User talk:Rhoark/sandbox/Gamergate controversy

Request for feedback
It's perhaps not perfect, but the draft is finally (much to my relief) complete in terms of sections and aspects that seemed necessary to cover. It may be easier now to provide feedback compared to when there were large question marks over most topics. Any issues you see with verifiability would be particularly important, but also of weight. Some bold edits would even not be out of the question at this point. I'm hoping for rapid turnaround on anything that seems egregious so it can be ready for a larger and more hostile audience within the week. If anyone can provide word clouds, sourcing pie charts, or the like, that would be very helpful. I don't know any turnkey way to generate those. I will also be turning my attention to images soon, so would appreciate pointers to any relevant open-licensed images that are not already on the mainspace article.

Some editors I'd like to specifically invite to provide feedback: Thanks, Rhoark (talk) 22:04, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Looks like I didn't ping the right above. Rhoark (talk) 21:51, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I think this might be a much more improved article than the actual one being used now. While somehow managing to use less sources. Maybe after some more though copy-editing I would recommend more this to articlespace. GamerPro64  22:26, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
 * "Everybody, get in here!" (in order of last having edited the GGC page, excluding those not necessarily interested in the topic area) -         PeterTheFourth (talk) 22:23, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I hoped to start with a smaller and more manageable subset, but everyone is welcome of course. Everyone, get in here! Rhoark (talk) 22:36, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
 * What an embarrassing typo on my half. PeterTheFourth (talk) 22:46, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Comments by Masem
Not going to be able to do a full readthrough in one sitting so here are a few things that stand out:
 * Lead: If you mention Tropes Vs Women, I think it's necessary to identify Anita Sarkseeian in the lede alongside that as also being a target. Instead of "though the issues date back at least to the 2012 controversy over Tropes vs. Women in Video Games." Maybe "Anita Sarkseeian, who has been harassed since 2012 for her Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series, became embroiled in the controversy after she published another video from her series in September 2014."


 * "Zoe Quinn Controversies" section.
 * Best I know can tell, Quinn made no games that were published prior to DQ, so that first sentence is very weird. DQ in 2013 did lead to her getting a lot of complains and some harassment.
 * We probably can mention that Grayson's writeup was documenting DQ at the GameJam event (and even link that article).
 * Probably can mention when talking about Quinn aware of chan culture that she herself providing the 4chan/irc logs that pointed to the "quinnspiracy" from the ArsTech article.


 * On general - there's something with the flow that I find off (but I had the same feeling on the original page too). I've tried to slice the topic several times before to find a good ordering but there's so many crossings of chronological and logical and narrative flows that makes it difficult. My first gut instinct is more a chronological order, but that doesn't work really well. Maybe a radical idea, not used before on the GG pages: what if we were to start with the nature of the conflict first (what issues are involved) without "naming names", and then going into the history and more specifics. I don't know though for sure. --M ASEM  (t) 00:09, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
 * In the issues going back to 2012, I mean not only the harassment but also the content of the videos and all the ancillary commentary about feminism and video games. It's basically meant to map to the first 3 paragraphs of the "Cultural conflict" article section.
 * Quinn made some other games; it's in the citation on that claim.
 * I added a citation to Grayson's actual piece.
 * Quinn's involvement in the logs is a bit thorny. There's clearly cause for caution, but its also difficult to word exactly what the issue is without implying something too strongly. In the end, the important claims about the logs are duplicated by Heron,Belford,&Goker without Quinn's involvement AFAIK.
 * The first paragraphs of "Cultural conflict" could viably come before the section on Quinn, but I think some others here would regard that as "burying the lede"
 * Rhoark (talk) 14:13, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
 * That's been the issue on the mainspace version of the article, is the apparent need to get to the harassment and threats as soon as possible in the article. Harassment is a predominate issue with coverage of GG in media, we can't undercut that, but as your rewrite shows, it is only one facet of the larger issues, and to rush to highlight it first breaks a more cohesive or logical flow of information. It's why I think if we start with a fundamental, "looking back" take on what the GG issues have generally be about, that it will be easier then discussing the chronology of events in that light. But its an order that's hard to state if its the best way without actually seeing it in place. --M ASEM (t) 15:25, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I took a look at what would be involved in making this happen. The problem as I see it is not that it delays too long before the harassment facet, but that it delays too long before defining the Gamergate movement. In discussing the issues, you'd want to discuss inline how they relate to the Gamergate movement, which is awkward to do when you haven't adequately introduced the movement. (For those who'd might like to go the other way and start with harassment, the place to start would be Sarkeesian, which would be awkward to introduce divorced from the issues of feminist criticism, so you run into the same problems.) Rhoark (talk) 21:47, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Kingsindian's section
Yes, the ping didn't go through correctly, but I have this page on my watchlist, so I'm aware of this. I'll give my comments asap, hopefully in the next day or two. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 22:40, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Preliminary comments follow. More comments as I get the time.
 * The readable prose size is 52kb, which is large, and at the very high end of Article_size. Some of the content should be perhaps forked. This is a problem with even the current article.
 * The sections are somewhat puzzlingly ordered. The rule in writing which I follow is: get to the point as quickly as possible.
 * The primary association of Gamergate in the sources is with harassment. All else follows afterwards. This fact should come as early as possible.
 * It is weird to talk about how Gamergate prompted "Relationship disclosure" without saying what exactly Gamergate is. That section should come after the harassment section.
 * After discussing what Gamergate is, one can talk about its effects and activities.
 * Then one can talk about root causes, evolution and so on.
 * Thus, I feel the order should be Quinn -> Gamergate as a movement -> Individual harassment -> Cultural conflict -> A big section containing effects, which would include both response to harassment and relationship disclosure.


 * I find, in several sections possible synthesis. For instance, consider the statement: There has been significant distrust of the gaming press among some readers since at least 2007, sourced to a 2012 article. This can't directly be included, unless one directly connects the earlier incident with Gamergate. (It is possible this is already present in some source, but it should be done explicitly.)
 * I'll give more detailed comments when I get the time.

Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 19:16, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Possible Exercises to be carried out. None of the exercises should stand by itself, but overall, can give signs about whether one is on the correct track:
 * One could divide the sources into categories: like Gaming press (Polygon, Escapist), high-impact national newspaper sources (like Washinton Post, WSJ), lower impact sources (Guardian), technical or journalism sources (CJR, Ars Technica), in-depth magazine sources (Atlantic), scholarly sources (...).
 * One interesting exercise would be to pick 10 random sources from the references, pick a roughly fixed amount of text from each source and make a word cloud. Also make a word cloud of the article itself. Compare the two.
 * Look at the time of the sources. How many of them are close to the early period, and how many of them are further away?
 * Sources earlier in the article should be given more weight because people read the early part of the article much more than the later part.

State of the draft
Is this draft abandoned? I no longer see any discussion about it in the article's talk page. I really hope it does make the cut at some point. - Olivier FAURE 2A01:CB00:B62:6500:CBB3:B79B:5476:D2A5 (talk) 19:38, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
 * see Requests_for_comment/Gamergate_draft Rhoark (talk) 21:02, 13 October 2016 (UTC)