Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/GamerGate (controversy)

GamerGate (controversy)

The filing party (the editor who opened this request) will add the basic details for this dispute below.

Editors involved in this dispute

1. Retartist (talk · contribs) – filing party
2. PseudoSomething (talk · contribs)
3. Masem (talk · contribs)
4. Ryulong (talk · contribs)
5. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk · contribs)
6. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk · contribs)
7. The_Devil%27s_Advocate (talk · contribs)
8. Ranze (talk · contribs)
9. Willhesucceed (talk · contribs)
10. Tarc (talk · contribs)
11. Kaldari (talk · contribs)
12. ArmyLine (talk · contribs)

Articles affected by this dispute

1. Talk:Gamergate controversy (edit | subject | history | links | watch | logs)

Other attempts at resolving this dispute that you have attempted

• Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Archive_100#Talk:GamerGate

Issues to be mediated

What is this dispute about? What sections, sentences, or issues in the article(s) can you not agree on? If you are the editor who opened this request, list these issues to be mediated under "Primary issues". If you did not open this request, you can add additional issues to be mediated under "Additional issues". The issues to be mediated would be properly agreed upon later, if this request for mediation is accepted.

Primary issues (added by the filing party)

1. The reliability and validity of a variety of sources as discussed on the talk page and DRN case
2. The perceived biased against gamergate in the article
3. User civility
4. Blp Issues
5. Weighting of the article
6. the presentation of opinions as fact

Additional issues (added by other parties)

• Additional issue 1: whether or not woman-hating (misogyny) associated with games is describable with enforcing terms like long-standing or engrained, and what kind of references which support or oppose related viewpoints are proper to include
• Additional issue 2 comparison for consistency of both claims and allegedly supporting data with sister sections of other Wikipedia articles such as:
  1. Gender representation in video games#Effect on attitudes towards gender
  2. Video game controversies#Portrayal of gender
  3. Video game culture#Gender issues
  4. Women and video games#Social and cultural attitudes
• Additional issue 3: whether 'journalistic ethics' is actually a central aspect of Gamergate (as covered by RS)

Parties' agreement to mediation

If you are a named party, please sign below and indicate whether you agree or refuse to participate in mediation. Remember that all editors are obliged to resolve disputes about content through discussion, mediation, or other similar means. If you do not wish to participate in mediation, you must arrange another form of dispute resolution. Comments and questions should be made underneath the numbered list below, to avoid confusion.

1. Agree. Retartist (talk) 04:25, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

   I noticed a premature arbcom case relating to this. TROPD and Ryulong were nominated and suggested that there was no attempt at dispute resolution. Hence i find it odd that they decline to participate in this. Retartist (talk) 03:54, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

   Re:RYulong so you are saying ANI or RFC/U or ArbCom is a better alternative? Retartist (talk) 22:19, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

2. Disagree. There is nothing to discuss with single-purpose accounts who have done nothing but disrupt and violate WP:BLP, a core policy of the project; they simply need to be removed from the topic area and all will be fine. Especially when the filing party's 1st edit to the topic had to be rev-deleted, and who felt that misogyny and sexism has another "side" that is unfairly represented. Tarc (talk) 05:18, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
3. Disagree. Not really necessary. The article talk page discussion is long and convoluted enough without opening up yet another discussion that will almost certainly rehash the same issues that have been debated time and again. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:39, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
4. Disagree: Stop fucking forum shopping.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 05:45, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

   Re:Retartist: Because this dispute is not one that can be solved here. This is not something that requires mediation because every issue that has been raised by you and also Ranze are issues that are covered and have been covered again and again. It's just the same repetition from suddenly new voices in the debate that cry out bias and "it's not about misogyny" when everything has been covered before they arrived and have to be covered again and again when a new account appears or someone else remembers their Wikipedia password and uses their autoconfirmed status to get their opinion known. That is why I am refusing to participate in this mediation. That is why everyone else who has been dealing with the deluge of pro-gamergate editors is refusing to participate. It's pointless. Nothing will be solved by this small group of editors that get picked out by the hordes as being biased or against them.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 21:56, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

