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Requested move 20 August 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved in favor of Option B. (AKA Gamergate → Gamergate (ant); Gamergate (disambiguation) → Gamergate)

This was a really tough one, but an important one, given the long history of RMs here and on related pages. Many good arguments were made on all sides, using technical evidence (RSes, ngrams, scholarly searches) and PAG reasoning (PTOPIC, CRYSTAL, RECENTISM, DPT, ASTONISH).

What is clear at this point is that this discussion is slowing down, and participants are now rehashing and reexamining the same arguments ad nauseum. These arguments have been re-litigated to life support status. No new arguments have been made in several days, and most votes are using existing arguments rather than novel ones. Per WHENCLOSE, this is a signal that it's time to figure out what the result is, and give this conversation a merciful death. And so that is what I will do. A close on this is especially important given the contentious nature of past RMs and how long they've lasted, sucking up community time that could be better spent elsewhere, yknow, building an encyclopedia.

On Wikipedia, we are tasked with determining discussion outcomes using the principle of "rough consensus." That principle tells me to determine what result would be overall acceptable to the most participants, using both arguments made and the overall landscape of how participating editors feel about those arguments.

In examining this discussion, it is clear that many participants feel strongly about the favorability of option A, but also that many feel strongly about the favorability of option C. It is also clear that the largest share of editors (by a thin margin) picked A or B as their first or second choice, meaning that the largest share of editors found C to be the least favorable option. This tells me that we have a narrow marginal consensus in favor of doing something here. (see also the attached graph of participant votes)

So which of the options, A or B, should I implement?

Examining Votes: The answer lies in what editors have chosen as their second option. A was very favored by many participants. However, the greatest number of C voters also mentioned their frank distaste of option A. The least "hated" option was B, and many C voters also mentioned B as viable, if not preferred.

Examining Policy: What's clear from examining the discussion is that few editors found the "scholarly primacy" argument (the record says X, even though it looks like it says Y) convincing. Some participants found temporal/recent arguments convincing, but also cited how that could favor option B, if not C. Per NODEADLINE, we can revisit if either of these subjects gains or loses prominence in a big way. Importantly, we will not mislead readers if we show them a page listing both the ant and the controversy in the meantime. B results in the fewest ASTONISHed viewers. B will not result in anyone going to the wrong page. The lion's share of arguments cited the scholarly record and search hits, on both sides, attempting to determine if a RECOGNIZABILITY criterion exists for these subjects, in different communities (entomologists, internet nerds, etc). In this respect, neither As nor Cs were particularly convincing to participating editors, leaving the compromise of B as very viable. I would agree this is also the most well-weighted argument provided.

The vote distribution.

So, in considering the options re: popularity and re: strength of argument, I must implement option B. It has been said, you cannot please all of the people all of the time. On wikipedia, we try to please the largest number of people, but in the least pleasing way! Option B is the most milquetoast, and it leaves the largest number of participants somewhat satisfied and so it is the result.

As always, if you find this close to be in error in some way, let me know on my talk page, and if I agree I will reopen it. Otherwise you are free to litigate it at WP:MOVEREVIEW.

Vote tally: A 9; B 0; C 14; A>B>C 9; A>C>B 1; B>A>C 1; C>B>A 3; C>A>B 1; A or B 2;

A primary: 20; B primary: 1; C primary 18;

A secondary: 2; B secondary: 12; C secondary: 1;

A tertiary: 3; B tertiary: 2; C tertiary: 10;

— Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 17:08, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

– Special:PermaLink/1039653835#Requested move 12 August 2021 was just closed with the conclusion that if the incident is to be disambiguated, "harassment campaign" is a better disambiguator than "controversy". The close left open the possibility of a RM to determine the primary topic of "Gamergate". I see three main options here:

It will make the closer's job easier if you rank these three buckets even if you disagree with the specific moves proposed under a bucket; in such a case, you can identify what you believe the primary topic to be and proceed with your alternative proposal. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:45, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

I forgot to mention this in another reply, but this page is rated high importance in the Ant taskforce, (WP Insects is extremely large and is split up for that reason), so this comment is extreme cherry-picking even if our internal ratings played a role in primary topic discussion. KoA (talk) 13:53, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Support A - the campaign is a clear primary topic. The event is still having ongoing impacts on society and also gets significantly more pageviews than the ant. Elli (talk | contribs) 03:46, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose/C due to the recency of Gamergate hate campaign and it now having a decently descriptive name. Would prefer B if it does not go that way, A just deems like giving in towards a bias for internet phenomena over real world terms. Artw (talk) 04:29, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
I'm going to add that I really dislike the idea of using page views/google rankings as a metric here. Feels like social media's promotion of "engagement" over all else. Do we really want to be the Facebook algorithm? I don't think so. Artw (talk) 18:43, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • A>B>C: based on WP:PTOPIC and our usage data. PTOPIC guideline language is in green with italics added:
    • The usage test: "highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term."
      The guideline later suggests using the article traffic statistic tool for this. The evidence here is overwhelmingly in favor of the harassment campaign as the primary topic. In the article traffic data (year to date), the former "controversy" page gets about 15 times as many page views as the ant. The ant gets about 6.5% of the total page views.
    • The long-term significance test: "substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term."
      Most supporters of the status quo are pointing to this. This test necessitates some crystal ball work and I don't see how status quo supporters are so confident in their foresight that they can look past the facts in the usage test. As far as the data goes, over the first full year of data, the "controversy" had 92.2% of the daily views, and over the most recent year it went up to 94.1%.
    • internal links: "Incoming wikilinks from Special:WhatLinksHere". Looking at the link counts (total/article namespace only), the ant has 283/68 and the harassment campaign has 1468/409.
    • "historical age is not determinative" so we should discount that the harassment campaign is newer than the naming of the ant type (which is relatively new as far as ant biology goes).
    • A topic may have principal relevance for a specific group of people (for example, as the name of a local place, or software), but not be the primary meaning among a general audience. Self-explanatory here.
    Our current position is under-serving our readers, and we're letting the most precognition-reliant aspect of our guideline elevate content that our users are clearly less interested in. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 05:12, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Since this was the first to bring up WP:PTOPIC I'll mention that the guideline is why the ants are the primary topic right now. Our last RM explicitly mentioned these components back when the harassment campaign had mostly settled in for page views already. I posted the close result at Talk:Gamergate#Background_on_previous_RM_closes. it is apparent that a clear majority of the community would prefer a primary topic in favour of long-term significance. In short, it's bullet 2 that is more viable here (long-term signifance) because of issues with assessing bullet 1 (useage).
As for how you try to cite WP:CRYSTAL, that violates that policy. The whole issue is that we don't have the foresight to know if the harassment topic is going to have lasting enough significance in the historical sense and WP:RECENTISM cautions against focusing too much on the here and now. For current/recent events, you largely need historical impact compared to events that affect entire species like we have for ants to get primacy debatable. KoA (talk) 23:41, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose - C > B > A. It's reasonable to look at page views as a starting point, but this is not enough by itself. We have to strike a balance and cover thing in proportion to their larger importance. Statistics about page views only reflect the "average Wikipedian" and this almost certainly distorts the prominence of this topic. The biology of ants may be dry or academic to some, but this is still an encyclopedia. Grayfell (talk) 05:29, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    We usually use "Wikipedian" to refer to editors, not readers. Similarly, your link to WP:Systemic bias is about participants in the project, not readers. Pageviews reflect reader interest. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 05:38, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    Your "larger importance" test stil favors the controversy. If you "gamergate" on google, every results from the first three pages is about the controversy. And significant, real world events (even if they are on the internet), are still worthy of inclusion on an encyclopedia. Bwmdjeff (talk) 15:58, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
My point was exactly that these kind of metrics, which includes google hit counts, are are not sufficient for this. They are useful as a reality check, but not sufficient. What this proposal is attempting to do is compare the significance (or importance) of one specific harassment campaigns to the significance of one category of ant. This is, at a fundamental level, completely arbitrary. As topics, these are are so different that any attempted comparison will be based on personal perspective, because there is no other basis for comparison. Ghits and view-counts cannot sufficiently compensate for this category mismatch, and it is a mistake to over-rely on these. Grayfell (talk) 20:24, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Strong Support for A: For the same reasons I stated in the prior move discussion. There is simply no evidence whatsoever that the majority of people searching for Gamergate are searching for the ant such that it should be the primary topic. By contrast, there is ample evidence, in the form of page views, that readers are searching for the harassment campaign. As others have already pointed out, each of the considerations outlined in WP:DPT strongly supports making the harassment campaign the primary topic. I think B is also a reasonable compromise position but I really think A is the correct answer here. If we're wrong and Gamergate fades into irrelevancy in 10 years, then we can move it back. But there's a difference between recency bias and recognizing that readers are overwhelmingly looking for the harassment campaign (even several years after it started) rather than the ant. DocFreeman24 (talk) 05:42, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose / C. The difference in primary long-term significance is too obvious and extreme here for this; the ant clearly has more long-term notability. The arguments that people pushing for a move are using to try and dismiss that could be as easily brought against any argument for using long-term significance as a criteria; but the reality is that this is as clear-cut as any case of starkly distinct long-term significance is likely to be - a single comparatively recent event from 2014 vs. an academic classification central to one of the most common insects in the world. --Aquillion (talk) 05:46, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    The thing is, there is hardly a more clear-cut disparity in usage: almost 20 to 1, even years after the whole thing has already boiled over. When the two WP:PTOPIC criteria collide, why do you insist on elevating one of them instead of just allowing there to be no primary topic? This is not Apple 2.0. In that case, almost everyone looking for the company is aware that the fruit exists, and would consider it reasonable for it to hold the main title. But here, anyone looking for the controversy would be WP:ASTONISHed to find an article on a type of ant they have never heard of, and have no interest in reading about. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:57, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    If the ant has more "long term significance", why does it have so much more searches on google and searches on wikipedia, even 6 years after the controversy. This is a clean-cut decision, but in the opposite way as you proposed. Bwmdjeff (talk) 16:00, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Support A > B > C Current naming setup is a violation of Wikipedia:POVNAME, as the movement/harassment campaign is best known as simply 'GamerGate', and as such does not fulfill the requirements for a non-neutral name. My preference of B over C is weak, as B still falls in violation of neutral naming. Pidey (talk) 06:33, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    Let's not re-litigate the specific disambiguator used for the Internet phenomenon, as that was already the subject of a long and extensive RM and concluded that "harassment campaign" is the term to use if any should be used at all. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:41, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    The extensive RM referenced mostly the Wikipedia:NDESC rule, as opposed to the Wikipedia:POVNAME that I am mentioning. They are two separate rules with significant nuance between them. Pidey (talk) 07:07, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    TBH If it's their reason they should give it as their reason, even if it's bad. Nice to have that motive out in the open. Suspect there's been more than a little of that involved since people started helpfully jumping in with this suggestion. Artw (talk) 06:51, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose. C > B&A Do not rename the ant article. see discussion in gamergate harassment talk page. - ForbiddenRocky (talk) 07:13, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Addendum: For Option A I don't see an argument that addresses WP:RECENTISM (7 years v 31+ years) that also addresses the biases of wikipedians to think what they know is what readers experience or accounts for the odd selection bias happening around GG. And for Option B I don't see a convincing argument that GG is the WP:PTOPIC over the ant, that doesn't require ignoring WP:RECENTISM or doesn't depend on using a crystal ball. - ForbiddenRocky (talk) 19:47, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
WP:RECENTISM has no doubt been invoked quite often with respect to past move discussion but at what point does that policy rationale begin to fade? Even ~7 years on, the harassment campaign is continuing to be referenced on, if not a daily, certainly a weekly or monthly basis in the mainstream press. See e.g., [1],[2], [3]. The harassment campaign has clearly become an important (albeit horrific) cultural touchpoint for discussions involving sexual harassment and gender, to say nothing about it's significant in discussions regarding video games and Internet culture. WP:RECENTISM suggests that editors consider the ten year test when evaluating this argument. Given the period of time that has passed and the continuing relevance of this harassment campaign, I feel fairly confident that, 10 years from now, when people talk about issues of sexual harassment, particularly in the Internet era, the harassment campaign will be invoked. Could I be wrong? Sure, I don't have a crystal ball as we all acknowledge. But armed with 7 years of history, page view statistics, and media coverage, I feel pretty confident that the recentism argument has been sufficiently addressed. DocFreeman24 (talk) 22:54, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
Per WP:RECENTISM what is to be avoided is "writing without an aim toward a long-term, historical view" - there is not a time limit that kicks in where if we go over it the harassment campaign becomes more that than the ant. Artw (talk) 23:07, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
  • A. The pageviews make it obvious that the controversy is far and away the most notable topic, and the "harassments campaign" violates guidelines on neutral titles. Bwmdjeff (talk) 15:50, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • A>B>C This very talk page says that the article on the ant " This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale." If it is low importance relative to ants, it must be very low importance relative to all topics here. Whereas the article on the controversy is rated:
"High-importance" for WP: Internet Culture
"Mid-importance" for WP: Video games
"Mid-importance" for WP: Social Movements
The article on "gamergate harassment campaign" clearly has more pageviews, more searches on google (see google trends), and more news articles on google (the first three pages of google search are all about the controversy). And this interest is not transitory or "recency bias", as the controversy is six years old, and has seen few recent developments in the past few years. Despite that, it has maintained a much higher level of interest for those past six years, and has no sign of slowing down. So I have proven that the controversy is much more relevant to the layperson.
Even on JSTOR, which hosts academic journals, searching for "gamergate" and sorting by reveals that gives 4 of the 5 top articles are about the controversy. There is simply no contest here in terms of notablility.
I would accept "B" as a secondary option, but "C" is ridiculous. Swd7391 (talk) 16:18, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
On WikiProject ratings, that has nothing to do with determine the primary topic since that's a meta-issue of what editors are up to. In the case of Wikiproject Insects, I suggest scrolling down to the statistics section to see just how many articles we have to work with. Articles generally get a low importance rating by default in that project. Either way, there's no policy-based argument made above. KoA (talk) 18:50, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Isn’t the inclusion of the -gate suffix in the name POV in itself by implying that the article is about a scandal? My only knowledge on this topic is what’s osmosed its way into my daily life, so excuse and please correct any ignorance - but isn’t the “scandal” just a thinly veiled excuse to harass any woman who dares be too visible in the gaming world? As such, calling a spade a spade and dispelling any illusion at the earliest possible opportunity seems wise. That’s B or C from me, I guess. EditorInTheRye (talk) 07:23, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

