• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Wikipedia bans editors over GamerGate controversy

Status
Not open for further replies.

tkscz

Member
Just because your screen name is The Albatross doesn't mean we're gonna pre-chew your food. It's a complicated, messy issue, and if you don't want to take the most basic explanation ("it's a bitter sexist hate mob that wants to keep women out of gaming, disguised as an ethics movement") at face value then you're gonna need to read some of the background material.

I know I shouldn't argue with a mod, but that right there in parenthesis, is that like just a part of Pro-GG? I see people who are Pro-GG who support women playing video games.
 
D

Deleted member 10571

Unconfirmed Member
yknow its blatantly obvious that pro-gamergate is way more vile than anti-gamergate, but both sides seem to behave as if the apex of activism is posting as many rants on twitter as possible. About Video Games.

it seriously makes me wonder if these people realize the internet is not real life. Listen to an avid warrior for either side and you'd think this was the greatest cultural battle of our generation.

About
Video
Games

at best this is pathetic and at worst its actively destructive to activism movements that result in concrete change. so you'll have to forgive me if i just call both sides idiots on the internet.

It is not and was never about video games. It's about harassing women and shutting down opponents, about bringing in sheep and about making horrible opinions heard.

Video games are just a pretense added later on. Stop the "both sides.." shit.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
I know I shouldn't argue with a mod, but that right there in parenthesis, is that like just a part of Pro-GG? I see people who are Pro-GG who support women playing video games.
As long as they don't talk about anything that would challenge the status quo or bring a female perspective to the table, sure
 
EDIT: They made this table to tally the votes on the various proposals against me and I can't for the life of me understand it.

5.1 is "topic banned", 5.2 is "other topics restriction", 5.3 is "full site ban", 5.4 is "this is your final warning", 5.5 is "1 revert restriction" and I know 1 is "first choice", o is "oppose", and "a" is abstain but I don't know how the fuck they calculated those votes. Waiting for a clarification but I'm still confused as hell.

It looks like they're trying to implement an ad hoc Alternative Vote system (which I believe is what the Americans call Instant Runoff Voting). The difference here is that the voters can change their votes at any time.
 
I know I shouldn't argue with a mod, but that right there in parenthesis, is that like just a part of Pro-GG? I see people who are Pro-GG who support women playing video games.

Like Vivian James.....

Edit: I may have mis-interpreted the above statement.

I'm surprised this is really an issue seeing how vocal the ceo of Wikipedia was about GG. I suppose GG wont end until the wiki article gets sorted out to begin with.
 

KingFire

Banned
GG Wikipedia article is horrible. Not a single source is provided in that abomination of an intro. I do not support nor condemn Wikipedia for banning those editors as I am not aware of the full extent of the facts. However, judging from the laughable quality of the GG article, it seems that action was needed, and Wikipedia decided to take it. Whether this is positive or negative is subject to reader's personal opinion, or perhaps personal political and social agenda.
 

Ryulong

Neo Member
GG Wikipedia article is horrible. Not a single source is provided in that abomination of an intro. I do not support nor condemn Wikipedia for banning those editors as I am not aware of the full extent of the facts. However, judging from the laughable quality of the GG article, it seems that action was needed, and Wikipedia decided to take it. Whether this is positive or negative is subject to reader's personal opinion, or perhaps personal political and social agenda.

This is something that has been gone over before in the old GG threads. It is a stylistic choice not to have references in the introduction, because the references for those statements are found in the text itself. There were previously references in the intro, but because of gators' insistence that every single statement that maligned them be meticulously sourced, it was decided to follow the manual of style and just leave them out.

As far as I can tell (read through a few things) ... there was a lot of angry behavior behind the scenes by both "sides" and a general lack of interest in objectivity and more about pushing one agenda or another. Just general behavior that is looked down upon on Wikipedia.

