried and convicted of crimes against multiple women. I have no problem with the accusation being made against those people who made rape threats, because the threats themselves are evidence. But the accusation is expanded to absolutely everyone who sympathises with any aspect of Gamergate, accusing even those who have denounced and condemned the makers of threats since day one. Bramble window (talk) 18:45, 26 December 2014 (UTC) nope, there is no serious dispute that the hateful vile harassment has been misogynistic and sexist in nature. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:50, 26 December 2014 (UTC) At no point in the current article do we, in Wikipedia's voice, describe individuals, groups of individuals or motives as misogynistic. All such statements are currently expressed as opinions. Where Wikipedia's voice is used to attribute misogyny, the objects of the attribution are actions or statements; we do not comment in Wikipedia's voice on intent. The actions and statements we do describe as misogynistic are characterised as such in overwhelming numbers of excellent sources. The material you wish to purge does not exist. CIreland (talk) 19:40, 26 December 2014 (UTC) To be fair, the scattershot accusations of misogyny have been tidied away a lot, but we still have lines like "Many commentators have said that the harassment associated with the movement tapped into this existing well of deep-seated misogyny". We really need a "supposedly" in front of that "existing". Also we have Wikipedia's voice describing "Gamergate's violent, misogynistic element". I am highly dubious about using that adjective without proof (or strong evidence) that gamergaters have ever committed an act of violence. If Wikipedia means verbal abuse, can't it say verbally-abusive? Bramble window (talk) 20:01, 26 December 2014 (UTC) Sending a threat of violence to someone is, in fact, a violent act. So no, we're not going to remove that word. In the real world, contrary to your earlier description of it being "no big deal," people take threats of violence seriously and they're federal felonies punishable by five to ten years' imprisonment. 18 USC 875/876 are on point. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 20:13, 26 December 2014 (UTC) In English, when we talk of a violent element, that's about people who commit physical assaults. Not mere words. US law holds no authority over the English language. Bramble window (talk) 23:39, 26 December 2014 (UTC) Violence includes threats, at least in how I use the word. — Strongjam (talk) 23:44, 26 December 2014 (UTC) The fact that an overwhelming majority of sources describe many of Gamergate's actions as misogynistic is not a subject for debate. The apparent fact that Gamergate supporters don't like that description is not grounds for removing our accurate description of what the reliable sources say about it. The first claim is proven to be false, at least based on any evidence so far presented. The second claim is irrelevant and nonsensical — there is nothing unethical about activism, and what Anita Sarkeesian chooses to do on her own time is absolutely none of anyone's business. The third claim is also irrelevant and nonsensical — every profession networks and talks amongst itself, that's just how the world works, and the fact that many journalists who write about video games are supportive of efforts to make video gaming more inclusive is evidence not of conspiracy, but of human decency. The fourth claim is utter bollocks — one doesn't have to be part of a super-secret conspiracy to describe the very public slut-shaming of a female developer as inappropriate, motivated by ill-will and misogyny. The fifth claim is a nullity — Gamergate isn't talking about billion-dollar publishers, they're talking about who Zoe Quinn had sex with, how Anita Sarkeesian is a liar, and how much they hate Brianna Wu. The sixth claim is useless — what Gamergate supporters believe about themselves does not require that people outside the movement perceive their rhetoric, ideology and activities the same way. Gamergate supporters are welcome to believe up and down all day long that they're not part of a misogynistic, anti-feminist movement — but everyone else has already decided they are, and that's pretty much the end of it. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 20:12, 26 December 2014 (UTC) When you use terms like "slut shaming", this is where I feel concerned that you're basing the entirety of your writing on a philosophical model for human behavior. I recognize some of the terms and tenets of Feminist theory, North, but you have to understand that sociological theories are not the end all, be all when it comes to explaining human motivations. You may believe in rape culture or other sociological theories, and Gamergate may tie in nicely to all those theories as long as it follows a particular narrative - but there, I think, is the problem. You're trying to make Gamergate follow a specific narrative so that these social theories are supported, or on the basis of these social theories. They're just theories, though, North. People don't tend to fit into social models very well. Humans are very diverse - you can't just lump all our motives and reasons into cultures of 'x' or 'y' and have that conveniently explain why world events happen. Writing the article in the assumption that a culture of misogyny explains everything is a major disservice, because it prevents any actual discussion of the controversy from outside this perspective of "everything is misogyny". YellowSandals (talk) 21:05, 26 December 2014 (UTC) You miss the point entirely, YellowSandals. This has nothing to do with me or my personal beliefs, because they're completely irrelevant to Wikipedia content. Rather, this is about what reliable sources say. The reliable sources consistently make all of the above points, and our articles are required to reflect what the reliable sources say. That you apparently don't like what the reliable sources say is interesting, but similarly of no relevance to Wikipedia content. Wikipedia is not a platform for Gamergate supporters to attempt to change the highly-negative public perception of their movement — it is an encyclopedia based upon reliable published sources. If the reliable published sources follow a particular narrative about a controversy, Wikipedia's article about the controversy will similarly follow that narrative. If you sincerely believe all the reliable published sources are in thrall to "feminist theory" or whatever... well, too bad, because we're going to follow the reliable published sources regardless of whether anyone likes what they say about Gamergate. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 21:19, 26 December 2014 (UTC) I mean consider, if you will, that this article would be more persuasive to all parties if it were less on the attack and just discussed what happened. Gamergate has been based a LOT on rumors, popular opinion, and telephone whispers. The popular press has reported almost exclusively on the death threats sent to a few feminist pundits, but that's because those threats are among the few definite things that you can report on without fear of libel. Whether or not Quinn received political or professional advantages through romance is a matter conjecture and should approached with a great deal of care because Wikipedia shouldn't be stoking a witch hunt either, but if you're going to continue writing this article, you should be trying to understand what the other side was thinking at the time or how events came to pass, because for an encyclopedia, that's what's actually relevant to the reader. Univested parties don't really care if you, North, personally hate Gamergate supporters - they just want to know what it is and why popular figures like Total Biscuit are supporting it. If you would be gentle and explain things without calling names or pointing fingers, a lot more people would nod their heads, say "Oh", and then just move right along. On the other hand, a damning, ignorant, jeering diatribe against a whole group you've never met persuades nobody and teaches nothing. If someone is sympathetic to what Total Biscuit is saying, they don't come to Wikipedia and then immediately assume that Total Biscuit was a liar and misogynist this whole time. His fans assume he's a good guy, and they wind up thinking that Gamergate is being bombarded with misinformation and propaganda, and they cease to trust what they're reading. It polarizes them, and they wind up at a far position instead of being informed and able to make up their own mind. And while this article doesn't exactly lie, it still contains a ton of bloat trying to discredit or villainize people who really may not be villains. People who aren't harassing anyone, who don't believe in harassment, and who follow Gamergate because they care about this or that aspect of the debate. Writing impartially doesn't mean heaping slander on a group even if the reliable sources do. It just means patiently and impassively describing the events without the assumption that anyone was trying to do anything wrong. When you spend this much time trying to guide the reader while trying hide any positive or reasonable sentiments about Gamergate, they wonder exactly how far you're misdirecting them and how much you are hiding. Or in other words, by being this partisan, you just give credence to the conspiracy theories because although you may not be colluding with a shadow organization of some sort, you are pretty clearly conspiring to make this group look bad by yourself at the least. You don't have to stretch that far to make Gamergate look sketchy. It started with rumors, it's involved some gossipy figures, there's a lot of partisan politics, it's been difficult to prove much of anything because many accusations are directed towards intents, and it's nebulous so anyone can say they're a part of it. So when you go out of your way to write disparagingly and hide positive elements of Gamergate - and there have been some - it throws the whole article into question. I don't know how much of the current article is truthful and how much is propaganda. I personally think it needs to be blown up, restarted, and this time written in a much more condensed with way less speculation over who's evil and who isn't. Just say what happened without pointing fingers. It should be easy enough. What's you've done so far goes above and beyond seeking reliable sources to understand the controversy - you are actively trying to make Gamergate look bad and guide the reader to negative conclusions about Gamergate, and all it's going to do is polarize readers and fail to inform people who realize they're looking at scads and scads of accusatory, useless, purple prose. YellowSandals (talk) 21:27, 26 December 2014 (UTC) For what it's worth, when I came to this article I was shocked about how positive it is. I didn't see it as demonizing, in fact I think it makes more assumptions of good faith than are really warranted at this point. eldamorie (talk) 22:50, 26 December 2014 (UTC) (ec) The goal of a Wikipedia article is not to be persuasive, at least not in the sense you mean -- we're not trying to change anyone's mind. Our article on Evolution, for instance, would probably be more persuasive for religious readers if it devoted more space and prominence to the various religious figures throughout history who have spoken in favor of Evolution; but doing so would violate WP:RS and WP:UNDUE, since those are not reliable sources on evolution and since quoting them at length would therefore be giving them undue weight. People who are not convinced by the consensus of