Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Gamergate draft

Page rationale
Talk:Gamergate controversy is subject to WP:30/500 restrictions as a page-level (not topic-level) sanction. This page is being used to host a Request for Comment with full community participation. Page protection sanctions are intended to prevent disruption, not to privilege the contributions of autoconfirmed over unregistered users. The Gamergate controversy talk page was sanctioned to prevent two types of disruption: 1) New accounts re-raising old issues, and 2) Incivility by a particular user. Neither is applicable to this page, as it is 1) Being used by an extended-autoconfirmed user to raise a single issue, and 2) the incivil editor is topic banned. Any page protection should be used only when proven necessary. Rhoark (talk) 03:03, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * No, that is a self-evident attempt to en-run around a policy that was designed to prevent votestacking. This discussion should also be covered, because it is a part of exactly the same content dispute. Guy (Help!) 09:36, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree with here. One may or may not like the rules, but any reasonable reading of the AE ruling would put this discussion under the 500/30 ambit. One could make an WP:ARCA request to clarify this, of course. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 10:38, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * the 500/30 restriction is, at this time, applied only to the Gamergate controversy article itself, its Talk page and its subpages. In case there's confusion as to what a "subpage" is, see Subpage, which has the definition I'm talking about. Linked or related pages aren't included in the 500/30 restriction, as of yet, so it is not applied here at this time.  But, if convincing evidence can be brought that shows that a related page is having chronic problems from a series of low-experience accounts, it can be applied to those pages too.   14:03, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Rhoark (talk) 22:06, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, but this RfC would normally be on the talkpage, which is covered by the 500/30 restriction. The subject of the discussion is the main article, not a "related" page like the Anita Sarkeesian BLP or Crash Override Network. So I think a reasonable reading of the AE request would mean that the 500/30 restriction would apply to this discussion. As I said, one could clear up the matter at WP:ARCA. One middle ground, if people agree, is to let all people comment, but count the !votes of only the extendedconfirmed accounts. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 23:15, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * That is precisely what ought not to be done: disregarding voices in the absence of disruptive behavior. In an ideal world, a closer would review arguments only and disregard content-free or "per (name here)" votes. The anxiety about this is enough of a distraction that I'd endorse to or any passing uninvolved admin to IAR and apply semi-protection, even though WP:SEMI advises not to do it preemptively. Rhoark (talk) 02:34, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * This is a subpage. That is obvious. Guy (Help!) 14:21, 14 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment It is no secret that I detest the use of 500/30 protection in content discussions as a way to bar the opinions of our readers and new editors, the people that we are writing an encyclopedia for. In addition, 500/30 has never been authorized or used in the Wikipedia: namespace, according to the Protection logs. Holding an RFC as a subpage of Requests for comment is a valid and traditional method for gaining a more broad community consensus, though it is unusual for an RFC held here to just cover one specific article. Usually RFCs held here are done so because they affect multiple pages and are thus not suitable for an individual talkpage.


 * I would also note that WP:ECP specifically states "In its use as an arbitration enforcement, extended confirmed protection may only be applied in response to persistent sockpuppetry or continued use of new, disruptive accounts where other methods (such as semi protection) have not controlled the disruption...Extended confirmed protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against disruption that has not yet occurred". I see some IPs and new editors participating here, but I don't know of any sockpuppets and so far everyone seems to be behaving themselves. I think we can reasonably trust whichever closing admin is brave enough to step up to examine the arguments made and weigh them accordingly, though when we call for a closer we should probably let them know that there is significant participation by new users.


