Talk:Gamergate (harassment campaign)

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

They/them pronoun confusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think these sentences should be written more clearly (by someone who knows what the sentences are supposed to mean). Paditor (talk) 08:49, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree. I've tried some very minor rewording - replaced the first "their" with "Quinn's" to read "which falsely insinuated that Quinn had received a favorable review because of Quinn's sexual relationship with a games journalist", and removed the "their" from the second to give "The blog falsely implied that Quinn received a favorable review of Depression Quest in exchange for a sexual relationship with Nathan Grayson". Hopefully that reads better. - Bilby (talk) 09:03, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Wired article concerning Gamergate and Kamala Harris

A discussion in Wired of the playbook that arose during the Gamergate campaign and how it has been used in other contexts [1] Acroterion (talk) 00:44, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Transphobia and attempted outting of Brianna Wu

Should it be added that several proponents of Gamergate attempted to out then stealth trans woman Brianna Wu as part of the harassment campaign? Turtletennisfogwheat (talk) 07:58, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 5 November 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. There is a consensus here that the harassment campaign is not a primary topic  — Amakuru (talk) 20:54, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

---

Gamergate (harassment campaign) → Gamergate – In /Archive 13#Requested moves (12 November 2014), there was no consensus to move to Gamergate due to recentism and whether it is the primary topic. In Talk:Gamergate (ant)/Archive 3#Requested move 20 August 2021, there was consensus to move the ant species to use its qualifier. It is now clear that there is no recentism issue, and the hatnote indicates this is the primary topic "GamerGate redirects here. For other uses, see Gamergate (disambiguation)." Sir Kenneth Kho (talk) 22:37, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

• A nitpick on the "primary topic" bit: GamerGate—that is, camel case with 2 capital Gs—redirects here, as nobody writes "GamerGate" when discussing the ant. It doesn't mean that this article is the primary topic. Gamergate is a disambiguation page. Also, there have been 6 move discussions since that 2014 discussion, so I wouldn't put too much stock into just "recentism". They're all under the "Other talk page banners" banner at the top of the page. Woodroar (talk) 23:08, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
• Support I really don’t think anyone outside of biologists even knows “gamergate” is a type of ant. This isn’t like the infamous Bill O’Riley vs. Bill O’Riley debacle— one’s an obscure technical term and the other is an extremely infamous harassment campaign. Dronebogus (talk) 00:13, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

  agreed! Laugoose (talk) 20:30, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

• Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 19:36, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose as there is still data coming out about both topics and "obscure" is only of value as a term when used to demote the usage of something outside ones scope of knowledge. Gamergate as a caste of ant social structure is not going to go away at any point. The harassment campaign is over, and as the legacy section shows, each years coverage has moved more and more to basic level "compared to" analogies and a full lack of in-depth conversation. Recentism seems to clearly be applicable here.--Kevmin § 23:30, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose per Woodroar and Kevmin. This gets rehashed frequently, but there's still no policy-based reason to move the article from its current name. We should retain the disambiguation page at Gamergate and keep this page as-is. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 13:23, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. I suppose I'll add an official !vote here. The harassment campaign article currently gets more views than the ant article. And given the campaign's influence on the alt-right and later harassment and disinformation campaigns, I don't see that interest disappearing tomorrow or next year—but I also can't see it staying relevant forever. Every retrospective I've read puts it firmly in the past, not an ongoing event. The ant was named first and gamergate ants will almost certainly outlast the relevance of the harassment campaign, Wikipedia itself, and probably humans. I don't think it's a burden for searchers to land at a disambiguation page where they can see options for the harassment campaign and ant, or for the Adventure Time character or note about GamersGate. I mean, to be fair, the camelcase GamerGate redirect should probably go to the disambiguation page as well, just to help dispel that confusion. Woodroar (talk) 17:42, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

  This won't stay relevant forever, but as long as culture war isn't over, this would be the primary topic in most people's head, and a contentious topic at that. I am hesitant to do a WP:CRYSTAL here, but I am quite sure culture war will continue for at least 20 years per WP:RECENT#WP:20YEARTEST, it will be very useful to keep this as primary topic during that time. Sir Kenneth Kho (talk) 18:19, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

• Support nobody is looking for a niche ant when they're searching for gamergate. Scuba 22:49, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

  nobody is looking for a niche ant when they're searching for gamergate This seems to sit squarely in statements without data territory. You're saying nobody at all searches for the ant caste by its official name??--Kevmin § 23:31, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