scientists might not be convinced by our article on Evolution, of course, but that is their concern and not ours. Similarly, our article on Gamergate quotes some of the most reliable sources available on the subject. If readers choose not to believe PBS, The Guardian, BBC, Columbia Journalism Review, Washington Post, New York Times, the Australian Broadcast Company and so forth in favor of believing rumors and conjecture, that is up to them, but we cannot write an encyclopedia based on rumors and conjecture. As it is, I don't feel that it goes out of its way to make people look bad; it simply reflects what most of the world's reputable media (and, therefore, most reliable sources) have said. --Aquillion (talk) 22:59, 26 December 2014 (UTC) I know Wikipedia is not out to change anyone's minds in a direct sense, but it can do so by simply laying out information as its present and letting people understand it on their own terms. Right now the article is bloated to the eyes with tons of chaff about this or that pundit. Per WP:DUE, harassment has been the core thing reported on the most, so the article should discuss it as the core issue, but then it should mention some current beliefs or theories as to why it's happened. In honesty, there's not a lot of factual information out there about Gamergate - even with the harassment, we don't know who did it, why they did it, or how many did it. In fact, Gamergate supporters themselves are presently excited about recent articles discussing FBI investigation into the harassment because they don't like it and they think it would help what they're trying to do if names and faces were put to these crimes rather than the name of their movement. To claim the harassment occurred because of misogyny is just speculation. After all, if that's the case, why is it only these select people? Why aren't any important game devs similarly receiving threats? Or are they? See, this is the thing - ascribing a motive like this feels very easy, but it's probably too easy. There's no way that everything that's happened can be summed up as just "misogyny" like that. The ad pulls, the updates to policy on various journals, the change of guard at Gawker media - that's not "just misogyny". The stuff about journalism and ethics is clearly not a ruse if they're actually trying to take down journals. Intel pulled ads because Denton made disparaging tweets in the first place, even if he called them jokes, so it's a lot more political than simply grouping people together in a negative stereotype. You don't write the ISIS article and say they do what they do because they're Muslims. There's more to it than that. Coming up with some simple explanation like, "because these people are 'x' and have a culture of 'y'" is convenient, but it's also lazy and ignorant. I mean come on, guys. I don't believe there is a conspiracy, but I do believe that a number of journalists appear to be friends and aren't going to contradict each other politically. I think other journalists are lazy - and that's not a conspiracy either because we see this a lot with other controversial issues too; sometimes the press just reports on what it thinks and calls it a day. That's called yellow journalism, and let's be honest, Time, PBS, and the BBC don't really care that much about video games so they're going to report on the juicy stuff that can be substantiated. The whole lot of this could be trimmed down quite a lot if we only wrote what we actually know about the controversy. It isn't much. The more extensive stuff, like all the background about Zoe Quinn and her video games or Wu or Arthur Chu a few weeks ago - as Maseum has argued, all that seems to be recentism. These people seem to sort of fall out of the limelight once everyone gets tired of them. Or in other words, the misogyny stuff has been part of things but hasn't amounted to much, while the ongoing thing with advertisers keeps happening and was even commented on by Jimmy Whales when Wikipedia became a target of it. The policy changes are permanent. The change at Gawker is permanent. I hate to say it, but Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu weren't and aren't major figures in the gaming industry and they weren't worth the money or influence that Gawker and Denton are. Major women in the gaming industry haven't targeted either. This narrative about misogyny just doesn't make sense, but I think it's being driven because it fits a philosophical model. Yes if people are harassing women just because they're women then that's misogynistic, and the press has brushed a lot of Gamergate off by saying it's meaningless misogyny, but at some point, shouldn't this article be written to focus on the controversy's physical impact on the world? Instead of paragraph after paragraph about Quinn and whether or not Gamergate supporters are misogynist - which is all conjecture anyway - shouldn't the article be about the money, the politics, and how it's impacting the online world? The articles actually discussing this concrete stuff are far and few between, but this is an encyclopedia. To document people's feelings, make pages about those people and their feelings, but otherwise use the encyclopedia to talk about how and why a subject is relevant to the world. YellowSandals (talk) 00:21, 27 December 2014 (UTC) Or to put it in another perspective, suppose we wanted to make an article about Mountain Dew. We have two articles that talk about how Mountain Dew is made, and we have eight articles that say Mountain Dew is theoretically a threat to women. Would we really devote 80% of the Wiki page towards talking about Mountain Dew's threat to women? I mean, those eight articles talking about the misogyny of Mountain Dew would be opinion pieces, which really aren't that useful to an encyclopedia. YellowSandals (talk) 00:28, 27 December 2014 (UTC) The thing is, there has bee an a lot of coverage about what has happened and why, from many many many highly-reputable sources. We cover this all in the article; we discuss the most noteworthy, reputable attempts to analyze the movement, its background, and the reasons it exists as described in reliable sources. These are, mostly, the parts of the article you are objecting to. Whether you think that this reputable mainstream coverage is reasonable or not, whether you think it's persuasive or not, whether you think it's accurate or not, or whether you think it's complete or not are all irrelevant; what matters to us, as an encyclopedia, is what reliable sources say. They describe the impact of the controversy -- the real-world impact, the parts that matter -- in the terms you are seeing in the article; that is to say, virtually all mainstream coverage says that the main impact of the controversy is about vitriolic online harassment caused by reactionaries against the diversification of gaming and its effects. Most of the reliable sources we've found specifically say that ethical issues (and the things connected to them) are not particularly important outside of serving as a justification to perpetuate this harassment and to rally people to the cause of opposing diversification and its effects. That doesn't necessarily mean I agree with that assessment, but that is clearly, at this point, what the most reliable sources say, and that is therefore what our article has to reflect. To answer your other question, yes, if 80% of the reliable coverage about a topic says one thing about it? That would indeed dominate 80% of our article, for the better or worse, because we are an encyclopedia, and covering things in proportion to their coverage in reputable sources is what an encyclopedia does. If you feel that the more reputable mainstream media outlets have not devoted enough attention to some aspect of the controversy, or that they are covering it wrong, the appropriate place to address that is by taking it to them, not to bring it up here. --Aquillion (talk) 01:30, 27 December 2014 (UTC) If 80% of the coverage of a particular thing discusses a particular part of that thing, then yes, our article on that thing will be dominated by that coverage. A good example of how this principle applies is our article on daminozide, or alar. We briefly discuss what the chemical is and how it's used, but the bulk of the article discusses the major controversy over the potential for the chemical's breakdown products to be carcinogenic in humans, which led to a widespread and successful public and scientific campaign to prohibit the use of the chemical on food crops. That's by far and away the most notable thing about the chemical, so it dominates our article on the chemical. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 02:03, 27 December 2014 (UTC) So the plan you're supporting is, if one scholar writes a book about how a chemical works and how it's synthesized and what it's for, that scholar's work is considered fringe or a footnote at best if one hundred tabloids write articles about what the chemical smells like? What kind of sense does that make. A hundred tabloids have said Gamergate is misogynist, so you'd include that commentary, but why does the prevailing emotional response to Gamergate trump an actual discussion of the impact it's had or is having? It seems like the lede should just give a brief rundown of what Gamergate has done, and you can flesh out responses to those things in the body. There wouldn't even be that much to say once you establish, "They think it's misogyny" because every other opinion tends to sort of belong to individuals. There's no need for five paragraphs about Zoe Quinn any more than the article needs five paragraphs about Alec Baldwin. Mention her because she's seen as the start of the whole thing, but after that what does she have to do with anything after the initial complaints? I'm asking honestly, what makes her so relevant that we need five paragraphs to explain her relationship to the issue? I'd argue that Anita Sarkeesian probably deserves more discussion if only because she's more noteworthy in general and already has plenty of reports regarding her controversial involvement in the gaming industry - but then she has her own article. YellowSandals (talk) 04:47, 27 December 2014 (UTC) The "mainstream" media has really only reported on Sarkeesian's/Wu's/et. al. whining, therefore, it's not far to say that it's the "more reliable" source. It's been largely ignored by the mainstream media, with only Internet sources reporting. Frankly, the article is ridiculously anti-GG to paint as some sort of "harassment against women" thing, which is what the anti-GGs think. Is the whole "[redacted], Depression Quest, got a lot of publicity" lost on some people? While I think that the article should have some sort of protection, a "Not NPOV" tag should be added to it, because it sure as hell isn't right now. TheListUpdater (talk) 04:36, 27 December 2014 (UTC) You're going to get dinged for BLP, List. Sarkeesian hasn't been accused of anything like that - you're getting people confused in the first place and even if you weren't you're not allowed to bluntly discuss a touchy accusation like that unless you've got a set of really reliable sources to support it. The talk page is considered as important as the actual article where it comes to discussing living people. YellowSandals (talk) 04:47, 27 December 2014 (UTC) Certainly we don't have enough verifiable sources among media to support the gamer's side. But wikipedia is an encyclopedia and we are no means to take a conclusion without reference or taking original research as a reference. I hope someday truth will come out of it's shell. -  abhilashkrishn talk 05:38, 27 December 2014 (UTC) Extended content bottom