The thing is that "anti-GG" behavior was just trying to keep the pages in line with Wikipedia's policies. I know that's all I was trying to do (and also add information from new articles when it was still sort of boiling over in the media). The issue was that sea lions ending up at Wikipedia were constantly crying foul over a perceived "anti-GG" bias. If you go through any of the two prior Gamergate threads on GAF you'll see the exact same behavior. Brand new accounts appearing out of nowhere parroting the same discussion points as every account that came before it that got banned. Here's the rundown of what I saw before I stepped away from everything in November and only checked in a few times when shit hit the fan (or I read a post on Reddit by someone who documented it in a parodic way):

  • The Gamergators who went to Wikipedia intended to change the page so it presented their side of the story in a 50/50 split when such a 50/50 split does not exist in anything Wikipedia considers reliable sources (see Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources for more).
  • Arguments were made constantly that the Wikipedia pages on Adolf Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan (as was linked in here earlier in the thread) didn't malign the subjects as much as the Gamergate page does, completely ignoring the fact that the page isn't about their unorganized movement but the controversy it caused, like the 9/11 conspiracy theorists and the Obama birth certificate deniers which both go "these people think this but they're fucking nuts for doing so".
  • They constantly complained that the word "misogyny" appeared in the first sentence.
  • They constantly complained that the allegations that Zoe Quinn had sex for good reviews were labeled as "false allegations".
  • They would post links blindly without any sort of inkling as to what anyone else was supposed to gather from them. If you've already done the research, then provide the information and use it as a source for your new opinion and tell others instead of forcing them to do the leg work you already did.
  • They complained that I had added free photos of all of the major figures, and it just so happens that there are more free photos of the harassment targets (or in their words "anti-GG") than there are of the pro-GG ones.
  • They cried foul when someone discovered that the photo of Christina Hoff Sommers wasn't actually free and couldn't be hosted on Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Commons (a central file repository for all Wikimedia projects).
  • They cried foul when people independently decided that the section about Christina Hoff Sommers "Gamer boys will be gamer boys" video was deemed irrelevant and got removed.
  • They cried foul when I messaged someone else and said "Hey, I found all these grammatical errors. Could you fix them because if I touch the page after I said I'd not touch the page they'd lose their shit" and they did indeed lose their shit (on Reddit at least).
  • They fought tooth and nail when someone (I think it was Tarc) messaged Zoe Quinn on Reddit and asked her if she could provide photographs to the Wikimedia Commons because the one photograph someone did find she disliked as it was constantly being distributed by newspapers who just took the photo off of her Wikipedia page.
  • They went apeshit when I tried to suggest that we use one of those photographs over the one that was already on the page.
  • They constantly tried to push Breitbart, KnowYourMeme, Gamergate.me, Techraptor, TheRalphRetort, etc. as sources (not sure if it's still going on).
  • They made new pages on pro-Gamergate subjects to content fork away from all the negative shit they can't possibly fix because their PR is awful. That's why 8chan and 8chan's owner Fredrick Brennan have their own pages.
  • In the last 24 hours, they were maligning people peripheral to Gamergate that happen to have articles. Brianna Wu's husband Frank Wu has his own page because he's notable in his own right and Wikipedia had to expunge contributions to it because of how vile it was.
  • An established editor proposed that some long rambling pro-Gamergate website whose authorship was attributed to "Gurney Halleck" (Patrick Stewart's character in the 80s Dune movie) to be added to the page and was so insensed when he got shot down that he added the refusal to add the link as evidence of a "house POV" to the arbitration case. It wasn't until weeks later that the evidence was removed because everyone with a working sense of morality knew it violated a central policy of Wikipedia not to post anything that could remotely malign someone unless it's from a impeccably reputable source considering it pushed the "Five Guys" narrative.
  • Someone tried to add a disclaimer to the top of the page saying "This is not what Gamergate supporters believe, go to Know Your Meme".
This is the shit that all of the editors on Wikipedia have had to deal with since August. And because it's the "encyclopedia anyone can edit" it takes so much red tape to get rid of anyone who isn't being an obvious tool.
 

tkscz

Member
It is not and was never about video games. It's about harassing women and shutting down opponents, about bringing in sheep and about making horrible opinions heard.

Video games are just a pretense added later on. Stop the "both sides.." shit.

Again, from what I observed, this is how the gamergate issue is separated:

1. Pro-GG who are anti-feminist and only care about antagonizing feminist.

2. Pro-GG who care about gaming and want to defend, while inviting everyone into gaming with no hassle.

1. Anti-GG who are there just to antagonize the Pro-GG who antagonize feminist. They are in the right for this, but how they go about it isn't much better than Pro-GG #1.

2. Anti-GG who understand that not everyone on Pro-GG are the same, and take a more sensible route to solve the issue.

Both Pro-GG and Anti-GG #2 tend to be ignored for the childish antics that both #1's are doing. This is just from my observation.
 

KingFire

Banned
From what I understand this is dumb, banning editors simply for being feminist is silly since their opinions won't necessarily affect the Wikipedia articles, banning GGers isn't because you're effectively banning people who participate in a hate campaign which isn't something you should ever want associated with the website anyways.

