Talk:Gamergate (harassment campaign)

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— Preceding unsigned comment added by TheRedPenOfDoom (talk • contribs) 21:18, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Reminder: Contentious Topic editing restrictions apply to this talk page as well.
Editors should take note of the warning at the top of this talk page indicating this is a contentious topic (CT) under active arbitration remedies, to which editing restrictions apply. The contentious topics procedure applies to all edits and pages across all namespaces, broadly related to a topic, which includes article talk pages. Specifically, editors here should be aware of the requirement that "You must be logged-in, have 500 edits and an account age of 30 days". Edits in violation of the CT standard restrictions may be reverted, and any single uninvolved administrator is authorized under the CT procedures to impose editor restrictions including sitewide and partial blocks, topic bans and page bans (from the entire contentious topic, a subtopic, or specified pages within the topic), interaction bans, revert restrictions; as well as page restrictions including page protection, revert restrictions, and others. ⇒  SWAT Jester   Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 05:13, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
 * , it appears the the talk page is not set up 500/30? Could you (or some other admin do that)?  So that underqualified editors can't get into trouble by editing? i suppose some admin should clean up all the outdated admin stuff WRT gamergate - ForbiddenRocky (talk) 07:10, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
 * At the moment, this particular talk page seems to have cooled down a bit, so I'll leave it to some other admin to put that restriction on if they feel they need to. ⇒   SWAT Jester   Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 15:41, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Actually there seem to be several cases this month of very new editors with some knowledge of Wikipedia policy either starting new topics or being active in debates on this page - there was another yesterday, and another user with few edits supported the topic-starter in the discussion. If it’s possible to just restrict access that seems like a good idea to me. Lijil (talk) 07:14, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

infobox lists misogyny, anti-feminism and anti-progressivism as motives while the only serious study I have been able to find about Gamersgate supporters seem to indicate the opposite.
https://christopherjferguson.com/GamerGate.pdf

Comparisons Between GamerGate and the U.S. Population on Social Values: According to the study, gamersgate population support action against Global warming Affirmative action, Marijuana legalization, Gay marriage, Abortion and Universal healthcare above the U.S. population mean

"Ultimately it appears that the common narrative associating GamerGate with right-wing, regressive White men (Braithwaite, 2016; Horgan, 2019; Romano, 2018) is not supportable, given the current data. Indeed, GamerGate supporters appear to be more left-wing than the general public and also diverse in terms of race, gender, and other demographic variables than is often assumed"

Quijote3000 (talk) 15:56, 22 March 2024 (UTC)


 * You will find extensive citations supporting those descriptors in the body of the article. MrOllie (talk) 16:32, 22 March 2024 (UTC)