This abomination of a page needs to be deleted

WP:SNOW no matter how many people with torches and pitchforks come screaming, deletion will not be the outcome-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 01:50, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Seriously, this is embarrassing for Wikipedia. This site already has problems in academic circles, and this article and associated clusterfuck are doing it no favours. The article itself is full of bias and misleading suppositions, and it does Wikipedia a disservice to allow this article to exist in it's current form. An information void is preferable to outright lies and misinformation being presented as fact. The impartiality and neutrality of several editors and SysOps associated with editing on this article has been called into question primarily because of how much the world is monitoring this scandal, which means that edits both here and around Wikipedia are being watched like a hawk. The fact that the impartiality and neutrality of several editors and SysOps has been called into question is a very serious matter that needs to be investigated. It is time to call to an end this counter-productive situation.--TrekMaster (talk) 00:51, 28 December 2014 (UTC) To nominate any article for deletion, follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Please note that a very early version of this article was previously nominated for deletion. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/GamerGate The result of the discussion at that time was to keep it, but that doesn't preclude further discussion. --TS 01:38, 28 December 2014 (UTC) To counter TheRedPenOfDoom, [redacted]. Notice how a lot of conversation about what should and should not go in the article is being played out on talk pages. I don't come with torches, or pitchforks, I come with an observation; some users who are overseeing this article are destroying the last few shreds of credibility that Wikipedia has. The purpose of this addition to the talk page is to generate discussion from the userbase, and for someone to step in (who has no real real rights beyond approving pending changes and rolling back page revisions) and immediately declare that the mere possibility of the article being deleted is off the table, is incredibly counter-productive. The notice is hereby removed, as the decision on deletion or non-deletion is not decided by TheRedPenOfDoom, and is premature to declare otherwise. As Tony Sidaway has pointed out, nominating an article via the above method is the procedure to follow. However, in light of the fact this was carried out before, it stands to reason for a group discussion to take place on the subject, prior to any nomination taking place.--TrekMaster (talk) 03:01, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Notability? Neutrality? Neutralize?

Honestly, no matter how many gamers or feminists talk about this, is it really notable? Should we document every single gaming outrage as encyclopedic events if they have well known sources behind them? Also, it appears that large portions of the article are sourced and referenced by the magazines and websites whose independence as journalists are the very ones called into question by the outrage, making this a POV nightmare! It appears to me that there is no possible way to neutrally cover this subject given the quality of the sources given. (Podcasts are not reliable sources by the way.) The only possible solution to this crapfest I can see is to just delete the whole thing. Best of luck. Breckham101 (talk) 06:01, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

You are welcome to put it up on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion (it was up once before, on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/GamerGate), but I highly doubt you would succeed; at this point it has received extensive coverage from many of the most reputable news sources in the world, and those make up the bulk of the sourcing for the article's core. I also doubt you'll convince many people that the sourcing is a problem; if we refused to use even the most well-known, mainstream, reputable sources in a situation like this, we would be unable to write articles about eg. conspiracy theories at all (even when notable), since it is very common for such theories to claim that any voice that rejects or disproves their theory is part of the conspiracy itself. For instance, we cite NASA (and news sources that trust it implicitly) extensively in our article on Moon landing conspiracy theories, even though anyone who believes those theories obviously feels that NASA is an unreliable source for that, and even though they would argue that NASA has a vested stake in rejecting them; similarly, we cite evolutionary biologists at length in our article on Evolution, and climate scientists in our article on Global Warming, even though there are countless voices who would accuse them of being biased for one reason or another. Beyond that, our current sources draw heavily from the Guardian, the BBC, Columbia Journalism Review, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Australian Broadcast Company, and so on -- as far as I am aware these are not sources that have been accused of anything in this case. We cite people who are directly involved only to source their own opinions or claims, when these things are noteworthy and relevant to the subject. --Aquillion (talk) 08:55, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I think this kind of ill-informed comment is turning up often enough to go into our FAQ. Something like:

Q. Why does this article use sources that are accused of being unethical?

A. Our article stringently adheres to Wikipedia's core policies on sourcing, and reflects the overwhelming consensus of reliable sources such as The Telegraph, The New York Times, The Guardian, TIME, and Forbes. We do not rely on the gaming press as a source for facts, except for instance facts about their publicly stated opinions.

That needs work, obviously, but we should make more extensive use of the FAQ, and keep it up to date. --TS 12:12, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

On matters pertaining to gender feminism, I don't think the Guardian merits consideration as a reliable source. In terms of faithful fact-checking and attempts at objectivity, its work on gender politics is akin to the O'Reilly Factor or the North Korean official news agency. Bramble window (talk) 13:43, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I havent ever seen that FAQ's actually impact disruption on talk pages, so i am pretty ambivalent about putting effort into making it more comprehensive. the SPA drones will keep coming with their same tired complaints. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:55, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

In practice I've found the existence of a FAQ useful in handling perennial complaints, usually prompted by off-site sources, on talk: Global warming and other climate change article talk pages. It doesn't measurably reduce the number of such complaints but it reduces the amount of work needed to handle them. You don't need to repeat the same rebuttal umpteen times, you just say "see FAQ Q10" or whatever, hat it and move on. --TS 14:24, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

i guess its worth a try. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:04, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

You can use what I listed at the ArbCom page as a starting point. Rhoark (talk) 16:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Have you thought of putting your ideas into an essay? --TS 20:29, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 28 December 2014

Editors are politely requested to stop abusing the edit protected tag. Please read the documentation before even contemplating using it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This article is written in such a way as to demonize a large group of people, which includes many women, by assigning "hatred" (misogyny), "sexism", etc. It only presents the controversy from the perspective of those who oppose the Gamergate movement. This is like extreme atheists writing the article on the Catholic church. The article needs to be reopened so that the Pro-Gamergate perspective of the controversy can be put. Ksolway (talk) 11:05, 28 December 2014 (UTC) You dont seem to understand what the edit request template is actually for. You're meant to write a specific request like "add this sentence about Pakman I've written to the article" not just ask for the entire article to be rewritten. If you want to get the article to be unprotected, you're meant to ask the admin who protected it User:Future Perfect At Sunrise. Please read WP:ERQ before you try and make an edit request again Bosstopher (talk) 11:19, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Being bold with the lede in the draft

This comment thread relates to the draft version of the article, Draft:Gamergate controversy, which is being used to test editorial changes while the main article is fully protected due to disputes.

I just went in and hacked out every lede paragraph after the first, which I proceeded to split in two.

The subsequent paras just look to me like an attempt to repeat the entire history in miniature. Well, that's what the article body is for.

Comments, aggressive edits, etc, are hereby solicited. --TS 13:14, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

A lead will generally include a summary of the history for context ... although i guess the history here is harassment, harassment more harassment so I guess there is not much context gained except for an introduction of the significant "players" -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 15:08, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Looks good! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Artw (talk • contribs) 16:55, 28 December 2014‎ (UTC)

per below the identification of the gamergaters as leaderless mob is important and needs to be added back in somehow. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:32, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

The role of the lede is to summarise the content in the body - accordingly, if the body goes into the history of GamerGate, some summary of that history needs to be restated in the lede. - Bilby (talk) 22:45, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

• The cutting seems good. Thanks TS for stepping up. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 03:30, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

TechRaptor at RSN

The discussion here got stale and archived, but it is now being renewed at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#TechRaptor. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 22:06, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I get the impression that website is a bit like examiner.com. The stories I've seen are often way out there. --TS 00:05, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Edit request

Can we merge the changes i have made to the see also section in the draft to the main article? Retartist (talk) 06:07, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

edits have been reverted per WP:SEEALSO retracting request Retartist (talk) 06:09, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

As per WP:SEEALSO, As a general rule, the "See also" section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body or its navigation boxes. All of the links you added in that section either appear or should appear in the body text of the article. But thanks for raising this issue, because while checking to make sure all those links appear in the article, I discovered that somewhere in our cuts, Sommers' first mention/name/link got taken out of the article, leaving her unlinked and without a first name. I've restored it. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 06:10, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

In principle I see nothing wrong with asking for all or part of the draft to be merged into the main article. It may, though, be a good idea to check that consensus exists first, before putting up an official request which would tend to fail if the admin cannot see evidence of consensus for it. This is the main reason why we've been hatting a lot of these edit requests (the other reason being that some of the "requests" are not specific about what change is to be done).

Remember that admins have to be able to look at the request and will perform the action requested only if there are no serious objections. Spelling corrections and the like are most likely to be accepted; other changes require significant discussion and substantial agreement. --TS 14:25, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Christina Hoff Sommers: necessary edit to fully protected article

In the course of editing, the name of Christina Hoff Sommers has been lost, and currently the only reference in the article is her surname. This should be changed to the wikilink Christina Hoff Sommers as suggested recently by User:NorthBySouthBaranof and performed by the same user in the draft article thus: [3]. This edit is necessary to correctly identify the person being talked about in that sentence. --TS 14:41, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

• support as completely non controversial -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 14:45, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
• Support — Strongjam (talk) 14:54, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Done, makes evident sense. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:30, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

No, she is not a conservative or pundit. She is a registered Democrat that that works for a nonpartisan thinktank AEI. Her politics are not conservative. Removal of "conservative" is necessary if you lump Baldwin, Yiannouplis and Sommers together. --DHeyward (talk) 18:53, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

What's iffy here is attributing condemnation of Sommers to Liana Kerzner. Kerzner is generally pro Sommers, calls her based Mom and has positive opinions of Sommers' "equity feminism." [4] (there is way better sourcing for this, but I'd probably be revdelled if I posted it) While there are no reliable sources in which Kerzner writes this, it seems wrong to imply that she condemns Sommers when in fact she does the opposite.Bosstopher (talk) 19:26, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

