Wikipedia

Talk:Gab (social network)/Archive 8

< Talk:Gab (social network)
Latest comment: 5 years ago by Tym Whittier in topic Proposal to change the short description to "American micro-blogging Internet service"
Archive 5Archive 6Archive 7Archive 8Archive 9Archive 10→Archive 12

Removed Storyful's "19,526" weekly active users estimate from the infobox

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I've removed Storyful's estimate of "19,526" weekly active users from the infobox. This is because the num_users template parameter, according to Template:Infobox website/doc, represents "The number of registered users the website has".

Gab self-reported 850,000 registered users in December 2018. Storyful and the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that the number of weekly active users was lower, and this information is due in the article body. However, the num_users template parameter is for registered users, not active users, and the weekly active users figure doesn't belong in the infobox because there's no parameter for it. — Newslinger talk 13:01, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Please give ref-names NAMES rather than numbers

Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52568
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T92432

People, please stop using ":1" and such as ref-names, in violation of WP:REFNAME. Going forward, please don't do this. And could someone go through and give substantive descriptive names to the named references, in compliance with WP:REFNAME? -- Softlavender (talk) 21:22, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

This is probably an artefact of the visual editor. GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:34, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
Latest comment: 5 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

Is there a good place to find information about Gab's logo? I'd like to mention when the logo got switched from Gabby to its current, more generic one. I remember when Tsumikiria reverted my edit he said "IIRC they used it before the shooting", but I don't know what IIRC means, and I would like a specific, citeable source. The closest thing I got to that was a unsourced claim on one of the Gab articles on Infogalactic which vaguely states it got changed in September 2018. AKA Casey Rollins Talk With Casey 21:09, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

The frog logo is mentioned in reliable sources as being the Gab logo as late as October 2018, when the site was taken offline: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. It is possible that, and appears that, the logo may have changed in September 2018 when the company acquired, and switched to, the domain name gab.com [6], [7], but that does not extinguish the prominent and much-commented-on use of the frog logo for the first two years of its existence [8], [9], [10], [11], [12]. -- Softlavender (talk) 21:52, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
I don't disagree with you. But the fact that the logo was a frog for two years doesn't extinguish the new, also prominent logo. AKA Casey Rollins Talk With Casey 04:37, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
The new logo isn't "prominent". It's just the word "gab", in green. Softlavender (talk) 04:55, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
How is it less prominent than Gabby? AKA Casey Rollins Talk With Casey 21:23, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

First Sentence in History

Latest comment: 5 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion

I was wondering if you guys support this slight change to the first sentence of the History section:

Original: Gab was created in August 2016, billing itself as an alternative to the social networking site Twitter.

Proposed change: Gab was created in August 2016, billing itself as a "free speech" alternative to the social networking site Twitter. (quotation marks are unnecessary but serve to placate the anti-Gab crowd)

Why: Not only is this claim supported by citation 12, which in its very title mentions this, this serves to inform further sections, more specifically it nicely tees up the mention of Wired's doubt of the sincerity of their free speech claims.

What do you guys think? I would like to hear detailed responses, as I suspect I will likely get backlash for suggesting this edit, even though it is supported by the citations and evidence already provided in the article. I would like to understand where you guys are coming from and your POV on this matter. Additionally, I previously made two edits that addressed this but were reverted for other things in portions unrelated to this matter. I don't want to be accused of edit-warring, I just want the article to be fair! AKA Casey Rollins (Talk With Casey) 21:19, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

I approve of this change. X-Editor (talk) 04:33, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
Its freeze peach marketing can be described elsewhere, but not here. Appending a sentence or a paragraph describing that would be more appropriate, but all of this risks WP:SYNTH. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 21:29, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
@Tsumikiria: Maybe it would be more appropriate to put marketing of Gab into a separate marketing section, where it discusses their free speech marketing and their other forms of marketing. Also, why do you refer to free speech as Freeze peach? X-Editor (talk) 05:54, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
See my closing statements here. IIRC not a lot of sources discuss their marketing practices in-depth. A dedicated marketing section isn't much viable. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 22:18, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
I concur. Additionally, many of the editors here get angry when others try to add references to Gab being a free speech platform; however, their claim that they're a free speech platform is undeniable, and supported in the existing citations. Tsumikiria my reason for not adding an extra sentence or anything was to not make anyone upset, some feel it is unnecessary to refer to Gab as a free speech site. Until that consensus changes I feel it is appropriate to make this change and leave it at that. AKA Casey Rollins Talk With Casey 05:46, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 March 2019

Latest comment: 5 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion
tired WP:NOTFORUM defense of a far right communications tool
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Gab is not a Neo-Nazi site all references to Neo-Nazis needs to be removed. Also the reason why Gab now exist and it must be clearly stated that Gab creation was in direct response to the actions of authoritarian socialist and racist many of who are anti-Semitic who decided to attack the free speech free expression of idea and opinions. Remember any form of censorship is an admission of intellectual defeat. Are the left admitting defeat because people on gab speak the truth? Or that they cannot defeat the truth with their hate, lies and deceit? This entry on Gab is completely wrong and the whole thing needs taking down. It is intellectually in accurate it is defamatory and slanderous. This entire entry is shameful and disgusting in it blatant lies. If allowing falsehoods to be perpetrated on Wikipedia then Wikipedia is dead.

Gab recently removed a number of left wing troll accounts who were posting Nazi propaganda. The thing is no egalitarian or right wing person speaks or expresses themselves like that. Also Nazi are a left wing phenomenon they were socialist as such The right detest them. So attempting to push these lies has effectively backfired on the left as everyone associates the left with NAZI's... This Wiki entry is a prime example of left wing Nazism and the false propaganda one has come tom expect, from left wing degenerates.

