Talk:Gamergate (harassment campaign)

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This article has previously been nominated to be moved. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination.

Discussions:

Not moved, 14 February 2014, from Gamergate controversy to Gamergate movement, see discussion.
Not moved, 12 November 2014, from Gamergate controversy to Gamergate, see discussion.
Not moved, 15 May 2015, from Gamergate controversy to Gamergate harassment campaign, see discussion.
Withdrawn, 30 August 2015, from Gamergate controversy to Gamergate, see discussion.
POINT close, 19 September 2015, from Gamergate controversy to Gamergate (sexist terrorism), see discussion.
Moved, 12 August 2021, from Gamergate controversy to Gamergate (harassment campaign), see discussion.
Not moved, 20 August 2021, from Gamergate (harassment campaign), see discussion.

Draft:Gamergate controversy was nominated for deletion on 23 June 2017. The result of the discussion was redirect.

This article was nominated for deletion. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination:

speedy keep, 23 November 2015, see discussion.
Keep, 6 September 2014, see discussion.

Text has been copied to or from this article; see the list below. The source pages now serve to provide attribution for the content in the destination pages and must not be deleted as long as the copies exist. For attribution and to access older versions of the copied text, please see the history links below.

Copied Draft:Gamergate controversy (oldid, history) → Gamergate controversy (diff)
Copied Draft:Gamergate controversy (oldid, history) → Gamergate controversy (diff)

This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Alex Hern (January 23, 2015). "Wikipedia votes to ban some editors from gender-related articles". The Guardian.
Sarah Jeong (December 14, 2016). "If we took 'Gamergate' harassment seriously, 'Pizzagate' might never have happened". The Washington Post.
David Auerbach (February 5, 2015). "The Wikipedia Ouroboros". Slate.
Dabitch (February 5, 2015). "Wikipedia: the perpetual motion native ad machine". Adland.
Lauren C. Williams (January 26, 2015). "Wikipedia Wants To Ban Feminists From Editing GamerGate Articles (Updated)". ThinkProgress. Archived from the original on September 29, 2018.
Daniel Greenfield (August 20, 2016). "Gawker Editor: Gamergate Was Our Most Effective Enemy". FrontPage Magazine. Archived from the original on 21 August 2016.
Sam Wineburg and Nadav Ziv (October 17, 2024). "Go ahead and use Wikipedia for research". The Boston Globe. Retrieved October 18, 2024.

This article has been viewed enough times in a single week to appear in the Top 25 Report. The week in which this happened:

October 19 to 25, 2014 (19th)

Section sizes

Section size for Gamergate (harassment campaign) (30 sections)
Section name	Byte count	Section total
(Top)	7,663	7,663
History	12	24,274
Zoë Quinn and Depression Quest	8,674	8,674
Anita Sarkeesian and Tropes vs. Women in Video Games	4,118	4,118
Brianna Wu	2,212	2,212
Other targets of harassment	4,785	4,785
Coordination of harassment	4,473	4,473
Demographics	1,742	1,742
Organization	6,272	14,948
Harassment and Twitter	2,598	2,598
Efforts to affect public perceptions	3,442	3,442
Targeting advertisers	1,100	1,100
Sad Puppies	1,536	1,536
Purpose and goals	8,967	8,967
Social, cultural, and political impact	3,100	20,723
Gamer identity	6,370	6,370
Misogyny and sexism	6,365	6,365
Law enforcement	4,888	4,888
Gaming industry response	6,868	6,868
Representation in media	3,227	3,227
Reducing online harassment	2,438	2,438
Legacy	10,955	34,355
2015–2018	5,223	5,223
2019	4,618	4,618
2020–2021	4,176	4,176
2022–present	9,383	9,383
See also	180	180
Notes	24	24
References	111,539	111,539
External links	1,076	1,076
Total	238,024	238,024

Reference ideas for Gamergate (harassment campaign)

The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:

Beyer, Jessica L. (2021). "Trolls and Hacktivists: Political Mobilization from Online Communities". In Rohlinger, Deana A.; Sobieraj, Sarah (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Digital Media Sociology. Oxford University Press. pp. 417–442. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197510636.013.47. ISBN 978-0-19-751063-6.
Condis, Megan (2018). "From #GamerGate to Donald Trump: Toxic Masculinity and the Politics of the Alt-Right". Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Gendered Battle for Online Culture. University of Iowa Press. pp. 95–106. ISBN 978-1-6093-8566-8. JSTOR j.ctv3dnq9f.12.
Dewey, Caitlin (2016-02-17). "In the battle of Internet mobs vs. the law, the Internet mobs have won". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2023-07-10. Retrieved 2024-01-22.
Donovan, Joan; Dreyfuss, Emily; Friedberg, Brian (2022). Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-63-557864-5.
Jones, Bethan (2018). "#AskELJames, Ghostbusters, and #Gamergate". In Booth, Paul (ed.). A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 415–429. doi:10.1002/9781119237211.ch26. ISBN 978-1-1192-3716-7.
Kidd, Dustin (2018). "GamerGate: Gender Perspectives on Social Media". Social Media Freaks: Digital Identity in the Network Society. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-4299-7691-9.
O'Donnell, Jessica (2022). Gamergate and Anti-Feminism in the Digital Age. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-14057-0. ISBN 978-3-031-14057-0.
Reyman, Jessica; Sparby, Erika, eds. (2020). Digital Ethics: Rhetoric and Responsibility in Online Aggression. Routledge Studies in Rhetoric and Communication (1st ed.). New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429266140. ISBN 978-0-367-21795-2. S2CID 189982687.
Ruffino, Paolo (2018). "GamerGate: Becoming Parasites to Gaming". Future Gaming: Creative Interventions in Video Game Culture. London: Goldsmiths Press. pp. 104–119. ISBN 978-1-90-689755-0.
Salter, Michael (2018). "From Geek Masculinity to Gamergate: The Technological Rationality of Online Abuse". Crime, Media, Culture. 14 (2): 247–264. doi:10.1177/1741659017690893. ISSN 1741-6604.
Veale, Kevin (2020). "Introduction: The Breadth of Harassment Culture and Contextualising Gamergate". Gaming the Dynamics of Online Harassment. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1–33. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-60410-3_1. ISBN 978-3-030-60410-3.
Zuckerberg, Donna (2018). Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-6749-8982-5.

Sanctions enforcement

This section is pinned and will not be automatically archived.

All articles related to the Gamergate controversy are subject to discretionary sanctions.

Requests for enforcing sanctions may be made at: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement.

— 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)[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

It has been proposed in this section that Gamergate (harassment campaign) be renamed and moved to Gamergate.

A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil.

Please use {{subst:requested move}}. Do not use {{requested move/dated}} directly.

Links: current log • target log • direct move

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.--Kev min § 23:30, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]