This successful edit request was just to make sure readers know which Sommers we're talking about. Any other problems with the article can be fixed by directly editing the draft at Draft:Gamergate controversy. --TS 21:42, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Except the current version of this article literally contains an outright BLP violation in claiming Adam Baldwin, who was a voice actor in several games such as Halo 3: ODST, is a "conservative pundit" who had "little involvement" in video games before GamerGate despite the cited sources not making any such claim. You guys keep introducing these BLP violations against GamerGate supporters even after it is pointed out that it is a BLP violation.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 22:52, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Thems what the sources say. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 23:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Then find better sources. Thargor Orlando (talk) 23:32, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Only thems NOT what the sources say. Only the Gawker article mentions Baldwin, and it merely says his proclaimed interest in video game journalistic ethics is new, not that he hasnt been involved in video games.Bosstopher (talk) 23:39, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Not only that, the author was clearly just wanting to lay into the guy who confronted him for his tweets about bullying nerds and added Baldwin, Milo, and Sommers, just to give it that nice holistic look.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 23:50, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree that the wording is currently rather sloppy, confusing the viewpoints of several different sources. We should reword it. While Sommers when speaking on behalf of the conservative AEI is undoubtedly expressing conservative views, it's incorrect to imply that Liana K is taking about her in her article (which is about her spat with Milo, also conservative). Baldwin is also conservative but his game acting is known. The writing there is shoddy and should be replaced swiftly. For the moment I wouldn't object to its outright removal on the identified BLP grounds, simply as a precaution until we know where we're going with it. --TS 23:56, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Failure to apply WP:IS

Essays are not policy
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Gawker Media (including Deadspin, Kotaku, Jezebel, and others), Rock Paper Shotgun (partnered with Eurogamer, dunno if it's close enough here), Polygon (which shares ownership with Vox and the Verge), and Gamasutra (owned by UBM) have been subject to a massive advertiser-writing campaign from Gamergate called Operation Disrespectful Nod, along with a boycott and use of archive.today links on places like 8chan's /gamergate/ board and Reddit's kotakuinaction. They are not independent sources and neither are their business partners, and must be treated with extreme caution. I'm especially concerned that some of the most hostile comments about Gamergate in this article come from Vox and the Verge writers, along with the dismissal of GameJournoPros sourcing them - that's a blatant violation of NPOV. Birdboy2000 (talk) 02:32, 30 December 2014 (UTC) It's been already said - there's no need for Vox and Verge to dismiss GameJournoPros. We've already got Columbia Journalism Review, Forbes, the Week and Westman Journal doing exactly that. These three are unaffiliated sources. That's enough. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 02:40, 30 December 2014 (UTC) Would you cite the part of the essay WP:IS you are relying on here? Be aware that it is not any part of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. --TS 02:43, 30 December 2014 (UTC) An independent source is a source that has no vested interest in a written topic and therefore it is commonly expected to describe the topic from a disinterested perspective. An interest in a topic is vested where the source holds a financial or legal relationship with the topic, for example. An interest in a topic may be either positive or negative. I'm especially concerned with the financial relationships between media outlets that share ownership. Birdboy2000 (talk) 02:48, 30 December 2014 (UTC) He's probably referring to Independent sources have editorial independence (advertisers do not dictate content) and no conflicts of interest (no potential for personal, financial, or political gain from the publication). The latter part. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 02:49, 30 December 2014 (UTC) The policy here is WP:QS (under WP:V), in that these are sources that have a conflict of interest. As I've argued before, that doesn't make them unreliable to use here but we have to be aware they are not independent of the events of the story and should be avoided for the more contentious claims. The only real case of where we are doing that is the refuting of the initial claim by citing Kotaku, but that's a directly required source for that point. --MASEM (t) 02:51, 30 December 2014 (UTC) The Chris Plante quote that Gamergate is "completely devoid of empathy" and the use of Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander and Vox's Todd VanDerWerff to dismiss the ethics complaints strike me as woefully inappropriate. Birdboy2000 (talk) 03:00, 30 December 2014 (UTC) There is no Chris Plante quote about empathy in our article. How much of the rest of your purported problems don't exist? Hipocrite (talk) 03:05, 30 December 2014 (UTC) It was an Adi Robertson quote, but from the Verge so my point stands. My apologies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Birdboy2000 (talk • contribs) 03:09, 30 December 2014 (UTC) Your point was that it was written by Chris Plante. This point stands, despite the fact that it was written by someone else? Hipocrite (talk) 03:11, 30 December 2014 (UTC) No, it was that it was written by a Verge writer. I conflated two writers for the same publication, which I apologize for, but the issue is the publication's shared ownership with polygon, not anything personal about Chris Plante. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Birdboy2000 (talk • contribs) 03:15, 30 December 2014 (UTC) That's not what you wrote - you didn't care about the publication, you were focused on the authors being people who wrote articles about the changing identity of gamers (The "Gamers are Dead" articles, to use GamerGator parlance). I get that you are shifting your argument - believe me, I do, but I'm not letting you. Hipocrite (talk) 03:23, 30 December 2014 (UTC) That's more than a little unfair when my first post here specifically addressed shared ownership issues along with biased authors. Birdboy2000 (talk) 03:38, 30 December 2014 (UTC) I think it's perfectly fair to note that one of your "woefully inappropriate" sources wasn't actually "woefully inappropriate." I think that a constant litany of errors invalidates a lot of points about source appropriateness in an encyclopedia where our first job is to get the facts right. Hipocrite (talk) 03:43, 30 December 2014 (UTC) Agree this has been my argument since day one Loganmac (talk) 06:34, 30 December 2014 (UTC) This is a non-stop "independence until you disagree with us" treadmill. Every source that doesn't say what GamerGators want them to say is immediately labeled as involved. Don't fall for it. We have a guideline on sources - WP:RS. Essays are not policy or guideline. Hipocrite (talk) 02:55, 30 December 2014 (UTC) Please cease the WP:BATTLEGROUND behaviour - I don't see anyone purporting to be a GamerGator here. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 02:58, 30 December 2014 (UTC) I'm not referring to anyone here as a GamerGator. I'm saying that the movement declares every source that disagrees with them as totally conflicted. We cannot follow the movement in that. Hipocrite (talk) 03:00, 30 December 2014 (UTC) I could make a lot harsher criticisms if I wanted to follow that route, but I've restricted them to the four outlets specifically mentioned in Operation Disrespectful Nod, which doesn't even contain all the sites that participated in the Gamers are Dead articles, along with places that share ownership with said four and writers who write primarily for them. Birdboy2000 (talk) 03:07, 30 December 2014 (UTC) So GamerGate can disqualify otherwise reliable sources by having an "Operation Invalidating Facts," that targets them? Hipocrite (talk) 03:08, 30 December 2014 (UTC) We are discussing sources which ran the "gamers are dead" articles before the hashtag even spawned and faced heat on day one. This isn't a case of shifting targets. Birdboy2000 (talk) 03:13, 30 December 2014 (UTC) Except those articles came out after the hashtag spawned - it's certainly a case of shifting targets. Regardless, it's not relevant, as the sources in question are reliable and thus usable, especially for attributed quotes. Hipocrite (talk) 03:23, 30 December 2014 (UTC) My bad. One day before - I mixed it up because it predated a lot of the big events (i.e. founding of notyourshield, reddit mass deletions, 8chan.) However, your contention that these outlets are being exclusively targeted for criticizing Gamergate, when not all outlets which criticized Gamergate are targeted, and these particular outlets have faced a sustained boycott campaign, and the criticism of Gamergate in question cited postdated the start of said campaign, is a major reach. Birdboy2000 (talk) 03:39, 30 December 2014 (UTC) So, yes, "GamerGate can disqualify otherwise reliable sources by having an 'Operation Invalidating Facts,' that targets them." Hipocrite (talk) 03:43, 30 December 2014 (UTC) What surprised me about citing IS is that it's basically just saying "don't write an article predominantly from dependent sources", which is a rather weaker baseline than our actual policies and guidelines, to which we adhere very well. --TS 03:01, 30 December 2014 (UTC) It was the first thing I found looking for wiki policies to address conflicts of interest regarding sources and not editors. I never had the best knowledge of policy. Birdboy2000 (talk) 03:40, 30 December 2014 (UTC) I'm surprised by an account that has lain dormant for 7 years, reappearing and citing a rather obscure essay. Tarc (talk) 03:36, 30 December 2014 (UTC) No you're not. Hipocrite (talk) 03:43, 30 December 2014 (UTC) I just wish that Tarc and Hipocrite would stop contributing towards a toxic and unwelcoming environment with passive-aggressive jabs / attacking an editor's background. They would do well to learn from TS' actions within this thread. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 04:32, 30 December 2014 (UTC) The gentleman doth protest too much. This topic area has been deluged by coordinated attacks by 8chan and reddit for months now, and ample evidence was entered into the Arbitration case regarding SPAs, sockpuppets, and zombie.dormant accounts. This is simply another of the latter. Consider contributing positively to the environment yourself, rather than egging on and goading such accounts. Tarc (talk) 04:39, 30 December 2014 (UTC) Who is the one goading such accounts? An account being "zombie dormant" has absolutely nothing to do with the legitimacy of its arguments. Everything has to be treated by a case by case basis, and good faith assumed at first. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 04:45, 30 December 2014 (UTC) WP:IS is an essay and not policy, but in any case it doesn't forbid sources with involvement from the subject from being referenced; it just says that "...it must be possible to source the majority of information to independent, third-party sources." This is the case here; the majority of the information in the article is cited to independent sources. The actual relevant policy is in Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources#Biased_or_opinionated_sources WP:RS, and it says: "...reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject." That is to say, biased sources (those with a stake in the topic) can be used judiciously provided they otherwise meet our requirements for a reliable source -- non-fringe, having a reputation for fact-checking, and so on. Otherwise (to use the example I cited above) our article on Moon landing conspiracy theories couldn't cite NASA, because the people who believe those theories would say that NASA is implicated in them, and in fact it probably couldn't cite the mainstream media at all (because they're all in on the conspiracy!) Similar issues have been brought up, I believe, in our articles on Evolution and Climate change, where people have similarly accused sweeping swaths of otherwise-reliable sources of being part of a vast conspiracy and editors have therefore tried to argue that (being the target of such accusations) they are not impartial. --Aquillion (talk) 05:40, 30 December 2014 (UTC) I can sort of see where this is going now. The idea, which seems to be honestly held by some editors here, is that because an online campaign exists, and has anathematised certain publications, we shouldn't use those publications ourselves when writing about this online campaign. I find the reasoning absurd, but this is a moment of enlightenment for me. It should go without saying that we are not ourselves that online campaign, nor do we support it. We make our selections of sources on the merits, not on the command of that campaign or any other body. That because we're independent. If we weren't, Wikipedia wouldn't be worth anything. --TS 11:56, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 28 December 2014 (2)