Take this utter garbage down get a balanced and correct version in place end the Socialist-Nazi censorship and idiot propaganda!

Totally disgusted by the blatant bias in this entry! 115.160.184.180 (talk) 17:06, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

  Not done: No sources or any compelling argument for change. I know it sucks to learn that you're associating with Neo-Nazis; that must be a blow to your self-esteem, but we go by reliable sources, not your gut instinct or what someone in PR tells you.--Jorm (talk) 17:28, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
Everybody who goes on the internet, or any network, is "associating with neo-Nazis". There are some forums like Usenet, 4chan, ED, and Gab where you can see that you're associating with neo-Nazis, and other forums like Facebook and Twitter where enough of the neo-Nazi comments get disappeared by the censors that you don't know it. But mostly it's a matter of PR and spin - when forums fail to have a vast miserable crew of censors, they get tarred in different ways. For 8chan it's child porn, for justpaste.it it's ISIS, for 4chan it's hilarious/obnoxious/racist pranks and so on. I suppose with enough of the press telling the public that users of a forum are, in this case, racist, they can make it a reality, but Wikipedia editors should be wary about what "reality" is. So long as there are any editors on the site who aren't actually Nazis, we ought to be very careful about flourishes of McCarthy-like rhetoric like "... frequented by..." "...is popular with..." "...attracts..." etc., or "associating with". (But if someone comes up with some cold hard facts that Gab is X% neo-Nazi while Facebook is Y% neo-Nazi then by all means put up a table) Most complaints are of the type that so-and-so saw something appalling and the site wouldn't censor it -- and Wikipedia should convey that as close to the literal nature of the incident as possible. Wnt (talk) 13:04, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

What an unhelpful and clearly biased response to a concern raised. I despise the rhetoric of the alt-right, but I do not want them censored, I want them debating in the open where their ideas can be challenged which is much more productive than letting them go underground where reasonable people cannot challenge them and rethink their ideas.

Gab was setup as a pro freedom of speech platform which allows for such a challenge to peoples views to happen. It is not an alt-right platform, of course some alt-right people use it, as do centrists and left-wing leaning people but it is not centrist or left wing either but a neutral platform for ideas to be discussed. It is only known publicly as an alt-right platform due to the fact that alt-right accounts are not banned unless the account user breaks the law on the platform and thus this narrative is pushed by news outlets.

Antifa have been labelled as a domestic terrorist organisation in the US which was reported in the news and by the same logic seen on the comments so far the Antifa page should be linked to the Terrorism Portal. Do not assume to know who people associate with or support, you have no idea and should treat all comments on these matters as genuine concerns unless you can prove they are not. To do otherwise is utterly reprehensible behaviour and a clear attempt to censor and push ones own viewpoint, which as I have pointed out previously goes against Wikipedia's pledge of neutrality on all matters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.41.163.211 (talk) 02:02, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

If you want to propose a change to this article, then you need to provide links to reliable sources that verify the change. General venting accomplishes nothing. Wikipedia summarizes what reliable sources say, and that is not going to change. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:18, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Inaccurate citation

Latest comment: 5 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Within the opening paragraph of the article, it bizarrely states (bearing in mind online accounts are already difficult to verify) "A majority of Gab's users are white, a majority are male, and a majority are conservative.". Bizarrely, next to the citation on Wikipedia, it re-echoes this same inaccuracy as if though quoted from the study: "We also show that the majority of Gab users are conservative, male, and Caucasian."

However, if one visits the citation in question: https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.03688

One notices that A) there is no such quote, and B) the thing being cited is stated as a "preprint", and ergo the full paper isn't actually cited: "This is a preprint of a paper that will appear on ASONAM'18". There appears to be no full version printed anywhere. Even more suspiciously, when one checks the authorship of the paper and if it's endorsed: https://arxiv.org/auth/show-endorsers/1807.03688

One finds that "Lucas Henrique Costa De Lima" is not endorsed, which as the ArXiv page on endorsements explains basically means they're not known within scientific circles (IE it's not a (preprint) paper by a reputable individual): https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement

This raises serious questions of credibility in the claims being made that Gab has a "majority" of white users. Essentially, the quote isn't in the citation; the citation itself is an abstract for (what appears to be) an unpublished paper; the author doesn't have any known credibility in the subject area, and the claim itself is contentious at best given there's no reliable way to determine the ethnicity of an electronic account by external observation alone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.18.220.70 (talk) 17:51, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

You're wrong, this article exists.
In your defense, I know little about the veracity of the claims of this study. Your accusation that the article doesn't exist, however, is entirely baseless. Not to sound mean, but you should've done more research before calling the citation inaccurate and saying the article doesn't exist. AKA Casey Rollins Talk With Casey 21:25, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
We should be careful to avoid racial bias on this article. If it is noteworthy to report that the study said 76.1% of users were white, it is also noteworthy to report that 15.8% were Asian and 8.2% black according to the same study. As the United States is according to our article 76.6% white, 13.4% black, and 5.3% Asian, this is actually not a tremendous surprise. (Note that for reasons I don't understand, Hispanic is now no longer a race, and so is not counted in either total) Wnt (talk) 12:16, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Incorrectly linked to the larger topic of antisemitism

Latest comment: 5 years ago9 comments6 people in discussion

The article makes reference to a large antisemitic community, this may or may not be true but to classify the website as anitsemitic seems incorrect and does not feel like it is in line with the neutrality policies of Wikipedia. I suggest the content stating that claims exist that the website is a host for antisemitic groups or individuals but it should not be linked to the topic of anti-semitism. A website cannot be seen as anitsemitic unless the website itself is explicitly declaring itself so. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.41.163.211 (talk) 16:03, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

