6 ms·

Is there a way for you to quickly explain where/what the bias is, for people who have no idea what Gamergate is?

tim333 8y ago
Yeah I'm puzzled too. I think it's along the line of sexist racist trolls attacking women for being into gaming then wikipedia being against sexist trolling?
- Xelynega 8y ago
  From what I understand the bias is that the Wikipedia article describes the controversy as "targeted harassment" with a side note of ethics in video game journals, even though there is a case to be made that the gamergate hashtag was started to point out unethical practices in game journalism which the accused took as harassment to save face.
  - untog 8y ago
    Is there a case to be made there? "The accused took as harassment" implies that there was no harassing intent and... there's just no way that's true. People like Zoe Quinn were absolutely harassed, I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise. Even the original incident that sparked the whole controversy was bunk: that Zoe Quinn got a favorable review from a journalist because she was sleeping with him. He never even reviewed her game! If Gamergate wanted to point out unethical practises in game journalism then holy hell was there a lot to work with. "Exclusive" reviews that are always positive, "sneak peeks" and so on that are openly and obviously traded for positive coverage. Video games journalism is so far deeply in bed with the major publishers in the industry it covers that it's absurd. But somehow, Gamergate became all about a small number of independent game developers who just happened to be women, and were (indisputably) the victims of harassment, rape threats and doxxing. Weird, that.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 8y ago
    No. This is preposterous. I ended up on gamergate's hate list and they dumped so much filth into my reddit inbox I deleted my account and never looked back. And I'm a total nobody. The harassment from the core GG folks was systematic and severe. In several cases it escalated to physical stalking of women where the police became involved. And should we be surprised? This whole thing got started when one angry ex boyfriend wrote a rant and got the whole 4chan gaming world to start harassing and demonizing his ex. But sure, go ahead and keep claiming "it's about ethics in gaming journalism" and that there's no harassment, just people being too sensitive or faking it. Utterly. Preposterous.
  - srpablo 8y ago
    A common fallacy is "if there are two strongly opposing sides, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle" and the related "if there's two strongly opposing sides, there are ways in which they're both right." But, this is a fallacy. Vaccines don't cause autism, the Earth isn't even a little flat, and GG wasn't in any way "about" ethics in games journalism — some people were led to believe it was, but they were useful idiots who were purposefully corralled to create a smokescreen. So I'd argue strongly against claims that the Wikipedia page is "biased" if it doesn't mention the ethics storyline. e.g. notice the lack of cultural hell during "Gerstmanngate" — https://kotaku.com/yes-a-games-writer-was-fired-over-review-scores-5893785 https://kotaku.com/yes-a-games-writer-was-fired-over-review-... Or how the "sex for good reviews" accusation was about a game that never received a review from that publication Or the chat logs that were found of the channers who worked the whole thing — https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/zoe-quinn-outs-4chan-behind-gamergate/ https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/zoe-quinn-outs-4chan-behind-... It's understandable, for parties with less information, to think this was more balanced than it was, but I hope with appropriate information we could stop giving that side credibility. A great comic illustrating the dynamic http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2014/10/15/the-perfect-crime/ http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2014/10/15/the-perfect-crime/
