Talk:Roll20

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2019 and 13 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): KMYCP. Peer reviewers: JohnWilfong, Arielpaige17.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:11, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Reddit controversy section
I've removed this section again, due to a complete lack of reliable secondary sources reporting on the events. Until such sources are written and presented here, please do not re-add this content. Thanks, ansh 666 01:38, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.58.242.171 (talk) 19:33, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

On September 25th, 2018, the managing partner and one of the co-founders of Roll20, Nolan T. Jones, acting as head moderator of the Reddit Roll20 subreddit under the username NolanT, banned Reddit user ApostleO, mistaking the account for another previously banned account of a similar name — ApostleOfTruth — whom Nolan believed to be circumventing the prior ban. After a 36 hour attempt to get clarification and correction of the ban, user ApostleO deleted his Roll20 account and posted a summary to Reddit of what he perceived as hostile customer service. Many users derided the actions of Roll20 staff, Nolan Jones’ response, and the inclusion of Roll20 staff as moderators of the subreddit. A reply from NolanT regarding the issue quickly rose to become the one of the most downvoted posts in the history of Reddit. Multiple Roll20 users pledged to no longer do business with the company and seek alternative vendors.

Wikipedia (says that it) allows primary sources even those that may only be as reliable as eyewitnesses. All content removed was sourced as primary. And, other than minor paraphrasing, no speculation or analysis was made that would Require secondary sources (although secondary sources would help clarify events).

Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved (e.g. u/ApostleO and u/NolanT). They offer an insider's view of an event.

"A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge...any interpretation needs a secondary source."

While events are developing and tertiary sources are unavailable (I would argue u/NolanT's response would be considered a secondary source) it seems useful to record events from verified (if not "reputable") primary sources. 174.52.4.208 (talk) 03:42, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Sure, primary sources aren't wholesale disallowed, but they are useable only in special cases, and only certain types of them. Things like reddit posts and comments fall under user-generated content, which isn't a reliable source, and thus can't be used to establish verifiability. Also, per WP:NOTNEWS, Wikipedia's purpose is not to document every small event, only current events that have been reported on in reputable news media. ansh 666 05:10, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I want to verify, such that I understand the rules. The fact that it is a large group that the event has impacted (at least 52.8K people of the ~100K user base Roll20 purports to have) is of no consequence. Even though the events as described are corroborated by other members of the company and moderator group, the event is only noteworthy once the impact is realized in the release of sales figures or once it moves to a different platform that is not considered UGC, such as a post by the company on their website. An announcement post by the company on reddit is not considered with the same weight due to the platform disregarding the origin of the information remains the same. 174.52.4.208 (talk) 06:31, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The incident's scale is quite large in proportion to the program in question so a "small event" is proportionally quite a large deal to them. Also WP:UGC is not you should be referencing it would be WP:SOCIALMEDIA, which this does not violate by any stretch 1, 3, or 4, and questionably 2 and 5. I would Argue that 2 is not violated as the claims are confirmed by the NolanT nor is 5 as that is apparently referring to the article as a whole, unless there is ambiguity between the definition of article and section. 2601:647:8006:47D:6401:257E:641C:57B3 (talk) 08:29, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * If this controversy really is so "large in proportion" then reliable secondary sources should start talking about it soon. This is WP:ORIGINAL because we do not have a secondary source outside of Reddit, the website of which the controversy happened, talking about it. Therefore we are acting as a secondary source which Wikipedia is not.  Lazz _R  11:51, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Admins just trying to sweep the event under the rug, same thing that happened on Reddit. This an abuse of admin if I have ever seen one. By the logic they are using, you could have a building burn down, and if no news source reported on it for a week, then it didn't happen, the people who watched it burn wouldn't be considered a "reliable source", because they aren't a news platform. TIL Wikipedia admins only believe the news. Zeldatp151 (talk) 12:40, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Feel free to familiarize yourself with Wikipedia's policy on what constitutes a reliable source. People lie about everything all the time, Wikipedia does not want to rely on its anonymous internet editors/contributors to verify things, it waits for outside, trusted sources to verify things and then collates that information somewhere. Cannolis (talk) 12:53, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I think your idea of what Wikipedia is is flawed. This is an encyclopedia. We take what reliable secondary sources say and, in a way, act as a tertiary source. If we took every event that happened on a user-generated forum and was not included outside of it, then I could just post something on Reddit and demand it to be news-worthy. The guideline isn't to "only believe the news", it's to not determine content only reported through primary sources as notable, apart from certain cases. Check Verifiability, notice it says "reliable, published sources" and not "user-generated subreddits". Just give it time, sources should come soon. (Note: I am not an admin).  Lazz _R  16:01, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

So I can't post links to sources here apparently. Zeldatp151 (talk) 12:53, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