 * So at this time, I decline to apply 500/30 on the grounds that disruption has not occurred. I intend to keep monitoring this page plus the usual offwiki places to keep an eye out for meaty sock campaigns, and if necessary will apply semiprotection. If that fails to stop disruptive editing, I would then consider extendedconfirmed as a last resort. The Wordsmith Talk to me 14:09, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * FWIW per this conversation I believe Wordsmith should be considered WP:INVOLVED when it comes to this draft page. Artw (talk) 03:29, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * That was fairly comprehensively rejected in this ANI discussion . - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 14:24, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The draft page was not mentioned at all in the ANI, and since Wordsmith is directed to it by Masem after requesting edits to support I do not believe that it is appropriate for him to speak as an admin here or in maters related to it. Artw (talk) 15:22, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Suggestion: since everyone is concerned about the 30/500 protection, I suggest we apply it to this page, withthe added restriction of only allowing edits from users who have NEVER edited the GG article or any of it's related pages in the past.  Trolls and vandals are one thing, but the primary problem with the exsiting article is OWNership and POV-pushing from entrenched editors who refuse to allow any viewpoints that conflict with the narative they are trying (and failing) to build.  So my suggestion is a clean slate - apply the 30/500 restriction to keep away the vandals, and limit edits to existing veteran editors who can bring a much needed new perspective to the whole article. 69.63.86.114 (talk) 19:08, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * That has no basis in any policy, I'm afraid, whatever one may think of your argument. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 23:41, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Request for comment
Regarding the Gamergate controversy, is this draft an improvement relative to the existing article? Rhoark (talk) 03:03, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Relevant prior discussions can be seen here: Respondents are encouraged to make reference to applicable policies which could include but are not limited to WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:WWIN, and WP:BLP. Please focus on the articles and avoid soapboxing on the topic. Rhoark (talk) 03:07, 12 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Reject. The existing article rapidly explains to me, as one who has only limited exposure to this subject, what it's about and why it's a problem. The revised draft looks suspiciously as if it's all about ethics in videogame journalism. I like, on the whole, matter-of-fact articles on contentious issues, but this is way too far over that line. "People representing various points of view about Gamergate have faced harassment, doxxing, and threats of violence". Technically true, but the vast majority of them, and all the early ones, and all the ones that caused the shitstorm, were women or people who defended them. The draft puts GamerGaters and "SJWs" on an equal footing, as if social justice is a bad thing and misogynist privilege is just a point of view, not something demanding challenge. It started with the attacks on Quinn and Wu, that's how any article needs to start, but your draft minimises that and contextualises it as just one of a number of playful spats between equally matched opponents. I could go on, but basically this reads as if it were written by a Gamergate apologist. I do hope that is not what you intended, but sadly it is what you achieved. Guy (Help!) 07:31, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Being too factual is a curious indictment. I responded in more detail on Jimbo's talk page about whether its "all about ethics", with the answer being plainly, "no." The draft does in fact begin with the harassment of Quinn, as you desire. Harassment is the largest focus in both versions, the difference being that the draft also follows WP:NPOV's instructions to report fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. We should not, as the existing article does, highlight the WP:OUTRAGE. Rhoark (talk) 12:40, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: The limited arguments advanced for accepting the draft below seem to me to offer far better support for a careful copyediting of the existing article, through discussion and consensus on its talk page. The current article has undoubtedly suffered fomrt he back-and-forth of competing ideological edits, but the solution is not to replace it with a well-written whitewash, it is to review and sharpen the existing text. Guy (Help!) 08:17, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It reads as if it were written by a partisan on the GG side, albeit one who is at least prpeared to acknowledge that some independent sources (read: virtually all) put the blame squarely on the GG trolls. That is how it reads to me, and when I compare the two, I find that this one feels less neutral and more like an apologia. I know you think it's more neutral. I disagree. You asked for people's opinion and comment, that's what you got from me. Actually the current article is improved over the version current during arbitration, no doubt due tot he additional scrutiny it received, so I don't even see what problem we're supposed to be fixing at this remove, let alone with a weholesale rewrite that seems to me to offer a massive dose of false balance. Guy (Help!) 12:50, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * First off, I am slightly biased towards GG. It means that there is an inevitable amount of bias in what I'll say, and my position might not be exactly what it would be if the article was biased for "my side". That said, I don't have any personal or social stake in the debate, and I think my main motivation here is epistemology, for what it's worth. With that in mind, I think the current article is a lot more partisan on the anti-GG side than the draft is on the GG side. In fact, most status quo supporters I've read are both aware of the current article's anti-GG partisanship, and support it. The reasoning I've seen is that GG is a toxic movement at best and a hate group at worst, and that many reputable sources agree with that assessment; therefore, the fact that the current article sides heavily against GG is an accurate description of both reputable media and reality. I strongly disagree with this reasoning. While I've seen several posters note that reputable sources considered GG as a pure hate group, I've seen very little criticism of the specific sources that the Draft uses when it covers GG's alleged non-pure-hate-groupness; if there are trustworthy sources that say that GG is evil and crackpot sources that say GG is awesome or complex, then the crackpots should be ignored and the article should be about the harm that GG does; but if there are trustworthy sources that say that GG is evil and trustworthy sources that say it's complicated and there are problems on both sides and some people in GG are trying to do good (like a Washington Post article), then covering both sides becomes important for the sake of neutrality. Actually, I'd appreciate your opinion on this. What do you think of the sources in the draft that present the controversy as being more balanced than the current article presents? Olivier FAURE 2A01:CB00:B62:6500:CBB3:B79B:5476:D2A5 (talk) 15:26, 16 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Reject. More whitewash/scrubbing/false equivalences.  Rhoark knows this, too.--Jorm (talk) 14:49, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Clarification: Rhoark knows that it is a common position that his draft comes off as an attempt at whitewashing and false equivalences. He also knows that his draft will not be accepted by the majority of editors working in the Gamergate area.  Why he wants to get a larger audience about this, I do not know.  Just know that this is a well-worn path.--Jorm (talk) 15:54, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Reject - Primarily per Guy: this draft seems like a pretty blatant/obvious attempt to put 2 very different perspectives about Gamergate on an equal footing, when in reality the vast majority of RS (and the highest quality RS) make it very clear that our article should not do that. WP:WEIGHT requires that our article portray and discuss Gamergate primarily as the mainstream media have, and not cobble together a collection of lower-quality, outlying sources and pretend that they represent a perspective on Gamergate that has equal weight. An example that's really troubling to me: in the section titled "responsibility for harassment," we find the phrase In public discourse, Gamergate as a controversy or movement has mainly been associated with harassment of women, and this has severely damaged the movement's credibility. OK, well, if that's the case, then we should be portraying gamergate primarily as the harassment of women. I'm not seeing enough sources of high enough quality anywhere in the draft article to justify an article which notes the consensus of most RS about what Gamergate is/does/did, but then proceeds to pretend that that view is just one of two equally-weighted perspective. Fyddlestix (talk) 14:56, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Could you please identify specific uses of "lower-quality, outlying sources" or how the draft coverage differs from mainstream coverage? The reliable sources report that harassment is a minority of activity within Gamergate, but they focus on this minority, and media comments on itself about how it focuses on this minority. That is exactly the mainstream reliable sourcing that I have summarized. Most of the article weight is given to harassment, but weight is not a reason to contradict the reliably sourced fact that it's a minority. I'll note also that the mainspace article's first and boldest claim that Gamergate is mostly about harassing women is the attributed opinion of Stephen Colbert. Is that representative of due weight? Rhoark (talk) 15:24, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Rhoark, that reads as a bit disingenuous. Given your familiarity with the subject, you know that many of the 254 sources in main space echo Colbert's opinion. As a notable personality (especially with the generation primarily caught up in GG), his opinion was considered relevant, but he is not by any means the sole basis for due weight. 2600:1005:B169:195A:8D65:EFAC:3C3A:82F7 (talk) 20:57, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Stephen Colbert, acting in character, has probably agreed with mainstream political positions on a lot of questions, and half the time he was probably sincere. That doesn't make it due weight to use a satirical performance as a cornerstone for framing contentious topics on Wikipedia. If it is aligned with the other 253 sources, it should be possible to find an example that can be used to follow WP:YESPOV. I'm not so sure that can be done, though. Colbert seems to be used here precisely because it allows the article to insinuate more than it could assert. Rhoark (talk) 21:11, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think your assessment of what RS say there is correct. See my comment (lower on this page) here. Fyddlestix (talk) 07:28, 20 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Reject per Guy. 2600:1005:B169:195A:8D65:EFAC:3C3A:82F7 (talk) 20:57, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The draft has better structure. I don't think this is a RfC that can be answered with a "yes" or "no" answer. Since the article and the draft are quite different, there will be aspects that are better in one over the other, and vice-versa. In the case of the draft, the titles of sections creates a much more distinct partition of the topic space, where the focus of each section is clearly indicated by the title, and each section covers a subtopic sufficiently different from the other sections; meanwhile, it's hard to say the same about the topics in the article, which include significant overlap.
 * As for matching the tone in the sources, I'd say the draft would greatly benefit from including quotations within the references themselves, referencing the particular paragraph or sentence in the article that best represents the part of the article it supports; this way, it would be crystal clear how well or badly does each part of the draft corresponds to a point made by one or several reliable sources. Diego (talk) 22:02, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * That's an excellent suggestion. Several people have gotten the impression that the draft is somehow trying to contest the reliable sources rather than reflect them. Quoting everything would be a massive undertaking, but in the live revision I've added quotes to the citations on the first two sentences of "Responsibility for harassment". These seem to particularly give pause to and . I suspect some changes are in order to the wording of that passage, but as a starting point we should all be able to agree that it is supported by very mainstream sources. Rhoark (talk) 23:47, 12 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Accept: (I gave comments on the draft in an earlier version). The reasons are as follows:
 * Better written:
 * Overall readable prose size is 12% smaller. Current article: 57 kb. Draft: 50 kb.
 * Prose is better. This is subjectively clear when reading the article. Quantitative measures are available here. To pick one measure, the Flesch–Kincaid_readability_tests readability score (higher is easier) and grade level (lower is easier): Current article - Score: 38.5, Grade level: 13. Draft - Score:43.2, Grade level: 11.
 * Lead is much more concise and easier to understand for the uninitiated, while covering the major topics in the article. (my subjective view)
 * Topically and chronologically, draft is much better arranged. The current article jumps too much over the place chronologically for my taste. For instance, the "responses to harassment" section is much better written in the draft. The current article jumps all over the place on the issue. The law enforcement portion comes very early. Gaming industry response is separated from the earlier portion.
 * Sourcing:
 * There are roughly the same number of sources in both articles.
 * The references for both versions seem roughly of the same quality to me. High quality sources like the Washington Post are mixed with specialist sources (games press, for instance) or journalism sources like the Columbia Journalism Review, together with scholarly sources. Eyeballing the references: diversity of sources is slightly higher in the draft, but not much different.
 * POV issues.
 * As a crude test, I created word clouds for both the current article and the draft. I couldn't discern much difference. The major themes were the same. Among the biggest words in the cloud in both versions were: "Gamergate", "harassment", "supporters", "women", "threats", "controversy", "journalism/media", "game/gaming/video", "ethics", "online", "Quinn", "Sarkeesian", "Law" and "Twitter". There are some differences: for instance, the current has entries for "industry" and "sexism", while the latter has entries for "bullying", "movement", and "political". People can see both the word clouds here: current, draft.
 * As for subjective issues, I feel the focus in the draft, as in the current article, is on harassment (properly). There are three sections in the draft dealing with harassment (initial phase, continued harassment, law enforcement response) and another section (Events disrupted) is basically about harassment.
 * The draft has a much better section on the political and cultural influence. The current article does a much more muddled job of this. The topic should be discussed in a thorough way. (See recent speech by Clinton on the alt-right for one indication of importance).
 * The draft is a bit more nuanced on the different viewpoints expressed. This is partly through sourcing and partly through organization and emphasis. This is just my subjective opinion: people can differ on this, of course. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 22:17, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, those are useful tools. I find it quite illustrative to compare the "Longest Sentences by Word Count" provided for both versions:
 * "The Los Angeles Times, Wired, The Atlantic, and other reports described the campaign as a backlash against the increasing racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in science fiction, while members of the bloc gave a variety of reasons for their actions, saying that they sought to counteract what they saw as a focus on giving awards based on the race, ethnicity, or gender of the author or characters rather than quality and bemoaning the increasing prominence of 'message' fiction with fewer traditional "zap gun" sci-fi trappings."
 * vs:
 * "Gjoni's blog drew attention from people with a variety of pre-existing grievances about Quinn or the industry, including: what some considered undue media praise for Depression Quest, Quinn's prior conflicts with Wizardchan and The Fine Young Capitalists, and perceived bias in video game journalism."
 * As a sample of the differences in style, the former represent the product of a difficult time, where the process to write the article was akin to an attrition war, and where each stable sentence was the result of a back-and-forth between highly disputed positions. Diego (talk) 22:38, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * User:Kingsindian, love how you bring data to the table. Those word clouds are great.   "rape", "death", "abuse", "victim",  and "home" (as in where threats were delivered to)  appear in the cloud for the original but not for the draft; "harassment" and "women" are more prominent in the original, "threats" is about the same in each.  "controversy",  "political", "cultural" and "allegations" appear in the cloud for the draft and not for the original.   I think this is why some people are reacting with a sense that the harshness of the attacks/threats against women that were made by Gamergaters have been downplayed in the draft. Jytdog (talk) 05:08, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Data is subject to varying interpretation; this is why I presented the clouds so that people can judge for themselves. As I said above, word clouds are crude tools. In my opinion, only looking at the differences, as you do, is not the correct way to go - one should also look at the similarities. If one looks at the biggest words in both articles, i.e. those that cover the main themes, they're mostly the same, as I detailed above. As to the point about "harassment" and "women" being smaller in the draft, they're still among the biggest words, so I don't see it as a problem. One also has to take into account synonyms and subsets: for instance "threat" is one type of "abuse", the most serious kind; "Sarkeesian", "Quinn" and "Wu" are subsets of "women"; and so on. I am fine with the phrases "rape threats" and "death threats" being emphasized more in the draft. I don't think it will change the tone of the draft much, as I argued here. I see the appearance of "cultural" and "political" in the word cloud of the draft as one of its strengths. Pretty much all sources, including those who treat Gamergate as simply a harassment campaign, emphasize the cultural and political aspects including feminism, video game culture. The current article is totally inadequate in this respect, as I mentioned above.  As for why some people think the harassment has been "downplayed", there are hidden assumptions in the framing: that the current article has the "right" emphasis. With such an assumption, any relative reduction is "downplaying" harassment. I don't think much of this argument: harassment is still, by far, the bulk of the draft. YMMV. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 08:54, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
 * It would be an interesting experiment and perhaps further data to consider to make up word clouds for the text of the sources in the various tiers that Rhoark listed out below (eg: a cloud for just the high tier sources, a cloud for the high and mid-tier sources, etc, adding a new tier each time). My impression is that one will see the shift in predominate words as more lower-tier sources are added, reflecting the hyperbole used by those sources in their reporting and stressing the need to look at the framing elements better rather than the reaction elements. --M ASEM (t) 00:08, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Indeed, I suggested this on the talkpage but never got around to it. I suggested the following method: take a fixed amount of text from a sample of sources and make a word cloud. (keeping in mind that the sources have differnt amount of text). One can pick the sample in several ways. One is the way you say, using higher-tier sources more. One can also look at sources based on date of publication, and their placement in the article text - since the beginning of the article is intrinsically more important than the end - most people only read the lead and perhaps the first couple of sections. Standard caveats apply to such an exercise: it is simply a crude indicator, so one should not oversell it. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 05:13, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Word clouds are an interesting way to look at tone, but I wonder if we might be falling too much in love with them. Two articles, one of which is filled with nothing but "Gamergate is political diarreha" and the other with "Gamergate is a political triumph" will both show a lot of focus on the "political" but that doesn't really capture the tone of either.  Tone-matching is a job for a much more sensitive algorithm... perhaps we can employ the ones that run on our wetware in some asynchronous way? (Or pick up something from the field of sentiment analysis if you want to stay silicon) Heterodidact (talk) 22:29, 4 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Reject. The draft certainly has the advantage of greater readability, but I expect that's because it's the sole labour of a single hard-working editor.  In regards to the content itself, I have some concerns - for example, in the "Responsibility for Harassment" Section, there is a claim that assigning responsibility for the harassment is "difficult", but the rest of the section clearly argues for the position that it's certainly due to the efforts of anonymous unaffiliated trolls - and then, bizarrely, spends a paragraph finding fault with the media's coverage of Gamergate.  Are we to gather that the media should bear some responsibility for the harassment? There is another section regarding media coverage that simply quotes David Auerbach's opinion that the media has a vested interest in not covering Gamergate properly - I'm not certain that his opinion has weight as an authority in this regard. Now, to be clear, I can easily find similar faults in the existing article - I took a moment to click around the original in the same manner when I discovered this request for comment - so I cannot say that the original article is strictly better, but I'm fairly confident this draft is not superior.  I would suggest that certain well-written passages be picked out and integrated with the original article, instead of a wholesale replacement. Since Rhoark has already done significant amounts of work here, perhaps other editors would be willing to take his draft and pull out the very best pieces and try them on for size in the original? Heterodidact (talk) 00:08, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * If, as some say, the draft's greatest strength is in high-level organization, it might do better to import text with a stronger consensus into that structure. I'm more confident the text can be incrementally improved than the structure can. The "Responsibility for Harassment" section is clearly a lightning rod that will require further iteration. Can you elaborate on the transition you find "bizarre"? I'm not sure I follow what the difficulty is. (Auerbach's quote has CJR's imprimatur, without which I certainly would not have included it.) Rhoark (talk) 02:00, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I would disagree that the organization is the draft's greatest strength; what I meant to indicate is that it has a far more coherent style and fewer awkward compromises-of-sentences. That is to say, I think certain strongly-written passages can replace their equivalent (if they have one) in the original article.  In regards to the transition, I apologize if the word choice was harsh, but I don't see how his opinion should be used in that manner.  He was quoted for his own opinion by David Uberti in a larger piece on "why" Mr. Auerbach (and others) are doing what he's doing, and that piece was published in CJR; that's not the same as CJR endorsing his opinion on the media's coverage; on my read of your paragraph, it was presented as a scholarly, authoritative last word on why the media is not conforming to its critic's expectations.  Now, I appreciate that citing two specific examples is likely to invite a lot of litigating over those examples, and I'm willing to engage for as long as you wish, but I would like to be clear that my concerns are not limited to those two examples alone, and focusing on them is not likely to change my opinion of Reject for this specific draft.  I reserve the right to change my opinion for later ones. Heterodidact (talk) 02:25, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, no sense in belaboring points you don't consider crucial. If you can identify something that is more at the crux of the matter that would be helpful, but if you'd rather wait it out for a revision or two, nothing says you can't. Rhoark (talk) 02:42, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I would be pleased to keep an eye on your successive drafts; thank you for the invitation. However, keeping with the spirit of my original suggestion, I think I would prefer to keep an eye out for particularly good examples of prose and flag those for you (or others) to incorporate into the existing article.  I trust you won't be too put out by that.  Heterodidact (talk) 02:47, 13 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Reject per Guy, though with thanks to Rhoark for the effort. Dumuzid (talk) 00:35, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Strong Reject. The draft violates WP:FALSEBALANCE, especially in its overarching structure, which does not reflect the way the topic has been covered in most reliable sources.  Devoting an entire section to "Gamergate as a movement" and weighting it equally to "Zoe Quinn controversies" is an unacceptable misuse of the sources, which devote vastly more text to the harassment of Quinn; it's also flawed in that most coverage devotes far more to other harassment, especially pf Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian, which (by moving it to the near the end of the article) is sharply downplayed here in a way that distorts what most reliable sources have to say.  Devoting a section of comparable size to "responsibility for harassment" is again clearly not reflective of how most sources have covered the topic - these are aspects that are present in some sources (and are touched on in the current article, with weight appropriate to the degree of coverage each has received); but they are not aspects that can legitimately be weighted equally with eg. the harassment covered by the preceding paragraph or further down.  The problem is that this draft structure forces a false equivalence between aspects that generally get only bare mentions (at best) and the vast majority of remaining coverage, which has focused overwhelmingly on particular incidents of harassment and the timeline behind them.  The vast majority of coverage has presented the topic in a manner much closer to the current article, especially the current article's excellent and comprehensive history section (which this rewrite inexplicably scatters over the article, with focus drastically distorted from the weight accorded to individual aspects of the timeline in reliable sources.)  I take broad issue with this rewrite, but especially with its structure, which is its most clear flaw; an article's structure needs to reflect the weight accorded to aspects of the topic in reliable sources, per WP:BALASP.  This structure does not and cannot do that. --Aquillion (talk) 03:32, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * If you take a look at the text of WP:FALSEBALANCE it is about balancing the validity of fringe views against scholarship. It's not really applicable to this case, because the draft is presenting only scholarship and mainstream journalism. I think your later link of WP:BALASP is probably what you had in mind. What I'm getting overall is that you would prefer a more chronological arrangement? Rhoark (talk) 04:28, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I feel really strange seeing say that the "history" section is "comprehensive and excellent". Perhaps for people familiar with the topic, it might be that way, but not to the uninitiated. I'll give my own experience: when I first tried to read it last December, I knew virtually nothing about Gamergate. I found the section incomprehensible: it jumps all over the place chronologically and topically; one subsection, "coordination of harassment", is not "history" at all, but "analysis" by other people of this weird internet phenomenon. I made this point last December (see this ) - virtually nothing has improved since then. People are not amenable to changing the structure of the article. People don't want to change the section content. People were not amenable to making it chronological either. Perhaps people like to keep this mess set in concrete. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 12:57, 15 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Reject. The draft fails WP:NPOV as it gives too much credence to the side of the conflict which caused so much harm. Primarily in-universe sources support that view; the wider literature does not. We should respect the wider literature. Binksternet (talk) 04:25, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * By "the side of the conflict which caused so much harm", which side are you referring to? We have it on the authority of the BBC, Washington Post, Le Monde, and Mortensen2016 that this describes both sides. And which provision of NPOV is it that discusses harm? Rhoark (talk) 04:32, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not into pretense. The harassment campaign of Gamergate was catalyzed by Zoe Quinn's angry ex-boyfriend posting a hurtful essay about her. His supporters are given too much credence in your draft, which fails even to call it a harassment campaign. I can't imagine why you went to the trouble of placing this POV piece in front of community review. Binksternet (talk) 05:36, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The specific phrase "harassment campaign" is important then? We're getting more specific; that's good. How would this edit affect your overall impression? Are there particular aspects of the harassment that seem to have been neglected? Rhoark (talk) 02:44, 14 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Accept: Finally it looks like we are making some progress here. The current article suffers greatly from ownership and POV-pushing, this draft attempts to fix some of those issues.  A lot has happened since the Gamergate movement had its genesis.  The article is in need of updating, and it needs to actually follow what the reliable sources say.  This RFC is a step in the right direction.  Too many people have made a good-faith attempt to edit the article and been chased off - by both "sides".  There are a great many of us out there who are neither pro nor anti GG, but view the current article as an embarrassment, as it comes across as wildly disorganized while at the same time doing a poor job of defining what GG is and what the whole controversy is a about. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.242.76.20 (talk • contribs)
 * Comment: I have seen several people above (like ) argue for taking an "incremental" approach to the article rather than a complete rewrite. All I can say to that is: "you're welcome to try". Please realize that people might have hit upon this solution for a reason. I myself had suggested this approach almost half a year ago, but I never had the time, energy or motivation to follow through. As far as I know, hit upon this approach independently. The reasons are the same: every talk page discussion about something not minor tends to devolve to WP:FORUMing and goes around in circles till everyone is exhausted. There are more than 50 talk page archives proving my point if anyone is interested. Here is a recent discussion, which can be indefinitely multiplied for anyone who cares to look. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 09:10, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I do understand your point, but there is only one way we will get a wholesale replacement of the article and that's if the new draft is written by someone who is not a partisan. At this point, only the partisans seem to care. Guy (Help!) 09:13, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * There's an alternative to that, which is that good-willed partisans from both sides start a new draft from scratch, using the best option found in either article whether in terms of structure, weight or phrasing. This is in the spirit of WP:DR, similar to a WP:Mediation process; and it would sidestep the current deadlock at the published article by replacing the "stay the same vs change a single sentence" with a "use the best content available in a way that all can accept", an option which didn't exist before. I believe the latter could achieve a much larger improvement.
 * And incidentally, that adversarial process is how NPOV articles on controversial issues are normally written - the Gamergate article was an exception in that it was impossible to maintain the scholarly discussion, due to the disruptive and ignited nature of the debate when it was written. Diego (talk) 09:27, 13 September 2016 (UTC) Diego (talk) 09:27, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * : Would you like fries with that? No, seriously: there's another way - the way being followed. Someone can write a better article and put it for an RfC: and the "community" will decide. The point is that people do not want major changes (due to inertia, ownership, apathy, whatever). Here's the article roughly a year ago. See for yourself whether it has improved in prose, intelligibility or NPOV since then. If anything, it has gotten worse. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 09:30, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the "way being followed" has resulted in an obviously partisan draft that is almost certainly not going to get accepted. Guy (Help!) 09:37, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * See my previous comment - there's no need to accept Rhoark's draft in full for it to be useful. The fact that it works as a foil to the status of the article, which can be now discussed in relative "better/worse" terms of comparisons between concrete aspects of both alternatives, is an improvement over the "acceptable/unacceptable" dynamic over every proposed change; and a lot of that is going on in the "Reject" comments above. I'd say the existence of this RfC is showing that it is possible now to have the academic debate that was not possible when the first article was written. Diego (talk) 09:47, 13 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Replace the article with the draft (the existence of votes such as "support" and "oppose" confuses me, so I want my vote to be unambiguous) — the article as of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=738771209 is not neutral, portraying the movement in a negative light, while the draft as of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=739148550 merely describes the situation without implying that either side is in the right. If you think that the article is more neutral, portraying all perspectives without taking sides, you need to stop participating in this encyclopedia project until you can write in a neutral point of view, because the article as if oldid=738771209 distinctly does not "attempt to present ideas and facts in such a fashion that both supporters and opponents can agree", as was the statement of WP:NPOV even at the beginning of the project, and does not conform with the current NPOV intro of "Articles must not take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without editorial bias".  Nyttend (talk) 12:12, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Reliable independent sources also portray GamerGate in a negative light, so an article of ours that goes to such lengths to avoid this is a pretty clear indication of something seriously wrong. Guy (Help!) 12:14, 13 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Accept per KingsIndian and thank Rhoark for this effort. I think that the only way to move forward with this topic area is a BOLD action such as this draft. It's very clear from browsing the article talk page archives (50 pages!!) that the collaborative approach simply isn't working as intended for this topic area, and short of just deleting this article entirely, this is the best approach. Mr Ernie (talk) 19:01, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Reject per JzG (Guy) and Jorm. BethNaught (talk) 22:12, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Accept per KingsIndian. For some reason an argument about opposing this would be that the draft does not follow the sources. If I'm reading WP:NPOV correctly: "Neutral articles are written with a tone that provides an unbiased, accurate, and proportionate representation of all positions included in the article." So even if the sources we use are descibing Gamergate as a notorious internet terrorist, WP shouldn't adopt that same tone. Sethyre (talk) 05:39, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It appears you missed the word "proportionate". We summarize the reliable sources in proportion to the mass of their arguments. If 60% say one thing, and 40% say the opposite, then we emphasize the 60% position, but we also tell the reader about the 40% position. Binksternet (talk) 04:28, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * My issue is that the current article uses Wikipedia's voice a lot. That's different than proportional use of sources. Hobit (talk) 12:39, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I cannot express just how correct your assessment is! Wikipedia's voice is used to assert things as fact when the sources are opinions, something people have brought up numerous times before being shut down by the entrenched editors. Well, not all of the editors, just a couple who take issue with change. Sethyre (talk) 23:53, 17 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Reject per NPOV (especially FALSEBALANCE, UNDUE, and YESPOV), V (NOTRELIABLE), BLP, and a CHERRYPICKING on top. Probably some other scary ALLCAPS as well, but not MOS:ALLCAPS. Woodroar (talk) 01:55, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Could you please elaborate on how specific parts of the draft fail specific parts of the guidelines you've listed? Otherwise, your OMGWTFBBQ comment is of little usefulness to the conversation, since nothing can be done to the draft to fix those flaws. Diego (talk) 12:05, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I detailed some issues with the Draft at Talk:Gamergate controversy. As far as I'm concerned, they all still apply. Woodroar (talk) 23:17, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I suggest continuing this thread at Talk:Gamergate_controversy Rhoark (talk) 14:20, 16 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Reject Others have already listed the reasons why, but I'll just add that the reporting of threats and harassment is poor. Much of it is unverified. ゼーロ (talk) 13:01, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Can you please clarify? Do you mean the sections about harassment need more citations to verify? Or that the sources report on events that are unverified? Or that the draft should describe them in more detail? Rhoark (talk) 17:47, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * There is a lot of text detailing harassment and bomb threats, but much of it is based on single sources or poor sources, and was never verified or resolved in the end. For example, when GamerGate supporters held events they always got bomb threats, and apparently got the police involved once, but it was never discovered who made the threats. We don't know if they were genuine attempts to disrupt the events, or if it was the organizers trying to paint themselves as victims of extreme... er... feminists I suppose. I cases where there has been follow up, on-going criminal investigations, reputable media coverage etc. it's reasonable to mention it, but I think that in trying to present a "balanced" view the proposed text has ended up repeating basically rumours and allegations. ゼーロ (talk) 10:40, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * If we were to include only things that had been "verified and resolved" we would be left with only Rankowski's threats against Wu. If in addition they have to be known to be genuine threats, then there would be nothing. Rumors and allegations are the story. Rhoark (talk) 11:37, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I disagree, there is reliable media coverage of much of what happened. Sarkeesian being driven from her home was widely covered, for example. On the other hand, I do agree that much of the material would need to be removed as being basically impossible to verify. ゼーロ (talk) 15:10, 4 October 2016 (UTC)