  Yeah, Not sure what sort of demographic group is searching for ant castes named Gamergate... unless they knew it was an ant and put (ant) at the end. Scuba 05:42, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

  The problem here is that "knowing to put (ant) at the end" is learned behavior for searching and editing on wikipedia, not innate search behavior taught in school or higher education. You are creating a strawman argument that the ant is NOT a search topic ever and using that to endorse your position.--Kevmin § 19:13, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose Gamergate was a decade ago already, periodically re-upped or mentioned in passing as a historic footnote to the alt-right. The ant is eternal. The "for other uses" at the top likely needs refining is all I would say. And, unrelated to this specifically, the article long ago needed a rewrite. Koncorde (talk) 02:43, 8 November 2024 (UTC)
• Comment “the ant will always be relevant” is technically true, but dismissing Gamergate the harassment campaign as just something that will fade away in x years is WP:CRYSTAL. If we took this ad absurdum, you could say the primary topic of Mario being the video game character is recentism, because the name itself has been around much longer, but that is obviously silly because there’s only one “Mario” most people are thinking of when they type it in. Similarly, who is seriously searching for information on a type of ant when they look up “gamergate”? None of the first-page hits on DuckDuckGo are for the ant besides its Wikipedia page. Dronebogus (talk) 14:11, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

  It already has faded away and is referenced in the past tense. It was a thing that happened briefly a decade ago. The people searching Gamergate for ants (or writing thesis, or producing research content, or studying entomology) are the same ones doing it before 2016, and will continue to do so forever because it is, like, science. This does not mean Gamergate ceases to be mentioned, or doesn't generate hits or search results - and why prior consensus agreed on the disambiguation. This is also why the sentence In a few cases, there is some conflict between a topic of primary usage (Apple Inc.) and one of primary long-term significance (Apple). In such a case, consensus may be useful in determining which topic, if any, is the primary topic exists. Mario meanwhile is covered later by the statement: Non-encyclopedic uses of a term are irrelevant for primary topic purposes; for example, Twice is about a Korean pop band, despite the existence of the common English word "twice", as the latter is not a topic suitable for an encyclopedic article of WP:PRIMARY. Koncorde (talk) 21:57, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

  “Happened in the past” is not a measure of relevance any more than happening in the present is. Is Woodstock irrelevant because it only lasted a few days? Is Randy In Boise’s Junkyard Band relevant because they’re currently touring garages in the vicinity of Ada County? Dronebogus (talk) 12:27, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

  It very specifically is a measure of long term relevance as referenced in the example of Apple Inc vs Apple. The significance of coverage of the event confers notability for the creation of an article. After the event, the significance is maintained through repeated coverage. Woodstock (as the given example) has persistent, repeated, significant and notable coverage and new significant material produced about it annually (along with insignificant and non-notable coverage where it is merely referenced). Gamergate as a harassment campaign isn't. Gamergate occasionally comes up in single instances of research, commonly referenced as a precursor to some element of the Alt Right - but the topic itself isn't discussed, rather it is used as a bellwether type event. There are typically articles written from time to time with titles such as "What we didn't learn from Gamergate" etc but there is little meaningful content (either about the victims, the actions, and certainly not the perpetrators beyond the speculative attribution of the thing to a group of people who may or may not be now a part of another thing). In contrast (per example previous) Apple Inc is likely the most searched topic, the most routinely covered and so on - but an Apple is an Apple, Valve is a Valve, just as a Gamergate should be a Gamergate. Koncorde (talk) 01:49, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

  Except nobody knows what a gamergate is besides an entomologist. It isn’t even considered a valid word by my spellcheck, i.e, it’s an obscure technical term almost nobody uses. Dronebogus (talk) 00:24, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

  Arguments from incredulity do not really give any traction to your point though (you not looking for the Caste =/= NO ONE searches for the caste). Policy is where changes come from, and as it stands now, there is a continually decreasing amount of novel coverage for the harassment campaign, while the ant caste isn't going to go anywhere an has the lasting persistence of science topics.--Kevmin § 18:02, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