    - a1369209993 8y ago
      > the Earth isn't even a little flat Well, actually, it is a little flat. In fact it's quite flat; it has curvature (inverse radius) less than 1.6e-7 (0.00000016) per meter. In other words, it takes about 70 miles for it deviate from 'flat' by one degree. (Golden mean is a fallacy, but that's not a very good example of it's fallacity.)
  - makomk 8y ago
    Also, back when GamerGate was actually relevant, the article was very heavily controlled by someone who liked to track down the social media accounts of editors who disagreed with him, harass them off-site over it, and then accuse them of violating Wikipedia rules and threaten to get them banned if they complained about it on Wikipedia. I think he even managed to get a few of the people he'd harassed banned. Previously he'd done it over things like his personal interpretations of obscure anime plot points, and he brought those tactics to fighting against GamerGate. To be fair, ArbCom did eventually decide they'd had enough and indefinitely ban him for this - much to the anger of all the folks proudly taking a stand against harassment by fighting GamerGate. (Though it took something like three attempts at bringing it before ArbCom.)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
DuskStar 8y ago
I think that the KnowYourMeme article [0] is the closest thing to "favorable to gamergate + moderately unbiased" I've read. And while I do think it leaves out some of the horrible behavior on GG's side, at least it doesn't try to paint the media as being composed entirely of angels. 0: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamergate https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamergate
- mfoy_ 8y ago
  I'm confused, isn't "Gamergate" like "Watergate"? How can you be on Gamergate's "side"? That's like... are you on Watergate's side?
  - DuskStar 8y ago
    This is a comment chain from someone saying that the Wikipedia Gamergate article is horribly biased... Edit: I think I misunderstood the parent. To be on GG's 'side' in this sense would be to be a gamer who believes that games journalism should abide by some basic ethical standards and/or be a horrible mysoginist who hates the idea of female characters and catering to people besides straight white men, depending on who you ask.
    - Asooka 8y ago
      GG is a pretty heavy case of an "if by whiskey" argument from all sides (I don't want to say both, because it feels like there's a lot of sides there), and it's been blown up to horrific proportions in the politics of entertainment scene. I recall Stallman's remark that even if you're not interested in politics, politics is interested in you, but it looks more and more like there's nothing you can do to meaningfully and safely interact with the zeitgeist, so why the hell would you try to be part of any kind of politics. It feels more like a force of nature than an actual human activity. More like a tornado than a debate of any sort - just close your doors and windows, keep quiet and hope it's not your house that gets destroyed.
  - calimac 8y ago
    Did you learn about watergate via Wikipedia?
snvzz 8y ago
For gamergate's own view: https://medium.com/@KingFrostFive/gamergate-august-2014-revisited-3b41832c061b https://medium.com/@KingFrostFive/gamergate-august-2014-revi... To be clear: This is not an endorsement. This is provided only because of the stark contrast with the wikipedia article depiction.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  Gamergate's "own view" isn't necessarily of any more value than a flat earther's view on the Earth article. Wikipedia's goal (met or not) is accuracy, not equal time to every opinion.