Gamergate supporters have been unwilling to move beyond the unorganized, leaderless and anonymous origins which has resulted in an inability to control the behavior and messaging of those acting under the Gamergate hashtag.

This sounds biased as if the group themselves refuse to appoint a leader. However can gamergate even be qualified as a movement as there are no goalposts? Ethics in Journalism is not a goal but a tenet. As such I think it would read better as:

Gamergate being unorganized, leaderless and anonymous in origins has resulted in an inability to control the behavior and messaging of those acting under the Gamergate hashtag.

Xgllo (talk) 20:11, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

The current draft is at Draft:Gamergate controversy. Actually that bit looks like something I may have hacked out of the draft early this afternoon. Do join in the editing if you have further thoughts. --TS 20:17, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Being a leaderless anonymous mob has been a conscious choice. There has been no effort made to select leaders or even spokesperson (and in fact active campaigning against such). -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:28, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I think you're almost certainly right. --TS 20:35, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Tony, would you be willing to include something like "Gamergate, being purposefully unorganized, leaderless and anonymous, has been unable to control the behavior..." in the draft's lead? Shii (tock) 20:53, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I think it's a true statement, but I don't know if its verifiable. We should probably drop 'purposefully' unless we have a source for it. — Strongjam (talk) 20:57, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikis work best when people just write something onto the page and others refine it. Give it your best shot at the draft page, no pressure. --TS 21:37, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Keep in mind that we can only say it is a perception of the sources that GG has opted to stay leaderless/unorganized. It's Occums Razor based on all evidence they are and the clear opinion they purposely stay that way, but still only an opinion and nothing yet factual (even in their GG mandates they don't address the leaderless asepct). --MASEM (t) 01:44, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

no there are actual threads and postings where they talk about "we are not going to have a leader- thats against our ethics " (only you know, with calling each other faggots and posting lots irrelevant pictures) . -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 02:02, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

...Which, for the same reasons we can't go into more details of their ethics credo, we can't use forum posts as to meet WP:V; we have no idea if those are the GG supporters or just people there to stir the shit. --MASEM (t) 02:12, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

again, thats the problem with being a leaderless missionless mob. one that has not soaked into GGers heads yet. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 04:03, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

• There's no need for the inflammatory second sentence. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 04:09, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

There are or were several sources cited discussing Gamergate's unwillingness to organize, particularly Jesse Singal in New York, and others discussed it as well. It's the point Jimmy repeatedly made, though obviously he's not a reliable source for it. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 04:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Marking as answered per discussion below --Mdann52talk to me! 09:45, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Bandai Namco on Gamergate

Two sources:

• gameranx: Bandai Namco Speaks Out Against GamerGate Harassment
• Game Politics: Bandai Namco Clarifies Its Position On GamerGate

The first, I've read, the second is a link via Google news but I can't get it to load at present. I post it anyway because the website seems to have a good reputation. --TS 01:27, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Second link is in google cache basically quotes the first article with a little commentary. Once the site comes back up I think it would be a worth adding a sentence to the Industry response section in the draft. — Strongjam (talk) 01:42, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

While an official statement from NB on GG would be great, this is a email response from a comment sent to the company, and really isn't "official" for purposes of inclusion, compared to something like what Intel has stated. --MASEM (t) 02:01, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

It's a comment from their spokesperson, short of a press release its as official as it gets. — Strongjam (talk) 03:30, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

No, it's not anywhere close to official. We have to consider the reliability of Gameranx, the only publisher of Namco's response, and I'll assume they didn't make it up, but it's still not a normal route to consider for official statements. A press release would be an official response we could use. --MASEM (t) 05:21, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree that it's best to wait until this shows up on other sources. There's no hurry. --TS 16:51, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Edit request (not that one, the other one)

Please remove Baldwin from this sentence. Commentators such as Liana Kerzner and Sam Biddle have also said that a number of the conservative pundits who have involved themselves in the movement—such as Christina Hoff Sommers, Yiannopoulos, and Baldwin—had little involvement in video games beforehand, and in some cases had spoken of them with contempt. Only this source mentions Baldwin, and this is what is says: Actor-turned-Tea Partier Adam Baldwin, whose last notable film role was the guy in Independence Day who shoots the alien in Area 51, is another conservative extra with a very sudden interest in "video game journalism ethics." It says Baldwin is conservative but it does not say that Baldwin had little involvement in video games beforehand. A sudden interest in video game journalism ethics does not equal to a sudden interest in video games. Furthermore, the source is Sam Biddle and Gawker, an involved party in this whole conflict, thus he and it cannot really qualify as an "secondary" outside commentator. The article is also extremely partisan. Background info: Baldwin has had voiced roles in Halo 3: ODST [5], Half-Life 2: Episode Two [6], among other games. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 23:55, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

As I said above, I think we should remove the whole final sentence in the political views section on BLP grounds until we know where we're going with this. It's worded too loosely. --TS 00:01, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

As a model for the kind of excision I'd like to see, I edited the draft version: like this. --TS 00:11, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

And the inevitable cleanup edit to fix the references: like this. --TS 00:19, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I think that that sentence is important, but it was badly-directed -- there isn't any need to single out specific commentators (and in fact several of the refs didn't.) The fact that right-wing support for GamerGate has been characterized as exploitative by numerous commentators, though, is important, especially in the larger context of discussing the movement's political affiliation and the broader politics involved. The old version had a weird thing where it lined up their argument without saying their conclusions; but the refs do make that conclusion in their pieces, so we can just report that. --Aquillion (talk) 00:23, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

• I'm fine with right-wing support for GamerGate has been characterized as exploitative by numerous commentators and isn't any need to single out specific commentators. But this false claim regarding Baldwin should be removed immediately. It has been in the article for over a month. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 00:31, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I like Aquillion's simple, economical fix. If we're all agreed that it resolves the BLP issue I think we should swiftly ask for an uninvolved admin to perform Aquillion's edit on the main article. --TS 01:05, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

• I'm uncomfortable as listing Sam Biddle of Gawker as a commentator. He is obviously involved - see Operation Baby Seal in the article. I have replaced him with a Forbes source which mentions rightwing non-gamers suddenly swooping into the scene. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 02:34, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

• Strictly speaking, Kerzner is also involved with regards to that matter since she had a tiff with Milo right before writing her piece. I don't think we need to name the commentators at all, but should instead just leave it unattributed. Enough people have raised this concern that I don't think we need to provide the names.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 04:19, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

So, bearing in mind that the BLP issue is paramount and the current live version of the article gives a misleading account, can I have agreement that this edit needs to be performed by an admin, in order to resolve the BLP issue? Remember that we can spend as long as we like editing the draft to resolve other, non-BLP questions. --TS 12:17, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't oppose that edit (or really care much), but I dispute that there is any substantial BLP issue. Hipocrite (talk) 12:19, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

• "In a phone interview, Mr. Baldwin, who said he was not an avid gamer himself" -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 17:40, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Please try to read sentences to completion when quoting them. Right after that the article says "...but has done voice work for the popular Halo games and others" Bosstopher (talk) 17:56, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
    • But that work for pay is irrelevant to the positioning and critique that has been made that the named talking heads who have come out "for" gamergate are not in it because they are gamers or care about games, but purely to push against "intrusions " of feminists. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:47, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
      • It's not "irrelevant" when we falsely claim that Baldwin had "little involvement" in games when games are a significant part of his career. Thargor Orlando (talk) 21:03, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
        • replace "little involvement" with "little interest" (direct from the horses' mouth) and there is NO issue at all. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 21:10, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
          • A key, well-known source of income is hardly "little interest." Thargor Orlando (talk) 21:30, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Friends (if I may be so familiar) please let us remember that we're here to seek common ground, not to argue about this or that. I have proposed above an edit that will, I believe, eliminate a potential BLP issue without harming the article in any way. RedPen, can I take it that while you have reservations about whether or not a BLP issue exists in the current text, the specimen edit I proposed above is acceptable to you and we can ask an admin to perform it? I think we could build trust and improve the working environment by seeking such opportunities, if you agree with me that the proposed edit is, at worst, harmless. --TS 00:17, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I think that's a good edit. Gets the point across without singling anyone out. — Strongjam (talk) 01:39, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

• Naturally I support the edit. Come on guys, we've got false info for at least a month here. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 06:13, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I support this edit. Breckham101 (talk) 16:14, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

• I am fine with the generic. I was just pointing out that the wails of "BLP violations!!!" were overblown as there are sources for each of the named individuals where they specifically disclaim interest prior to the gg fiasco and so it is a matter of wordsmithing as opposed to outright fabrications -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 16:32, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks to everybody for this very seasonal show of accord. We did it! --TS 18:53, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Formal request to perform edit discussed in the above section

Substantial agreement exists for an edit to the protected article in order to avoid possible BLP issues (though some agreeing to the edit do not think the BLP issue exists).