  Bkonrad’s argument directly below is concrete evidence that almost nobody is looking for the ant. The opposes are many, but they’re all based on four main arguments: “it’s too old” “it’s too new” “it’s the status quo” and “the ant is just more worthy”; these are all vague and subjective in their importance. Dronebogus (talk) 07:34, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

  Bkonrad’s argument missed all the points the @KoA: provided regarding the nuance of flash in the pan events vrs established topics with lasting use in a field. A situation you also are ignoring,--Kevmin § 19:31, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, there is a small population of individuals in a narrow field of study who might use the term with some frequency (some of whom are apparently thin-skinned enough to get bent out of shape that more people are interested in other things). This niche technical term in is dwarfed by the overwhelming disparity in what readers of this encyclopedia are looking for. Any comparison with Apple (fruit) vs Apple (company) is without merit. Nearly every speaker of English knows what the Apple fruit is, even if the company generates more traffic. For gamergate, it is likely less than .01% of English speakers who know about (or might ever think to look up) the ant-related topic. older ≠ wiser 20:55, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

• Support. This is a bit ridiculous. The page views and wikinav show pretty overwhelmingly what readers are looking for in this case and it is not ants. The ants can be added specifically to the hatnote in addition to the dab so readers looking for the ant are still only one click aways just as they would be with the current setup. older ≠ wiser 17:11, 11 November 2024 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Theparties (talk) 00:48, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
• Support, if we can make a compromise, why not rename the ant article to Gamergate (insect/or ant)? Cburt777 (talk) 19:29, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
• Comment. Nothing that prior to this comment, the other affected page on the ants was never notified. That's an inappropriate WP:VOTESTACK in terms of notification when comments are being made about the ants while leaving out the audience that would be most knowledgeable about it when discussing WP:PTOPIC and focusing instead on only this page's audience instead. I didn't notice this was going on until I stopped over at the disambig page's talk today. I'll put notifications up shortly. KoA (talk) 19:50, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  Idk what that means Cburt777 (talk) 21:59, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  @Cburt777; Primary topic grabs typically require multi-page moves, but if they don't, it is still courtesy to notify the other pages listed on the disambiguation. Sennecaster (Chat) 07:41, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. While this topic certainly still gets mentioned, coverage has declined sharply; it seems silly to suggest that it would be more appropriate as the main article than it was a decade ago when it was in full-swing. --Aquillion (talk) 20:39, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. per WP:PTOPIC. It's one thing to have the current disambiguation setup, but to call the harassment topic the primary topic would be a huge pardigm shift from previous discussions that isn't reflected here. I'll get into the substance below, but this does feel like a bludgeon for editors at the ant page not wanting to have to deal with a controversial topic. Over the last 10 years, this page has had a lot of controversy over its title and ambiguity on what to call itself to the point moratoriums have been put in place on RMs partially to give the ant topic a break. For the harassment topic to suddenly be the primary, there would have to be something huge that changed that wasn't covered ad nauseum in all the past RMs. Here's the history I had from the last RM below:
  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1041117019#Requested_move_20_August_2021
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1039653835#Requested_move_12_August_2021
  3. Talk:Gamergate_(ant)/Archive_1#Requested_move_28_December_2015
  4. Talk:Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)/Archive_45#Requested_move_30_August_2015
  5. Talk:Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)/Archive_46#Requested_move_20_September_2015 (moratorium put in place on requested moves)
  6. Talk:Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)/Archive_32#How_about_calling_this_article_.22GamerGate.22
  7. Talk:Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)/Archive_30#.22Movement.22_or_.22Controversy.22
  8. Talk:Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)/Archive_28#Requested_move_14_February_2015
  9. Talk:Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)/Archive_13#Requested_moves
  10. Talk:Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)/Archive_37#Requested_move_15_May_2015

  This initial proposal leaves out a lot of what actually happened in the last RM, but the core issue here is that comments in support aren't really addressing the core issues found in the last move. It wasn't primarily a matter of recentism, but instead rangling with two aspects of PTOPIC:

  1. A topic is primary for a term with respect to usage if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.
  2. A topic is primary for a term with respect to long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.