  • Support A > B > C, partly per Firefangledfeathers. I agree with King of Hearts's reading of usage, although I think he didn't go far enough: my reading of it is closer to 100 to one, based on data for a neutral query, where the first "ant" result appears at #87 (and is in French) and results 1-86 and 88-100 are about the online misogyny. There also seems to me to be a lot of moving of the goalposts, with respect to what constitute RECENTISM; here's a brief excerpt from this November 2014 move discussion at the controversy – it's kind of amusing in a way to see how much WP:CRYSTAL failed back then, and to some extent still is:
Excerpt from Nov. 2014 move discussion at the controversy

Usernames changed in the excerpt below

A year from now, when you say "Gamergate", how many people will immediately think of the ant, assuming that you're not sitting in the department of invertebrate zoology of a college or museum? — Example two (Talk) 14:40, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
WP:CRYSTAL but I will bet dollars to donuts far more will think of the ants than than who will remember or think of "harassment of women" /"but ethics!". there is no evidence this trollfest based on nothing will have any lasting impact. -- Example three 19:33, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
. . .
  • oppose- the "controversy" has received coverage and notice, not the "movement" /clusterfuck. In 3 months when there is even more evidence that this was just a trollfest, it will fade from view and relevance other than the dingiest corners of 8chan . The ants will still be around. -- Example three 15:47, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
Amusing, no? The lines of discussion seem to be about the same now as they were then, with few, or no minds changed. Somebody please ping me for the 2023 Requested move, when the ant name celebrates its 40th anniversary. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 07:51, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
What is going on here is similar to what went on in the 2014 discussion you just referenced. Then, people were making predictions that in a few years the ant would somehow be more notable. Now, six years have passed and the pageviews ratio is STILL extremely lopsided. And in this discussion they are saying in a few years, the ant would become more notable? They will just keep saying "in a few years, the ant would be more notable". I bet in 20 years they will still say the same thing, even if people still search overwhelmingly about the gamergate controversy. The other side's argument is so preposterous that I believe there is a political motivation behind it. You can't ignore the pageviews. Bwmdjeff (talk) 16:04, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Then, people were making predictions that in a few years the ant would somehow be more notable. I was around for those discussions well before you started editing in 2021, and no one ever seriously said anything like that. It was always about the relative stability of the ants vs. the unknown trajectory of the campaign. KoA (talk) 23:14, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose/C There is no need to move anything; the ant is the primary topic by longterm significance criterion. Heavy amounts of WP:BIAS can be seen in dismissing the ant as pointless, as I assume gamers and typical internet users vastly outnumber scientists here.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 08:17, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose Ant gamergates have chronological priority + are a longer term research subject unlike (an already now) historical episode. Shyamal (talk) 10:01, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    If it is a "historical" episode why are the pageviews for the controversy still so high compared to the ant? Truth is, a vast majority of people have never even heard of your ant. Bwmdjeff (talk) 16:05, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Good point but if the pageviews are vasty different, then it indicates that people are finding the right article and suggests that the title is probably correct. If people are finding the wrong article and then having to move to the other one via hatnotes - we should see a correlation in the pageviews. Shyamal (talk) 17:16, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose The recent successful move request was not a permission to resume the vexatious and incessant move request discussions from the past. There had been a moratorium in place for a reason, and the timing of this very discussion only reinforces that such a moratorium probably needs to be reinstated. On the substance of the argument, WP:RECENTISM is a real concern here, and that ant article is still a reasonable target as primary topic. The harassment campaign is certainly important in intensity of the minds of people that care about it, but on the balance the ant article is still a better primary target. --Jayron32 12:43, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    There is no moratorium; the proposal was rejected by the closer of the December 2016 RM, and even if it passed would not have lasted more than 6 months. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:33, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    Maybe you are correct, I am just going on what the original move proposal states at the harassment campaign article, where the OP there stated eventually resulting in a move request injunction, I assume they know what they are talking about, but perhaps that was an overreach. Regardless, the fact that we just concluded that move discussion, and mere minutes later this one starts, well, that's a problem. --Jayron32 16:01, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    And the closer of that discussion explicitly allowed for the possibility of that "consensus for [an additional move] can be tested in another RM". -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:16, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I'll echo Jayron above that this appears vexatious given that a few editors tried to propose moving this page over at this recent move and did not get traction. The moratorium was put in place in part so those passionate about the harassment topic would stop bludgeoning this primary topic page. Considering that, I'll just copy paste my last response from the RM that was just closed:
Strongly oppose any attempt to change the Gamergate ant article as some have suggested here per all of the archived discussions at that talk page. Nothing has fundamentally changed about the ants since all of those discussions years ago nor the notability of this page's topic. As many others have pointed out, the ant usage will always has lasting usage as a biological characteristic across multiple species rather than just a single small short event for the human species. KoA (talk) 13:48, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Something has fundamentally changed: The last RM was conducted in 2016, when the harassment campaign was still fresh in people's minds. Now, after seven years, the harassment campaign still beats out the ant by an order of magnitude, showing that interest in the topic is not transitory. After 20 years, even 50 years, the harassment campaign will probably still be higher; are you still going to oppose it per WP:RECENTISM then? (Also, if you read the discussion carefully, no moratorium was put in place, and any proposed was not to exceed six months.) -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 14:39, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
No, nothing has significantly changed, and trying to claim otherwise is exactly why WP:RECENTISM is an issue here. If anything, there should have been more developments over those seven years if the subject really was approaching the current primary's lasting endurance. Page traffic from a recently occurred event does not dictate the primary topic. That's especially in cases like this when you cannot make apples to apples comparisons due to things like inherent bias in pages views that WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY policy points out. In this case, the harassment stuff is more a popular press thing that inherently get more views than technical subjects, but that is no guarantee of primary subject for the former. In cases like that, we tend to lean more on the second part of WP:PTOPIC:
A topic is primary for a term with respect to long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term. Instead, it's been five years since the last RM, and the ants still are significant in the long-term as they always have been. That's largely unchanging as I mentioned above. Key points there are long-term significance, enduring notability, and educational value. That's where the comparison between the two puts the ants in the primary category.
Maybe there will be something of long-term impact or enduring about the harassment topic, but that's not really evident as of now, and WP:CRYSTAL policy is clear on second-guessing things like that. Having a relatively quick peak followed by being kicked around by sources once in awhile does not make for long-term or endurance compared to the ants that developed a characteristic that impacted entire lives of multiple ant species well before and well after the current-events article. The ants are going to be the consistent impact/notability in this case. Then it comes to educational where we generally defer to things like biology, chemistry, etc. over just regular current events articles. The harassment page has enough for it's own notability, but meeting that bar for a current event does not make it into equal long-term significance as a biological characteristic that is already well established. I've said it before, but A is basically trying to argue a single event of debatable impact or ongoing development at best in human history supersedes an event that has significantly impacted the lives of all ants within multiple species. That is also largely why editors on this page have consistently felt WP:BLUDGEONed in the numerous move requests over the years because nothing has really changed in that context. KoA (talk) 18:37, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
If you look carefully, I am not in fact arguing for one to supersede the other; my favored solution is disambiguation. Why are you so convinced that the ant is the primary topic, when it overwhelmingly fails one of the criteria in WP:PTOPIC? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:51, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
I would avoid leading questions like that. It's already addressed both in the RM's close and in comments right here that long-term significance outweighs usage. Google stats, page views, etc. are almost always one of the weaker metrics out there when you have different types of topics like this. PTOPIC even cautions about that. That is why those opposed (C) are generally addressing both metrics in PTOPIC. This is not a topic where one can simply say look at the page views repeatedly. KoA (talk) 20:24, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
That was more than 5 years ago. How long are we going to keep ignoring numbers to prop up some subjective and arbitrary notion of "long-term significance"? The fact that the pageviews of the Internet topic have been so high for so long is proof of its long-term significance. To you as an entomologist, the ant might be the more important topic, but it is not the topic that is relevant to a vast majority of our readers. This is very much not the same situation as Apple or Avatar, which are terms that the general populace is actually familiar with. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:38, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
And that was the decision that ruled the roost for 5 years. Your burden here is to show that something has significantly changed since then. Again, you need to stop directly misrepresenting people. This may not be the controversy/campaign article, that attitude is not appropriate here either. Those opposed to the move are addressing the numbers. Just look at Grayfell's recent reply. That was why usage was weighed less heavily back then, and nothing has really changed when you dig into the numbers now. The campaign views aren't increasing to a level (they're close to zero net increase since) that those are going to push a change in the primary topic alone, and we're still looking at roughly the same relative difference if we're looking at purely page views.