The exact edit to be performed on Tue main article Gamergate controversy is demonstrated by the diff at this link on the draft version of the article, draft:Gamergate controversy. --TS 16:38, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Okay, done [7], please let me know if I got anything wrong with the edit. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:58, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. See your user talk for a mea culpa and a note about some cleanup that needs to be done. --TS 17:52, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Explanation of Tony Sidaway's revert of an edit to the draft "Gamer identity" section by Starship.paint

One of the conspiracy theories underpinning some of Gamergate is the notion that a series of opinion articles published mostly in late August were part of a coordinated "attack" on the gamer identity by some nefarious group or other, and not just the usual wave of outrage expressed by opinion formers at disgusting behaviour by some self-identified gamers. This was in the wake of swatting incidents, a false terrorist threat against a senior game executive that left an airliner on the ground, the Zoe Post nonsense, and finally the then-latest terrorist threat against Anita Sarkeesian after her publication of the second part of her video essay "Women as background decoration."

Maybe there are reliable sources that discuss this conspiracy theory. I'm not aware of any, but it's conceivable that there are such pieces but they've either never been discussed here or we forgot about them in the middle of everything else.

Our article is fairly loose about time and dates, usually just saying which month something occurred in. So when we use a precise date, it ought to mean something significant.

Against that background, Starship.paint introduces a precise two-day period for when most of the "gamers are over" articles were published. Previously we had "late August." Of course in online journalism it's quite normal for different opinion corners and journalists to react almost simultaneously to events, and the events of that week were particularly harrowing as can be seen from some of the content of the articles.

This raises the question of how much attention we're going to pay to some of the deeper rabbit holes of Gamergate. I say we follow the reliable sources, and discuss the topic of that conspiracy theory only if there is sufficient material. Otherwise I don't think it has a place here.

That's why I performed this revert. I don't think we should give much significance to the precise date unless reliable sources give us reason to do so. The style of the article overall is not driven by precision in dates. It shouldn't look as if we're concerned about precision here unless reliable sources think it's necessary. --TS 17:46, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

So, to be clear, you want the article to be more imprecise because you believe the precision is enabling some "conspiracy theory" that you haven't been able reliably source? Thargor Orlando (talk) 17:52, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

It's really a stylistic quibble. I don't mind tightening up date references, but the edit I reverted doesn't seem to do anything except make significance of a date range that is an artifact of the news cycle. Reliable sources don't seem to have picked up on this obvious nonsense, but as I said in my edit summary: "Probably not a good idea to adumbrate the conspiracy theories, unless we intend to cover them." If the precise date of, say, Felicia Day's doxing isn't spelled out, there's no reason to introduce an artificial precision into a series of articles which were all reactions to some particularly dismal and disgusting episodes (up to then) in the history of gaming. --TS 18:06, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Auerbach notes that the articles were published "concurrently."[8] Would that be enough to merit the inclusion of precise dates? Bosstopher (talk) 18:14, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

As a matter of style, the dates don't really help - it makes the article read like proseline (which happens far too much on WP already). It is important to note that the "death of gamers" articles came out all around the same time, and some days after Quinn/Sarkaasian/Fish's harassment, and predicated the advertizer-email push by GG, but the exact timing is not critical to the understanding of GG. I'd rather not see the dates if we can avoid it. --MASEM (t) 18:19, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

It's definitely not something I'd say blemishes the article. I like to explain my reverts in more detail than an edit summary, though.

I do agree with Auerbach-Keller's description "concurrently" though definitely not with his dismissal of the concerns expressed. Perhaps having seen at greater length and shockingly greater amplitude the kind of behaviour the writers were talking about, he may have revised his opinion. But this article isn't about my pious hopes for a 2015 more harmonious than 2014. --TS 18:30, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I do think the gamergaters may be on to something here. Did you notice how all the major news sources ran stories of the ISIL beheadings within 24 hours of each other? and how now nearly every mainstream media site is full of editorials discussing the year in review? I'd say that's some pretty heady evidence of collusion right there and we should do everything in our power to make that visible. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:02, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

You're hilarious. Weedwacker (talk) 00:16, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Polygon's Ben Kuchera's opinion piece on GG

[9] In considering the RECENTISM of some of the more original quotes in the article, this might be better to use to replace some of the earlier quotes- keeping in mind this is an opinion piece. The second-to and third-to-last paragraphs are very interesting summaries. Do note he touches on the state of this page and Wales' take as one aspect. --MASEM (t) 19:05, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't know. I mean I love it and agree with it as a matter of personal opinion, but what earlier remarks would you replace with this material? And wouldn't it be just exactly the same recentism to put this new material into the article? --TS 00:34, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, not in the same way that the original article was built. It's an opinion after 4 months of observation as opposed to 1 month, with the amount of stories coming out having slowed downed significantly. As such, this opinion does not suffer from as much RECENTISM as some of the other comments. As to exactly which quotes to replace, I'm not sure immediately, I'm just pointing out that there are probably some better statements to pull from this as a statement of the anti-GG view of GG. --MASEM (t) 02:00, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I think I agree with your reasoning, broadly, but perhaps it would be best if you were to say here, or preferably demonstrate on the draft version, how you see that material replacing (or maybe just augmenting and clarifying) the existing assessment.

I think we often get a kind of wikiterror, the opposite of wikitude (I just made those words up) in which we forget that the beauty of a wiki is that we can change things immediately to show what we think they should look like, and if somebody disagrees they can change it back or make it better in some other way. Please give it a go. --TS 19:07, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I believe that Masem was basically saying, 'I found this article that might be useful in a bit. If someone finds it useful, then here it is.' That is likely oversimplifying it, but it is bring attention to a likely better source. --Super Goku V (talk) 11:04, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Lead's third paragraph superfluous?

Just a reader's driveby comment - isn't the third paragraph of the current lead almost exclusively a less artful repetition of content from the two preceding paragraphs, and could be omitted?  Sandstein  10:32, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

It's already been dropped from the draft version. Main article is fully protected and probably won't change until after the arb com case. — Strongjam (talk) 16:10, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Phil Fish and weasel words

We still seem to be cleaning up various bits of passive aggressive nonsense from the article. Until recently the article still contained irrelevant rubbish about Phil Fish's turbulent relationship with the public.

Another recent excision was the removal of the text "which included numerous denigrating tweets he made about her opponents" from the statement that Fish was doxed and had his website compromised for defending Zoe Quinn. Of course he denigrated the disgusting low-lifes who threatened Zoe Quinn's life, any decent person would. The presence of the text served no purpose, except perhaps to weasel away the crime against Fish.

So why is that text now back in the draft? [10] --TS 22:12, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Reliable sources saw fit to mention his insults in relation to the hack and doxing. His past was relevant enough to mention in those sources as well, presumably because it indicates such comments were not unusual for him. I find it rather bizarre that you have no problem with saying Kluwe insulted them but didn't get doxed, but have a serious problem with saying Fish insulted them and was subjected to a nuclear doxing. Saying he got doxed for speaking in support of Quinn is horrifically misleading as it makes it seem like he just went on YouTube to be all "Leave Zoe alone!" and then got doxed, when the truth is he said the people criticizing Quinn were "essentially rapists" among other insults.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 23:05, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Where? I didn't see the refs characterizing his tweets that way when I glanced over them just now. Some of the refs quoted them, and I can understand you interpreting the quotes that way, but it's still WP:OR to characterize them yourself, since you're asserting not just the tone but the relevance of that tone in your own personal voice (ie you're making the implicit statement that first, his tone is noteworthy, and second, that he was attacked because of that tone, which is not in the sources that I can see.) --Aquillion (talk) 23:15, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I am not suggesting my interpretation be added to the article, only that the nature of his "support" and his prior history be mentioned as reliable sources saw fit to mention it.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 00:46, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't think that's an adequate reason to include this quite irrelevant material. We do not ever include material from reliable sources simply because they "saw fit to mention it." Here we're writing about the crimes, not what the victims said about the criminals. The wording at present reads like an attempt to weasel away those crimes and blame the victims for their righteous anger. --TS 01:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

"Well, they doxxed him and spread and hacked his business financials, but thats legitimate becuase he called them names first." -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 01:48, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, RedPen, that's how it reads to me. I keep asking myself what else that statement is doing there if not to mitigate the crime.