I can't link to it, but dailykos has an article, "Repentant abusers": roll20, reddit, and an object lesson. It covers the first part of the event, but not the resolution. Not really a good article, but it is coverage by a news source. Zeldatp151 (talk) 13:18, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Also, I believe the section on "Self-published and questionable sources as sources on themselves" would apply here, as both parties involved in the reported controversy self report in the original primary sources. The primary sources that you said were not reliable are always going to be the most accurate sources of information on this event, any other source will most likely be an opinion piece from a small news platform, that cites the primary source as its source. While this event was relatively significant to Roll20 and its user-base, the amount of external reporting it will receive isn't going to be much, as Roll20 itself affects a relatively small portion of people. With this in mind, it is likely that this entire indecent will remain undocumented. Zeldatp151 (talk) 13:53, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * "The primary sources [...] are always going to be the most accurate sources of information on this event". This may be true in this instance, but it is does not apply to the all of the broad scope of what is written on Wikipedia. People lie and a reliable source needs to confirm things to a level that we can consider truth. Say [famous person] posts "It's my birthday" on Twitter, on 20 September. So we add that as their birthday because the primary sources are always most accurate, right? Or [alleged criminal] posts "I killed [victim]" to their Facebook account. But we would believe that before we wait for a source to say that the criminal is convicted, right? That is not how it works, which is why we have a verifiability guideline.  Lazz _R  16:01, 27 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Mark my words here. This event will never become a permanent part of this Wikipedia page, because it will never meet your verifiability guidelines. The origins of the event happened in private communications between ApostleO and NolanT. The only public part of the whole thing is the post and x-post made by ApostleO, and the response made by NolanT. Sure the subreddit being transferred out of Roll20's hands was public, but that's about it, the only thing news sources will be able to use to report on and fact check against is the original posts that were being used as sources here. So no matter what gets reported about it, the original posts will always be the source, and if they aren't good enough, then this whole thing is just going to disappear, which I'm sure is exactly what Roll20 wants to happen. I supposed it isn't unreasonable to believe that Roll20 employees might be "encouraging" people on wiki to keep this off of their page. Zeldatp151 (talk) 16:14, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Then by what we can do with primary sources, if a secondary source reports on the existence of the controversy we can fill in the gaps (as there are rules for what primary sources can be used for). But we cannot have an entire section of controversy that is referenced with primary sources. Listen, (I don't know about others here but) I am purely going by what the guidelines say not to include. I am not motivated by R20 or any other agenda, and the whole reason I'm here in the first place was because of how horrible the customer service of Roll20 was to that Reddit user, and I agree in spreading the news - but we simply can't add it at the present moment with the rules of sources for Wikipedia content.  Lazz _R  16:55, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Some secondary sources:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/26/1798953/--Repentant-abusers-roll20-reddit-and-an-object-lesson

http://www.thecourtofnerds.com/rpgs/2018/9/26/roll20-is-getting-lambasted-on-reddit

https://decksize.com/content/roll20-co-founder-faces-reddits-wrath-after-banning-user-roll20-subreddit

https://popcultureuncovered.com/2018/09/26/roll20-shows-how-not-to-handle-social-media-complaints/

https://www.newsweek.com/roll20-reddit-nolant-jones-apostleo-apostleoftruth-dungeons-and-dragons-ban-1142706 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zeldatp151 (talk • contribs) 23:29, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Is that enough to reinstate the section?

Additionally, here is an article from Kotaku. https://kotaku.com/one-fans-criticism-of-d-d-app-roll20-sends-its-subreddi-1829374197

Kotaku is a recognized reliable source according to WikiProject Video games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Video_games/Sources

I feel this new secondary source justifies the reinstatement of the removed section.131.93.245.170 (talk) 00:30, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The Kotaku article seems sufficient for me, author is a staff writer. Would be okay with a rewrite of the content based solely on that source. Daily Kos one actually seems the least reliable, it's from their community section which I think has little to no editorial oversight. The other 3 kind of look like blogs? Which isn't of itself disqualifying but I don't know enough about D&D to say how authoritative those bloggers are in that niche. Cannolis (talk) 01:15, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree - Kotaku is definitely good, and the Newsweek one seems to be okay too. The Daily Kos and Decksize posts don't seem to be reliable here, as they're basically self-published stuff, and the other two are borderline (I'd say they're probably usable). ansh 666 01:47, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The irony is that pretty much all of these sources just use the Reddit comments as a source themselves. It's okay for news publications to rely on primary sources, but not Wikipedia? Sounds like pointless pedantry. Biglulu (talk) 11:43, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:TERTIARY. Wikipedia is not a secondary source. We use reliable secondary sources and therefore act as a tertiary source. There is no irony here to speak of.  Lazz _R  16:21, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Not at all, relying on good secondary sources means we offset some of the burden of figuring out WP:WEIGHT - if something happens that secondary sources completely don't care about, that's a good indicator that our adding it on Wikipedia would be undue weight. Cannolis (talk) 17:49, 28 September 2018 (UTC)


 * There are more talking heads on youtube jumping on Jones and D20 right now for supposedly discriminating against white men. I expect this to be added to the media narrative as well, due to the timing, though it all strikes me as spurious. See and  for the primary sources (less than a day old, so we should see it being mentioned in the secondary sources by later today or tomorrow).  ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants   Tell me all about it.  13:06, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

It seems everyone is an agreement that the sources above provide sufficient evidence for this to be reinstated. Can someone do it? (I'm not sure how to) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.58.242.171 (talk) 15:39, 12 October 2018 (UTC)


 * I've summed up the secondary sources below here. I think the first two are enough to support the section, but just barely. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants   Tell me all about it.  21:28, 16 October 2018 (UTC)