 * With the comment that I know very little about the topic, I think the new draft is a bit more clear and readable. The lede of the current article is a mess and this is clear and short.  Also seems to be more "just the facts" while the current article reads more like a one-sided screed. Sounds like the one-sided thing may be appropriate per sources, but the current article puts this in Wikipedia's voice  more than I am comfortable with.  Accept draft but with a full acknowledgement that I don't know much about the topic. Hobit (talk) 21:17, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Accept draft. Kingsindian's arguments are convincing. This is far better than the current "article" that does not even attempt helping the reader understand a topic. SST  flyer  03:20, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Accept Draft I'd forgotten how bad the current article was - right from the start it uses an astounding number of words to say almost nothing. The pattern of contrived language and disjointed structure continues throughout - long, rambling. This is much clearer and more straightforward. An editor above described it as a "just the facts" version and I find it more organized as well. That's no small task with a team of editors much less alone. Well done. James J. Lambden (talk) 05:08, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Accept. The draft is more readable, and is a massively superior example of neutrality, free from any false balance. Bravo, sir/madam! 109.255.206.160 (talk) 13:49, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Reject - the Gamergate controversy article as it stands gives a very detailed and explicit explanation on both what Gamergate is about and the chronology of events concerning it. The draft is a somewhat whitewashed version of the article. The draft sections off parts of the article that should be better described chronologically, and the draft goes to describe these events in a somewhat POV tone. If there are issues with the current version of the article, then that should be worked on by the efforts of multiple editors, rather than debating whether to implement a version of an article that was solely worked on by a single editor. I'm not against having discussions with the wider community on how to improve this article, but a re-purposing of this RFC may be in order, and then all members of the community could pitch in and discuss their own ideas on how the article could be improved. — Mythdon 22:09, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Reject The current article is a bit of a mess, but this one tries too hard to give all points of view equla weight. There needs to be something in the middle. AIR corn (talk) 22:55, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Support with caveats On a re-read, many of the rejects !votes above do have a very valid point that some of the areas covered by this draft are false balance on specific aspects that could be considered "pro-GG supporting", that, in the long run, are minor issues compared to the larger one as a whole (TFYC stuff, for example). We should be trying to look at this from a farther-down-the-road view to avoid details that may have contributed but were minor and that were not readily focused on broadly. But that said, it is very easy to trim from this version to make it better. The key aspect of this one draft over the current mainspace article is that it adopts the correct impartial, neutral tone that one should expect to see a controversy documented in an encyclopedia, rather than the present mainspace version which is written to maintain the vitriolic and accusation tone that the press have adapted. When you take out the minor points above, the article still presents the right balance that there was a lot and a lot of negative opinion on the GG situation, but we should not be letting public opinion drive the tone of the article, and Rhoark's done a good starting point of distancing the encyclopedic coverage from that tone. --M ASEM (t) 14:13, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Reject Unusable sue to deliberate WP:WEIGHT issues and therefore unlikely to ever be made usable, as discussed in the previous RfC. Artw (talk) 16:54, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Came here via bot ping. By coincidence, I was just reading the article earlier today for an unrelated reason and the article struck me as having painfully obvious WP:NPOV issues. However, asking RfC respondents to comment on a wholesale rewriting of an article is really to ask too much of them. Chris Hallquist (talk) 04:25, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually, I stand corrected. The rewrite seems to mostly concern three sentences, yes? The wording of the RfC leaves me a little unsure. But assuming the issue is three sentences from different points in the article, this should be three separate RfCs. The first sentence of difference, "There is strong disagreement between participants in these debates as to what the controversy is fundamentally about" seems obviously true and clearly important enough that it needs to be clearly stated in the article. The other two edits concern unrelated issues that are mostly going to be a matter of what the cited sources actually say. I'd need to read both sets of sources, but given that the issues are largely unrelated I think they're two separate RfCs. Chris Hallquist (talk) 04:33, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The question asked in the RfC is about replacing the current article wholesale with the draft. The reason for doing it this way is explained here. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 05:39, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * But it doesn't actually look like a wholesale re-write? (It's possible I'm looking at the wrong diff.) OTOH if it were a wholesale rewrite, a wholesale rewrite being desirable does not make it any more realistic to expect RfC respondents to review a large draft. Furthermore, it's not clear how making the RfC about a large diff makes WP:FORUM less likely.
 * From the RfC header: we're comparing draft with article. The versions are at the point when the RfC was started, so that changes can be made to the live article, while the RfC is going on, without confusing people. Just indicate which one you prefer and why. Of course, this will involve reading through the draft as well as the article, carefully or not: there's no avoiding this. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 15:19, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * In that case, I stand by my point that it's not clear how this approach makes WP:FORUM less likely. Chris Hallquist (talk) 16:06, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * A yes/no question usually limits meandering, in my experience with RfCs. Most of my own RfCs (this was not opened by me), are yes/no for this reason. Of course, people are free to weigh in on aspects of the matter they find interesting, in other sections on this page. In case this RfC is inconclusive, perhaps the other sections might still be fruitful in the future. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 16:31, 19 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Strongly accept —- Someone, who didn't participate at talk before, just reverted a broadly accepted and none-opposed BLP-violating-rumor-removal, the suggestion of which didn't originate from me:.


 * It was again removed by a third editor: ;


 * returned by a fourth: ;


 * removed by a fifth: ;


 * returned by a sixth:


 * and once again removed by me:.