I have to agree. Otherwise, it would make sense to put a big "pedophiles live here" banner on the YouTube article. petrarchan47คุก 23:56, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
No. This is a false equivalence, and the removal of the antisemtism topics are discussed and settled multiple times before. If most reliable sources discuss in depth and emphasize on the site's antisemitic contents, we must do so here, provided that weight and language is considered. Are Youtube primarily known, among RS, for pedophiles? No. Are Gab primarily known, among RS, for antisemites? Yes. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 00:15, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

People claim things which are untrue all of the time, if I claim to be a unicorn and enough people believe me and this gets news coverage then should a Wikipedia article about me be linked to a wider topic on mythical creatures? By your logic yes but to do so would be moronic. Gab markets itself as a free speech platform, naturally it will attract some people with views that were not welcome on other platforms but that does not make it an alt right, neo nazi, anti semitic or whatever other claim you want to throw at it. The best way to defeat bad ideas is to have them exposed, debated and ultimately defeated publicly, censorship sends such ideas underground where they grow unchecked. Gab provides a means to achieve this end. Has no one learned from simply believing things to be true that are reported on, Jussie Smollet and The Covington students are 2 recent occasions where false claims were made and reported upon that turned out to be true. By not being impartial and pushing a narrative like this Wikipedia is showing itself to have bias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.41.163.211 (talk) 01:16, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

I have no formed opinion on the inclusion of antisemitism mentions in the article (I've not researched it closely enough), but I strongly object to the {{Antisemitism}} article series template being used here. This is a fundamental misuse of such a navigational aid as certainly this service is not core or even barely ancillary to that broad topic. Its also not lost on me the irony that this article series template, with its prominent yellow badge, is fundamentally being used more as a way to signal what some would consider a distasteful element. This article series template should be removed from this article, and the article removed from the template. -- Netoholic @ 02:45, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and boldly removed the article series template from the page. I agree with Netoholic that it's out of place, and both Gab and Voat appear pretty out of place in the template. I understand including unquestionably antisemitic websites like The Daily Stormer, where that is the premise of the entire website, but I think there needs to be a much stronger reason for Gab to be included. GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:27, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree that Voat article at its present time may be insufficient for the template, but we have a whole subsection here on how the subject attracts various kinds of antisemites and panders to them with half-cryptic antisemitic rants like "I'm calling the cops on both and getting my shotgun ready". From a weight standpoint, placing the template to that section may still be viable. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 23:27, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
The ADL, which is used as a source for this argument in our article, also speaks of massive anti-Semitism on Twitter. [13] Should Twitter be on the list also?
One argument I edited about recently was the bit about 61% of an ADL list of extremists having Gab accounts. I thought that sounded pretty serious, and ADL is all about anti-Semitism, no? But the ADL list consists of 10 "alt-lite" people like Milo Yiannopoulos who I would hardly call anti-Semitic, and 26 others most of whom seem genuinely prone to racism, but who are professional celebrities who would certainly not avoid a forum if it didn't ban them on sight because of who they are. Also there's the apparent argument that Gab is white supremacist because, like the United States, it is 76% white, if you count Hispanics as white (as that Arxiv paper does). I mean, the whole hue and cry seems to come down to the complaint that they didn't ban 15 people, at least one of whom they since did ban. Most of the forum participants are not demonstrably antisemites. And given that this fractionally connected infobox is relatively prejudicial to some BLP-worthy persons linked with the site, it seems reasonable to omit it. Wnt (talk) 01:16, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
There is unquestionably a lot of antisemitic content on Gab, and they have definitely posted (but later deleted) antisemitic stuff on their Twitter account, but I don't agree that that's enough for them to belong in the {{antisemitism}} template alongside sites like Stormfront, Jew Watch, and The Daily Stormer. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:06, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 February 2019

Latest comment: 5 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion

"listed far-right conspiracy theorist websites Breitbart News and InfoWars as its main competitors." Breitbart is rightwing, info wars is right conspiracy theory. No source claims Breitbart is a conspiracy theory site. The Washington post article referenced does not make this claim. InfoWars is commonly known as conspiracy theory even though the Washington Post article does not make this claim it would seem like a fair label. Change to "listed far-right website Breitbart and far-right conspiracy theory website InfoWars as its main competitors." One cannot make up info just to make a sentence flow better! Thanks. 2607:FEA8:2C5F:F9C7:3162:88E4:119B:BBC7 (talk) 05:46, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Nice try. PaulCHebert (talk) 06:50, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
  Not done: its wrong DannyS712 (talk) 14:28, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
If I remember correctly Breitbart has perpetuated consipiracy theories in the past. It's not often, and I don't think that qualifies them as a "conspiracy theorist website" since that's not their main feature, but the distinguishment between "conspiracy theory site" and "site that has occasionally promoted conspiracy theories" is so minute and insignificant that this edit is quite unwarranted. Additionally, Brietbart isn't "rightwing", they are "far right". Big difference. AKA Casey Rollins Talk With Casey 21:21, 20 February 2019 (UTC)


It's not as well known right-wing website like facebook. Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-asia-47578860 this is only if use the same logic to class Gab as right-wing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Politicalunbiased (talk • contribs) 11:16, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Cleanup boxes

Latest comment: 5 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion
This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

@ElectroChip123: Can you explain why you added these cleanup tags? ({{Cleanup|reason=poorly written and violates WP:NPOV}} and {{weasel}} to the Users and content section, and and {{original research}} to the Antisemitism and violence section) Specifically what is poorly written, violates WP:NPOV, contains WP:WEASEL words, and is original research? Drive-by tagging isn't particularly helpful with no explanation.

