Talk:Gamergate (harassment campaign)

Latest comment: 1 hour ago by Dronebogus in topic Requested move 5 November 2024

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— Preceding unsigned comment added by TheRedPenOfDoom (talkcontribs) 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)Reply

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)Reply

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)Reply

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)Reply

Requested move 5 November 2024

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)Reply

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)Reply
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)Reply
agreed! Laugoose (talk) 20:30, 6 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 19:36, 6 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • 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)Reply
  • 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)Reply
  • 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)Reply
    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)Reply
Support nobody is looking for a niche ant when they're searching for gamergate. Scuba 22:49, 7 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
nobody is looking for a niche ant when they're searching for gamergate[citation needed] 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)Reply
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)Reply
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)Reply
  • 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)Reply
  • 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)Reply
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)Reply
“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)Reply