Banning editors because of their political or social views belongs to the 17th century. If a writer is working on quality articles and trying to stay as objective as possible, then that person must not be banned even if he or she was an ISIS sympathizer.

Judge the actions, not the ideas.

Wikipedia is not "associated" with anybody or anything. It is an encyclopedia. A digital database of knowledge and facts. While the quality of articles ranges from the excellent to the terrible, the goal has always been the same: present factual information in a concise manner, and support it with reliable sources.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
Again, from what I observed, this is how the gamergate issue is separated:

1. Pro-GG who are anti-feminist and only care about antagonizing feminist.

2. Pro-GG who care about gaming and want to defend, while inviting everyone into gaming with no hassle.
Defend it against who? If your defending it against "women with opinions" then your not inviting everyone in
 
l
Judge the actions, not the ideas.

That's what Arbcom aspires to. I think they get it right more often than not.

For me the headline of this arbitration case, which all the outsiders are missing, is that they're massively stepping up the power of Wikipedia administrators to exclude throwaway accounts and to deal with conduct issues summarily. It will give the topic a chance to cool down.
 
D

Deleted member 10571

Unconfirmed Member
1. Anti-GG who are there just to antagonize the Pro-GG who antagonize feminist. They are in the right for this, but how they go about it isn't much better than Pro-GG #1.

2. Anti-GG who understand that not everyone on Pro-GG are the same, and take a more sensible route to solve the issue.

1. What? Example please.

2. is just silly. If you openly support a movement with your voice, account and hashtag, you agree with what they do as a whole. It's that easy. Putting all the harassment, hate, criminal activities and general arseholeness on a few individuals is basically the same as shutting your eyes going LALALA I DONT SEE IT LALA.
 

KingFire

Banned
That's because the lead section is a summary of the article, which is amply if not redundantly sourced.

I would have failed my college courses if I did not cite my summaries. The summary includes information that are not common knowledge, and therefore must be cited even if that information is further expanded in the article itself.

The citation is a minor issue in this article; I only mentioned it because it is the first thing I noticed while reading the article's unprofessional introduction.
 

Dryk

Member
2. Pro-GG who care about gaming and want to defend, while inviting everyone into gaming with no hassle.
GamerGate has nothing to offer people like that. It's 50% harassing feminists, 40% calling foul over what turns out to be ethical or non-existent conduct and 10% calling foul over actual misconduct. If you're in it for that 10% you will be more productive anywhere else, and you won't have to hang out with terrorists and terrorist sympathisers to boot.

And as Technomancer said, defend it from what? By and large the people GamerGate is trying to defend gaming from is feminists and women they don't like, which is incompatible with the second half of your statement.
 
GamerGate has nothing to offer people like that. It's 50% harassing feminists, 40% calling foul over what turns out to be ethical or non-existent conduct and 10% calling foul over actual misconduct. If you're in it for that 10% you will be more productive anywhere else, and you won't have to hang out with terrorists and terrorist sympathisers to boot.

And as Technomancer said, defend it from what? By and large the people GamerGate is trying to defend gaming from is feminists and women they don't like, which is incompatible with the second half of your statement.

Ten percent? You really think it's that high?
 

tkscz

Member
Defend it against who? If your defending it against "women with opinions" then your not inviting everyone in

Not against women, should've finished that with more detail. They are actually against the unfair tactics of journalism, actually talking about journalism, rather than feminism. They also support #Notyourshield, which I don't see a lot on NeoGaf.

1. What? Example please.

2. is just silly. If you openly support a movement with your voice, account and hashtag, you agree with what they do as a whole. It's that easy. Putting all the harassment, hate, criminal activities and general arseholeness on a few individuals is basically the same as shutting your eyes going LALALA I DONT SEE IT LALA.

1. Will take me a bit to get examples, but will edit with them. Sorry, at work at the moment and most sites I'd get the examples from are blocked, for example, twitter is blocked.

2. You should go onto tumblr, people do the "LALALA I DON'T SEE IT LALA" thing quite a lot. Whether you agree with people doing it or not, people will separate themselves from the "bad apples" on the same issue, as they would rather not be associated with them. Coincidentally, I see it a lot more with feminism than with anything else.
 

Ryulong

Neo Member
I would have failed my college courses if I did not cite my summaries. The summary includes information that are not common knowledge, and therefore must be cited even if that information is further expanded in the article itself.