As a note, I've removed the {{unsourced}} template that you added to the Antisemitism and violence section—that's for sections that don't contain any sources, and as you can see that section has quite a few. GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:37, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

@GorillaWarfare: The whole first paragraph of the Antisemitism and Violence section is unsourced (or single sourced, which is still bad). If that all comes from one source, then it needs to be condensed, otherwise it is clearly biased (as it only has one source). Likewise, the many extrapolations based on that single article would certainly fall under "original research". The "35%" stat has no number backing it, yet it is presented as if it actually means thousands of people voted that option. On it's face, that is misrepresenting data, which is, in all cases, a violation of NPOV, and WP:NOT. If that 35% is 10,000 people then it's a fairly representative sample, and can be included as relevant. If it's 90 people, then it hardly means anything at all, and shouldn't even be included in this article (sample size bias). It reads as an editorial, not a Wikipedia article. Furthermore, little is written about the counterpoints to these claims. This is "weasely" and violates WP:NPOV. Regarding the main section, there is a ton of redundant information in the entire "User Profiles" section, and it could be written much more concisely. Furthermore, the section focuses on extremist positions (not saying there aren't any, or that there aren't many), rather than all positions taken by Gab users (many of whom may not be so extreme). Hence, this section (very likely) misrepresents the community. Therefore, it violates WP:NPOV. ElectroChip123 (talk) 18:01, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
@ElectroChip123: Thanks, this is helpful. Are there specific phrases that you feel are weasel words or are you just referring to what you see as NPOV?
As for your comment, the section focuses on extremist positions (not saying there aren't any, or that there aren't many), rather than all positions taken by Gab users (many of whom may not be so extreme), can you provide the sources you're seeing that describe other positions that are being left out? GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:10, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
I think you have a point about the 35% stat. I've removed it, and condensed the section a bit. Does that address your concerns regarding the first paragraph? Waiting on your other replies before I address the rest of your comment. GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:44, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
My thanks to OP, and GW's copyediting. @ElectroChip123: Can you point out exact phrases that are weasel or OR? I'd be helpful if you could provide sources to counterpoints. Thanks. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 01:48, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
@Tsumikiria:There wasn't an exact phrase that was OR, it was the entire paragraph that seemed to be sourced from a single Politico article. It was presented as if all the claims made were backed up by independent research, yet there were no citations except for the one article at the end. It have been more in an "OR gray area" than directly "OR", but the way it was written it seemed like the author (of the paragraph on Wikipedia) had independently come to the conclusions presented, but didn't provide any citations as to how they came to them, leading me to speculate they may have researched it on their own. On the flip side, they may have simply come to that conclusion by reading a single online article. Likewise, the lack of detail about the studies, and they way they were presented as fact, despite having only one source total for all of the claims, would be a rather "weaselly" move. Phrasing conjecture, or ill-supported conclusions, as if they are fact. The weasellyness was making a paragraph out of what should have been just a few sentences. All in all, I wasn't sure if they were purposely breaking "NPOV" (being a weasel) or if they had done other research and not cited it (as in the case of OR). So I tagged the section with both. Side note, it's more of the description that {{weasel}} gives than how the editing guide defines "weasel words" as far as why I thought it might fit.

@GorillaWarfare: and @Tsumikiria:, I removed specific cleanup boxes, and did some cleaning of the article as well. That said, I still think it's a bit wordier than it ought to be. In this case, I think that the wordiness gets in the way of maintaining a NPOV, which is why I still have that listed in the cleanup box.— Preceding unsigned comment added by ElectroChip123 (talk • contribs)

off topic
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
@ElectroChip123: I would respectfully disagree with your latest rearrangement of the lead. Per MOS:LEADREL, it would be inappropriate to put a subject's possibly self-preserving, promotional self-descriptions and relatively unimportant trivia (3,000 characters) much more prominently than what most reliable sources say and put most weight describing about the subject (a major hub for Nazis). I agree that the lead might need some work, but this approach appears to be in the wrong direction and has been discussed previously. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 01:01, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
@Tsumikiria: One of the reasons why I chose to move that information away from the leading paragraph was to keep it consistent with how articles about other "far-right" social media/networking services, such as voat are introduced, as well as how other social media/networking services are generally introduced. If the Gab user base was suddenly dominated by the far-left, that would then require a redo of the whole main section, whereas by sticking to the core of what Gab is, there is little that would need to be updated. Plus, "popular with the alt-right" is still mentioned in the section visible via mouse-over. Hence, I would be opposed to putting "...antisemitism..." where the "...3000..." is currently. Having said that, I wouldn't be too opposed to re-arranging the order the paragraphs are in. To fulfill most of what you are asking, all we need to do is swap the 2nd and 4th paragraphs, or simply relocate the 4th paragraph between the current 1st and 2nd paragraphs. This would leave a condensed "what" as the first paragraph before expanding on it's critics. Gab isn't JewWatch or TheDailyStormer, it isn't around solely to be antisemitic, and as per other talk page discussions, listing antisemitism in the first paragraph would be misleading and make is seem like it belonged in the "antisemitism" portal (which it does not, at least not according to this. ElectroChip123 (talk) 01:58, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Intro Paragraph

Latest comment: 5 years ago10 comments5 people in discussion

@ElectroChip123: I would respectfully disagree with your latest rearrangement of the lead. Per MOS:LEADREL, it would be inappropriate to put a subject's possibly self-preserving, promotional self-descriptions and relatively unimportant trivia (3,000 characters) much more prominently than what most reliable sources say and put most weight describing about the subject (a major hub for Nazis). I agree that the lead might need some work, but this approach appears to be in the wrong direction and has been discussed previously. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 01:01, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