To you as an entomologist I will also note that's a blatant attempt to personalize a dispute and also misrepresent what I've said in totality related to that. This page is already getting long enough, so I'm not going to repeat myself every time you misrepresent what others have said. Repeatedly painting caricatures of editors who are approaching this evenhandedly and trying to present them as one-sided is very much violating WP:NPA has no place here. KoA (talk) 21:02, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Many of the "Oppose" arguments in the 2016 RM were predicated on the WP:CRYSTAL idea that interest in the Internet topic would wane over time. That simply didn't happen. An increase in interest is not necessary; the fact that there is no decrease is enough to shatter that assumption. What's changed is that that argument no longer holds water. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:30, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Again, please stop misrepresenting and WP:BLUDGEONING at this RM, not to mention flipping CRYSTAL policy upside down and misapplying it. You're literally creating strawman arguments, and those arguments are increasingly coming across as posturing ("shattering" a strawman is just embellishment).
CRYSTAL deals with things that are not well established yet, so you can't call reasonable doubts following that policy a violation of itself like you just did. Even if what you claimed was true, it wouldn't matter, the burden would still be on you to establish long-term significance. At the time, the campaign had enough notability to at least write a page about it because the events had mostly unfolded, but it would have needed to grow in significance significantly from that point to vie for primary status. After all this time, either a decrease or no change in views still results in no change to this page. You need significant positive lasting change overall in metrics, number-wise or not. On the ants side, no one had reasonable doubts that the notability was in flux.
You're going on tangents now while having issues with confounding things here, and multiple editors are commenting on that now, so I highly suggest slowing down following the guidance here. Take that as a hint to let the RM breathe so others can discuss. KoA (talk) 23:24, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
I am not the only supporter of A or B to cite WP:CRYSTAL. Take a step back, and stop assuming that your interpretation of policy is the only correct one. Let's agree to disagree. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:46, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
Yes, those instances you mention citing CRYSTAL are violations of that policy as discussed elsewhere already. Please take a step back and avoid doubling down on repeated dismissed arguements. KoA (talk) 03:47, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
[citation needed]. I notice that in you mention WP:BLUDGEON in your very first comment here; any further accusations of bludgeoning from you will fall on deaf ears. I will let you know that I have not participated in a Gamergate-related RM before this month. Feel free to disagree with any of the arguments presented, but you are not the sole authority on how policy should be interpreted. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:59, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
[citation needed] I missed that comment, but I highly suggest giving WP:CRYSTAL a read in that case and understand the spirit of that policy. It deals with issues like when a topic hasn't reached a threshold we need to determine something such as initial notability, longer-term significance than that baseline, etc. That also especially applies to #4 of that policy dealing with scientific content. KoA (talk) 23:20, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
I have read that many times, and nowhere does it imply any of that. You are conflating what it actually says with what you wish it said. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:16, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
The spirit of WP:CRYSTAL is to not make editorial decision based on the future. - ForbiddenRocky (talk) 01:18, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Additional background. I was pretty short above just due to the historical bludgeoning of RMs and time spent on this page dealing with incessant move requests and disruption the harassment campaign stuff has brought into this topic. Constantly having to revisit the justification for ants as the primary topic often results in the very subject being glossed over. Here’s a bit more focus on the ants as the primary subject from a WP:!VOTE perspective as opposed to many other comments here so far.
First, WP:PTOPIC is what has driven previous RM requests, and the previous close should be read before making assessing any comments here.
While Wikipedia has no single criterion for defining a primary topic, two major aspects that editors commonly consider are these:
  • A topic is primary for a term with respect to usage if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.
  • A topic is primary for a term with respect to long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.
In most cases, the topic that is primary with respect to usage is also primary with respect to long-term significance; in many other cases, only one sense of primacy is relevant. 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.
I posted the last close below this current section Talk:Gamergate#Background_on_previous_RM_closes. In that and previous closes, what truly mattered for PTOPIC was not usage (bullet 1 of the guideline), in part because the internet event created inherent bias in using such things like Google statistics, page views, etc. Others have mentioned the inherent bias, but primarily internet events tend to be heavily documented simply by nature, which results in biased perceptions simply be looking at page stats. That in part has to do with relative WP:RECENTISM associated with current events that tend to get more attention in the ~10 years after they occurred as sources revive the topic on occasion. Instead, long-term significance (bullet 2) is the more informative bullet of PTOPIC here to attempt comparison and is why WP:CRYSTAL policy still plays a significant role for the more recent event since current events often get a lot of attention in their time period, but end up being a relative blip in comparison in the long-term assessment.
On ants as the primary
A gamergate is a worker ant that is able to reproduce, which the article outlines as unique for most ant species. This currently impacts all individuals of species within at least five subfamilies and 17 genera (as opposed to only a of subset of individuals within the species Homo sapiens for the harassment event).[4] For the ants (or really any biological trait this fixed in multiple species), there is not a reasonable doubt this million-year+ old trait will just suddenly disappear and stop affecting all of these species. In fact, that CRYSTAL policy specifically calls out such arguments as a violation: Although currently accepted scientific paradigms may later be rejected, and hypotheses previously held to be controversial or incorrect sometimes become accepted by the scientific community, it is not the place of Wikipedia to venture such projections. When scientists name these traits, they are generally also stable in usage Mermithergate is a similar example of these terminology being common in biology.
Much of this long-term impact is something inherent to WP:SCHOLARSHIP/biology topics and is why PTOPIC also mentions long-term education aspects being of higher value. On that note, ant gamergates are something that’s likely to come up in biology textbooks when discussing ant colonies since eusocial animals are often a common example in varying degrees for both kids and college students. It might be a footnote in more basic biology books, but if you get into common intro-level courses at say college, this kind of thing can easily come up in sections dealing with insect diversity.
While common usage metrics have consistently been an issue for this discussion, looking at scholarly metrics helps. Google Scholar is well known, but generally not that reliable for things like citation metrics, etc. because they include a lot of non-scholarly sources. Web of Science is usually a more conservative (scientifically, not political) search engine in that regard. Just typing in gamergate gave 140 articles. Of these, 79 involved ants, and 61 involved the harassment topic. That paints a very different picture than those haphazardly using Google searches and puts it at a 56.5% to 43.5% split in favor of ants even in the scholarly subject.
On the harassment article’s significance
The issue with long-term significance with the harassment campaign is that it’s not really established according to the article relative to the multiple ant species (i.e., notability for a time is not the same as lasting ongoing impact). Part of why that topic has been troublesome in real life and on Wikipedia are the constant pushes to rebrand what is was about with the common WP:FRINGE (based on the article) push that it was all about “ethics in journalism” or some variation of that. That can be seen in some of the A/support comments here trying to relitigate the extremely recent close at the harassment article moving it to Gamergate (harassment campaign) and bristling that it is now called such.
Looking at the article itself though, the subject is mostly focused on a single event/time period:
  • The controversies and events that would come to be known as Gamergate began in 2014 as a personal attack on Quinn, incited by a blog post by Quinn's former boyfriend Eron Gjoni.
  • After Gjoni's blog post, Quinn and their family were subjected to a virulent and often misogynistic harassment campaign.
  • Gamergate supporters subjected others to similar harassment, doxing, and death threats.
Those sentences from the article mostly sum up the key event that in resulted in the lead of the article that the subject centered around sexism and anti-progressivism in video game culture. By the time we had our last RM request in 2016 on ‘’this’’ page, the now harassment article topic had mostly played out without any significant changes over time. Much of Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)#Social,_cultural,_and_political_impact mostly deals with sources that were taking an introspective look at the subject as a sort of autopsy after the fact rather than more distanced sources showing some sort of legacy.
With that, I was hoping Gamergate_(harassment_campaign)#Legacy would help for addressing long-term significance. Instead, it’s only a handful of opinion pieces/pundits kicking around the topic a bit after the fact, some around 2016, and some around 2019 and a few namedrops elsewhere. At best right now, the article is asserting that the event was a symptom of larger issues that were brewing, especially in the US with the 2016 election, Trump, etc. However, it’s not illustrating a continuing major impact or something that is ongoing with the core event.
On an educational parallel I mentioned for the ants, I would not expect nor do I see similar usage in social studies books for those in school on the harassment topic. It’s too recent of a topic to really be in some textbook cycles, and it hasn’t really established itself as something that would be covered outside of more niche courses. I’ll also quickly mention that others have mentioned usage in this RM a lot (often missing key issues with that), but I will point out that many of those stats show relatively unchanged page views, etc. since the last 2016 RM. If one was going to argue on usage alone for the event after that RM, there would need to be increasing usage since then to differentiate it as the primary topic. That's especially there’s little to show long-term enduring notability beyond what normally happens with recent popular events like this. The article actually seems to show weakening significance over time while looking at the legacy section.
On the options
So when it comes to A, there's all of the above issues and the fact that it undoes the recent move over at the harassment article. There are NPOV issues seen in comments there from those who did not want such a name, so we need to be mindful of not introducing NPOV issues with changing that article. B also has issues because it assumes increasing primacy of the harassment topic since the last RM, which isn't established in actual evidence discussed above as oppose to just declarative statements. WP:NODEADLINE applies in that regard too. If the harassment topic develops more impact and establishes true lasting long-term significance, then that's the time for an RM. Could the topic spark some more legacy and move it up in primacy? Possibly. Could it also fizzle out of usage and significance once it moves out of memories of recent years? That too. Both NODEADLINE and CYSTAL guidance are pretty clear on uncertainty like that though, which is all the more reason to wait and leave things as-is. KoA (talk) 23:20, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
OK, so even in a scholarly search engine the two topics are basically 50/50. All the more evidence that we should go with option B. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:19, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