5. Partial agree. The issues above of Reliability of sources, user civility, BLP issues, and weighting of opinion as fact are either things that cannot be resolved either because either they are readily and easily dealt with or outside the scope of mediation (eg civility). But I will say that I think there needs to be a third party with zero stake in the controversy to help judge if the article's balance is proper or not. To the point: while the amount of reliable sourcing we can use toward the pro-Gamergate side is minimal and lacking to the point that there's no way we can expect a 50/50 split coverage of this topic, the article is presently (in my opinion) overloaded with anti-Gamergate views to the point of being preachy and villifying the other side, a point I have had difficulty trying to show this light to to other editors that seem to have emotional investment in this topic (for good reason, but as editors we have to learn to drop that at times to cover a topic fairly). So the remaining points - the percieved bias, and the weighting of the article - are both fair game for mediation. --MASEM (t) 06:20, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
6. Agree: I have some serious concerns about several of the sources being used in the article, especially the Time piece, The Verge articles, and those which rely on the word of one person (Zoe Quinn) for their information, concerns which I don't believe have been given proper consideration by other editors. I'd like to discuss the inclusion of one or two unconventional but otherwise reliable sources, as well. I believe some editors, willfully or no, have not distanced themselves sufficiently from the matter to do their job properly. Hopefully this mediation will be able to fix that and the general lack of civility evident; the confrontational nature of the talk page makes it exceedingly difficult to contribute. Willhesucceed (talk) 08:44, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
7. Agree and added 1st+2nd additional issues, being that the content of the GGC article is so multi-faceted I worry that the huge mass of issues could become overwhelming so it might be good to break this into particulars in addition to the broad ones. I'm not on Wikipedia as regularly as some others so I'll try to be a bit more involved, liberal use of Pinging would be appreciated though. Ranze (talk) 10:45, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
8. disagree-for the same reason DRN was a waste of time- even if all of the above named parties did come to an agreement about how WP:BALASPS applies to the subject, the flood of SPAs into the page whinging about "you cannot talk about the haraamsnet because that is not what the gamergaters want to talk about" "you cannot use that mainstream source because all the media is bias and has a conflict of interest" "we have to discuss the allegations about that living persons sex life because it is more interesting than mine" etc etc will continue unabated. no value in continuing those pointless discussions on multiple pages and venues only to repeat them again on the talk page.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 12:31, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
   • I think a competent mediator will be able to discern whether or not accounts are single-purpose. The core issue is also how to improve the article, not who is attempting to improve it. People who are proposing changes for the simplistic reasons you are stating probably (if they are single-purpose as you say) probably would not know how to find their way into the middle of a mediation process. If they did, that kind of reasoning would be held to higher scrutiny. The matters you discuss are also not the only issues of mediation. I haven't even bothered to move on to other problems the article may have (undue focus on harassment with questionable proof, embellishment, using biased sources) because I start from the beginning and am caught up in problems contained in the introduction sentence which aren't even about GamerGate but some kind of PoVrant about gaming culture as a whole. That's what I would like to see mediated before anything else. Ranze (talk) 10:15, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
9. Agree I think this can only work if the other side of this dispute agreed, though a number of them are not even represented here. Even people on this side of the dispute are not represented. Perhaps if we could see about getting other voices represented in mediation as well it would have a better chance of being seen as credible.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 20:50, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

   Feel free to invite or add any other parties Retartist (talk) 08:50, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

10. Disagree - We have already bent over backwards to present a "balanced" view of the 2 sides - one represented by a cavalcade of well-known mainstream media (the "anti-gamergate POV") and the other represented by a handful of fringe media sources (the "pro-gamergate POV"). The horde of pro-gamergate SPAs isn't satisfied with this, however, and wants us to whitewash the article into their version of "The Truth". Because this isn't in line with Wikipedia policies such as WP:NPOV, WP:RS, WP:BLP, etc. they have been unable to build consensus for their changes on the talk page. What they are asking for isn't simply to resolve a difference of opinion, but to bend Wikipedia policies and guidelines to the breaking point. The article already devotes too much verbage to the "pro-gamergate" POV (per WP:UNDUE). Whitewashing the harassment aspects from the article would basically mean throwing our guidelines out the window and caving to mob rule (like Intel did). I have very little confidence that these SPAs are actually willing to abide by any sort of consensus. They are here to push a POV and continue their "culture war", not to build an encyclopedia. Kaldari (talk) 20:54, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
11. Agree - When you have editors outright stating that they have "no interest" in what others have to say and writing off death threats as "defending others from harassment", it's time for mediation. The parties who disagree likely disagree because they themselves are the problem.--ArmyLine (talk) 01:19, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Decision of the Mediation Committee

This section should only be edited by a mediator. The Mediation Committee's representative will indicate in due course whether the request is accepted (meaning a mediator will be assigned) or rejected (meaning you will have to try a different type of dispute resolution). If the mediator asks you a question in this section, you may edit here.

• Chairperson's Note: If there are other editors who anyone feels should be a part of this mediation, feel free to add them to the list of parties, above, but I'm going to set next Tuesday, October 21, at 23:59 UST as the latest time for such additions. If anyone is added, I'll extend the acceptance/rejection period until October 28, to allow them to weigh in; if not, then I'll evaluate acceptance/rejection on the basis of the acceptances and rejections of the originally-named parties after October 21. For the Committee, TransporterMan (TALK) 21:36, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Reject: Since the parties who were added prior to the deadline for adding parties have already weighed in, I'm going to go ahead and make a decision. The technical reason for rejection is failure to satisfy prerequisite for mediation #5, a "majority of the parties to the dispute consent to mediation", but the problem really goes to the reason behind that prerequisite. Mediation requires participation by all editors necessary to come to a consensus which will be accepted and "stick" at the article. In light of the high level of participation in the dispute of the parties who have specifically rejected participation above and also in light of the number of editors currently actively participating in the discussions at the article talk page who are not listed here, there can be no reasonable hope that any effort here would include enough participants to solve the problems at the article even if the acceptances had met the technical standard (which they did not). For the Mediation Committee, TransporterMan (TALK) 15:32, 23 October 2014 (UTC) (Chairperson)

@TransporterMan: looks to me like 6 out of 11 agreed to mediation and that we DID receive a majority here. I also do not thing objecting to mediation means that the objectors will not participate. I am confident they still would. Also, a notification said "will be deleted by an administrator after a reasonable time", I was wondering if we could have this archived instead of deleted, I would like a record that this process was attempted and of the ideas expressed here. Ranze (talk) 10:37, 24 October 2014 (UTC)