Yeah I'm puzzled too. I think it's along the line of sexist racist trolls attacking women for being into gaming then wikipedia being against sexist trolling?

Xelynega 8y ago
From what I understand the bias is that the Wikipedia article describes the controversy as "targeted harassment" with a side note of ethics in video game journals, even though there is a case to be made that the gamergate hashtag was started to point out unethical practices in game journalism which the accused took as harassment to save face.
- untog 8y ago
  Is there a case to be made there? "The accused took as harassment" implies that there was no harassing intent and... there's just no way that's true. People like Zoe Quinn were absolutely harassed, I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise. Even the original incident that sparked the whole controversy was bunk: that Zoe Quinn got a favorable review from a journalist because she was sleeping with him. He never even reviewed her game! If Gamergate wanted to point out unethical practises in game journalism then holy hell was there a lot to work with. "Exclusive" reviews that are always positive, "sneak peeks" and so on that are openly and obviously traded for positive coverage. Video games journalism is so far deeply in bed with the major publishers in the industry it covers that it's absurd. But somehow, Gamergate became all about a small number of independent game developers who just happened to be women, and were (indisputably) the victims of harassment, rape threats and doxxing. Weird, that.
- jasonwatkinspdx 8y ago
  No. This is preposterous. I ended up on gamergate's hate list and they dumped so much filth into my reddit inbox I deleted my account and never looked back. And I'm a total nobody. The harassment from the core GG folks was systematic and severe. In several cases it escalated to physical stalking of women where the police became involved. And should we be surprised? This whole thing got started when one angry ex boyfriend wrote a rant and got the whole 4chan gaming world to start harassing and demonizing his ex. But sure, go ahead and keep claiming "it's about ethics in gaming journalism" and that there's no harassment, just people being too sensitive or faking it. Utterly. Preposterous.
- srpablo 8y ago
  A common fallacy is "if there are two strongly opposing sides, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle" and the related "if there's two strongly opposing sides, there are ways in which they're both right." But, this is a fallacy. Vaccines don't cause autism, the Earth isn't even a little flat, and GG wasn't in any way "about" ethics in games journalism — some people were led to believe it was, but they were useful idiots who were purposefully corralled to create a smokescreen. So I'd argue strongly against claims that the Wikipedia page is "biased" if it doesn't mention the ethics storyline. e.g. notice the lack of cultural hell during "Gerstmanngate" — https://kotaku.com/yes-a-games-writer-was-fired-over-review-scores-5893785 https://kotaku.com/yes-a-games-writer-was-fired-over-review-... Or how the "sex for good reviews" accusation was about a game that never received a review from that publication Or the chat logs that were found of the channers who worked the whole thing — https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/zoe-quinn-outs-4chan-behind-gamergate/ https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/zoe-quinn-outs-4chan-behind-... It's understandable, for parties with less information, to think this was more balanced than it was, but I hope with appropriate information we could stop giving that side credibility. A great comic illustrating the dynamic http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2014/10/15/the-perfect-crime/ http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2014/10/15/the-perfect-crime/
  - a1369209993 8y ago
    > the Earth isn't even a little flat Well, actually, it is a little flat. In fact it's quite flat; it has curvature (inverse radius) less than 1.6e-7 (0.00000016) per meter. In other words, it takes about 70 miles for it deviate from 'flat' by one degree. (Golden mean is a fallacy, but that's not a very good example of it's fallacity.)
- makomk 8y ago
  Also, back when GamerGate was actually relevant, the article was very heavily controlled by someone who liked to track down the social media accounts of editors who disagreed with him, harass them off-site over it, and then accuse them of violating Wikipedia rules and threaten to get them banned if they complained about it on Wikipedia. I think he even managed to get a few of the people he'd harassed banned. Previously he'd done it over things like his personal interpretations of obscure anime plot points, and he brought those tactics to fighting against GamerGate. To be fair, ArbCom did eventually decide they'd had enough and indefinitely ban him for this - much to the anger of all the folks proudly taking a stand against harassment by fighting GamerGate. (Though it took something like three attempts at bringing it before ArbCom.)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

DuskStar 8y ago

I think that the KnowYourMeme article [0] is the closest thing to "favorable to gamergate + moderately unbiased" I've read. And while I do think it leaves out some of the horrible behavior on GG's side, at least it doesn't try to paint the media as being composed entirely of angels. 0: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamergate https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamergate

mfoy_ 8y ago
I'm confused, isn't "Gamergate" like "Watergate"? How can you be on Gamergate's "side"? That's like... are you on Watergate's side?
- DuskStar 8y ago
  This is a comment chain from someone saying that the Wikipedia Gamergate article is horribly biased... Edit: I think I misunderstood the parent. To be on GG's 'side' in this sense would be to be a gamer who believes that games journalism should abide by some basic ethical standards and/or be a horrible mysoginist who hates the idea of female characters and catering to people besides straight white men, depending on who you ask.
  - Asooka 8y ago
    GG is a pretty heavy case of an "if by whiskey" argument from all sides (I don't want to say both, because it feels like there's a lot of sides there), and it's been blown up to horrific proportions in the politics of entertainment scene. I recall Stallman's remark that even if you're not interested in politics, politics is interested in you, but it looks more and more like there's nothing you can do to meaningfully and safely interact with the zeitgeist, so why the hell would you try to be part of any kind of politics. It feels more like a force of nature than an actual human activity. More like a tornado than a debate of any sort - just close your doors and windows, keep quiet and hope it's not your house that gets destroyed.
- calimac 8y ago
  Did you learn about watergate via Wikipedia?

snvzz 8y ago

For gamergate's own view: https://medium.com/@KingFrostFive/gamergate-august-2014-revisited-3b41832c061b https://medium.com/@KingFrostFive/gamergate-august-2014-revi... To be clear: This is not an endorsement. This is provided only because of the stark contrast with the wikipedia article depiction.

ceejayoz 8y ago
Gamergate's "own view" isn't necessarily of any more value than a flat earther's view on the Earth article. Wikipedia's goal (met or not) is accuracy, not equal time to every opinion.