 * The current article is an edit-warred, illegible, BLP-violating, travesty piece of s*** controlled by a group of editors who abuse their numbers in perfect, WP:TAGTEAM and WP:STEALTH harmony to oppose even the slightest neutrality or readability added. Even a very slight faint of a hint of change is warred against by taking turns. I have no doubt there is a lot of WP:COI involved as well. Current article is a stain on Wikipedia and brings the credibility of the entire site down. Pardon my language but I've had enough of this s***. Mr. Magoo (talk) 17:26, 19 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment on the feedback process a week in. The request has so far been a resounding success, inasmuch as it has injected actionable feedback into what was a stalled talk page discussion. Some readers were apparently given an impression that the draft was attempting to undermine or contest the reliable sources on certain points, and an attempt has been made to address this. Through adjustments to wording and through citation of exact source text it should be clear that the draft is reflecting rather than contesting the reliable sources. A quick review of these changes by Guy and Fyddlestix, to see whether their concerns have been assuaged, would be helpful.
 * Several editors have commented that the draft is more readable or approachable, which is good to hear. Others have wondered whether this readability could be brought to article space by merely copyediting rather than re-evaluation of the content. It is my firm belief that it cannot. The article's problems are not just some awkward turns of phrase. It fumbles in trying to use terms before introducing them. It repeats itself in trying to discuss a single idea in several different sections. It omits significant points of view, and demurs about answering basic Five W questions that the cited sources would enable it to answer. The readability the draft enjoys is the result of careful and comprehensible organization, not only phrasing.
 * The most troubling concern raised is the assertion that this organization of the draft is not neutral or reflective of the reliable sources. To a certain extent, this is an expression of shock that the reliable sources differ so starkly from editors' preconceptions about the topic. Some even feel that the topic is so nefarious that NPOV should not be followed. That view should obviously not be accommodated. Others think the draft devotes too much attention to certain claims for WP:BALASPS, and that view can at least be engaged. I've started a parallel discussion in another section of this page to evaluate the overall landscape of sources and see what kind of emphasis is most consistent with the reliable sources. I hope for as many people as possible to participate in that process. Rhoark (talk) 19:40, 19 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Reject draft as garbage I was canvassed to come here and vote support offwiki. I have rejected the advice of my canvasser. Having reviewed the draft, I find it to be highly biased. Even starting, it states, in Wikipedia's voice, that "The Gamergate controversy is a collection of cultural debates." This is not a statement that should be made in Wikipedia's voice. Specifically, a number of sources have stated that Gamergate is a harassment campaign, not a collection of debates. I further note dramatic errors of fact in the lede. Specifically, "a panel discussion hosted by the Society of Professional Journalists," was not, in fact, hosted by the society, but rather by the Florida chapter of said society. I could continue, I choose not to. Hipocrite (talk) 20:31, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Why would "pro-Gamergaters" canvass you to vote "support" when you're very publicly anti-Gamergate...? Can you link the canvassing so we can monitor it, or email the link to an administrator if linking would violate policy? I notice your last edit (in June) was communication with an editor who was indefinitely banned for off-site harassment. It would be especially troubling if the canvassing occurred in a forum where harassment also occurs. James J. Lambden (talk) 20:53, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The forum in question is one that I monitor and was specifically created to harass people. Tarc is probably unaware of the existence of the forum in question. As to your insinuation that I harass people? I do not. Hipocrite (talk) 12:14, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Unlike some other wikis, Wikipedia values reliable sources over editors' personal opinions.
 * "At its most basic level, it's a heated debate over journalistic integrity, the definition of video games and the identity of those who play them."
 * "GamerGate has become a feud between two sets of video game fans."
 * "On one level, #Gamergate is an internal squabble between ideologically opposed factions within the gaming world."
 * "GamerGate is the name of a campaign whose supporters allege that close ties between some video games journalists and those working in the gaming industry itself have given rise to conflicts of interest. The movement became embroiled with a wider debate over claims of sexism in gaming, and gave rise to violent threats being posted online."
 * "Gamergate, a movement at the center of debates about misogyny in gaming and ethics in video game journalism"
 * There are, of course, dissenting views, but that's why we have the NPOV policy. Rhoark (talk) 01:05, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Given that you mention the NPOV I find it ironic (NOT IRONIC) that you mention "dissenting views," which you failed to include in your hot-garbage POV-push lede. Why are those dissenting views not included, exactly? Are you arguing that only a tiny-minority of the sources believe GamerGate is a Harassment Campaign, and not a whatever the fuck you think it is? Hipocrite (talk) 12:14, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Harassment is given more attention in the lede than any other aspect, and more space in the body than all other factors combined. By dissenting views I mean those like Alex Hern or Amanda Marcotte who criticize the media for covering any aspect but harassment. That's a minority view, explicitly setting itself against mainstream coverage, yet many editors would like it to dominate the article. Rhoark (talk) 13:30, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * If you were aware that a substantial percentage of the sources do not believe the Gamergate Controversy is "a collection of cultural debates," but rather "a harassment campaign," then when you wrote, in Wikipedia's voice, that "The Gamergate controversy is a collection of cultural debates," you were intentionally violating NPOV. You should be banned from this topic post-haste. Hipocrite (talk) 13:45, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I really don't think I need to explain WP:FALSEBALANCE to you. Rhoark (talk) 02:28, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Um, did you really just WP:CHERRYPICK your own cherrypicking? Wow. 2600:100F:B014:3B0E:3103:F8DA:1F5B:984 (talk) 03:16, 20 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Support as per Kingsindian's assessment. Irrespective of acceptance I respect the effort put in. LCrowter (talk) 15:45, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Reject. While I appreciate that the current version of the article may not tell both sides to the Gamergate story, and that perhaps those Gamergaters not engaged in harassment have a legitimate complaint, sources of the highest quality mostly equate Gamergate with a campaign of harassment ([www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Tech-Culture/2014/1125/Gamergate-and-the-new-horde-of-digital-saboteurs],, , , ), rather than a more benign manifestation of the "culture wars".  I feel that the current version more accurately represents the WP:WEIGHT of sources like these, even if that means that WP:THETRUTH fails to be quite captured.  Still, Wikipedia is not the place to right great wrongs.  I think it is as yet too soon to have an article that so radically departs from the sources.  For that, we'll have to wait for the historians.  More directly and to the point, I am concerned that the article in question attempts to undercut the most reliable sources we have on the subject with other, less reliable ones, in an effort to "tell both sides".  For example, the Boston Magazine article is referenced, and then a Tumblr post that attempts to "tell the other side".  This sort of false balance of sources is explicitly disallowed under WP:NPOV.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 00:36, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Mendacity on top of calumny. Gjoni's blog is used in a refnote about Boston Magazine indicating that he disputes the accuracy of his own interview. It's in dangerous territory with respect to WP:V and in following with current Talk:Gamergate controversy discussion, the article and draft would be better off without Boston Magazine. Rhoark (talk) 02:19, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Look, the purpose of a request for comment is to solicit comments from editors who are not involved in local discussions; it is not to litigate every small issue in the proposed draft. You wanted an outside view.  Also, I'd remind you to WP:AGF, and accusing other editors of lying is not; as accusations of calumny clearly cross a line into WP:NPA.  If it seems like the draft misrepresents sources and fails WP:WEIGHT, then that's a big problem, regardless of ongoing local discussions.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 10:27, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The point being made is that if one deletes the refnote, it will change exactly nothing in the article text. Indeed, if one deletes the Boston Mag reference altogether, nothing will change in the article text. About your larger point, I don't get why you feel harassment is downplayed or that Gamergate is portrayed as "benign". The second sentence of the lead talks about harassment. The first section in the body is almost entirely devoted to describing harassment. The majority of the article is indeed devoted to describing harassment. Almost all sources, even those that describe Gamergate exclusively as a harassment campaign, discuss the cultural aspects. The section devoted to the cultural aspects tries to explain all viewpoints, without glossing over the harassment aspect or hostility. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 11:16, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Points do tend to be missed when you start off by calling someone responding to an RFC a liar and defamer. Dumuzid (talk) 11:24, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It is interesting that you are defending the second paragraph as a discussion of the harassment threats. To me, that paragraph is written in a weasely passive voice, which I read as trying to downplay the harassment.  As someone who had not read the original article (perhaps unlike many of the commentators at this RfC), I can say that after reading the lead to the draft, I still had no clear idea what the controversy was about.  (How do "comments" start a controversy?  A controversy has players... who are the players??) There is no mention of the Twitter hashtag, which was very much the vehicle for this harassment campaign, until well after the lead paragraph.  The net effect is, to me, a subversion of the spirit of maintaining a neutral point of view.  In any event, the second paragraph is barely coherent, and I'm willing to agree that this is just a side effect of poor writing, but whatever the reason, the proposed revision is manifestly worse.  I'm eagerly looking forward to other uninvolved editors, as opposed to being heckled by the regulars for daring to have an opinion.  Thanks,  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 11:56, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry to ping you again, but are you sure you are looking at the right version? This is the right version, which is at the top of the RfC. The Twitter hashtag is mentioned in the third paragraph of the lead. There is nothing about "comments" in the lead, or indeed elsewhere. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 14:09, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It does not discuss the hashtag until the third paragraph, and does not mention Twitter until later. As I said, the proposed revision makes it very hard to tease out who the players in the controversy are.  We have unattributed accusations made against a game developer.  Are the accusations part of Gamergate?  Is Quinn part of Gamergate?  We can infer that these women were harassed.  Was their harassment part of #Gamergate?  Is it something else?  If so, how is it relevant to the subject of the article?  We can also infer that their speeches were disrupted by threats of violence.  How were those threats connected with the subject of the article?  How were they delivered?  Were they somehow connected with the hashtag (which as yet has not even been introduced)?  Can we infer from the lead that the online movement organized under the #Gamergate hashtag is organized by Quinn and Sarkeesian, whom the second paragraph discusses?  Or is it something else?  The current revision of the article makes it pretty clear what #Gamergate is, and that it is opposed to the actions of Quinn et al.  But the proposal seems to leave things deliberately vague.  If this is for the purpose of subverting a neutral point of view, or just terrible writing, does not really matter.  The answer to the RfC is: the proposed revision is awful.  There's no way this should get consensus.
 * The draft lead does not contain any specifics about the most serious aspects of the harassment campaign, notably death threats, rape threats, and doxing. The text of the article only has a quotation by Quinn, but not WP:YESPOV assertions that she did, in fact, receive death threats.  Rape threats are barely mentioned at all.  This is clearly not WP:NPOV, since the majority of high-quality sources explicitly discuss these aspects of the campaign.  This is the most significant aspect of the source, such that this blatant attempt to minimize it is a clear and flagrant violation of WP:WEIGHT.
 * Finally, regarding "comments", I should have said "accusations". But unattributed "accusations" do not a controversy make.  Who are the players?  What is the controversy?  It is not explained at all in the lead paragraph, and not really clarified by the article itself, which rapidly goes into the weeds, and the reader is left wondering what the hell the specific controversy is.  Sławomir Biały  (talk) 15:00, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The calumny is on the part of a source; the mendacity by a variety of others. Writing a neutral article is called POV-pushing. Declining to make a moral condemnation is called Righting Great Wrongs. Using the well-accepted canon of top journalism is called cherrypicking. Preferring the best scholarship is called false balance. I recognize this is a process meant to gather outside input, but that input will only be useful if its based in the draft as it is, the article as it is, sourcing as it is, and policy as it is. If feedback is based on flights of fancy, I have to challenge that to elicit something useful. In this case, it has elicited some specific concerns about the lede. It is deliberately short and deliberately vague - not to subvert NPOV but to make compliance possible. So much about the topic is speculative and contested that almost any claim will drag with it a bundle of caveats. The options are to say as little as possible and defer to the article body, or to recapitulate those arguments badly and without the benefit of nearby citations. You'd like more specifics, and its certainly possible to iterate on that. If its moral clarity and assignment of blame you're after, that cannot be given, and the existing article errs in trying. Rhoark (talk) 16:40, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * , I think it's a BLP issue to throw around accusations of calumny; it can certainly be understood to mean one has committed a tort if not a crime. I'd respectfully ask you to think about rephrasing.  Thank you. Dumuzid (talk) 16:54, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * rephrased, though I think it perfectly reasonable to say so about a source being considered a BLP violation. Rhoark (talk) 17:03, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Enough grandstanding. The proposed version fails to discuss adequately the death and rape threats that were associated with the movement, and documented in many reliable sources.  This is not just the lead, but a systemic problem with the article that trivializes the actual harassment that was the source of much of the news coverage.  And the controversy is just noise.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 17:02, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The word harassment shows up in the current article 127 times and in the draft 107 times. At a quick look, both have the word distributed in a fairly uniform way.  And the draft is overall shorter by enough, that the ratio is nearly the same.  Yes, that's only a rough measure, but I do have a hard time seeing how using the word 107 times can be seen as downplaying it. Hobit (talk) 19:45, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Discussion of death/rape threats do not appear in the lead of the draft, nor is it said anywhere in the article that there were these threats. We have reliable sources of the highest quality that make this assessment, so outright omission is clearly a grave violation of WP:NPOV.  Death and rape threats are discussed in all of the reliable sources of the highest quality:, , , , , , , , , .   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 15:21, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The fourth sentence of the lead talks about violent threats disrupting events by Sarkeesian, among other incidents. The first section of the article talks about doxxing of Quinn, threats against Quinn and her father. The reason why "the players" aren't mentioned explicitly is because nobody knows who sent the threats and law enforcement does not publicly reveal such things. Your comments indicate that the draft, for whatever reason, was deeply confusing or otherwise unclear to you. I have not seen anyone else come away with the impression after reading the lead that it was possible that Sarkeesian and Quinn started Gamergate. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 15:45, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Please see the sources I cited above. These discuss death threats and rape threats as a significant aspect of the Gamergate controversy, yet these threats are barely mentioned in the article, and not discussed at all in the lead.  The only instances of the word "rape" in the article are to do with "journalism ethics" and threats against John Bain (which are very weakly sourced).  Likewise, the death threats against Wu are mentioned only in passing.  The death threats against Quinn and Sarkeesian are not discussed at all!  In fact, the word "death" appears more often in the titles of the sources used in the article than in the article itself.  This tells you all you should need to know about the gross inattention to WP:WEIGHT.   Finally, if one can read the lead of the proposed draft, and still not know that Quinn. Sarkeesian, and Wu are not associated with the #Gamergate Twitter hashtag, which was the vehicle for the harassment of these and other women, then I would say that vital details have been left out of the lead, or deliberately obscured.  Whether this is because of an attempt to whitewash the subject (which seems likely) or just bad writing does not matter.   S ławomir  Biały  17:15, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you, that's a lot clearer and I think you raise solid points. I still like the draft better, but that certainly seems like an area it needs significant improvement. Hobit (talk) 00:25, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'll be happy to improve it if I can understand what on Earth the problem is. Many of the claims above are demonstrably false, very minor or incomprehensible. It was alleged that the lead portrayed Gamergate as "benign", which is incomprehensible. There was a mention of the Boston Mag interview: I pointed out that the reference could simply be deleted without changing anything at all. It was alleged that the Twitter hashtag isn't mentioned, but it's right there in the third paragraph of the lead. It was alleged that the lead doesn't make clear who the "players" were: I then pointed out that the people making the threats are unknown, so it's impossible to meet the demand. Then, there is the claim that "death threats and rape threats" against Quinn and Sarkeesian aren't discussed: the draft talks about "threats of violence" in the lead. The section on Quinn describes several threats including threats to stuff dead animals in the mailbox which forced Quinn to leave her home, threats against Quinn and her father, threats to harm Quinn at conferences and so on. The section on Sarkeesian contains the following: Sarkeesian recieved hostile reactions online, including threats, slurs, doxxing, denial-of-service attacks, and pornographic images photoshopped in her likeness. These attacks renewed and included a specific threat of murder after a Tropes vs. Women episode was released in August 2014. Many criticisms of Sarkeesian are reactionary, ad hominem, or incorporate unfounded conspiracy theories. If the phrase "death threats" is important, one can add it easily without changing much at all. Finally, the comment that the lead gives the impression that Sarkeesian and Quinn could be part of Gamergate: it is simply weird. I ask you, since you say that you had little prior knowledge of the topic: did you have any trouble figuring out from the lead that Gamergate was directed against Quinn and Sarkeesian, and not by them? Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 02:10, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