@Tsumikiria: One of the reasons why I chose to move that information away from the leading paragraph was to keep it consistent with how articles about other "far-right" social media/networking services, such as voat are introduced, as well as how other social media/networking services are generally introduced. If the Gab user base was suddenly dominated by the far-left, that would then require a redo of the whole main section, whereas by sticking to the core of what Gab is, there is little that would need to be updated. Plus, "popular with the alt-right" is still mentioned in the section visible via mouse-over. Hence, I would be opposed to putting "...antisemitism..." where the "...3000..." is currently. Having said that, I wouldn't be too opposed to re-arranging the order the paragraphs are in. To fulfill most of what you are asking, all we need to do is swap the 2nd and 4th paragraphs, or simply relocate the 4th paragraph between the current 1st and 2nd paragraphs. This would leave a condensed "what" as the first paragraph before expanding on it's critics. Gab isn't JewWatch or TheDailyStormer. It isn't around solely to be antisemitic. Hence, listing antisemitism in the first paragraph would be misleading and make is seem like it belonged in the "antisemitism" portal (which it does not, at least not according to this discussion). ElectroChip123 (talk) 01:58, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
I agree with Tsumikiria that the lede was better and more informative before, and better reflected both the body text and reliable sources before. Since there was no consensus for the change, and since the lede has been discussed heavily on this page for many, many, many months, I support restoring it to the way it was -- barring a consensus of very experienced editors who are not Gab SPAs. Consensus is needed before major changes, especially on controversial articles and sections which have already been heavily discussed. Softlavender (talk) 05:18, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
@Softlavender: O/T: What's a Gab SPA? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ElectroChip123 (talk • contribs) 00:48, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Single purpose account. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:03, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Agreed that it was better before and should be reverted. The changes really should have been discussed here first. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:06, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
"...unimportant trivia (3,000 characters..." 3,000 characters for "Pro" accounts, 300 to free accounts, and it's a big deal (not "trivia") to the Users of Gab, which I assume you are not. The 300 char limit for new accounts is one of the primary reasons why it's objectively better than Twitter, and so that's a major competitive quality that makes Gab objectively better. Also not "trivia". It's a simple, concrete and easy-to-understand fact that should go in the Lede as it brings the Reader into the Article, vs. clubbing them over the head with all the condemnations and recriminations for how horrible and racist and violent and whatever-phobic the platform is. People get tired of being beat over the head with all that self-righteous moralizing, and so they move away from the Article, from Wikipedia, from traditional news media and they migrate TOWARDS "alternative media" like Gab. It's an interesting and important fact and for style reasons should be included in the Lede in order to "invite the Reader to continue to read further".Tym Whittier (talk) 06:36, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Your opinions about the value of various character limits on various sites are your opinions, not objective facts. The character limits are not salient facts in terms of summarizing the body text of this wiki article (per WP:LEAD) or in terms of reliable-source reporting about the site. The character limits may be important in marketing terms, but Wikipedia is not for promotionalism. -- Softlavender (talk) 08:40, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia articles are intended to reflect third party, reliable information about a topic, and the lead is meant to be a brief summary of that information. We need to focus on whether the lead is accurately summarizing the information in the article, not on whether it's showing that Gab is "objectively better" than another platform or "clubbing people over the head" with the fact that the platform is home to violent and bigoted content. Even if I were to agree with you that the media is tiring people with its "self-righteous moralizing", attempting to solve that by shifting focus onto what we personally feel is important or interesting about the platform is contrary to the fundamental practices on Wikipedia. Our purpose here is not to ensure people read Wikipedia over CNN or Gab or any other website—it's to provide an accurate, unbiased description of the subject as it is represented in the available reliable sourcing. If the sourcing featured the character count as an important detail about the platform, then so too should we, but it doesn't, and so we shouldn't. GorillaWarfare (talk) 14:11, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Well Which Is It? "Neo-Nazis", "Trolls", or Both?

Latest comment: 5 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion

"Robert W. "Rob" Monster, Epik.com CEO, had defended Gab's neo-Nazi users, and said that neo-Nazis on Gab are actually "liberal trolls" looking to "give enemies of freedom an excuse"."

This sentence has problems with logic. If Monster says the neo-nazis are actually "liberal trolls", then he can't be "defending" neo-nazis, because he's saying there aren't any. He's denying, at least, a significant part of their existance. Also the statement falls to parse out the "quantity" of neo-nazis, and allows the reader to believe that perhaps they are ALL "neo-nazis". So the sentence could reasonably interpreted to meant that all the members on Gab are neo-nazis, that Rob Monster defended those neo-nazis by denying that they were actually neo-nazis but instead "liberal trolls".Tym Whittier (talk) 04:00, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Please don't think we're dumb, and please don't try to pose such obvious obtuse, bad-faith questions.--Jorm (talk) 04:02, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
@Jorm: Please don't think we're dumb, and please don't try to pose such obvious obtuse, bad-faith questions. I wouldn't go so far as to say this is a "bad faith" question. For the logically inclined it can appear to be a contradictory statement. @Tym Whittier: It would probably be clearer if "... defended Gab's neo-Nazi users..." was switched out for "...defended Gab's neo-Nazi content...". "Rob" is defending the "neo-Nazi" content by claiming that it is actually being posted by "liberal trolls". ElectroChip123 (talk) 19:01, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
Right well I haven't really "dug-in" to the RS, but at the surface it feels like someone has taken an idea from one source, and another idea from another source, imagined a way to make them say something that "feels right" (confirmation bias), so they put them together and we have what we have. Which is my opinion as a Reader, which is the core of my objection. From the "readability" perspective, it feels cobbled-together and clumsy. However it got this way, it's clearly illogical to me, meaning I haven't changed my mind yet. But I suppose I could. Not married to this. Not the "hill I want to die on". Interested in finding out if anyone else sees it like I do.Tym Whittier (talk) 21:12, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
I held off hoping others would weigh in, but it appears that's not going to happen.
"...defended Gab's neo-Nazi content...".
I don't think you are understanding the illogical nature of the sentence. Rob Monster cannot "defend Nazi Users" (or content) if there aren't any Nazis to defend. His statement was a denial of the very existence of the Nazis. You can't "defend a murderer", if there was never a murder. It's possible Rob was defending GAB by denying the existence of Nazis, but that's not what the Article says, and that's not what the RS says either.Tym Whittier (talk) 01:56, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
@Tym Whittier: That's why I suggested the word "users" be replaced with the word "content". That is, "he defended its neo-Nazi content by claiming that such content was being posted by liberal trolls and not by actual neo-Nazis", is what I am suggesting. In other words, I'm agreeing that the sentence should be altered. ElectroChip123 (talk) 00:29, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Jeffrey Clark