Which, as you're already well aware from conversation here, is grossly cherry-picking and glossing over all the other relevant details here. We already established that usage alone has serious issues when long-term significance has issues at play. The only thing the scholarly articles show is that the harassment topic is far from overwhelming. That said, you're also immediately grasping at straws and not doing due diligence on the data. The harassment stuff happened fairly recently so it is more likely to be found in search engine databases. The ant research is from before when such sources were regularly indexed, and it's extremely common in entomology for publications to not be indexed very consistently before 2000 with decreasing reliability as you move through the 90s and 80s. Older subjects like this are more prone to such a search bias, which WP:PTOPIC explicitly warned about.
At that point, the remainder of WP:PTOPIC takes over rather than hyperfocusing on just one part of it. Even the scholarly articles have a WP:CRYSTAL aspect in play. Often times when a current event gets some attention, you get a lag in publications, and much like article views, it's largely going to be impossible to know if it's going to be an area of as much academic focus years down the line without some sort of historical legacy/impact. The ants though, are going to be around in the foreseeable future, so it's back to the same issue of crystal-balling that the harassment stuff is going to establish itself as a primary in the long-term or to say they're on roughly equal footing. Policy is very clear on that, and WP:NODEADLINE really applies to your push to do otherwise here. KoA (talk) 18:39, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
The entomological term has been around for only 38 years - only about 5-6 times as long as the harassment campaign, so it is misleading to treat it as if it's some long-term established name like Avatar. You can't conflate the fact that ants have existed for millions of years with the fact that the academic study of gamergates has only existed for the last few decades. There is no reason why we should give so much weight to a 5-6x difference in age over a 15-20x difference in pageviews. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:16, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
Most of what you just described for numbers is completely arbitrary, and as you're already aware, there are significant issues similar to what's outlined in WP:BIAS in using them that way to address bullet one of WP:PTOPIC. Near 40 years for terminology is something that is already established as long-term use. You can't conflate the fact that ants have existed for millions of years . . . Doing so is required when it comes assessing long-term significance, regardless of the terminology used. When a scientific occurrence is first described does not correlate with its importance, but rather its impact is what measures that. Higgs boson doesn't draw it's importance from when it was named or recent "discovery", but what it underpins in the field of phyiscs. In this case, even if the name for the ants had been changed from something else to Gamergate in say 2000, that would not change bullet two of PTOPIC in terms of long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value.
Listen, I get it. You're focused primarily on numbers here. I do that everyday for work. However, there's a reason we don't blindly using numbers like that and continue to assert an assumption while dismissing known biases in those numbers in science. It just wastes time, and at this point, is distracting from looking at the wide stepped-back scope of how PTOPIC applies here as opposed to singling out specific WP:LETTER portions of policies and guidelines to support removal of the ants. That is one key difference between the oppose/C arguements and A/B's that I'm seeing so far. KoA (talk) 17:50, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
Yeah, it's really a shame that all the ant research is from before when such sources weren't regularly indexed on search engines, which completely skews the results away from the topic of ants. Mathglot (talk) 09:36, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Yes, the tone is noted. The whole point in my comment you just wooshed over is that sources in that age range tend to be underrepresented, not completely absent. Nowadays when you publish, it's pretty much getting indexed somewhere. As you move back, espcially pre-2000s, that's increasingly less so in terms of percent of publications indexed even with attempts to somewhat correct that as you provided examples of. Posting those links shows a severe misunderstanding of what the issue with bias in search engine counts even is. Either way, this hastiness is highlighting some key faults involved in the A/B arguements in terms of lack of understanding of the content issues. KoA (talk) 18:40, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
Your fanciful assertion about unindexed older documents in pre-2000 journals is unsupported conjecture apparently designed to buttress your fallacious theory about age-related bias in online search of academic documents less than 40 years old. If all the armies of Google worker ants scouring libraries worldwide hunting down dusty tomes about ants from decades and centuries past in dozens of languages and imaging them didn't find some post-1983 article on gamergate ants that you claim exists, then it's exceedingly unlikely that you, or any other editor will ever find it, making the unique assertions in that unfindable article unverifiable. So even if your theory about unfindable pre-2000 articles were correct, that wouldn't change the outcome one iota. Your entire argument rests on a theory of unfindable articles, which, by definition, is unfalsifiable since they *could* all be out there—we just can't find them. Mathglot (talk) 19:25, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
I'll address the core content issue and ignore the personal comments that were in this comment at the time (with the hopes that they modify the comment). As I mentioned, this has been going on since the early 2000s[5] (mostly page 3 and onwards). Here's a a few links that give background on this general subject and more.[6],NAA bias,[7].
So obviously this is a pretty wide and discussed field, which paints a very different expectation that your personal expectations. You can look at almost any discussion of meta-analyses and biases that can come up there too. Like it or not, there are issues with capturing everything that happens before the Internet age. Reputable journals can just stop being published, and there's no one push to get it indexed somewhere. I've seen that in plenty of entomology journals I've had to search through. That's a problem even today with different subsets of journals: Dozens of scientific journals have vanished from the internet, and no one preserved them.
When it comes to entomololgy, this isn't anything new either. Let's say I want to find A Study of the Morphology of the Immature Stages of Aedes Trivittatus (Coquillett) (Diptera: Culicidae) in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America from 1949. Nothing to be found on Web of Science. The only go back to 1966 for that journal. You'll get different cutoffs like that for each journal with say Environmental Entomology only going back to 1974 when the journal is older than that. Even within those years, there are sometimes articles that Web of Science still didn't pick up on. Then you get now defunct journals that were never indexed but were regularly used in the print era. If that wasn't an issue, there wouldn't be people dedicated to trying to address that problem. That is an unfortunate reality, but that reality needs to be dealt with if anyone wants to try to use journal publications as a metric.
by definition, is unfalsifiable since they *could* all be out there—we just can't find them. You've just described Type II error (missing something that did exist). When something cannot be documented due to sampling bias or failure to detect, that's a serious problem. It creates more uncertainty in whatever measurement you are taking and often makes comparisons inappropriate in a certain direction. In this case we know the harassment topic is recent enough to not be influenced by indexing bias as much. The older age on the ant subject makes its estimate what we'd call right censored (a data point is above a certain value but it is unknown by how much). In the end though, this hardly matters because the numbers don't have much play in this discussion because we already establish in previous closes and reestablished here that bullet 1 of PTOPIC has serious issues that require relying more on bullet 2, long-term significance. KoA (talk) 23:28, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
Given the potential for the natural dab by renaming the other page too 'Gamergate harassment campaign' i don't think this is a problem—blindlynx (talk) 15:38, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose Move "Example" → "Example (Disambiguation)". Per WP:CRITERIA, there are perfectly recognizable, natural, precise, concise, and consistent forms of all four of the words without tacking on long disambiguations. Gamergate is an ant, GamerGate is a social disagreement, GamersGate is a company, and Lt. Gamergate is a cartoon character. The obvious solution is to use the CamelCase term GamerGate (which is consistently labelled as GG and GamerGate). The number of DAB arguments here alone suggests that the discussions have gone through an unnaturally large number of changes and it reminds me of nothing more than the long history of ambiguously-political incorrectly written terms like Democrat Party (epithet) in the past. So far none of the simple terms here require any disambiguation. -Thibbs (talk) 15:42, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose Gamergate the ant is a scientific term that is more prominent over a long time period Yleventa2 (talk) 16:02, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    This is not true. It has been several years and the controversy still is vastly more popular than the ant in terms of search on both wikipedia and google. The fact that the ant is a scientific term has nothing to do with the argument here, they are both notable events/topics. Bwmdjeff (talk) 16:07, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    The reason it appears more important to you is because you (and other people here) care about it. By this very nature, Wikipedia is a community of internet culture geeks, the exact audience that cares about the Zoe Quinn story. If we held the same discussion in a room full of entomologists, we'd have a different feeling about which is more important. --Jayron32 16:10, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    You are using a false equivalency.
    The vast majority of people who visit wikipedia are more likely to care more about the controversy than the ant. The ant is a specialized term and is only really relevant to anthropologists. Gamergate (controversy) was widely published in mainstream media outlets, it is misleading to describe it as something only internet culture geeks care about. Whereas it is reasonable to believe that the ant is something that only a specialized group of people care about. The pageviews statistic reinforces this. Bwmdjeff (talk) 16:27, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Page views are largely irrelevant here because we are talking about a singe flash in the pan event, and that by nature happens in cases of WP:RECENTISM. Consensus has frequently determined in the bludgeoning of move requests over the years that long-term significance rules the roost here on this subject. If the controversy reaches the point of significance of affecting the overall life-history of multiple species rather, then that would definitely be a time to revisit this discussion. KoA (talk) 17:23, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
If we held the same discussion in a room full of entomologists, we'd have a different feeling about which is more important. As someone who dabbles in both worlds, I would expect asking similar folks that if we were talking about a popular press type source, the controversy would be the primary topic. That's just what pop press does. Asking what should be the primary topic for an encyclopedia though? Ants hands down. Last I checked, we're an encyclopedia here. KoA (talk) 17:23, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
I find it extremely elitist to claim that entomology is inherently more worthy of encyclopedic coverage than societal topics. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:36, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
You wanted us to rank the two and so here we are. Artw (talk) 17:43, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Don't twist my words; I never asked people to "rank the two" in inherent worth. The technical evidence is strongly in favor of the harassment campaign, so supporters of A or B are not required to make a case based on subjective importance. The burden of proof is on supporters of C to make that case. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:51, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