  For the time being, the harassment campaign has higher views in terms of PT1, but all of our guidance related to views, search hits, etc. have strong cautions against carte blanche use of those stats, especially in terms of WP:NWFCTM and our internet audience where internet topics like the harassment topic are going to be more popular. For PT2 though, that's where the ant has a pretty clear case. Previous closes were clear too it is apparent that a clear majority of the community would prefer a primary topic in favour of long-term significance. Personally I think that puts the ant squarely as the primary topic even when weighing all of that with an even hand. With that said, the harassment campaign over 10 years never had primary topic status, though in the 2021 RM, it was just split down the middle to have a disambiguation page instead of having the ant as the primary topic. That at least did stop the RMs for a time, but I'm not seeing anything here that would suggest that something has majorly changed on that side since 2021.

  The other issue I'm seeing is the naming of the harassment campaign regardless of the ants. All the RMs I mentioned above show the history of how much the topic title has morphed and been contentious. Calling it the harassment campaign parenthetical seemed to finally settle that down, but undoing that is going to increase the ambiguity again. At the end of the day, the last RM at least made it so no one is astonished. You type Gamergate into the search and you're either going to see the two options you want already Gamergate (ant) or Gamergate (harassment campaign). If you click the first result, you get the disambiguation page which guides you even more. Unless there's a major resurgence of Gamergate-related harassment in coming years that truly adds to the event, it's pretty hard for it to leap-frog two levels up to the definitive primary topic. KoA (talk) 21:16, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  I thought I'd revive a bit I wrote at the last RM that actually focuses on the ant side of things.

  A gamergate is a worker ant that is able to reproduce, which the article outlines as unique for most ant species. This currently impacts all individuals of species within at least five subfamilies and 17 genera (as opposed to only a of subset of individuals within the species Homo sapiens for the harassment event).[2] For the ants (or really any biological trait this fixed in multiple species), there is not a reasonable doubt this million-year old trait will just suddenly disappear and stop affecting all of these species. In fact, that CRYSTAL policy specifically calls out such arguments as a violation: Although currently accepted scientific paradigms may later be rejected, and hypotheses previously held to be controversial or incorrect sometimes become accepted by the scientific community, it is not the place of Wikipedia to venture such projections. When scientists name these traits, they are generally also stable in usage Mermithergate is a similar example of these terminology being common in biology.

  Much of this long-term impact is something inherent to WP:SCHOLARSHIP/biology topics and is why PTOPIC also mentions long-term education aspects being of higher value. On that note, ant gamergates are something that’s likely to come up in biology textbooks when discussing ant colonies since eusocial animals are often a common example in varying degrees for both kids and college students. It might be a footnote in more basic biology books, but if you get into common intro-level courses at say college, this kind of thing can easily come up in sections dealing with insect diversity.

  While common usage metrics have consistently been an issue for this discussion, looking at scholarly metrics helps. Google Scholar is well known, but generally not that reliable for things like citation metrics, etc. because they include a lot of non-scholarly sources. Web of Science is usually a more conservative (scientifically, not political) search engine in that regard. Just typing in gamergate gave 189 articles (49 more than in 2021). Of these, 94 mostly focus on the gamergate ant, and 95 involved the harassment topic. That's giving the harassment topic a handicap since that includes mere mentions of Gamergate in that context in the search parameters. That paints a very different picture than those haphazardly using Google searches. At the least academic attention (or use) isn't any higher for the harassment topic, so you'd be hard pressed to call that the primary topic based on search hits. WP:PT2 is what really anchors discussion here. KoA (talk) 21:32, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose per KoA and others, the fact that people are finding the article they are interested in via the disambiguation and also learning about other uses supports retention of status quo. Shyamal (talk) 02:09, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:PTOPIC. While the harassment campaign is more notable in tv news and right-wing twitter/X/parler, it is not necessarily so world-wide, and most importantly, in the scholarly literature. See also: Ngrams for GamerGate vs Gamergate vs gamergate. Wikipedia is a scholarship-driven institution, and harassment of video game journalists is not any more important than entomology in the world of scholarship. Keep the disambiguation page, and keep these two pages (ant) and (harassment campaign) disambiguated. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:07, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose Pure pageviews and Google hits are not the sole criterion of primary topics. As per others, mentions of the ants and the harassers are pretty balanced in scholarship, if not having the ants come out on top. Can we put a permanent moratorium on move discussions now? The "harassment campaign" part of the title gives WP:SPA editors a good reason to keep attempting this move for the foreseeable future. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 12:09, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
• Comment: Leave how the title is and don't change it, or change it to "GamerGate". I'm only speaking for the title, btw. Tonkarooson • (📭|Edits). 05:32, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.