Latest comment: 5 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion

I agree with ElectroChip123's removal of the Jeffrey Clark section, but am bringing it here since it was reverted. For posterity, their edit summary was If we listed every neo-Nazi that used facebook... you get the picture. Removed Jeffrey Clark as he isn't notable to Gab. At least, not any more than the individual people who have live-streamed terrible stuff on Facebook Live are relevant to an article Facebook. There is no real connection between Clark and Gab, other than that he used the service, and I don't think there's any indication the posts were what led to his arrest or anything like that. Descriptions of what he posted might be relevant to a biography of Clark, but I don't see how it's relevant to an article on Gab. Furthermore, some of the details about Clark (his attendance of the Unite the Right rally, his affiliations, the results of authorities' search of his home, and his charges) have nothing to do with Gab whatsoever, and so it's really bizarre for them to be included. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:22, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

"There is no real connection between Clark and Gab, other than that he used the service ...." I disagree with that. I've checked the four citations in the section. This NBC report on him mentions Gab 11 times [14]. This ProPublica article [15] on him mentions Gab 4 times, including:

Prosecutors urged the court in the Nov. 15 filing to keep Clark in detention pending trial. They said his “dry run” post on Gab was “clearly designed to convey a message that he and others who hold his views plan to commit future acts of violence.”

“The Court should not view this statement as simple hyperbole in light of the defendant’s access to weapons, possession of body armor, possession of high-capacity ammunition magazines, glorification of acts of violence, and proclamations that he was ‘committed to the survival of the white race by any means necessary,’” prosecutors said.
 
On Friday, a judge agreed, ordering that Clark remain in detention.

The Washington Post article on him mentions Gab twice: [16], as does the HuffPo article [17]. -- Softlavender (talk) 01:54, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
Okay, that's fair enough, but I think it should be cut down to a sentence or so rather than its own section. Do you have objections to that? GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:04, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
Given the heavy amount of coverage of Gab in those articles, I do personally object to that. I checked the wiki text and I can't see anything that merits being deleted; in fact, more from the articles can be added; there is a lot of relevant material, for instance, in these paragraphs from the NBC report [18] (I am bolding particularly relevant material):

He was a prolific user of Gab, which briefly shut down in October after its web host and support services abandoned the site following reports that Bowers had posted anti-Semitic comments there before the shooting.

Clark and Bowers both followed each other on the site, according to an archive of Bowers’ removed account, viewed by NBC News. They were among each other’s hundreds of followers, but a review of their thousands of posts shows no actual conversation between the two.

Under the username @PureWhiteEvil, Clark posted over 3,700 times to Gab. Clark explained in August that he had moved to the site after multiple failed attempts to evade Twitter's ban on his neo-Nazi content. "I used to be DC Stormer, DC Death Squad, then DC Bowl Patrol (which preceeded BOWL GANG) before giving up on being able to stay on Twitter after which I retired here."

On Gab, Clark idolized Dylann Roof, the man who shot and killed nine black people at a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015, and obsessed over "cultural marxism" and baseless conspiracies involving vast pedophelia rings. He also posted hate speech and threats, including over 60 calls to throw Jewish and black people, journalists and perceived political enemies "feet first into a woodchipper."

Following the Pittsburgh shootings, Clark posted defensively against outrage over the killings and railed against calls for Gab to self-censor users. Clark also praised Bowers in a Gab post after the shootings, where he wrote, “f---ing k---- that got shot by the hero #RobertBowers were all active supporters of pedophilia… and every last one of them deserved exactly what happened to them and so much worse,” according to the FBI’s affidavit.

That post was not available via the archive accessed by NBC News and a representative from the U.S. Attorney’s office declined to share a copy or say if they had one. Gab may have removed it before it could be captured by the archive.

In one of his final posts, Clark "dared" Gab CEO Andrew Torba to ban him. Torba "can ban me if he wants but he knows as well as anyone else that banning me for this would take away any reason people still have to post here," Clark said.