I'd say the burden of proof for making a change is very much on those who want to make the change. I'd also say that any attempt to rig the framing so that it isn't the case is bad faith on your part. I'd also say that your repeatedly implication that the entymological "gamergate" isn't a subject worthy of holding the title of "gamergate" without parenthesis, whilst the harassment group - something for which "gamergate" is mostly a label of convenience - somehow is owed that absolutely is a ranking of the two on your part. Artw (talk) 18:06, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
A debate is always a push and pull. The case for the harassment campaign has already been made very clear: the numbers don't lie. In the face of such overwhelming evidence, the burden is on you to refute it. Again, I have no opinion on whether either subject is "worthy of holding the title of 'gamergate' without parenthesis"; I simply look at the numbers and make my conclusion from there. The framing of this discussion as deciding whether the subjects are "worthy" is fundamentally flawed; we are just deciding on the arrangement of pages that will be the most helpful to readers. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:47, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
The level of railroading you are doing here does not indicate some neutral attempt to be helpful to readers. Artw (talk) 18:52, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Artw, I'll also second that. I'm trying to post a bit more here in response to what is coming across as WP:BLUDGEONING (the only way to somewhat counteract it). KoA (talk) 20:10, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Also I'd consider the nature of the articles themselves. One is a rock solid example of an encyclopedic subject with well understood importance that is well fleshed out, the other is very much a work in progress and by no means an encyclopedia grade article on a societal topic. Furthermore YOU are the one that keeps trying to diminish the importance of an article here. Artw (talk) 17:48, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
The quality of an article has absolutely no bearing on primary topic. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:51, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
You are the person who brought up encylopedic worth. Artw (talk) 18:06, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
First of all, whether a topic is encyclopedic has nothing to do with the quality of its article. Secondly, if we don't discuss encyclopedic worth, then the topic with numbers on its side automatically wins. I am not forced to discuss encyclopedic worth, you are. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:43, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
See above Re: Why I absolutely do not give a fuck about your numbers and nobody here should have to. This is not favebook, we do not rank by shady engagement metrics. If we are going to move an article we are going to move it because a good argument for moving it has been made, something I'm not seeing, and because that outweighs the argument for not doing it, of which there are many, regardless of your attem,pts to deliberately misunderstand them. Artw (talk) 21:46, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Don't twist my words is all I have to say in response to that. That's pretty blatant considering I've given plenty of context to my comments already. KoA (talk) 20:10, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Strongly Support Gamergate is the primary topic, and it wasn't an online harassment campaign, it was a political movement. If it's not referred to simply as "Gamergate", then it should be something like "Gamergate (Political Movement)" instead. --Nick012000 (talk) 16:17, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Note: WikiProject Insects has been notified of this discussion.  — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 16:19, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Note: WikiProject Video Games has been notified of this discussion.  — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 16:19, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • C (or oppose) The ant species will always have permanency over the GG campaign/controversy/whatever its going to be called. We did not move Avatar the film over Avatar the spiritual construct despite that the film having far more immediate views and sourcing than the construct, because we always defer to topics of long-standing academic value over contemporary terms when it comes to disambiguation. --Masem (t) 16:43, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    Avatar (film) was named after the spiritual construct, so it could never overtake it as the primary topic. In this situation, the harassment campaign came to its name independently of the ant - it was not named after the ant. Elli (talk | contribs) 16:51, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    Technically not true, see Boston, Lincolnshire. But anyways, for me there are two factors that make this case different from Avatar: 1) the discrepancy in pageviews is far greater for "Gamergate"; 2) an avatar is a household name, a gamergate is a highly specialized term only known to entomologists. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:59, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
    @Elli: But Madonna the singer managed to overtake Mary, mother of Jesus as the primary topic despite being named after her. Shocking, right? Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 02:55, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
    @Chess: I think that is a seriously flawed situation. Elli (talk | contribs) 03:08, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
    @Elli: It is what it is though. See Talk:Madonna/Archive 22#Requested move 18 July 2020 if you want. It raises interesting points. Madonna has been "immediately popular" for decades at this point. At what point do we say that "Gamergate" the controversy has overtaken gamergate as a type of ant? The term "gamergate" to refer to a type of worker ant (disputedly) has only been around since the 80s. Gamergate has primarily referred to the campaign for longer than the kind of ant for a greater relative period of time than the Madonna singer/mother of Jesus dispute. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 03:28, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
    @Chess: I think Gamergate the harassment campaign is the clear primary topic, as that, as I mentioned, is a distinct situation from the one with Madonna as the harassment campaign is not named after the ant.
    I will admit my view on this is unconventional, for example I think that Delta (letter) should sit at Delta as everything else named "Delta" is named after the letter. Elli (talk | contribs) 03:31, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
    @Masem: Yet Madonna the singer was moved over Mary, mother of Jesus because "we always defer to topics of long-standing academic value" only applies when the Wikipedia community generally likes those topics. Madonna the singer is someone we like more as a community than one of the most common appellations for the mother of Jesus Christ but nobody here really liked Avatar the film. And we as a community really, really like to shit all over Gamergate whenever possible. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 02:58, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Support A Gamergate and anything with the suffix "-gate", people automatically think of a controversy. On this site that people look up the suffix "-gate" the first thing that comes up is "List of "-gate" scandals and controversies". It'd make no sense for the site to have that as the first page it goes towards and then go against it because "it was a scientific term first". HauntingStomper (talk) 16:49, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
WP:NWFCTM KoA (talk) 17:42, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Okay, fair enough. The fact still remains that the suffix "-gate" is used commonly with controversies, little or big. Plus, since the link to "-gate" goes directly to "List of "-gate" scandals and controversies", it would make sense for the first page when typing anything ending with "-gate" that has another article not relating to a scandal or controversy (like Gamergate) would be the scandal or controversy. HauntingStomper (talk) 17:55, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
This article has nothing to with what you are describing and gets into WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS territory. The etymology of the term is described at Gamergate#Etymology. KoA (talk) 18:11, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
I'm not sure it's the "first thing" as universally as you think. A person from the north of England might just think that if you stick a random noun in front of -gate, you're talking about a street, as it's a suffix derived from old norse meaning "street" (e.g. Gallowgate). EditorInTheRye (talk) 19:28, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
That's pretty amusing, citing WP:NWFCTM in opposition, given that WP:NWFCTM uses the Birmingham example to argue for the English city over the Alabama city, based on the English city being "far more notable and whose article is read much more often". And that is very true. By that same measure, the controversy wins by having *far* more WP:SIGCOV by two orders of magnitude, and per "read more often" (page views) by a factor of ten or twenty at least. I love your links, sinking your own argument; more like that, please. Mathglot (talk) 10:06, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
The sheer vindictivness and posturing coming off this comment is why it's so tiring when the drama of the harassment topic finds its way over to this page, which isn't supposed to happen. It's just plain disruptive and degrading for those of us who try to watch this page to always have to deal with things like this when that happens.
As for NWFCTM, the Birmingham example and the others ones is why I mention the multiple ant species the primary topic, and is why I had it in recall in first place. The first reason was obviously for poor arguments for "what first comes to mind", but the second paragraph you allude to is also pretty informative here. Primacy is not determined by what first comes to mind for niche gruops of internet deizens or entomologists as many topics on Wikipedia are more interesting or pertinent to particular groups . . . What first comes to your mind when you hear the word Java? It may be coffee or a programming language, but the primary topic belongs to the island with over 140 million people living on it..
I list that last sentence because it's probably the most illustrative. People might get passionaite over coffee, programming, etc. in their own niches, but it's the topic with long-standing significance that gets primacy. Everything is in relative terms, but the harassment topic in this case is most like Java, the programming langauge. Important in its time, but programming, like current events, have their moment and are eventually deprecated or lose focus relative to something with more permanency that has already established itself as significantly affects millions+ lives (and definitely more than one species) for the foreseeable future. You don't need to undercut the importance of something like Java programming to reach that. That's why we tend to default to things like geographical, biological, etc. topics because of the sheer and longstanding reliable impact they have. Even tossing that aside for sake of argument, let's look at the island vs programming page views in the last 30 days. Island: 50,169. Programming: 424,664. About an 8.5-fold difference in page views, the lesser viewed topic still gets primacy, so page views ratios like we see in our case here are not out of the norm at all.
In this case, it's the trait that affects numerous species of ants that has the established long-standing permancy and wide scope of impact. It's entirely possible for current events to overcome major biological traits like that, but it's an inherently very high hurdle that the harassment topic would need to establish itself in first to be a true contender. KoA (talk) 18:32, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose/C per the numerous reasons above, the priority in use for the ant caste, and the likely-hood that ant caste will continue to be used, while other events in online behaviors will supersede the harassment campaign, whos name has already been shown to have morphed since the incident first happened. --Kevmin § 18:18, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • A > B > C, per WP:TIND and WP:NOTPAPER. The advantage of Wikipedia is that it evolves and reflects the world faster than a paper encyclopedia. Today, the harassment campaign is the primary topic, based on many ways to evaluate that criterion. Arguments in favor of the ant on the basis that it has more lasting significance is tantamount to WP:CRYSTAL: you are predicting that the primacy of the campaign will decrease AND that the name of an animal not change by the time that happens (yes, animals have had their scientific names change) based on preexisting assumptions. That may happen 5 years from now, 10 years from now, or never happen. It is impossible to say from our current vantage point. The only thing we can judge is based on today. If it ever changes, you can always make a new RM and it will likely be uncontroversial by then. Axem Titanium (talk) 18:48, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