The citation is a minor issue in this article; I only mentioned it because it is the first thing I noticed while reading the article's unprofessional introduction.

Take a look at this page in Wikipedia's manual of style as to why the introduction lacks citations. Like I said in my original post, it's a stylistic choice to not fill it full of citations because gators wanted every statement precisely cited to disrupt the flow and make the page look worse.
 

Brakke

Banned
2. You should go onto tumblr, people do the "LALALA I DON'T SEE IT LALA" thing quite a lot. Whether you agree with people doing it or not, people will separate themselves from the "bad apples" on the same issue, as they would rather not be associated with them. Coincidentally, I see it a lot more with feminism than with anything else.

This tells me more about you than it tells me about the world.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
Not against women, should've finished that with more detail. They are actually against the unfair tactics of journalism, actually talking about journalism, rather than feminism. They also support #Notyourshield, which I don't see a lot on NeoGaf.
Can you point me to where these actual ethical GG discussions are happening? I understand that you're at work, but I've asked this of others before and no one has ever been able to actually do it
 

tkscz

Member
Can you point me to where these actual ethical GG discussions are happening? I understand that you're at work, but I've asked this of others before and no one has ever been able to actually do it

Usually see the links on my tumblr. I'll PM them to you once I get them again. Going to do it from my phone.

This tells me more about you than it tells me about the world.

And what does it tell you? I'm honestly curious.
 
It is not and was never about video games. It's about harassing women and shutting down opponents, about bringing in sheep and about making horrible opinions heard.

Video games are just a pretense added later on. Stop the "both sides.." shit.

dude its about video games first and foremost. its about chasing women out of their hobby, removing any trace of what they perceive as malign sjw influence on game design, doing away with affirmative action leads. its about saving the bayonettas and mighty no 9s from the Gone Homofication of the industry.

alternatively, its about demanding more than a token representation of half the population of the earth in lead characters. its about fighting hostile workplaces for women, and expanding women's presence in both employment and leadership positions in the industry.

It Is All About Video Games. it is that retarded.

but then again, if we're being totally honest its really about Winning An Argument On Twitter for a shitload of people
 

Dryk

Member
They also support #Notyourshield, which I don't see a lot on NeoGaf.
It exists so that Gators have examples of minorities that manage to leave their minority identity at the door when they enter the clubhouse to point at to deflect criticism of their treatment of minorities that don't. The ultimate irony being that the people using the hashtag are being used as a shield.
 

tkscz

Member
That's fair enough. In the meantime can you at least mention what some of the ethical issues were/are?

Recently, one of Anti-GG bigger supporters basically said every negative thing he said about gamergate wasn't all true, and that he only said it to show how gamers are monsters. I don't see how purposely provoking people makes you less of a troll than said people. Not to mention not your shield is still being considered fake. Some Anti-GG people over tumblr still claim that there are no women or people of color are Pro-GG.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
Recently, one of Anti-GG bigger supporters basically said every negative thing he said about gamergate wasn't all true, and that he only said it to show how gamers are monsters. I don't see how purposely provoking people makes you less of a troll than said people. Not to mention not your shield is still being considered fake. Some Anti-GG people over tumblr still claim that there are no women or people of color are Pro-GG.
Okay but that's still GG drama. Do you have examples of journalism ethics being discussed by GG?

Also I really want to read that first item, if you remember later
 
Recently, one of Anti-GG bigger supporters basically said every negative thing he said about gamergate wasn't all true, and that he only said it to show how gamers are monsters. I don't see how purposely provoking people makes you less of a troll than said people. Not to mention not your shield is still being considered fake. Some Anti-GG people over tumblr still claim that there are no women or people of color are Pro-GG.

What does any of that to do with the supposed ethics problems in the game industry/journalism that are supposedly the focus of Gamergate
 

99hertz

Member
I can't seem to find a definition of sjw that isn't negative. Are they like those people that are mad at offensive jokes?
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
I can't seem to find a definition of sjw that isn't negative. Are they like those people that are mad at offensive jokes?
It started as a pejorative among social progressives on Tumblr and the like actually, for the people who even they found irrationally zealous. Now its been co-opted to mean "anyone who thinks everything isn't perfect right the way it is now'
 

99hertz

Member
I see, thanks. This stuff is confusing as hell, I thought being called a swj was bad. I can't see how being anti-bigotry is bad.
 
I see, thanks. This stuff is confusing as hell, I thought being called a swj was bad. I can't see how being anti-bigotry is bad.
The thing is, SJW's are a bad term. There's such a thing as being for social justice and being TOO extreme, to the extent that some who are the original intent of the title are advocating for the death of all cis men. However, the term has been co-opted.