--Softlavender (talk) 04:19, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
This new piece by CBS/WUSA published just 4 days ago said that Clark is in plea negotiations and is likely to plea guilty. The article make 2 direct mentions to Gab. We're likely going to hear updates soon. I have to agree with SoftL that his case is heavily related to Gab and the above bolded text should be added to the paragraph for clarification. The Facebook analogy might not be suitable here as most RS do not compare Gab simply as an alternative platform, and also per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 18:02, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
most RS do not compare Gab simply as an alternative platform, but is that not what Gab is Tsumikiria? Whether we like them or not, they are an "alternative platform" to Twitter and Reddit. Furthermore, it may be "an antisemitic alternative platform" but it's still an "alternative platform". That is, unless we want to make the argument that Gab is a "mainstream platform" like Twitter or Facebook. Softlavender, The fact that Clark dared Torba to ban him means that he was doing something that he knew was hurting Gab and putting Torba in a bad position. If anything, that defends the position that Gab is merely about free expression, as even those who use it in a malignant way are aware that they are circumventing the purpose of the platform. Listing the number of references to Gab in an article is like listing the number of references to Facebook live in an article on the Christchurch shooting or the 2017 torture incident in Chicago. Although both were heavily related to Facebook, with every article on the incidents mentioning Facebook live at least once, and thus Facebook live being once of the most talked about things with regard to both incidents,our article on Facebook doesn't give a graphic description of the perpetrators or the incidents. In Facebook's case, such information is rightly located on it's respective incident page, with only a brief summary or statement appearing on Facebook's main article or in its "controversies" section. @GorillaWarfare:, perhaps we shouldn't boldly eliminate the entire section, however reducing it to a sentence or two would be a good idea in keeping with the treatment of other incidents. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ElectroChip123 (talk • contribs) 00:10, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
I disagree with all of your apparent attempts at distancing clear and plentiful and well-documented (in RS) patterns of hate-speech and incitement of violence on Gab with the site itself. And you're not quoting the relevant passages, but rather using words and phrases to make your desired point without accurately presenting what was argued. Namely: (1) Tsumikiria never said Gab was not an alternative platform, he said "most RS do not compare Gab simply as an alternative platform" (I have bolded the operative word, which you are ignoring). (2) Clark said "banning me for this would take away any reason people still have to post here" (bolded in my original, and omitted by you entirely). In terms of your arguments about Facebook Live, they do not hold water at all, in my opinion, as Facebook is not a known haven for hate speech, extremists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the alt-right, nor were the Facebook Live videos incitements to violence per se (they were recordings of violent acts), nor did the perpetrators post thousands of individual comments on Facebook inciting hatred and/or violence. The fact that a platform has been abused twice does not equate to a platform being clearly persistently used for abuse. Softlavender (talk) 03:25, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Gab Dissenter merge

Latest comment: 5 years ago76 comments30 people in discussion
There is a consensus to merge the articles. A raw vote count had 20 editors in favor of merging and 10 opposed. When the presence of apparent single-purpose accounts, canvassing, and some faulty invocations of policy and guidelines are taken into account, the consensus appears to be even more lopsidedly in favor of merging. The primary argument made by those supporting a merge is that there is insufficient content specifically about Gab Dissenter to warrant having a separate article; some of those opposing a merge simply disagreed directly with this assessment, asserting that there was sufficient coverage in reliable sources to warrant a separate article. Others opposing a merge invoked WP:PRODUCT, claiming that adding Gab Dissenter content to this article would make it unwieldy; editors supporting a merge argued convincingly that even a naive merge pasting the two articles together would still be considerably shorter than the 40,000 character threshold after which it is recommended that articles be split, and editors who voted merge after this point in the discussion began citing WP:PRODUCT themselves as justification for a merge, arguing that while there is enough coverage to demonstrate Gab Dissenter's notability, the information is still best presented together with content about Gab. Some editors opposed to merging argued that Gab Dissenter may be big in the future, which was refuted by editors citing WP:CRYSTAL. One editor argued that we should not merge except to an article about Gab Inc., the parent company of Gab. Finally, some editors opposed to merge argued that we should wait and see before merging, and one accused a merge of comprising political censorship. I am somewhat perplexed by this last argument, as presumably a merge would not entail the deletion of any non-redundant information, and would presumably include a redirect such that anyone trying to look up Gab Dissenter would find the same information either way. All told, the pro-merge editors had both greater numbers and stronger arguments. I will leave it to editors who have been involved in this discussion and in editing related articles to actually carry out the merge. (non-admin closure) signed, Rosguill talk 21:48, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion 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.