This comment largely violates WP:CRYSTAL and mischaractizes the situation. Today the primary topic is the ants, and there's no reasonable doubt that the long-term significance of the ants is going to change. That's an event/characteristic that is already solidified. We can't engage in special pleading that either are going to change. What people are instead saying is that the primacy of the campaign is not very well established historically rather than commenting on the direction it is going. Also, species names can sometimes change, but it's not so common for traits like this.
As for WP:NOTPAPER, that isn't really relevant here because we aren't debating whether a given article should exist at all. Encyclopedic relevancy of the topics is already discussed above. KoA (talk) 19:02, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
The primary topic is *not* the ant; the primary topic is clearly the political movement. It has far more online discussion than the ant does. --Nick012000 (talk) 13:26, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
No, the current primary topic is the trait that currently five subfamilies (16 genera) of ants re affected by in their entire life cycle. That is why the last RMs left it as such, and nothing has changed much in either topic since then. Last I checked, the harassment topic only affected a subset of one species. Also, saying that something has more online discussion is pointing out an inherent bias. The harassment stuff is by nature an online thing, and others above and previous closes have addressed the issues with that. KoA (talk) 22:51, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
Yes, we are speciesist here. Wikipedia is a human encyclopedia written by humans for humans. Of the 1000 most important articles, 126 are on individual people ("a subset of one species"), compared to only 76 on biology. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 19:22, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Strongly support B. It is clear that currently, most will think about the harassment campaign—to the point that an Atlantic article in April 2021 about the ant contains an aisde about "no, not that kind" and NatGeo does the same thing ("not to be confused with the online harassment campaign tied to video games")—though New York Times does not. It is clear that the gamergate ants have ongoing and current significance, given three major outlets giving significant coverage to a major new study about their brains published this year (which is actually very fascinating and indeed of great significance in its field). Per WP:TIND, we do not have a deadline, so we do not have to figure out which is more important today. The most we can agree on today is that "gamergate" refers to different things that are very important to different groups, and both have ongoing significance in their fields. Thus, we can just put the disam at the main title and let readers wend their own way from there. One might say that's kicking this down the road, but maybe we'll have more clarity then. No deadlines, after all. ~Cheers, TenTonParasol 17:09, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
  • A Clear significant with still ongoing affects in modern society today, in addition to other points raised by 99to99 and Axem Titanium.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 18:30, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Strongly support A* - besides Gamergate (the harassment campaign) vastly outranking Gamergate (the ant) and that likely not being a recent thing, I would also suggest considering the title simply leading to confusion. Someone who has only heard of the name before, without any further context about the harassment, will likely at least know it has something to do with either video games, might be a controversy (going from the name), harassment, or video game journalism. Depending on the perspective, the title might lead to confusion whether this is a subpage with a leading article above it that explains the general situation. 79.205.180.181 (talk) 21:26, 21 August 2021 (UTC) — 79.205.180.181 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
That is why we use WP:NATDAB in this case as others have mentioned, so that particular concern becomes a false dilemna. Gamergate (harassment campaign) already differentiates itself in searches so no one should reasonably be confused with that colloquialism vs. the formal designated name for the ant trait. KoA (talk) 22:51, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Support A, the "harassment campaign" is clear WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, and I don't think that the parenthetical disambiguator is neutral nor common.--Ortizesp (talk) 05:43, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Support A or B. I'd mostly lean on "there is no primary topic" but during the recent years, the Internet harassment phenomenon has been mentioned much more often than the ant. JIP | Talk 12:21, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
  • strong oppose to any move of a long-standing article to suit recentism. Lembit Staan (talk) 21:08, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
  • A or B, per Firefangledfeathers. As Mathglot notes, people have been saying the ant will start to be the primary topic any day now for years, with the goalposts of when that day is moving ever further into the future as years pass and the primary topic, both in terms of what readers search for and what RS discuss, continues to be GamerGate ever since that campaign came into existence. The idea that GamerGate's long-term significance will eventually start to be less than the ant's seems like a lot of CRYSTAL that hasn't been borne out. (As for whether pageviews are a way to measure what the primary topic readers are searching for is: well, they were used to move The Advocate to a disambiguated title, and The Advocate got a much larger share of pageviews compared to other "The Advocate"s—nearly half, dwarfing any one other thing—than the ant gets compared to GamerGate.) -sche (talk) 23:05, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
I probably would not have replied to this if it wasn't for people have been saying the ant will start to be the primary topic any day now for years. Variations of that have been used to misrepresent what people have been saying to varying degrees above. No one is saying the ants are expected to change in their significance. Instead, it's the variability and uncertainty of the harassment topic that's under question and whether the topic has reached the appropriate threshold for it to vie for primacy. Applying CRYSTAL in such cases of uncertainty is exactly what the policy is for. KoA (talk) 23:54, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
  • A>B>C, obviously the harassment campaign is the primary topic. The Wikipedia is an evolving project, not a dusty physical encyclopedia on a shelf, it can and should make changes like this when appropriate. Also, I went looking through the article and talk page history to see just how much discussion there is of the controversy (99%) vs. the ant (1%), only to find that this article's history isn't as longstanding as some may think. It was created as a redirect to Harpegnathos in 2012, then untouched until 12 Aug 2014. The controversy article was created 5 Sept 2014. These are 2 topics sharing a similar name that started at essentially the same time. After 7 years, the controversy is far and away the primary topic. ValarianB (talk) 12:31, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
"These are 2 topics sharing a similar name that started at essentially the same time." - Basically right except that one of the terms was actually started 31 years before the other one. The Internet did exist in 1983, but the World Wide Web was only available in 1989 so information on the older term had to be written in paper like the rest of history. I would be curious the extent to which RSes for GamerGate (the video game topic) are available in actual paper copies. Are we assuming that the internet is the primary location for RSes rather than the previous 30+ years of paper for the older term? And why are the disambiguous terms "(ant)" and "(harassment campaign)" used instead of the perfectly simple and natural comparisons from simple Gamergate against GamerGate (the CamelCase term) which can be found throughout the internet's RSes? -Thibbs (talk) 15:48, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
The video game topic is more commonly spelled Gamergate than GamerGate. It is important to apply WP:NATURALDIS correctly. It says that GamerGate is a valid title for the video game topic, even if it is less common than Gamergate. It does not say that therefore the ant is entitled to hold on to the Gamergate title as the primary topic. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:14, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
We find ourselves within the same thicket I addressed earlier where incorrectly- (or rarely-) spelled terms can be used as ways to goad interloctors who prefer their own terminology over others. The example I gave earlier was Democrat Party (epithet) - a meaningless gibe. In this case, we can see many examples of self-identified GG campaigners using the term "GamerGate". Their websites, coiner Adam Baldwin, their social media, and their hashtags, etc. None of these are RSes of course, but the fact is that numerous heavily-vetted RSes from the "(harassment campaign)" article correctly use the term "GamerGate" rather than the less accurate term "Gamergate". -Thibbs (talk) 21:07, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
We can have a separate discussion on whether the campaign should be called "Gamergate" or "GamerGate" in a world where no disambiguation is necessary. However, that doesn't change the fact that for the last seven years straight, RS usage of "Gamergate" (exact spelling and capitalization) overwhelmingly refers to the campaign rather than the ant. And that's what matters in deciding what the primary topic of "Gamergate" is. To break it down:
  • If the campaign is the primary topic (A) and "Gamergate" is preferred for the campaign, then the campaign should be at Gamergate and the ant should be at Gamergate (ant).
  • If the campaign is the primary topic (A) and "GamerGate" is preferred for the campaign, then the campaign should be at GamerGate with a primary redirect from Gamergate and the ant should be at Gamergate (ant).
  • If neither is the primary topic (B) and "Gamergate" is preferred for the campaign, then the campaign may be at either Gamergate (harassment campaign) or GamerGate (using a non-preferred common term per WP:NATURALDIS) and the ant should be at Gamergate (ant), with Gamergate holding a disambiguation page.
  • If neither is the primary topic (B) and "GamerGate" is preferred for the campaign, then the campaign should be at GamerGate and the ant should be at Gamergate (ant), with Gamergate holding a disambiguation page.
  • If the ant is the primary topic (C) and "Gamergate" is preferred for the campaign, then the campaign may be at either Gamergate (harassment campaign) or GamerGate (using a non-preferred common term per WP:NATURALDIS) and the ant should be at Gamergate.
  • If the ant is the primary topic (C) and "GamerGate" is preferred for the campaign, then the campaign should be at GamerGate and the ant should be at Gamergate.
As you can see, the question of "Gamergate" vs. "GamerGate" is orthogonal to the question of primary topic of "Gamergate". Just because "GamerGate" is a viable title for the campaign does not loosen its claim to the title "Gamergate". -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:28, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
It's not really an official name for the thing with an official styleguide so reall Gamergate, GamerGate, Gamergate (harassment campaign) and 2014 online harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn and others would all be valid titles for it from that point of view. Artw (talk) 21:39, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose / C per long term significance. (Second choice A, so: C > A > B.) Yes, Gamergate the cultural movement outweighs in views at the moment, and honestly probably will in 5 years too, but this is a rare case where views are not everything, and this is the Internet over-magnifying one of its own foibles. Maybe this comes across as too much WP:IDONTLIKEIT but so be it. The ant isn't completely obscure, anyway, and a hatnote solves the issue, so why make a needless DAB page? SnowFire (talk) 21:57, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
  • A>C>B. We don't need a dab page for two articles. Pageviews are a relevant factor, and there is reason to expect the harassment campaign to have longlasting notoriety because of some of the ideas touched upon in "Legacy" about the alt-right, rise of Breitbart, and presidency of Trump (through Steve Bannon). It's not just a term familiar to internet obsessives: searches on Google Books, Google Scholar, ProQuest and JSTOR are all giving me the harassment campaign as the first few results, turning up sources about the ant lower down. The ant page wasn't created that long ago and I'm not seeing that it's particularly well-known within the field of biology.
    As such, I think the harassment campaign is the primary topic. Does anyone actually have pageview data from pre-Gamergate to see how widely viewed the ant topic was? Currently I've no idea what percentage of views there are just residual views from someone searching for the harassment campaign. Also, thank god the campaign was finally moved from the disgraceful title "Gamergate controversy" (the word "controversy" falsly implies there are two valid sides to the incident, i.e. legitimate support for the harassment campaign). — Bilorv (talk) 08:22, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
    @Bilorv: The article on the ant was newly created about a month before the harassment campaign, so there aren't really meaningful pageviews pre-Gamergate. I'm not sure why you say "We don't need a dab page for two articles." WP:TWODABS says "If there are only two topics to which a given title might refer, and one is the primary topic, then a disambiguation page is not needed" - implying that when neither is the primary topic, a disambiguation page is needed. I believe that there is a different answer to the two criteria of WP:PTOPIC, so there is no primary topic, hence we should disambiguate. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:22, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment: to both Snowfire and Bilorv As a note, the dab page already exists: Gamergate (disambiguation), and it lists four items. Interesting is the Adventure Time character from a 2014 episode, Lt. Gamergate, who was named after the ant but was mistaken as referencing the harrassment campaign (which I believe production predated). ~Cheers, TenTonParasol 16:32, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
    • It's an unneeded disambiguation page that could be deleted IMO. A minor character who shows up in a single 10-minute TV episode isn't worthy of a spot on a disambiguation page unless it is of truly epochal relevance (e.g. at Chuckles (disambiguation), but only because that's one of the most famous episodes ever). Otherwise, just two other articles means "stick a hatnote on whichever article ends up at Gamergate". Clarified my preferences above as C>A>B - if we really do move, no need for a disambig page. GamersGate has a different spelling and the minor TV character doesn't count for anything IMO, so one of the ant or the harassment needs to be the primary topic. SnowFire (talk) 16:51, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
I see the sense in that. ~Cheers, TenTonParasol 17:05, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
  • A, then B (as a comprise I suppose), then by default C which is really not OK. OK you've heard the arguments. There's obviouisly a lot of emotion and and ideology around the subject. Just want to point out that the gamergate harrasment thing has a whole big lot of long-term significance. It was a really important thing in society, just really symbolic of important social changes and conflict around them, important to the political and social environment during the emergence of a major new art form, videogames, into full acceptance as part of the landscape of society in general. And I mean biology is important and serious, but art and politics and sociology and history are too.
20 or 50 years from now are people going to want to read about the gamergate scandal? Well, sure they are. I mean not huge numbers, but more than the ant thing I'd warrent. It's going to come up in histories of the era and of the subject and people are going to look it up. Same as the South Sea Bubble or the Crawford scandal or whatever. 100 years from or 200? I don't know... maybe the gamergate scandal thing would have faded into complete obscurity. I doubt it -- the South Sea Bubble was in 1720, the XYZ Affair was in 1797, etc, and people still want to read about them -- but hard to say. But how far ahead should we look? I think we can let the Wikipedians of 2121 to handle that. They can move the pages again then if it's called for. For our time and (presumably) the next few decades at least, the scandal is the primary topic; Herostratus (talk) 09:34, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
  • C > B > A. I see merits with the arguments for all three options, including the somewhat convincing rationale that the ant is not the primary topic, though I can't help but feel that the primary motivation for some editors to support another RM is to eliminate the parenthesis descriptor which specifically label the topic as a harassment campaign like this poorly disguised rant, which is essentially WP:IDONTLIKEIT. In the event that the closer can't find a consensus out of this discussion, perhaps a moratorium on any further RM's may be necessary. Haleth (talk) 15:55, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
    @Haleth: Why do you prefer C to B then? B would continue to require the harassment campaign to carry a disambiguator, while removing the ant from primary topic. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:04, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
    Because I prefer the current status quo. There is some merit behind the argument of removing the ant as the primary topic, but I feel that it is too soon to judge the harassment campaign as the primary topic either. It hasn't even been ten years after the harassment campaign began, whereas the Gamergate term has been used within the international scientific community since the 1980's, and has been referenced in contexts unrelated to the harassment campaign like Adventure Time. By the way, to provide some international perspective, the Gamergate harassment campaign is quite specific to North American/British internet and political culture from what I can observe. It has some relevancy in a few other European countries, but to a much lesser extent. It has close to zero relevancy in English speaking areas throughout the Indian subcontinent as well as East and Southeast Asia. I'd like to see more evidence of long term significance which establishes the harassment campaign as the undisputed primary topic of "Gamergate" throughout all of the Anglosphere, outside of a select few core countries commonly referred to as the "West". Haleth (talk) 16:38, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
    "I feel that it is too soon to judge the harassment campaign as the primary topic either" - that's not an argument against B. With B, neither of them needs to be the primary topic. We can simultaneously serve what the overwhelming majority of our readers want, as well as people who want to read about the ant. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:48, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
    Except it is an argument against B that multiple editors have brought up through policy-based reasoning with WP:CRYSTAL and other guidelines. Repeating your claim constantly here doesn't change that. The whole issue with the harassment campaign is that is hasn't unfolded itself enough to establish a long-term degree of primacy, whatever that degree or lackof may be. When its not in such a state of potential flux, then it would be much easier to assess something like B or even A. That is where WP:NODEADLINE applies the most when it comes to changing the status quo. KoA (talk) 18:07, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
    Seven years is a long time, and pageviews have been remarkably stable. You are making an absurd WP:CRYSTAL-ball claim that in a few decades, the harassment campaign will be mostly forgotten relative to the ant, when none of the evidence backs that up. Repeating your claim constantly here doesn't change that. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:22, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
    As you're already well aware, your comment here is directly misrepresenting editors in violation of WP:NPA at this point. You are the one claiming You are making an absurd WP:CRYSTAL-ball claim that in a few decades, the harassment campaign will be mostly forgotten relative to the ant . . ., not me. Most of those citing CRYSTAL are talking about how the current long-term significance has not developed itself enough yet right now, and there's too much up in the air for a recent event to assert the degree of long-term signifiance for bullet 2 of WP:PTOPIC. You're missing the entire point that people are making in reference to CRYSTAL, and that is different than bullet 1 that you are addressing. As others have also mentioned, the way you are trying to use CRYSTAL is violating that policy, which ForbiddenRocky already explained that rather succintly to you. KoA (talk) 21:45, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
    You are completely disregarding the multiple people who have interpreted CRYSTAL a different way from you, and as I have stated multiple times you don't have the authority to declare that their interpretation is "violating that policy". "The spirit of WP:CRYSTAL is to not make editorial decision based on the future" - correct, so we make decisions based on the facts we have right now. What I've heard are claims of "long-term significance" without the justification to back that up. Often that means that the term is well-known and in general use. But this is not Avatar, a concept that most well-educated people can reasonably be expected to know about. As TenTonParasol pointed out, various articles even felt the need to point out that "gamergate" was not referring to the harassment campaign, which is not a promising sign for a primary topic with long-term significance. Biology is an important field, but so is sociology, and you cannot claim that one has "substantially greater enduring notability and educational value" than the other, cf. the comparison of scholarly articles in the previous section. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:24, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
    I invite you to state your goalposts: When is the earliest you would consider supporting B, and what needs to happen for that to be the case? And the same for A. Or do you never see a case where the ant is not the primary topic? (I'll go first: I, of course, already support B, because I believe that the harassment campaign has enough long-term significance to challenge the ant, given the continued RS coverage of it to this day, especially when you also factor in usage. I already support A > C, but I would support A > B if in 5-10 years, usage is still much higher for the harassment campaign and RS keep getting written on it.) -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:02, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
    You are completely disregarding the multiple people who have interpreted CRYSTAL a different way from you. Yes because we are required to do when policy is directly misapplied. The spirit of that policy directs us to be cautious of things that have a reasonable uncertainty of what will be happening in the future with it and to be sure we've established whatever metric of importance is actually established and not fleeting. Saying there's a CRYSTAL issue in the here and now with the harassment topic isn't a violation of CRYSTAL, it's the nature of CRYSTAL itself. That's what's functionally failing in the comments you mention.
    Either way, there's nothing new I could add here in response your recent questions that I haven't mentioned to some degree already. It's up to the closer at this point. KoA (talk) 23:46, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
    You've criticized me for reading too much into your comments, yet you refuse to clarify what your actual position is even when I explicitly ask you to state it. I have to assume that you absolutely won't budge on this issue no matter what, even 20 years down the road, unless you indicate what kind of evidence is required to get you to change your mind. And that just feels like WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Solid reasoning based on evidence must be falsifiable, i.e. it must be possible for the same thought process to generate a different outcome given different evidence. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:58, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
    As mentioned already, I have clarified myself ad nauseum in this discussion in response to comments like this to the point responding wouldn't be adding anything new at this point. That includes what I've said about what it would take for the harassment topic to solidify longer-term significance or legacy for increased primacy. Beyond that, we're at 7 days, and it's time for the closer to assess or let others actually get a word in. KoA (talk) 00:12, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Background on previous RM closes