"since you say that you had little prior knowledge of the topic: did you have any trouble figuring out from the lead that Gamergate was directed against Quinn and Sarkeesian, and not by them" The lead really does not say this, and it should not be necessary to have to puzzle it out. The #Gamergate "movement" was a gang of trolls that issued death threats and rape threats against women. That's what reliable sources have to say about it, and that is precisely the impression that the lead should convey. The current version of the lead totally fails to do this, and is deliberately obscure. I'm really sorry that you seem to have such trouble understanding my objections. I think perhaps you are already too deeply entrenched in the specific topic area. I believe it is time to stand aside and let uninvolved editors participate, instead of heckling them. Anyway, here is a summary of my position. You do not need to agree with it, but I would appreciate it if you would please cease this incessant heckling and let other uninvolved editors become involved in the discussion. Your views are already abundantly clear: I would thank any further editors to please let these comments stand, without proceeding to heckle me. If you wish to start another comment, you may do so. However, I will move any further discussion directed at me to my discussion page. It is time to let the RfC to serve its purpose: it is meant to be a solicitation of outside input, not a solicitation to be heckled by vested interests. The question, as posed, was "is [the proposed revision] an improvement of [the existing revision]": the answer is an emphatic no.  We aren't here to get into the weeds about how the proposed revision can be improved. Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:02, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The proposed lead is incomprehensible. It is never made clear that Gamergate is a collection of trolls that attacked journalists and video game developers, including Wu, Quinn, and Sarkeesian.  Instead, it merely refers to a controversy arising from (unattributed) "accusations".  Their connection to the movement is not specified.  One cannot read the lead, and get the impression that a number of people, primarily women, were threatened with death/rape/doxing/etc, largely under the hashtag #Gamergate.  That is essential information that needs to be conveyed in the lead.
 * The proposed article is a gross violation of WP:WEIGHT. As I mentioned, the word "death" appears more in the titles of the references than in the text of the article.  Since most reliable sources discuss the death (and rape) threats as the most significant aspect of this controversy, any proposed revision must assign a corresponding weight to these aspects.  This is straight out of policy.
 * One of the issues that has plagued Wikipedia's GG article from its onset is the need to differentiate between weight of Point of View, and weight of Tone. POV weight is important per NPOV/UNDUE here because we know that GG has near zero sympathy from the public at large, and so the near-majority points of view that describe it as misogynist, harassing, and all that cannot be ignored or whitewashed away. That's important. But what we have to recognize is that the tone with which most of the sources reiterate these points is something we are not supposed to copy or engage in, per WP:IMPARTIAL. The press has been vitriolic in trying to highlight all the harassment and threats made to various members, but to a point that the bulk of the sources have near zero useful information from an impartial standpoint, outside of being a tally mark in the "GG is bad" POV column towards weight in determining the distribution of viewpoints.
 * There's no question there's been harassment and threats, and they have to be highlighted and discussed and relatively early in the article text since, as many have suggested before, if there was no harassment or the like, GG would likely be very non-notable; the mere existance of those threats is the key reason GG is notable. But when you start going through all but the higher-tier sources that Rhoark has outlined, you find very little sustenance in these articles beyond spitting more bile at GG, which is a tone we are not allowed to take. Editors need to edit this topic in a very dispassionate manner, which is something that has not really happened until this draft. The amount of bitter tone from the bulk of the sources is something that NPOV tells us to correct, even if this appears to go against UNDUE. UNDUE still applies in discussing the distributions of POV about "GG is bad", but it cannot be used to bring in the same non-neutral tone being used by the sources. To the point of the harassment and threats the amount of coverage they have gotten is clearly a tone issue, not a POV issue and properly they should be presented as a core facet of the controversy but not highlighted to drown out any other rationale discussion of the topic.
 * This is why Rhoark's list of high-tier sources is important. When you read through these, the same tone taken by other sources is just not there; they are much much closer to the impartial tone that NPOV here requires. Works like the NYTimes establish the issues with harassment and threats as a central problem to the controversy, they still consider that the GG movement has very questionable goals and motives, but also recognize there's a lot of subtleties with whom is actually doing the harassing/threats, among other finer details that generally aren't covered by lower-tier sources. And as we are not news and looking towards longevity of information, this is the type of stuff that should be documented rather than knee-jerk reactions that the bulk of the press has given us to work with.
 * There's also the elephant in the room that the press here are not independent of the situation, and thus we do have to be very wary of anything they report or opine. Their actions are part of the controversy at this point, so just because they are normally reliable sources doesn't mean their word is "right". They're the most visible and the most loudest in POV and thus impact how this article needs to be written per RS/V and NPOV, but their involvement in the situation should make us even more careful about the tone. It is a systematic bias (due to the controversy being around issues of journalism) that we are support to work against to make a proper encyclopedic article that documents the controversy rather than drag us into it. And this is more reason to put focus on what the high-tier sources approach the topic as, as these are the sources known to be the least biased in past cases where they would be potentially biased.
 * This also explains that arguments so far on FALSEBALANCE are not really true. Again, I stress that UNDUE needs to be met based on the weight of POVs, and there's no way GG can be treated with a sympathetic view. What is happening with Rhoark's draft here is that when you take away the impressed tone following the press that the current mainspace version uses, you're still left with something that is highly critical of GG and addresses all the bad actions that have been associated with the movement/hashtag, but none of the anger. That's the side effect of being impartial is that if one is pre-disposed to dislike GG, it will look like whitewashing. Dispassionate writing and engagement is what WP demands, even if the bulk of the sources do not give that to us. --M ASEM (t) 20:09, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I think Masem has a nice take on this. I _do_ think we can spend a bit more time on the threats (including death threats), but I stand by my !vote here that the draft as-it-stands is better and I think it also has a much better chance of getting us to a good article (what we have not isn't that...). Hobit (talk) 02:51, 27 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Accept the draft. Neither is perfect, but the draft's structure is superior and requires less work to improve than the current version. Argento Surfer (talk) 12:41, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Reject per Guy and numerous other points made above. WP:FALSEBALANCE comes immediately to mind for this situation.  Immortal Horrors or Everlasting Splendors   16:40, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Reject per Aquillion et al. Any improved cohesiveness of the draft can be traced to it being the creation of (mostly) a single author, a quality the live article does lack, but is not enough to make it in any way superior to what we have now. Parabolist (talk) 22:19, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Reject fails NPOV. This really appears in the separation of the sections on Gamergate as a movement and the subsequent section "Responsibility for harassment"; the separation of these two in the draft is why folks are saying this is whitewashed. The hardcore harassment and death threats that have occurred are inextricably intertwined with the Gamergate movement.  The article also downplays the intensely personal and violent nature of the threats, as I noted above based on the word clouds generated by Kingsindian.  The efforts to contexualize in the "Cultural conflict" section are an interesting and encyclopedic idea but the execution fails - to have the second sentence of the "Feminist game criticism" section mention the "journalistic integrity" issue  - which is not otherwise mentioned in that section and has nothing to do with feminist critiques and some gamers' reaction to it  - is a small example of the overall lack of neutral presentation of the issues.  Jytdog (talk) 05:36, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The two sections are back-to-back for a reason. Nobody denies that the movement is inextricably linked with harassment, which is why the "Gamergate as a movement" section includes the following text: Critics assert that ethics concerns are only a pretense for further harassment - a view which is bolstered by Gamergate's origins in Quinn's harassment. Gamergate is described by its critics as being rooted in misogyny and reactionary politics. Jessica Valenti wrote in The Guardian that Gamergate is an effort by white men to maintain cultural dominance. Chrisella Herzog in The Diplomatic Courier writes that Gamergate manifests sexism, racism, transphobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and neo-Nazism. If this is "downplaying" and "whitewashing", I think I have a solution which strikes the right tone. I propose a draft, which would consist of a single sentence: "Gamergate is worse than ISIS". Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 10:48, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
 * To be fair, YouTube comment sections are worse than either. Just a thought. Dumuzid (talk) 11:13, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I generally do not like or appreciate sarcasm, Kingsindian, but you just made me laugh out loud with that ISIS remark.
 * I hear what you are saying both here and above. I believe a neutral article will make clear the personal and violent nature of the threats that have been made and show more clearly their intertwining with everything else Gamergaters are doing. As the article takes pains to state, Gamergaters are not organized and have many things going on; the separation in the draft of the ugly actions from their advocacy for positive goals is false; it is one ball of wax and framing that intertwining as "Critics say" is baloney.  That is where I think we differ. Jytdog (talk) 21:26, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
 * nvm. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 05:46, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Fun Fact: that statement of comparing GG with ISIS was actually first said by Devin Faraci. Sethyre (talk) 04:19, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
 * While I'd like to accommodate editors' desires as much as possible, I first follow the sources. Responsibility for harassment is separate from the section on the movement because a lot of different kinds of actors are responsible for harassment. Going against the best sources is what constitutes false balance. Rhoark (talk) 23:42, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I'll just call "baloney". The Gamergate "movement" is amorphous (no actual organization, no leadership, nothing definitive there to draw boundaries around)  and so drawing a bright line between the journalistic ethics thing and the vicious misogyny is untenable; Gamergaters would like the world to see these things as separate, but they aren't. Jytdog (talk) 19:58, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with this assessment, as someone who would fall under the term "Gamergater." However, When we also try to bring up the legitimate things that worry us, such as the GameJournoPro emailing group, it tends to get buried as WP:UNDUE or something like that. Just like you said, trying to draw a bright line between harassment and legitimate concerns is impossible, because everytime we do bring up something of note, such as a bomb threat towards the Airplay event hosted by the Society of Journalist Professionals, they never get the proper discussion they deserve (or at least, I would think they deserve.) Sethyre (talk) 03:43, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
 * With all due respect Sethyre, what you are describing is really a reliable sources issue, not a Wikipedia issue. The way to get the things you describe included in the article is to get them wider coverage in the reliable sources.  We're not here to set the record straight, and simply because something is "true" doesn't mean it gets included.  That being said, Wikipedia is a proxy battleground for a great many issues.  Cheers! Dumuzid (talk) 11:05, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Dumuzid (talk). I'm completely clueless to Wikipedia so I appreciate clearing that up for me. Especially considering how heated these things can get. Sethyre (talk) 20:04, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
 * To 's comment: To reiterate, there is no "bright line" between "journalism ethics" and "misogyny" or harassment. Indeed, the section I quoted above comes from the "Gamergate as a movement" section. It shows not only misogyny but other reactionary politics and cultural attitudes as well. The section "responsibility for harassment" is separate, coming just after the other section, because harassment is the most notable aspect of the movement -- as people here continually remind us. Therefore, it deserves a section of its own, describing all its aspects and events. Jytdog stated above that they do not like the "critics say" phrasing, but I fail to see how we can state all the things I quoted above in Wikipedia's voice. We should describe what the critics say per WP:YESPOV, which the draft does at great length and in detail. This can't satisfy people who want the draft to take a strident tone against Gamergate, but I can't help that. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 12:54, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
 * the result of the "critics say X" thing is WP:GEVAL, making it seem that the mysogeny is somehow only claimed and not actual. It is very real and comes from Gamergaters. This is another thing that makes it seem skewed.Jytdog (talk) 01:18, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Is the draft perfect? No, but it is not proposed as an end state, and I would expect further refinement. Is it better? Yes, clearly and significantly so. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 01:18, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Reject per Jytdog, Aquillion, etc. This draft fails WP:NPOV because it tries to create WP:FALSEBALANCE. ForbiddenRocky (talk) 09:38, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Accept draft - The core question is "Is the draft better?", that is, "better aligned to Wikipedia policies & guidelines". After an extensive review, I am convinced that it is. With respect to NPOV, we are required to represent fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic - if a view is included in a significant proportion of reliable sources then it must be represented in the article, and it must be represented fairly, and without editorial bias. There is a current trend, reflected in the Reject !votes above, to consider only the "proportionately" aspect of the NPOV policy (and to consider it tendentiously at that). NPOV is not so limited, and rather than selectively choosing which parts to follow, we must attempt compliance with the policy as a whole. In particular, the current article fails: WP:BALANCE, by failing to describe opposing views clearly and from a disinterested viewpoint; WP:IMPARTIAL, through failure to present viewpoints with an impartial tone; WP:YESPOV, through use of opinion sources as fact and failure to attribute opinion. There are also issues with original research and unverified content, with partisan selection of opinion tier sources, and with a structure which buries viewpoints or aspects found in a significant proportion of reliable sources. I do not find these same issues to the same extent in the draft. The "proportionality" arguments above are not compelling to me, nor would they be to any editor who had examined a broad range of sources. I note that & I are perhaps the only editors to have done any exhaustive examination of the sources (see analysis here) - both finding that they do not reflect a one-sided view of this controversy, nor do they establish that any views are sufficiently "fringe" as to allow arguments based on false balance to hold water. Add to this that the draft is infinitely more accessible to the uninitiated reader and clearly explains the viewpoints and aspects that are found in reliable sources.

summary of !votes
2603:3024:200:300:C67:8989:F806:A1A2 (talk) 07:27, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Mediation proposed
It's been several days since any substantive feedback. Most reject votes do not speak to the question, seeing as they call out some perceived flaw in the draft without relating these quibbles to the existing article's far more blatant violations of the exact same policies or principles. Notwithstanding this, I would not expect at this stage for any closer to declare in good faith that there is a consensus. If some editors insist on holding the draft to extraordinary standards they would not expect of the existing Gamergate article or any other article, that can be accommodated. If it's not ready for Featured Article status, I'm not satisfied either. I can work with these expectations; what I cannot work with are demands for the draft to conform to a vision of reality that no one is willing or able to substantiate with evidence. Here I mean primarily saying The problem is that this draft structure forces a false equivalence between aspects that generally get only bare mentions (at best) and the vast majority of remaining coverage, which has focused overwhelmingly on particular incidents of harassment and the timeline behind them. The vast majority of coverage has presented the topic in a manner much closer to the current article, especially the current article's excellent and comprehensive history section, though others have expressed similar sentiment in not so many words. That is not accurately reflective of the structure of reliable coverage, and I should know - considering I've recently compiled the best summary of said coverage to exist as yet. I'm prepared to be proved wrong though, if proof is provided. To that end I started the discussion on reliable sources below. The amount and kind of participation has been below what is needed. I'm bemused that even the most reliable sources are not trusted to be representative of the reliable sources if I had a hand in curating them, but I can at least understand that the people who most need to participate are leery of a discussion where I have set the agenda and timetable. For that reason, I think formal mediation is appropriate at this juncture. Rhoark (talk) 19:01, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

The formal process cannot start while there is a parallel dispute resolution (such as this RfC), so lets get a straw poll on two things:
 * Do you agree with ending the RfC per WP:Requests_for_comment #3 ?
 * Yes Rhoark (talk) 19:01, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Not yet. I would like to give the RfC the opportunity to play out; and also for the self-involved reason that I have not !voted, and should like to do so. Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 00:11, 1 October 2016 (UTC)


 * If formal mediation takes place, do you think you should be a party?
 * Yes Rhoark (talk) 19:01, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Maybe. While I do not see a requirement to be involved, I am happy to so be if I can add value to the process. Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 00:11, 1 October 2016 (UTC)


 * As I posted below, I'm fairly surprised that you could come away from your survey thinking that it supported your draft; it seems clear to me that the weight and structure of even the articles you selected broadly reflects the current article. Regardless, it is clear that there is not enough consensus to replace the article wholesale.  I definitely will not participate in any sort of mediation where that is considered; as I said above, I don't feel that the draft could provide appropriate, adequate, or balanced coverage of the topic as it appears in the sources, so I don't feel that there's anything to discuss in that regard.  Beyond that, I don't feel that "completely replace an article on a highly-controversial subject with a draft written, more or less, by a single person" is within the scope of what mediation can reasonably be expected to resolve (so I strongly encourage others to reject mediation on that basis as well; mediation requires at least some common ground, which "replace the article entirely with this draft, primarily written by me" doesn't really provide for.)  What I would suggest doing instead is to focus on the aspects that you consider most important (especially the ones that seem least-controversial otherwise) and discussing those individually on the article talk page, which has been relatively low in activity for a while now.  Many of the things you're requesting are already in the article; if the issue is merely one of tone or phrasing, then there might be smaller compromises that can be reached.  But as a starting point for discussions, "here's a completely distinct draft I propose replacing the entire disputed article with" is not something I feel we can reasonably expect mediation to resolve. --Aquillion (talk) 20:13, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Failing to gain consensus for a more sympathetic article on a subject where you have an emotional investment is not a thing that requires mediation. Guy (Help!) 20:41, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Assuming that the implicit conjecture that a consensus will not be formed is accurate, such absence of consensus for long-standing, intractable issues, where the article Talk page has become moribund, is exactly the sort of thing where mediation might offer assistance. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 00:11, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
 * It really seems to me (though I'll apologize for not being more attentive to this RfC, having contributed previously) that the effort expended here is better off used simply working on the primary article. Despite the assertion above, I found all of the reject opinions to be coherent and parsimonious.  It seems churlish to demand that every single reject voter use a fine tooth-comb to pick apart an extremely large draft sentence-by-sentence before their reject opnion can be considered; in fact, I'd applaud most commenters who took the effort to condense their opninions to something readable.  Concision is important.  If Rhoark wanted more detailed, comprehensive feedback, inviting people to the draft itself seems to be the better method, not an RfC and then later, a mediation to get the draft approved wholesale. Heterodidact (talk) 02:01, 1 October 2016 (UTC)


 * pretty sure the suggestion for mediation is forum shopping. 2602:306:BD7F:C6E0:9CB7:69F:C1DA:2C87 (talk) 20:46, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * pretty sure it's not. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 00:11, 1 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment As a sitting member of the Mediation Committee, I can say that this request would almost certainly be declined by the Committee. The Wordsmith Talk to me 21:05, 30 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I have to say that mediation feels inapposite here, per Aquillion. The process is supposed to facilitate collaboration and consensus, and I'm not sure "replace this article wholesale" can ever really do that.  I say start smaller, but I am mindful of how well that has worked out in the past.  Thanks. Dumuzid (talk) 21:05, 30 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I have no idea why people are challenging your draft yet failing to cite any particular parts in the proposal that support their argument. For example, many people are claiming "The sources you gave are more supportive of the current article and not the draft." I don't quite understand how that works, considering the edits in the draft are all from the sourced material, and I've seen not a single ounce of evidence to support why and how they support the current article over the draft. In fact, it's common knowledge on WP that the GG article is completely unreadable as it currently is, so I have to wonder why people want to keep that page just as it is instead of at least trying to make it better with rewrites and drafts. The whole thing is just insane to me. Sethyre (talk) 21:09, 30 September 2016 (UTC)


 * it's "request for comment", not "request for only people who agree with me" - I suggest you accept the result, abandon your attempts to replace the article and work to improve it in the normal manner, with the awareness that things are not always going to go your way and that most people do not see the sources the way you do. 2600:100F:B00C:4388:CD51:C6B0:C69D:D3BC (talk) 21:14, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * To clarify, I do not propose mediation about the question of this RfC or the draft text at all. I want to talk about what sources we mean when we talk about whether or not the mainspace article reflects them. Rhoark (talk) 23:09, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * That would circumvent the 500/30 restriction on the GGC talk page. Why not have the proper discussion on the GCC talk page. 2602:306:BD7F:C6E0:A8BB:21F6:9B4F:B9E7 (talk) 23:27, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm really not sure where to start. Perhaps best to have a read of WP:M and understand that process. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 00:11, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

As for this RfC, I'd keep it open the full 30 days - there's no harm in it. As for mediation, I'm pretty sure mediation would not work. There are too many people involved and with positions too far apart for consensus to be possible. It's pretty clear from the comments to the RfC and in this section that many people find the tone in the current article to be just fine and don't want any major changes. That's their right, of course, but such a gap can't be bridged in mediation. Mediation is also quite time intensive.

In my opinion, if this RfC doesn't find consensus, there are several options available:
 * Give up.
 * Abandon the draft and try to improve the current article.
 * Have an RfC in the future (perhaps 6 months) where some of the valid comments here have been incorporated the article. I'm pretty sure most people will not change their mind no matter how much the draft is improved, but that is normal in things involving politics and ideology.
 * Fork some of the material, discussing separate aspects of Gamergate, out into separate articles. I made a suggestion on the talkpage some time ago. At this point, there's enough material available to write full articles about many aspects of the controversy. Most NPOV matters on Wikipedia are handled through forking, not making changes in the original article. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 02:31, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The fork idea just sounds like a recipe for a bunch of WP:POVFORKs. And I seriously question whether there's "enough material available to write full articles on many aspects." If you ask me - and based on my reading of the sources - that's not the case at all.  In fact, I think the existing article on Gamergate is bloated and should be a lot shorter. Fyddlestix (talk) 02:53, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The article has 250 references and many more are possible if one drills down on specific aspects. I'm pretty sure one can make substantial articles using 50 or even 20 references. As for the worry about POVFORK, that would depend on implementation - the implementation could be good or bad. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 04:53, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The subject just isn't that important. The sprawl of references is only really a result of the endless back and forth between warring camps. Guy (Help!) 20:38, 2 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose a move to mediation. This RFC is this draft's day in the sun - if it fails to win consensus, then it's back to the drawing board (ie, the article talk page - which is where this conversation/RFC, and any future discussions about re-drafts, are supposed to happen). I know it's a controversial article and that people on both sides have strong feelings about it - but that's no excuse for trying to make an end-run around normal procedures and editing restrictions that have been placed on that article for good reasons. Fyddlestix (talk) 02:53, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose The format of this RFC is a piss poor way to get a consensus. Do you like my 137,841 bytes of text or do you like the current 155,690 bytes? This is the question being asked. If you are for these changes you should present them incrementally imo. The RFC process doesn't work well with a mine or theirs context.-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 12:12, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Sidebar on reliable sources
A recurring response seems to be to doubt whether the draft uses WP:BESTSOURCES or emphasizes the most appropriate claims from those sources. Let's talk first about what the best sources are. If we can agree on an approximate list, then we can start looking at how those sources weight different claims. This is particularly in relation to overall article structure, so lets keep things manageable by limiting the scope to sources that attempt to describe, in the publication's own voice, the complete controversy at the time of writing. This is not to say other sources are not reliable, but interviews, breaking news, or mentions in passing will not be as informative about how to arrange a high-level outline. First let's try to agree on what the most reliable overviews and explainers are. Once we settle on which ones to look at, we can talk about how they structure themselves. There's a dearth of complete overviews after 2014 (breaking stories later tend to link to 2014 explainers or just assume people already know), but we can leave the implications of that for later. Please identify anything that seems to be missing from this list, or appears to be rated too highly or lowly. Rhoark (talk) 17:53, 14 September 2016 (UTC)


 * http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/technology/gamergate-women-video-game-threats-anita-sarkeesian.html
 * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/03/gamergate-corruption-games-anita-sarkeesian-zoe-quinn
 * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/11/gamergate-a-brief-history-of-a-computer-age-war
 * http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/gamergate.php
 * http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/09/24/349835297/-gamergate-controversy-fuels-debate-on-women-and-video-games
 * https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/01/gamergate-at-the-beginning-of-2015
 * http://gac.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/04/13/1555412016640408.short


 * http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/15/living/gamergate-explainer/
 * http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/opinion/sunday/the-disheartening-gamergate-campaign.html
 * http://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/gamergate-how-a-gamer-fight-turned-into-an-all-out-culture-war/
 * http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2014/09/15/derriere-le-gamersgate-un-groupe-antifeministe_4485191_4408996.html
 * http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2014/09/15/comprendre-les-affaires-de-sexisme-dans-le-jeu-video_4487453_4408996.html
 * http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/gamergate-scandal-erupts-video-game-community
 * http://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Tech-Culture/2014/1125/Gamergate-and-the-new-horde-of-digital-saboteurs
 * http://time.com/3510381/gamergate-faq/
 * https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/12/with-gamergate-the-video-game-industrys-growing-pains-go-viral/
 * https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/14/the-only-guide-to-gamergate-you-will-ever-need-to-read/
 * http://fortune.com/2014/10/22/gamergate-guide/
 * http://www.diplomaticourier.com/when-the-internet-breeds-hate/
 * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/03/zoe-quinn-gamergate-interview
 * http://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/10/gamergate-explained


 * http://www.vox.com/2014/9/6/6111065/gamergate-explained-everybody-fighting
 * http://gawker.com/what-is-gamergate-and-why-an-explainer-for-non-geeks-1642909080
 * http://deadspin.com/the-future-of-the-culture-wars-is-here-and-its-gamerga-1646145844
 * http://www.vulture.com/2014/10/why-you-should-care-about-gamergate.html


 * http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/11195/battle-of-gamergate-2014/
 * http://www.ibtimes.com/what-gamergate-scandal-female-game-developer-flees-home-amid-online-threats-1704046
 * http://herocomplex.latimes.com/games/gamergate-related-controversy-reveals-ugly-side-of-gaming-community/
 * https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/07/the-gamergate-question/
 * http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/09/04/gamergate-a-closer-look-at-the-controversy-sweeping-video-games/#218056dd5448
 * http://www.recode.net/2014/10/9/11631750/what-is-gamergate-and-why-is-intel-so-afraid-of-it
 * http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/11180510/gamergate-misogynist-felicia-day-zoe-quinn-brianna-wu.html
 * http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/31/the-deanbeat-like-it-or-hate-it-gamergate-isnt-losing-steam/


 * http://time.com/3274247/video-game-culture-war/
 * http://reason.com/archives/2014/10/12/gamergate-part-i-sex-lies-and-gender-gam
 * http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/22/gaming-misogyny-gets-infinite-lives-zoe-quinn-virtual-rape-and-sexism.html
 * http://spectator.org/63882_beginners-guide-gamergate/
 * http://metaleater.com/video-games/feature/gamers-live-an-in-depth-analysis-of-gamergate
 * http://metro.co.uk/2014/10/15/gamergate-what-is-it-and-why-are-gamers-so-angry-4907102/
 * http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/technology/confused-gamergate-heres-simple-guide-4536829


 * http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/thinkpieces/why-gamergate-will-lose/