OT: I agree with Wikipedia that it should be unbiased, and the facts on the page last I checked were a list of all the crap GG has pulled.
 

Ryulong

Neo Member
Recently, one of Anti-GG bigger supporters basically said every negative thing he said about gamergate wasn't all true, and that he only said it to show how gamers are monsters. I don't see how purposely provoking people makes you less of a troll than said people. Not to mention not your shield is still being considered fake. Some Anti-GG people over tumblr still claim that there are no women or people of color are Pro-GG.
No I remember this. Anita Sarkeesian's collaborator Jonathan McIntosh revealed that whenever he saw shit about to hit the fan he started to tweet shit he agreed with in spirit but said so in a way that he knew would make GG flip the fuck out. It was nothing about how things weren't true. He also said he began to tweet things Noam Chomsky would say in order to show just how right wing GG really was.

And not your shield was shat on in the beginning because Zoe Quinn posted chat logs she had sat in on where she had proof that GG was astroturfing with sock puppet accounts using photos of women and non-white guys culled from profile community.
 
I see, thanks. This stuff is confusing as hell, I thought being called a swj was bad. I can't see how being anti-bigotry is bad.

Always been my biggest issue with the label. Since when is wanting social justice (you know things like equality, people to not be made to feel awful for gender or race) a bad thing. I mean come on.
 

Ryulong

Neo Member
Always been my biggest issue with the label. Since when is wanting social justice (you know things like equality, people to not be made to feel awful for gender or race) a bad thing. I mean come on.
IIRC it was originally used to mock the tumblr users who were so far flung in their enthusiasm for social movements that they overstepped and began to speak for groups they had no right to or like harass people for the most minimal infringement of whatever their faux pas of the moment was. There were posts going around shaming someone white for wearing a kimono when they were doing an exchange program in Japan. Or you have the post going around where someone is upset that the power is going out while they're cooking chicken nuggets and someone proudly proclaims they are a vegan and hopes that their power does go out, while the OP responds by saying the chicken is already in nugget form and a blackout isn't going to bring it back to life.

It's just that you have right wing libertarian conservative jack offs like those who have amalgamated into Gamergate who decry anything progressive as being social justice garbage. A video game about depression? SJW shit. A video game about lesbians/transgender relationships? SJW shit. Thinking women in video games aren't depicted well? SJW bullshit. Someone's sex life? Now that's corruption in video game journalism.
 

ReiGun

Member
Always been my biggest issue with the label. Since when is wanting social justice (you know things like equality, people to not be made to feel awful for gender or race) a bad thing. I mean come on.

The term had use originally to describe people who either had ass backwards and dangerous views on social issues or overzealous to the point of actually hurting the movements they were involved in, usually by way of harassing people. Since then, however, it's become a catch all for anyone who speaks up on social issues and wants to change the status quo. Basically an easy way to dismiss the views of others.

The term "white knight" works like this too. What I find hilarious about both is that they're meant to be pejoratives, but they sound pretty badass. lol
 

Brakke

Banned
The term had use originally to describe people who either had ass backwards and dangerous views on social issues or overzealous to the point of actually hurting the movements they were involved in, usually by way of harassing people. Since then, however, it's become a catch all for anyone who speaks up on social issues and wants to change the status quo. Basically an easy way to dismiss the views of others.

The term "white knight" works like this too. What I find hilarious about both is that they're meant to be pejoratives, but they sound pretty badass. lol

"White knight" is the same way. It was a useful pejorative for a dude who swoops in to speak for a woman or rescue her or play at chivalry while actually stepping on feet and being a jerk.

Then a bunch of knuckleheads misappropriated it to mean "dudes who think treating women bad is bad". Now it's just got too much baggage to be useful.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
"White knight" is the same way. It was a useful pejorative for a dude who swoops in to speak for a woman or rescue her or play at chivalry while actually stepping on feet and being a jerk.

Then a bunch of knuckleheads misappropriated it to mean "dudes who think treating women bad is bad". Now it's just got too much baggage to be useful.

This one really grinds my gears. The underlying implication is just disgusting
 

Brakke

Banned
This one really grinds my gears. The underlying implication is just disgusting

But why would a man would want to stand up for the rights of women unless to ingratiate himself to them so they'll bone him?
", such a knucklehead would think, seeing through that actually decent human's ruse.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom