Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-12-24/In the media

Wales's GamerGate comments receive criticism, praise


Digital Spy and The Mary Sue reported on recent comments by Jimmy Wales regarding the GamerGate controversy in the video game world.

Digital Spy reports that "GamerGate is a movement claiming to be fighting for ethical coverage of video games [in the media], but that has been accused of supporting harassment of women within the industry." Editing the GamerGate article on Wikipedia has been a controversial and contentious exercise, culminating in a currently open Arbitration case involving numerous editors on both sides of the issue as well as a number of administrators, including this author. A source of discontent with Wikipedia has been r/KotakuInAction, a Reddit forum populated by those who identify with the GamerGate movement, including a number of editors active on the Wikipedia article. On December 18, a Reddit user posted a complaint he emailed to Wales and Wales' response. Wales verified that the emails were authentic.

In the email, the user told Wales he would refuse to donate to Wikipedia's fundraising efforts because of his displeasure with the current state of the Wikipedia article on GamerGate, a frequent complaint on KotakuInAction and other online GamerGate forums. The user also complained about the December 13 deletion of a page on the Wikia that is devoted to GamerGate. (Like Wikipedia, Wikia was co-founded by Wales.)  That Wikia page listed a number of Wikipedia editors and administrators, including this author, as "hostile users".

The user wrote:

Wales replied:

Wales continued his responses to complaints about these issues on Twitter, replying to one GamerGate supporter and Wikipedia editor that the deleted Wikia page "was a long hitlist of editors. Much nastiness. Exactly the kind of viciousness that [GamerGate] is famous for."

While Wales was criticized by GamerGate supporters, The Mary Sue praised Wales' response, writing that he was "handling it admirably".

In brief

 * Viva la información: The Guardian discusses (December 23) how Cubans are circumventing the widespread lack of Internet access in their country.  Those with reliable high-speed access sell and distribute information on hard drives for offline usage.  Wikipedia in particular is usually downloaded in packets of 2–5 gigabytes that people keep on their phones for offline usage.
 * Charity begins on phones: CNBC discusses (December 20) the difficulties millennials have donating to charities using popular technological means such as Twitter or mobile devices and talks with one MIT student who found it easier to buy a vacuum on his phone than to donate to Wikipedia.
 * Amazon art identification: Mashable reports on a December 19 update to the Fire Phone's Firefly tool. Firefly now uses Wikipedia to identify over 2000 famous works of art.
 * Iranian Wikipedia conference: The Iran Book News Agency discusses a December 18 conference regarding Wikipedia at the Hosseiniyeh Ershad in Tehran, Iran.
 * "We'll meet again": Jimmy Wales was one of many celebrities to appear on the December 18 finale of The Colbert Report. Pictures are available at Talking Points Memo.