 * When did a blog post on Adam Smith Institute website become a "High-quality" source. — Strongjam (talk) 17:16, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The Adam Smith Institute is considered reputable and authoritative on far more complex and weighty matters than Gamergate.. From the author bio, Ben is Head of Research at the Adam Smith Institute, overseeing the ASI’s research papers and strategy. His intellectual interests include monetary regimes, nature vs. nurture in individual differences, sport economics, prediction markets, and quantitative approaches to social phenomena in general. At the ASI, he wrote a 2014 paper on the effect of foreign footballers on the English side, a 2016 paper on safe standing in football stadia, and his review of scholarly research on the economic burden of corporation tax was published in 2013. He has also had a book review published in the academic journal Intelligence and wrote the entry on business cycles in the forthcoming Encyclopaedia of Social Theory. He writes regularly on the ASI blog. He has written for City A.M., Conservative Home, The Guardian, TheSpectator, CapX, Huffington Post, The Yorkshire Post, BBC Online, The IBTimes, and appeared on BBC News, the Today Programme, Sunday Politics Scotland, BBC Scotland 2015, BBC World News, Scotland Tonight, Sky News,BBC Look North, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and many other radio stations and TV programmes. The fact the work is labeled as "thinkpiece" rather than "research" keeps it out of the top tier, but overall the bona fides of publisher and author are greater than those I've placed as mid-tier. Rhoark (talk) 17:52, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * This is from their blog, not one of their research pieces. This doesn't even qualify for WP:RS let alone "High-quality". — Strongjam (talk) 17:55, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * One does not need to agree with every choice in a classification. Do you feel that it is largely accurate? Incidentally, reliability is always in context. Two of the citations to the piece in the draft are simply together with multiple citations for the same (undisputed) fact, and can be removed with little or no loss. The third citation is for an attributed opinion - a person is obviously reliable for his own views. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 18:09, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Personally I'd just drop it entirely. Where it's cited for his opinion in the draft it says the controversy represents a schism within the political left. while his opinion in the source is less firm "This makes me think that gamergate might be best characterised as a case of leftist infighting". Generally this is a symptom of a larger problem with the draft. Some of the sourced statements don't quite match what the sources say, e.g. "Shawn Layden thought there was more to Gamergate than harassment" what the source actually says "I don't think there is one statement or one position on it, or one answer to whatever this very broadly-defined #GamerGate really means. A lot of things are getting swept into that.". The statement "Some journalists have been reluctant to revisit the controversy when new developments might validate the Gamergate movement" is sourced to CJR which doesn't say that "new developments might validate the Gamergate movement" says "A number of top journalists in the field declined to speak to CJR on the record because they feared validating Gamergate as something more than a collection of trolls. One described the hashtag not as a movement with goals, but rather as a platform “used by anyone who wants to say something.” Another feared it would inject false equivalency into the debate: “There is no Gamergate and anti-Gamergate,” he says. “That’s like saying people who don’t collect postage stamps are anti-postage stamps.”" There may be more, but I don't have the energy to check every cite. — Strongjam (talk) 18:27, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * This is good; we're already getting actionable issues. For this section though let's assume that the draft will be undergoing revisions, and not put the cart before the horse. How I'd like for this to proceed is:
 * Consensus on what the key sources are
 * Analysis of what structure they use within themselves
 * Ab initio generation of an "ideal" outline.
 * Then maybe we can compare the article and draft to the ideal and suggest edits. With that in mind, I'll put Adam Smith in a "disputed" category. Rhoark (talk) 18:37, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Let's first decide whether the sources are classified in a reasonable manner and then only later worry about whether they are rendered fairly and with all nuances. Do you think the classification above is reasonable? Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 19:46, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I suggest continuing this thread at Talk:Gamergate_controversy Rhoark (talk) 14:21, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * What about the CJR piece you've linked makes it a 'top shelf source'? It's not academic, Chris Ip does not seem to be an expert in the field or a particularly accomplished journalist, and it was published in the infancy of the harassment campaign and is unusable for any sort of macroscopic view. PeterTheFourth (talk) 21:36, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * He is (was?) a Delacorte Fellow - so a recent journalism school grad, who is essentially doing a post-grad work experience/internship at CJR. It's explained Here. Fyddlestix (talk) 02:37, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Columbia Journalism Review is a publication of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, which is widely recognized as the best such school in the country. It's one of the best sources there is about the practice of journalism and considered an authority about the quality of other publications. After the UVA story, Rolling Stone turned to CJR to audit their editorial process. This particular piece is a review not only of the GG controversy to that point, but identifying and describing the landscape of published articles on it. It should be immediately apparent how that's useful to us. Coming in late October it catches more than a lot of overviews. (As I mentioned, there are few late-breaking overviews.) About Ip, he wrote the story while on a one-year fellowship offered to 3 Columbia journalism grads each year. Two months prior to this story, he had written in CJR about New Games Journalism. Before that, he was at Reuters Hong Kong office writing about the Chinese government. Rhoark (talk) 12:03, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Colour me 'unconvinced' as to the top shelf quality of that source. PeterTheFourth (talk) 12:17, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Is there a reason for that, or just a gut feeling? Diego (talk) 13:22, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I outlined three issues I had with it being considered a 'top shelf source'- there was an attempt to address two of them, but they were not convincing attempts. PeterTheFourth (talk) 13:24, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I would add that the CJR piece is likely being misused even if it is a top-quality source; I took issue with it because it was using the authority of the source and the credentials of the author to add weight to the opinion of a single individual interviewed by the author, which struck me as wrong. Heterodidact (talk) 18:17, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Although that's a different piece from CJR you're referring to, I think its absolutely representative of the authority CJR has and one valid way to use that authority. They interview Koretzky as a matter of course because he's at the center of that particular story. For the others - David Auerbach, Mia Consalvo, and James Fudge - there's no obvious reason they should inevitably be interviewed. It's not as if CJR is lacking names in their rolodex either. The choice to interview them informs not only that they said something, but that they are people whose opinions on the matter are worth seeking out. I didn't use Consalvo's quote since it backed up claims that were already asserted, but looking at this question more closely makes me think some of her work ought to be brought up in the "Cultural conflict" section. Rhoark (talk) 18:53, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * That strikes me as a lot of unsupported inference about the notability of said opinions, to be quite honest. Going to such lengths to theorize about the subtext that might be implied by the assumed editorial process behind  the article is probably an indication that the article isn't saying what you want it to say. Heterodidact (talk) 19:15, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to great lengths to "theorize" anything. I'm describing WP:WEIGHT and WP:USEBYOTHERS as applied to quoted pundits. I honestly don't understand what the alternative would be in deciding whether to use a quotation. Rhoark (talk) 20:02, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Forgive me, but I see explicit theorizing - you note that there's "no reason" you can see to quote a particular individual, and then you take that as evidence that if they were quoted, that must mean the CJR thinks they were important, even though there's no evidence there was any selection process of that nature anywhere. Heterodidact (talk) 20:09, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I looked into this (my uni subscribes to CJR) and the Ip piece never actually appeared in the journal - if you look at it carefully, too, you'll see that it's web-only content on the CJR's "Behind the News" blog. So it's a blog post by a recently-graduated journalism student who was interning at CJR. It might still have some weight given that it's on the CJR site (per WP:NEWSBLOG) but I wouldn't give it the same weight that an article actually published in the CJR would have, and I certainly wouldn't classify it as "top shelf." NEWSBLOG says we should be cautious in use of such sources and that they might not go through the full editorial control process (no idea if this is the case at CJR or not). Fyddlestix (talk) 14:54, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * This list seems incomplete relative to the draft. E.G. The draft uses Breitbart as a source a few times, and I seriously doubt it should be used as a source ever. 2601:640:8001:D700:90A2:BB3F:EBCB:AC66 (talk) 23:45, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * From what I can see, Breitbart is used three times. One is an attributed opinion of Milo. Two of them are simply used as one of multiple citations about the same thing because they are cited by other sources as well. It's rather hard to talk about Gamergate without mentioning Breitbart at all. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 03:30, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Added Mother Jones to group B. Rhoark (talk) 20:39, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Why is the Alexander Time article in section E? Is the rationale that Time is a marginal quality source, that Leigh Alexander was involved prior to Sept. 5, 2014, or that she became involved after (and presumably as a consequence of) writing that article?  If it's the latter, I don't think that's a valid reason to discount a source. --Noren (talk) 15:38, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
 * She did write this which was published a week earlier. Which source might reasonably be included here in a lower tier- even though it doesn't mention Gamergate by name I think that "... they can concoct online ‘wars’ about social justice or ‘game journalism ethics,’" makes it pretty clear who that article is about.  Heck, why isn't this included, is it just because it also didn't use the neologism 'Gamergate'?  I would have expected that an actual publication in The Globe and Mail should be included and regarded as a higher quality source than, for example, a 'web exclusive' on firstthings.com.--Noren (talk) 15:38, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Alexander is as deeply involved an individual as Quinn, Gjoni, Yiannopoulos, Sarkeesian, etc. That doesn't mean unreliable for all claims, but we should look to more independent sources to organize and frame the issues. Add Globe&Mail to the list. Rhoark (talk) 16:10, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Do you have a source indicating that she was involved prior to authoring that article on Sept. 5, 2014, or is it your argument that she should be retroactively dismissed because she was later attacked and responded to those attacks?--Noren (talk) 18:26, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
 * You seem to be mixed up on the timeline and directions of causality, which is understandable if you've been reading the mainspace article. Draft:Gamergate_controversy should make things a bit clearer. Rhoark (talk) 22:52, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Outlines
While the discussion above may need some more time to play out, we can go ahead and start outlining some of these. I'll take one or a few at a time, and others can help if they like. Let's treat these as collaborative content rather than users' personal comments, so if there seems to be a problem with an outline we can BRD for expedience. Rhoark (talk) 03:37, 17 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Introduction
 * harassment: Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, and various game designers/scholars/critics
 * Academic game studies conspiracy theories
 * Cultural Marxism conspiracy theories
 * GG Operations targeting DiGRA
 * Swarm-like leaderless organization of GG


 * What was GG?
 * Zoepost
 * "Gamers are over" articles
 * Size of GG estimated from various social media


 * Ethics or Harassment?
 * Baldwin starting the hashtag
 * Issues from GG perspective: Gerstmanngate, TotalBiscuit commentary, GameJournoPros
 * "Gamers are over" some more
 * Issues according to Gamerghazi: harassing Zoe Quinn
 * 4chan logs
 * Academics supporting GG: Christina Hoff Sommers, Nick Flor


 * Talking About GG
 * Disunity of GG, unawareness of other participants' actions
 * sockpuppets, Joshua Goldberg
 * False flags in the hashtag, harassment of GG supporters
 * doxxing of GG supporters, opponents, Quinn, Sarkeesian, Wu, Felicia Day
 * SWATting
 * GG claimed disaffiliation with baphomet, No True Scotsman
 * harassment in larger game / image board culture


 * Image Board Culture
 * Anonymous
 * blase attitude toward offensive speech
 * Sarah Nyberg
 * longevity/ephemerality of imageboard content
 * sensationalist misinformation survives by getting more bumps than corrections


 * The Hooligans of the 'Net
 * GG analogized to football hooligans
 * hypermasculinity
 * NotYourShield
 * social bonding among participants
 * female GG supporters compared to female football hooligans
 * GG's belief in their own victimization


 * Who Benefits?
 * GG theories about Quinn and Sarkeesian profiting from the controversy
 * pro-GG YouTuber revenue
 * socially/economically marginalized GG supporters


 * A Weakness of Participatory Culture
 * diverse range of social media used in the controversy, echo chambers
 * wider social impact than expected from the topic and number of participants
 * importance of more research


 * Sarkeesian Utah threat
 * dense paragraph on various subfactions/goals, including harassment and ethics
 * changing game market demographics
 * harassment of Raph Koster in the 1990s
 * industry reaction/silence on the topic
 * Baldwin starting the tag; #StopGamerGate; SJWs
 * Zoepost
 * harassment of Quinn
 * harassment of Wu
 * more on player demographics
 * depiction of women, Lara Croft


 * (intro)
 * conflict between gamers and critics has been building for several years
 * player demographics changing due to smartphones and Wii


 * Enter the critics
 * Anita Sarkeesian and others investigating games
 * gamers feeling unfairly demonized
 * Zoepost, threats against Quinn and Sarkeesian, #gamergate hashtag, theories of press/developer collusion (all in one paragraph!)
 * gamer identity, alleged conflicts of interest, SJWs


 * The mistakes behind the hate
 * gamers regard criticism as coming from outside the community rather than inside
 * press problems exist but are overblown
 * analogies to movie and film press
 * unfairness of equating media criticism with misogynist harassment


 * The perceived power of social justice
 * fears about SJW influence on games is overblown
 * people can make their own game media with blackjack and hookers
 * harassment is bad
 * people should be able to express themselves without fear


 * Zoepost
 * "ethics in game journalism" and "SJWs" (skeptical)
 * GG's macho game preferences
 * Twine
 * GG concerns about Patreon
 * Kotaku and Intel responding to GG concerns
 * GG declining in influence


 * quoting definitions of GG from various media
 * entered mainstream media because of NYT reporting Utah threat
 * coverage is pieced together from examining social media
 * it's confusing
 * size of GG estimated from Reddit; goals are contradictory
 * harassment of Sarkeesian, Quinn, Wu; part of a wider Internet trend
 * culture war / expanding game audience / definition of gamer
 * difficulty in assigning responsibility for threats; many ethics criticisms debunked
 * anti-GG has more effective figureheads than Adam Baldwin
 * blockquote of Jesse Singal explaining No True Scotsman


 * Gamergate is about two things: "ethics in video game journalism, and the role and treatment of women in the video game industry"
 * attention has been brought to these things because of harassment
 * Zoe Quinn, Depression Quest
 * Zoepost, backlash on Twitter, SJWs
 * Threats against Quinn
 * Anita Sarkeesian, Tropes vs. Women, threats
 * Andreas Zecher's open letter
 * Leigh Alexander's opinions: not a minority of gamers who resist change