 * In general, primary studies (especially one like this, that is just a single poll of people's self-described politics) are not great sources. The article does contain much higher-quality sources, eg.   - these are in agreement that  misogyny, anti-feminism and anti-progressivism were the primary motives. The paper you present acknowledges itself that the conclusion it draws from its single poll is WP:FRINGE (even in the quote you presented, cites three others that it seeks to debunk, but only has a single poll of self-described opinions to do so.) If the conclusions they drew from their poll of how people involved in the topic described their own politics were borne out, you'd expect them to be confirmed by other studies, and they haven't been. Ultimately the fact that it's a poll of self-described politics means that it's just about how Gamergate supporters wished to be seen; and we already cover, in the article, the fact that Gamergate supporters made substantial efforts to influence the way they were perceived. But those efforts were (as the massive list of citations above shows) ultimately unsuccessful at convincing people that the sort of responses they gave to eg. the poll in question were actually representative. That sort of thing is why we rely on secondary coverage rather than initial polls - it's not unusual for an author to draw a sweeping conclusion from a poll that isn't borne out later. --Aquillion (talk) 17:30, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
 * FWIW the paper is also only cited 26 times, with a large number of those cites being to unrelated portions of the paper and not the primary claim about the identities of gamergaters. The paper is also self-contradictory, given that it's single poll actually supports the conclusion quite dramatically that GamerGate is white, male, heterosexual, and cisgender; the paper's authors appear to be only quibbling over the political alignment, not the other demographics. Seems quite fringe to me. ⇒   SWAT Jester   Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 16:40, 26 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, if gamergate supporters claim that the movement is not about that, shouldn't the article reflect that?, if all the "high quality sources" seem to describe the opposite of what the movement supporters are claiming they support, then maybe those sources are not reliable in the first place.
 * ...at least as a rule of thumb I think people should have the right to define themselves rather than just being labeled by their counterparts (I don't claim information from the opposing view should be removed, but I think any movement should be described first by what the supporters claim they want and in second place the criticism rather than be defined by the criticism).
 * I quote from reliable sources guideline:
 * "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in those sources are covered (see Neutral point of view). If no reliable sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it."
 * So if there are really no reliable sources representing the point of view of the protesters. Maybe we should remove the article. Lobishomen (talk) 17:08, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * No. We go with what the reliable sources say, not self-descriptions. If we went by the standard you propose, every corporation would be full of righteous people working to better the world through commerce, and Stormfront would be 'a community of racial realists'. NPOV does not mean WP:FALSEBALANCE, we don't give equal validity to self-serving claims. MrOllie (talk) 17:19, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, if gamergate supporters claim that the movement is not about that, shouldn't the article reflect that?
 * WP:MANDY applies. Of course they're going to claim it's not a harassment campaign, because harassment is bad & they don't want people to think they're bad. But reliable sources agree that it is a harassment campaign. So there's no point in putting up any particular GGer's claim that it's not. There is no right to "define" yourself here, because most people are going to use the most self-serving description they can think of, which is why we prefer what secondary sources say.
 * Twisting that around to say the reliable sources are in the wrong is just not going to fly here. —  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 20:47, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * "Reliable" means independent sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Not the ones that endorse a particular point of view. Next you'll be saying Church of Satan should be deleted because it doesn't uncritically accept The Satanic Bible as the truth. I second the appeal to WP:MANDY here; Gamergaters have a documented history of trying to manipulate public perception via the Fine Young Capitalists, NotYourShield, etc. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:42, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
 * No, self-ascriptions generally can't be relied upon because humans are almost universally self-serving. We should always go by what the reliable sources state. TarnishedPathtalk 11:57, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * No, self-ascriptions generally can't be relied upon because humans are almost universally self-serving. We should always go by what the reliable sources state. Tarnished<b style="color:#420000;">Path</b><b style="color:#bd4004;">talk</b> 11:57, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Purpose and goals summary
I just rewrote the lead slightly to better explain the origin of conspiracy theories about Zoë Quinn. There's a lot in the article about how "ethics in games journalism" was always a smokescreen to cover up the misogynistic abuse of Quinn and others. Seems like the lead should mention this as well. Thoughts? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 04:24, 29 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Yeah it should be if it’s not already. GamerGate is well established to be mostly or entirely a harassment campaign. Dronebogus (talk) 12:29, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Just added "Several commentators in the mass media dismissed the ethics complaints as a deliberate cover for the ongoing harassment of Quinn and other women". —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:09, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Category:Internet vigilantism
It's a bit weird for this category to be included given that the word "Vigilantism" isn't mentioned anywhere in the article at any point. Anyone know the specific reason for the inclusion? Trade (talk) 15:43, 24 May 2024 (UTC)


 * There are definitely sources available on the link, judging by a quick ["gamergate" + "vigilantism"] search. Unless someone wants to do some work on collecting and summarizing them, I'd support removing the category per WP:CATV's Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:01, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

They/them pronoun confusion
As someone who is not familiar with gamergate, there are some parts of the article which are confusing because of how Quinn's they/them pronouns are used. The lead currently contains the following sentence:

Gamergate began with an August 2014 blog entry called "The Zoe Post" by Quinn's ex-boyfriend, which falsely insinuated that Quinn had received a favorable review because of their sexual relationship with a games journalist.

The sentence gives the impression that it's about a sexual relationship between Quinn, Quinn's ex-boyfried, and a games journalist. I know it's because Quinn's pronouns are they/them but their pronouns haven't been mentioned yet in the text.

Then their pronouns are mentioned in a footnote, but it's still pretty confusing:

Called "The Zoe Post", it was a lengthy, detailed account of their relationship and breakup that included copies of personal chat logs, emails, and text messages. The blog falsely implied that Quinn received a favorable review of Depression Quest in exchange for their sexual relationship with Nathan Grayson, a reporter for the gaming websites Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun.

I assume the first "their" is about the relationship between Quinn and Quinn's ex-boyfriend, and that the second "their" is about a relationship between Quinn and Grayson, but the second could still be interpreted as "Quinn's and Quinn's ex-boyfriends" sexual relationship.

I think these sentences should be written more clearly (by someone who knows what the sentences are supposed to mean). Paditor (talk) 08:49, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree. I've tried some very minor rewording - replaced the first "their" with "Quinn's" to read "which falsely insinuated that Quinn had received a favorable review because of Quinn's sexual relationship with a games journalist", and removed the "their" from the second to give "The blog falsely implied that Quinn received a favorable review of Depression Quest in exchange for a sexual relationship with Nathan Grayson". Hopefully that reads better. - Bilby (talk) 09:03, 21 July 2024 (UTC)