Incidentally, looking at your latest edit to the draft, The Devil's Advocate, I notice that the edit summary says "If we are gonna say Kluwe didn't get doxxed after attacking GamerGate then we should acknowledge that Fish did." That sounds like a false equivalence. We refer to the Kluwe case because it coincided with a notable case where a famous actress unconnected with Gamergate in any way merely voiced her fears about Gamergate, and was promptly doxed. Frankly, that edit summary is in poor taste, and sounds like an attempt to bargain, suggesting that we should remove pertinent material if we don't include this manifestly inappropriate material. That's not how we edit Wikipedia. All material must stand on its merits. --TS 01:52, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

The whole "side" thread about Felicia Day and Kluwe was a minor bump in the larger picture, as little came of that in terms of ongoing aspects. In contrast, Fish, who prior to August has already had his own runins with those that would use harassment, became an immediate target as soon as he expressed support for Quinn, to the point that he and his company was doxxed and he completely left the game industry. In a different approach to the narrative, explaining how there had been some like Quinn, Sarkeesian, and Fish already in the sights of the anon mentalitiy and making them prime candidates once the GG aspects came to light would make sense. This is not blaming the victims but setting the stage that they were not all brand new targets once GG hit. --MASEM (t) 02:01, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

That is still WP:OR, at least as far as I can tell given the sources we have at the moment. I mean, it's not unreasonable to assume that that's a factor (though I would point out that Day, at least, was absolutely not a target before she spoke up, and I'm not sure how much Fish was actually a target before all this), but we have to go by the aspects reliable sources have covered, and the ones we're relying on at the moment are unanimous in focusing on the fact that Fish was attacked because he was defending Quinn. Beyond that, as far as TDA's last edit-summary goes, connecting what happened with Fish and Kluwe like that is also original research; we could argue here in the talk page about the similarities and differences, but that would be pointless, since the article has to go by what WP:RSes say and not by our opinions. Numerous reliable sources cited the fact that Kluwe was not attacked while Day was as evidence that GamerGate, generally, targets women rather than men; and all the reliable sources we're citing for Fish say that he was attacked primarily because he was defending Quinn. They quote his tweets, but at least from what I saw when I glanced over them, none of them describe them as 'denigrating', nor do they make the argument (which the line we're discussing implies) that he was attacked because of his tone rather than because he was defending Quinn. --Aquillion (talk) 02:38, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Prior to GG, Fish's relation with the would-be GG supporters was already weak, that can be shown from sources after he pulled Fez 2, in addition to prior statements. [11], [12]. There's also some additional claims the GG has made involving Fish, Fez, and the IGF which have not been verified to any degree, which was something they had earlier had claim to ([13] 2012). Now, I'm not coming up with anything that establishes specifically that Fish was already in the headlights as it relates to GG, but that's not to say I've exhausted all sources, eg [14] this from the WA Post describes there was already an effort to drive Fish out of the industry before GG hit.

I'm just saying though that Fish's involvement is not trivial (it's well established in articles even today about it), but Day's and Kluwe's are moreso. No one , outside of Kluwe for the most part, have used the harassment at Day and lack of harassment towards him, as an additional sign of misogyny. --MASEM (t) 04:36, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Outside of Kluwe, no one but CNN, Gawker, Time, The Washington Post.... -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 06:16, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm not talking about Day's harassment (itself an example of the ongoing harassment), but the fact that Day got harassed and Kluwe didn't being made bigger than it is; it is a side point of Day's harassment, and more an opinion made by Kluwe, and not a point used in any great rotation to demonstrate the misogyny of the harassment by more recent mainstream sources. (Heck, by that guide, even Day's initial harassment is a side point) It would be completely fair to list a number of major celebs that have spoken out against GG, which would include Day and Kluwe and Wil Wheaton, and several more, but the details of Kluwe's rant compared to that of Quinn, Sarkeesian, and Wu's harassment makes it very trivial for inclusion. It's minor details like this that bog down the size of the article - we should be looking at the long-term representation of GG and not the short term. --MASEM (t) 06:32, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that any coverage of GG of any depth will be including Kluwe's GG assessment of " basement-dwelling, cheetos-huffing, poopsock-sniffing douchepistol," - That is a phrase that is going down in gamer history right there with "All your base" -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 14:33, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I see absolutely nothing that makes Kluwe's quote "important". He's an outsider of the whole event, having had no skin in the game before voicing his support. I'm sure we can find as-demeaning quotes from those actually that are involved (Wu would be a source as a first guess) that would be more appropriate and central to the discussion. We need to recognize the RECENTISM of how the Kluwe's section was included, as in the larger picture it is nothing. --MASEM (t) 15:12, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Fish's comments provide context your preferred phrasing leaves out. Saying he was hacked and doxed after supporting Quinn makes it seem as if he were just being kind to Quinn and got pummeled for it by some ebil misogynists. The reality is that he went on an inflammatory tirade and then was hacked and doxed. If we are going to implicitly ascribe motives to unknown perpetrators, then we should not leave out key contextual details.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 07:34, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

"Saying he was hacked and doxed after supporting Quinn makes it seem as if he were just being kind to Quinn and got pummeled for it by some ebil misogynists." That is in fact what happened. All the rest is, as I suggested, a blatant attempt to blame the victim for the crime. Anybody with a shred of decency would be angry at a woman being driven out of her home by rape and death threats. Weren't we all? Why are we now pretending Fish's reaction was in any way extraordinary or unnecessarily provocative?--TS 14:14, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

No, that is simply not true. Fish was already a target for how he was seen as being pretensions and his involvement in the IGF prior to GG. While I don't agree with what the GG claim to these points, it would be completely naive to not note that Fish has a prior history of being a target (perhaps why he was one of the first to quickly support Quinn on the first harassment claims) and going off the handle - the whole cancellation of Fez 2 is a clear indication of something that most journalistic sites commented about. If it was any other person (male figure in this case) who had had no prior indication of being a target, say someone of the likes of Ken Levine or Cliff B. or the like, I doubt that they would have been as quickly targetted to be doxxed. It's the same reason that while Sarkeesian never spoke directly about Quinn but only released another Tropes vs Women, the poisoned well of harassment quickly recentered their attention on her, having already harassed her before; if it was some other random commentor, the reaction would not have been as major or as fast as it was. --MASEM (t) 15:12, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Because Fish's reaction was extraordinary and unnecessarily provocative, per things such as the Wolf Wozniak tweet affair, which Kain attributes as being part of the events that led up to his doxxing.[15] Bosstopher (talk) 15:19, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I am still not seeing any sources describing what he says as provocative, nor any connecting that to the reason he was attacked. Whether he was a previous target (which also isn't covered) is irrelevant to TDA's characterization of his statements as 'denigrating' and TDA's personal opinion that this is the reason Fish was attacked. If it's as obvious as people here are claiming, it should be easy to find reliable sources making both points explicitly. (The Erik Kain link you provided, as far as I can tell, does not.) --Aquillion (talk) 00:01, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Isn't your justification here just so much original research, as others have suggested? Fish is only mentioned because he was the most prominent defender of Quinn against hate mobbing and crime. He was in turn made a victim of crime. Full stop. Can you cite a source to support the notion that his expressions of disgust were so inflammatory as to justify and excuse criminal actions? --TS 15:22, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

You're posing a loaded question here. Justifying and excusing is not (I hope) what anyone is trying to do here. If someone is murdered by (for example) a fan of Pokemon because they called pikachu a fat rat, giving this as the reason they were killed is not an endorsement of the murder. As such pointing out that Fish has a history of being harassed and attacked for his agressive tweeting style is not an endorsement of the doxing of Fish.Bosstopher (talk) 15:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

This article [16] from polygon in the wake of Fish quitting the industry after the dox note that "Quinn and Fish have been the subject of a larger, ongoing harassment effort", so clearly tying Fish's prior history as part of the GG story just as Quinn's prior history is important. --MASEM (t) 15:35, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

After so many days I was surprised to see this edit restoring text that seems to be attempting to excuse criminal activity by referring to the words of the victim. You know we cannot do that, guys, it's an encyclopaedia and not a scandal rag. Please do not choose this as the hill you want to die on. --TS 03:04, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

It is not an excuse, but suggesting Fish got doxed simply for supporting a woman as though he didn't do anything wrong is not appropriate.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 04:35, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

• There's no need to judge his tweets as denigrative ... just quote them as Paste Magazine did. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 04:42, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Lede change

This diff [17], specifically saying GG "attempt to use the anonymity [of anon image boards] to attempt to distance themselves from the harassment", tRPoD claims to be sourcable to CRJ's Ip, but I've reread it and don't see this, nor do I think is accurate. There is something to be said that those who have actually engaged in the harassment prefer these boards to keep their identity secret/distanced from the harassment attacks while discussing matters, but for the GG supporters (the "ethics" people which we assume have not engaged in harassment) aren't using the anonymous boards as the means to distance themselves. They are using the boards to coordinate (non-harassing) activities like boycotts, and developments elsewhere, and there they are discussing ways to separate themselves from the harassers/etc., but it is not due to the anonymity of those boards that they gain that distance. Importantly, we have no discussion of anything of this nature in the article so it should not be in the lede either. --MASEM (t) 21:29, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

If a statement isn't specifically supported by the body, it shouldn't be placed in the lede. So the path for a fact to get into the lede goes: reliable sources -> distillation -> article body -> lede. --TS 14:18, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Interesting analysis article from BoingBoing, but...