I was going to try to summarize the large number of RM requests we dealt with a few years ago, but most of those are in the much more numerous Gamergate (harassment campaign) archives, and I don't have time to track those down. That said, here is the most recent close on an RM on this page that also has links to older discussions:

The result of the move request was: no consensus. Some other admins might close this as "not moved", but in reading over the discussion I found the support votes to be generally stronger than the more numerous opposers (but not significantly so). Clearly this article does not meet the usage criterion of primary topic and there are a lot of viewers of this article who are searching for something else. But, equally clearly, the ant meets the long-term significance criterion. Generally in situations like this where the two criteria conflict, the usual practice is to have a dab page at the base location. However, there are exceptions to that standard practice (both in favour of usage and in favour of long-term significance) and, in this case, it is apparent that a clear majority of the community would prefer a primary topic in favour of long-term significance. Hence, there is no consensus to move this page. On the moratorium question, I don't think there is a consensus to enforce a moratorium on this article, however if anyone is looking at making this proposal again I would recommend waiting at least a few months. Jenks24 (talk) 05:23, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

This should at least help give a better idea of what the actual status quo was for the above discussion. For context, the now campaign article was under a RM moratorium at the time, which is where those comments came from. KoA (talk) 19:29, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

@KoA: When did the RM moratorium end? Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) please always ping! 19:36, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
As of January 2016, it was a 6-month moratorium over there. This page though was not protected, so at the time that was imposed, RM came up here pretty quickly (and was a frequent occurrence here when something doesn't get traction over at the other page), which is why a second moratorium was proposed here. It worked out at the time just using the moratorium at the then controversy page though. KoA (talk) 19:42, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
(edit conflict) With this as our baseline on describing everything in totality, I'm still not seeing anything in the above conversations that would deviate from this overall description of the situation. Since it came up earlier with respect to WP:PTOPIC (i.e., usage vs long-term significance) as to what weighed heavier, I'll highlight the end result of the summary it is apparent that a clear majority of the community would prefer a primary topic in favour of long-term significance. KoA (talk) 19:42, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
Yes, the primary topic should be of long-term significance - and that's why the Gamergate political movement should be the primary topic. It was the first shot fired in the anti-progressive culture war that resulted in the development of the Alt-Right and would ultimately see Donald Trump elected president. --Nick012000 (talk) 13:29, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
Wow! can you prove that? By the way, where have you been sleepin for 3 years? Lembit Staan (talk) 21:18, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
Have you actually read the article, Lembit Staan? The Legacy section cites five sources for the claim It has been argued that Gamergate helped in the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency in 2016 along with other right-wing movements. Nick012000's view is definitely an opinion, but a fact-based one with significant support. — Bilorv (talk) 08:22, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
Have you actually read what you wrote yourself? "It has been argued" -- political opponents may argue till pigs fly, but their argument does not maker it fact. Lembit Staan (talk) 15:57, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
I feel like this section is just becoming more of a second section for folks to push their arguments rather than the actual focus of this section. That said, your comment is actually why I brought up the legacy section in my oppose comment in the above section. Opinion/pundit pieces are very weak sources when it comes to WP:WEIGHT and long-term impact. Those hyper-focused on examining the harassment stuff can create a sort of WP:COATRACK embellishing the impact of the event. In the meantime, the actual 2016 United States presidential election makes no mention of Gamergate harassment, and including that mention is likely WP:UNDUE for that article. That last bit is pretty telling that the opinion pieces appear to be embellishment, at least in terms of how it's being presented on this talk page. KoA (talk) 16:26, 24 August 2021 (UTC)


The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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