 * (intro)
 * Utah State threats
 * online arguments between "a wide variety of disgruntled people"


 * What is #Gamergate?
 * differing game preferences between men and women
 * agenda-driven arguers, death threats
 * hardcore gamers vs feminists


 * How did it start?
 * Tropes vs. Women
 * Zoepost, threats
 * Baldwin, #GamerGate, #StopGamerGate2014
 * free speech, media bias against gamers


 * Why are people so angry?
 * changing player demographics
 * SJWs


 * Can we resolve this?
 * Wu harassment
 * threats spurring support for anti-GG
 * ESA statement

CNN lists the following "story highlights":
 * "Threats against a feminist critic have refocused attention on #Gamergate"
 * "Term refers to debates over the definition of video games and the identity of gamers"
 * "Women are complaining about sexism in video games"
 * "Some men say feminist attacks on games are akin to censorship"


 * Gamergate focusing attention on Sarkeesian, false allegations against Quinn
 * feud between video game fans about depictions of women
 * gamers accused of being sexist, "Gamers are Over", Intel advertising
 * female supporters, #NotYourShield; quote Cathy Young about offense-driven feminism
 * Yiannopoulos involved opportunistically
 * Felica Day doxxing, Utah State threat
 * Wu threats; chilling effect on women in gaming


 * Anita Sarkeesian, Tropes vs. Women
 * threats against Sarkeesian 2012 onward
 * Utah State threat
 * thousands of non-threatening messages attempting to debunk and silence Sarkeesian
 * diversification in games' thematic content
 * Depression Quest, #gamergate, Baldwin, Grayson allegation
 * GG stated aims: ethical journalism, objective reporting; critics see it as hate movement
 * GG is tiny relative to game audience; Intel advertising
 * GG fear game criticism will lead to censorship; see criticism of sexism in games as criticism of gamers as sexist
 * unlike past critics, present critics believe in the medium
 * GG concerns about Patron, Jenn Frank, Simon Parkin
 * potential of games as a medium

Analysis
The sources outlined so far seem like a good overview. Some trends and themes are immediately apparent to me, but I want to hear what other people think. Rhoark (talk) 01:39, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Delving into the weeds like this is the opposite of what we should do when you cannot even justify the weighting you've assigned to sources (such as 'top shelf' for the CJR source.) PeterTheFourth (talk) 01:44, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I have given what seem like very solid justifications for this classification and don't understand the objection. I've asked for outside input from RSN. In the meantime, it would also be more constructive to suggest what publications you think are most suitable for informing article structure. Rhoark (talk) 02:12, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Comment - I have to agree that I see no point in posting and picking through point-form "outlines" of the sources when the larger problem appears to be with the selection of sources. For example: there are a number of academic sources (stuff that, per WP:RS and WP:WEIGHT should really be listed under "top shelf" sources above) that aren't used at all, either in the draft or in the current article. Those source suggest that the article should read quite differently than this draft does. Some examples: Those are just some of the top results when I type "gamergate" into a summon search and limit it to peer-reviewed sources, and there is a lot more out there that describes gamergate in similar terms that's not used here. So I'm not seeing a lot of support (basically, none) for the wording, tone and structure of this draft in the academic literature on this subject. There is no point trying to convince me that the article is "true" to the sources when the sources used to write the draft appear to have at best been assembled haphazardly, or at worst cherry-picked to support a particular view. Fyddlestix (talk) 07:16, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * This paper, describes Gamergate as an incident where "several high-profile female computer game developers were subjected to prolonged harassment, intimidation, and vilification," and notes that "While attempts were made to justify these attacks as attempts to expose wrongdoing in computer games journalism ... misogynism is a more convincing explanation."
 * This article, describes Gamergate as "an attempt to harass a woman out of participation in gaming culture," and a "misogynist backlash." While it notes that the abuse was often justified as a means of "'retaining the ethics in game journalism’" the article notes that "this explanation is difficult to square with the program of dedicated, focused abuse which has included detailed discussions and investigations into her sexual history, the leaking of nude photographs, ‘doxxing’ to find out her real life details, death and rape threats, and attempts to bully her and her supporters out of the industry." The article criticizes "Attempts by participants in the gamergate movement to deny there is a solid core of misogyny and anti-feminism reactionary rhetoric within the faithful," suggesting that this "creates an atmosphere where bad faith must be assumed."
 * This book describes Gamergate as "a campaign of harassment against women in the video game industry”
 * If you are already convinced, then of course there is no use talking to you. But other people might be interested in your analysis. As mentioned in the comment right at the top of this section, the sources being talked about above are "explainer" sources, which describe the timeline or the events in some detail. Among the sources you list, the first one deals with the matter in one paragraph (and quotes the third one as the source). It was only published this September, so it is hardly surprising that it isn't mentioned either in the article or the draft. The first and the third source's topics are doxing, harassment, "gendertrolling" and so on: so of course they focus on those aspects of the matter. This does not mean that there weren't other aspects of the matter. The second source (Heron, Belford, Goker) is indeed cited both in the article (10 times) and the draft (8 times), so I am not sure what your point is. By the way, it is not a peer-reviewed source, but it is still a good-quality source. Coming to your larger point: nobody denies that the incident was kicked off by a harassment campaign and that harassment is the major aspect of the matter. You can find that in the lead of the draft, the second sentence of which is: The controversy was incited in August 2014 by false or unsubstantiated accusations against game developer Zoe Quinn..., as well as the body of the draft (which starts with the harassment of Quinn; more than half of the article is devoted to harassment). That emphasis, however, does not mean that it is illegitimate to mention other aspects of the matter, also noted in many sources, provided it is done neutrally and in proportion. Indeed, this is what NPOV is about. Rhoark has given several sources in this comment which note the other aspects of the phenomenon. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 08:27, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, great; this is what I asked for. I'll read them ASAP. Rhoark (talk) 11:39, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The first is an article about doxxing, mainly outside the Gamergate controversy. Mentions in passing will not give a complete overview, and it's no surprise it focuses on the aspect that is the source's main topic.
 * The second - Heron, Belford, and Goker in the ACM - is used in the mainspace and draft article. I considered it to be mainly about the 4chan IRC log, but it does have a fairly extensive background discussion, so using it as one of the overviews seems perfectly reasonable.
 * I can't find full text of Gendertrolling online. If someone can provide a copy, or outline the relevant part themselves, we can see whether it gives a sufficiently broad overview. It is, however, a book about harassment first and foremost, so it would be unsurprising to see Gamergate discussed only in that light.
 * Rhoark (talk) 12:05, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok, in response to both Kingsindian and Rhoark - sorry about not noticing the use of the second source. I did check, not sure how I missed it. @Kingsindian, I'm never said that I'm "already convinced," only that I'm not convinced that the list of sources Rhoark has distilled down above is representative of what's available/best to use.
 * That brings me to the "this would be great about an article on doxxing" or "these are works about gendertrolling, harassment, etc, so of course they'll focus on that" arguments. I'm afraid I don't find that line of thought convincing at all, as the sources I listed/quoted are representative of what comes up when I search any major academic database (or meta-database like summon) for "Gamergate" - I did not limit my search to "Gamergate and harassment" or anything like that, and I did not restrict my search to scholars of a particular field or persuasion.
 * In other words, as far as academic scholars are concerned (again, in any field, and in any political persuasion - but who are publishing in properly academic works) the harassment appears to be what is notable/worth discussing about Gamergate. In fact, as the quotes I pulled out above show, most of these sources regard the harassment as the distinguishing, defining characteristic of Gamergate.  This is what academics in general have to say about Gamergate, but that perspective appears to be significantly under-weighted in the draft.
 * Finally, in reply to Kingsindian's final point, yes, I never said that it was illegitimate to discuss other aspects, and in fact we're in agreement that we can and should do so "neutrally and in proportion" - but from where I stand it seems clear that by far the largest number of highest-quality sources forefront the harassment and misogyny of gamergate way more than Rhoark's draft does. Fyddlestix (talk) 14:02, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I just want to jump in briefly to concur with Fyddlestix (who has clearly done far more work on this than I have). Rhoark, it seems to me what you are creating here is a great article for some sort of scholarly or journalistic venue, but suboptimal as a Wikipedia entry.  As I often say, reasonable minds may differ.  Thanks. Dumuzid (talk) 14:17, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't mean to imply you searched specifically for harassment, but in any search not all the results will treat the topic in a way that's suitable for an overview. There's a difference between "This is an article about Gamergate. It's X." vs. "This is an article about X. Gamergate is an example." The second is not useless, but its a statement more about the author's interests than about the topic's contours.
 * I have to take exception to the assertion that "sources used to write the draft appear to have at best been assembled haphazardly, or at worst cherry-picked to support a particular view". The sources used were the result of a careful curation, categorization, and annotation of sources beginning in June 2015. It is not by accident or preference that the draft relies mostly on best academic sources (Mortensen and Heron,Belford,&Goker) and best journalistic sources (NPR, CNN, CJR, BBC, NYT, The Guardian, and the Washington Post). Furthermore, an effort was made to use each source in line with it's main idea. People want to play gotcha by finding where these sources also discuss harassment, as if the draft didn't include those parts too. It's there and given the lion's share of weight. Under the broad umbrellas these sources outline, the draft uses more specialized sources such as games press or local papers to fill in detail as is appropriate to do in Wikipedia's role as a tertiary source. In contrast, the main article barely has an organization that can distinguish main idea from detail. The backbone of the article seems to be built on Ars Technica, Daily Dot, New York Magazine, and Boston Globe. These are generally reliable sources, but that is what cherrypicking looks like. Quotes by Quinn, Sarkeesian, and Colbert are used not just to present the range of opinion, but to frame the issues they describe. The Washington Post and Maclean's are mined for points only on one side. The article even has no compunctions about using details from First Things or Metaleater in direct opposition to the sources' views. I feel like a different standard for what constitutes an honest editorial process is being applied to the draft compared to mainspace. Rhoark (talk) 15:02, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Obviously, if there are important academic sources going unrecognized, I'll want to correct that. Spending some time on Google Scholar didn't reveal vast untapped reservoirs, but there are a few more publications worth considering. They don't all meet the overview criteria outlined above, but I'll go ahead and list them for consideration as data points on whether there is a neglected scholarly consensus.


 * https://books.google.com/books?id=nW5yCwAAQBAJ&dq=gamergate&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s
 * http://search.proquest.com/openview/84a78c9b3bce39c10955efcccc20a198/1?pq-origsite=gscholar
 * https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=L9k6DAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA117#v=onepage&q&f=false
 * http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.695.431&rep=rep1&type=pdf
 * http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2869107
 * http://press-start.gla.ac.uk/index.php/press-start/article/view/40/39
 * http://democracyjournal.org/magazine/36/last-front-in-the-culture-war/
 * http://www.aifb.kit.edu/web/Inproceedings3507
 * http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2775471


 * Rhoark (talk) 20:31, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * added two more Rhoark (talk) 23:20, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Although I'd disagree with some of the ranking and think that there are a few more sources that need more attention (especially the academic ones), my main takeaway is that most of the sources listed above seem to support the live version and not the draft, especially when you dig down into the amount of text and focus they devote to different aspects. Excluding the really early articles, which took place so early in the timeline that many events hadn't happened yet, the broad commonalities between the bulk of coverage seem to be roughly "broad overview; in-depth, extensive discussion of incidents of harassment and the timeline surrounding them; slightly less frequent discussion of history and social implications (though this is one where the depth in which it's covered varies a lot from source to source, with some articles being almost entirely about social context); much more cursory discussion of ethical accusations against Gamergate targets (usually a few sentences at most) and other things people associated with Gamergate have demanded, often dismissive or with a focus on the high difficulty of figuring out what people really want; and occasional bare mentions of other Gamergate activities (but with almost no depth, usually less than a paragraph). I would say that each item in this list tends to get an order of magnitude less focus than the one above it (with the possible exception, again, of cultural context, which varies wildly - but we do cover it extensively in our article as the second major topic.) This reflects the weighting and structure of the current version, not the draft. --Aquillion (talk) 20:01, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * In hindsight, the categorization was mistake. It would have been better to simply list sources that should inform the article skeleton, omit those that should not, and make no finer distinctions. Obviously, I think the draft represents the sources better, but this discussion is pointing to ways it could be better still. At this stage I'm not even trying to make the case that the sources do or don't take a certain tack. I just want to be sure that before we begin to talk about whether a structure "reflects the reliable sources" we know which sources we're talking about. Rhoark (talk) 23:22, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

How current are the sources?
I'm finding a host of sources out there more current than the list under discussion. e.g. etc. 2601:640:8001:D700:1DCF:7569:1A54:6CBD (talk) 16:17, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * http://www.houstonpress.com/arts/how-to-feel-about-gaming-after-gamergate-8762235
 * http://www.salon.com/2016/09/15/gamergater/
 * https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/gamergate-activist-charged-with-assault-on-officers-public-intoxication-in-virginia/2016/09/09/2751f216-76ac-11e6-8149-b8d05321db62_story.html
 * http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Man-Known-For-Involvement-in-Gamergate-Arrested-for-Assaulting-Deputy-392741831.html
 * http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/celebrity/pop-culture/anne-hathaways-new-movie-colossal-was-inspired-by-gamergate-and-male-entitlement-20160914-grglwi.html
 * http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/katherine-clark-fight-against-internet-trolls-gamergate
 * http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-america-divided/milo-yiannopoulos/
 * I've explained several times that overviews skew early, and other sources will have to supplement them to show how views evolved. Some of these could contribute to that, but they're all examples of tangential coverage. Rhoark (talk) 15:38, 28 September 2016 (UTC)