[18] describing how the nature of 4chan/anon image boards shaped GG, including some things that we haven't been able to source properly (eg the reason for the name "Operation Sea Lion" being based on a Wondermark comic). However, this is an anonymous work and while BoingBoing is a normally reliable source, I'm not sure about this being reliable. --MASEM (t) 15:32, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

There is a non-anonymous essay on this, based on an earlier version of A Man in Black's piece, at the Practical Ethics blog.

http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2014/12/limiting-the-damage-from-cultures-in-collision/

I think it may be worth including this as an early sign of a wave of sociological analysis of anonymous online communities, specifically inspired by the Gamergate controversy. --TS 17:57, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Incidentally A Man In Black has denied any connection with the Wikipedia editor of the same name. TS 17:59, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

We've got a section on Anders Sandberg's lucid analysis already, but perhaps it should be highlighted better: Oxford University research fellow Anders Sandberg argued that Gamergate's failure to connect with a broader audience and the "train wreck" of a debate it generated is a function of its origins in imageboard subculture, which he said values anonymity, promotes chaotic discourse and fosters a hostile, vituperative atmosphere within its own sphere. Noting that those rules are "radically different" from most other cultures, he said the result was that "when the Chan culture touches other cultures of discourse there will be fundamental misunderstandings about the very nature of what a discourse is supposed to be." NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 23:45, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

That works better for the connection of the chan-mentality to the way GG has been seen to operate, for sure. I'm hoping (from an academic interest) that we will get more sociological papers that work to try to analyze this type of behavior in online communities. --MASEM (t) 21:14, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I think, for now, the Practical Ethics blog is both a more respectable source than BoingBoing and less likely to be viewed as involved in the debate (since it's written by an academic outsider, rather than participating in net culture). Shii (tock) 16:38, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Wording and/or mistake in first paragraph of history section.

"receiving enough harassment to cause her to change her phone number and restrict harsh commentators from posting on the game's Steam discussion forum."

She would have no control over the Steam discussion forum. Steam is a multibillion dollar company. Thinking that an ordinary girl can use her feminine wiles to somehow redirect the company is absurd. Steam does have forum rules which ban a lot and are very restrictive.

One could say "Steam started to more harshly police its forum on Depression Quest." However, there is a problem with WP:UNSOURCED. The entire part of the latter sentence " and restrict harsh commentators from posting on the game's Steam discussion forum." is unsourced.

For these reasons "receiving enough harassment to cause her to change her phone number and restrict harsh commentators from posting on the game's Steam discussion forum." should be changed to "receiving enough harassment to cause her to change her phone number."Hilltrot (talk) 18:36, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

For transparency, TheRedPenofDoom removed this section claiming forum/blp concerns. Neither of those exist in this case, although I don't think I'd endorse this sort of fix without further information. Thargor Orlando (talk) 18:57, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

However, it does need to be sourced. If nothing else, [source needed] should be added. In addition, WP:PROVEIT puts the responsibility on the person who added it.Hilltrot (talk) 19:23, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Agreed, this should be fixed. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 18:55, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Developers have moderation rights over their own game forums on Steam. However, I do agree that it looks to be unsourced. —Strongjam (talk) 18:56, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

I didn't realize that developers could do that. Thank you for pointing that out. It is still unsourced though.Hilltrot (talk) 19:23, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

New source on GamerGate political affiliation

An article in Game Politics from Allum Bokhari details a survey showing GamerGate is generally left-wing or centrist in orientation and often libertarian. This can be used to further reinforce the statement from Cathy Young about GamerGate supporters generally being left-leaning.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 23:08, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree that it does fit in quite well with what we have. It's good to see some figures. The unapologetic extreme right wing and explicitly racist positions of some prominent Gamergate adherents seem to live uncomfortably alongside a lot of essentially liberal or libertarian aspirations. The only thing they all seem share is blindness to the severe misogyny around them. --TS 23:46, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Does Bokhari /EAC have expertise in surveys? On-line samplings are notoriously inaccurate and subject to spamming/bias - just what gamergate did to the survey from the Digra academic. I did not see anything in the article where they talked about how they selected their sample and why they think its accurate. Did I miss that? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 02:54, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, it seems consistent with Young's observations and it is the closest thing we have to an actual data-driven approach to characterizing the politics of GamerGate as contrasted with most of the sources characterizing them as right-wing on the basis that *gasp* they disagreed with some people on identity politics issues. I would not suggest we treat it as fact, but we should definitely include his work in the article.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 04:13, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I logged in to add a little sentence about this but the article was blocked, agree on adding maybe "While polls conducted by GamerGate supporters show 54% of them label themselves as leftists, most of them show a lack of trust in left-leaning media." don't know if mentioning that the author is also a TechCrunch writer. Loganmac (talk) 06:40, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

• Seeing as we have one whole section for Political views, this new information is certainly worthy of note, though not treated as fact. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 06:48, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

As an entirely self-selected survey, its results cannot be said to be representative of the whole of Gamergate in any way — without random sampling, the potential for sample bias is overwhelming. The results are usable only for that specific population which responded to the survey — "among XXX responses to a survey, YY percent said they were left-wing," etc. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 01:48, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

People reject anyone trying to suggest the obvious flaws in the Brandwatch study make it unreliable and it is still present in the article so I fail to see the issue with simply noting what is stated in this piece. No one is suggesting we state this as fact, but just noting that he did a survey and cited the results to support such and such position to corroborate the observation Cathy Young has already made on the issue. Here is the second part.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 06:48, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

• @NorthBySouthBaranof: - so you would be fine with saying Allum Bokhari conducted a survey among 1540 GamerGate supporters. 54% of respondents identify as leaning left-wing etc. Doesn't claim to represent GamerGate, just respondents. starship.paint ~ ¡Olé! 07:14, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

• It received 1,540 responses, but given the nature of the data collection, via Google Forms, I'm not really sure we can say it's 1,540 separate supporters — I don't see any obvious means of preventing ballot-box stuffing one way or the other. There's also not really a way to know if they're GamerGate supporters or not. It's a classic open access poll, which is at best a dubious tool and at worst an easily-manipulated nullity. At any rate, it would need to be an attributed opinion, if we even deem it useful to include, given the fact that it's posted under the site's Editorials section: "According to Allum Bokhari, an unscientific survey he conducted of self-identified Gamergate supporters..." I'm not convinced at this point that it belongs, frankly. The writer doesn't appear to be a notable expert in public opinion research and there's no evidence his survey has gained attention from other sources. It would be nice to see some secondary sourcing for this. That is, does anyone other than Allum Bokhari consider this open access poll to be a valid or useful tool in analyzing Gamergate? Given that the article's locked, I think we can afford to wait and see whether that becomes the case. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 07:56, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

• The Brandwatch study does not exactly show a comprehensive picture of GamerGate either as it focuses on like seven people or outlets, rather than looking at all parties involved, yet we include it in the article without trying to cast doubt on the whole thing.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 15:07, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

• The difference is that Brandwatch is a recognized authority on analyzing social media trends and that Newsweek didn't disclaim the analysis or the data like Gamepolitics did for this op-ed The opinions and data presented in this article are the author's and do not represent the opinions of GamePolitics or its staff. We can't weight it the same as the Newsweek/Brandwatch analysis. — Strongjam (talk) 16:18, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I've seen polls from 200 participants to thousands and they all reflect that it's a mostly left libertarian movement, now you have a reliable source to prove it, also remember NorthBySouthBaranof is not the owner of this article. Loganmac (talk) 05:07, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Your personal attacks aside, an op-ed is, at best, a reliable source for the author's opinion only, and the relevance, meaningfulness and suitability of that opinion are topics for editorial discussion and consensus. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:13, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Okay, the methodology is important. Are any other sources carrying this result? If it's just a self-selected online survey I've no idea how it made it into what I've up to now being treating as a reasonably reliable source. At the very least I'd like to wait to see if any mainstream sources write about it, and what their interpretation is. --TS 18:49, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

If this gets held up over methodology, the Newsweek study that couldn't actually classify 95% of tweets needs to go too. Rhoark (talk) 01:11, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

No, that really won't do. You're trying to equate two different kinds of report about two different kinds of survey. It's a bit like saying that we can't accept a report on the rate of inflation from the WSJ because an ad hoc poll on a related topic taken by a self-selecting group was not acceptable under Wikipedia policy. We don't do that because reliable sources matter. Each source is assessed separately under Wikipedia policy. Attempting to establish bargaining positions like this isn't how you make an encyclopaedia. --TS 02:12, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not bargaining anything. WP doesn't second guess the methodology or primary sources if a reliable source claims something. Rhoark (talk) 04:35, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

The relevance and suitability for inclusion of any source is subject to editorial discussion, particularly when that source is an opinion column. We don't just include everything every reliable source says — if we did, this article would actually become even more overwhelmingly anti-Gamergate in tone. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 20:54, 3 January 2015 (UTC)