Should Gab Dissenter be merged into Gab (social network)? GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:25, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Merge I've proposed that Gab Dissenter be merged into this page. At this point there's really not much sourcing on that page, and since it was released so recently, there hasn't been a ton of coverage. The "Examples of use" section on that page is really weak—if I wasn't going to propose a merge I'd have removed it myself—so it's really just the lead that would need to be added to this page (and much of it already exists in this page already). GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:31, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Merge because a) there's almost nothing there; b) Dissenter is deeply connected to Gab, and not its own thing; c) it's likely to be just another fart in the wind and thus won't get any real coverage, and d) there's one fewer place that we have to monitor. --Jorm (talk) 17:43, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
    "not its own thing"... is it? The Dissenter site is pretty sparse and I haven't installed it, but appears to be an entirely separate content base. Possibly single sign-on at most? But would welcome knowledge from anyone who has looked further, as it might change my vote. (Side note: what happens if you load Dissenter on a Gab post (what are they, "gabs")?) vsync (talk) 02:57, 1 March 2019 (UTC)— Note: An editor has expressed a concern that vsync (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.
    The sign-on appears to be shared, but I believe the content is separate. GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:06, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
  • SNOW Speedy Merge. This does not require either permission or a discussion. Gab Dissenter is a clear WP:CONTENTFORK which has little to no independent encyclopedic notability and should be instantly merged and redirected. Softlavender (talk) 19:43, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Snow speedy merge with a side helping of WTF and how the fuck would they even do that? Simonm223 (talk) 19:48, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Speedy Merge - Gab Dissenter in all respect fails WP:GNG spectacularly. More than a dozen similar services have failed in the past and this one is just another publicity attempt. The fact that they specifically advertised for the use on Wikipedia is indicative that this is Torba's retaliation against his failed canvassing attempts here. And we're not going to give him another chance. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 20:11, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
    "The fact that they specifically advertised for the use on Wikipedia is indicative that this is Torba's retaliation against his failed canvassing attempts here. And we're not going to give him another chance." I'm a little concerned that this motivation might create the appearance of impropriety in editorial policy. Decisions about managing a topic should not be biased by whether the subject happens to have advocated for discussion critical of Wikipedia in what is by all accounts an independent forum; advocacy of improper editing might be a different matter but should be more carefully assessed than what this comment might seem to imply. (It also occurrs to me that encouraging side-discussions about the article rather than, say, vandalism or edit-wars might actually be more in line with the mission to keep the encyclopedia NPOV.) vsync (talk) 02:57, 1 March 2019 (UTC)— Note: An editor has expressed a concern that vsync (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.
"I'm a little concerned that this motivation might create the appearance of impropriety in editorial policy." I concur. This is a very biased article which doesn't present a balanced viewpoint, and this merge proposal is an attempt by longstanding editors of this article to frame a totally separate product created by the company who made Gab in terms of that biased viewpoint. Ginjuice4445 (talk) 07:03, 1 March 2019 (UTC)— Ginjuice4445 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
@Vsync:I meant to prevent rigorous disruptions, as I commented below. I'll copy it here: This is not about a counter-retaliation attempt, but about common sense. The subject's past canvassing campaigns has conjured enough trolls, POV-pushers, and sealions to this page. Nobody wants another place that's a constant spotlight for such disruption and utter nuisance. I also agree with the WP:PRODUCT arguments. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 23:04, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Don't merge – WP:PRODUCT states that a company's products can have their own article if "the company article is so large that this would make the article unwieldy", which is purely subjective. I think the Gab page is large enough on its own, and this would bloat it even more (even though this is a different service). If it helps, consider Gab a Twitter alternative, and Dissenter a Reddit alternative. It's not only an extension, but a fully-fledged website. So it should definitely have its own article. Alex.osheter (talk) 20:27, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
    @Alex.osheter, X-Editor, and Ginjuice4445: (Pinging the folks who've mentioned WP:PRODUCT) Good guidance for when a page is so large to be "unweildy" can be found at WP:SIZESPLIT. The main page on Gab currently measures in at 26,471 characters; Gab Dissenter is 1,487. Even if the two articles were simply pasted together, they would fall within the "<40,000 chars" range, which is "Length alone does not justify division". So, since that caveat does not apply, merging the article would be following WP:PRODUCT's advice that information on its products and services should generally be included in the article on the company itself. GorillaWarfare (talk) 00:26, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
I read WP:Product a little differently. This notability guideline states that "if a company is notable, information on its products and services should generally be included in the article on the company itself, unless the company article is so large that this would make the article unwieldy." Unwieldiness isn't really relevant to this discussion as this article is not an article about the company Gab AI Inc. It is an article about the Gab.com social media website. Indeed its title is "Gab (Social Network)" and the first line of this article is "Gab is an English-language social media website." Dissenter is also an English-language social media website that is developed by Gab's developer, but isn't part of Gab.com. If you want to make an article about Gab AI Inc., then write one. But right now this article is about the Gab social media product, and accordingly a separate product - even if developed by the same company - doesn't belong here. Ginjuice4445 (talk) 00:55, 1 March 2019 (UTC)— Ginjuice4445 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
This is the main article that covers both Gab, Inc. and its product Gab. There is no need for a separate article on Gab, Inc. (since it's its product that is notable) just as there is no need for an article on Dissent. I believe WP:PRODUCT should be interpreted to be referring to the main article on the topic. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:05, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
I disagree, as do others in this discussion. This article would need a substantial rewrite to be not about Gab.com and to be about Gab the company and its products. Merging the Dissenter product into the Gab product article (where the phrase "the site" appears 38 times, including 6 times in the bloated lede, and the phrase "the company" appears 6 times, 4 of which relate to revenues, and the remaining 2 of which are company statements about use of the site) would make this trash fire of a biased hit piece even more dishonest and inaccurate than it already is.
If you want to include these things together, write an article about the company or rewrite this article. But don't try to confuse consumers by merging the two, which are very obviously different products, and which none of the references in this article refer to. Ginjuice4445 (talk) 01:11, 1 March 2019 (UTC)— Ginjuice4445 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
I think we've both made our points, so I'll leave it to the closer to decide. WP:PRODUCT is definitely a bit vague in this case. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:19, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
Alternatively, you may need to redirect your "trashfire" contempt at the sources instead - the current article is a direct result of appropriate weights in the reliable sources that cover the website and the company - which indicates that Gab AI Inc is not independently worthy of an article or a substantial rewrite. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 04:49, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
If Gab.com had closed down completely and the company offered Dissenter as a totally new offering, would Dissenter get its own article, or be incorporated in the article about the defunct platform? Of course, it would get its own article. Concurrent separate software offerings get their own articles, just as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Edge do. There is no good reason to lump an article about Dissenter in with an article about a totally different offering. Ginjuice4445 (talk) 07:08, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Don't merge The extension has gotten a decent amount of coverage in reliable sources now [19][20][21][22][23]. X-Editor (talk) 21:22, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
    Sources for the significant amount of coverage? The Dissenter article doesn't show much. If it were augmented with additional coverage that might say something for notability. Right now the citations include a press release, a NYT article, and a smattering of the articles one sees about the launch of any service. That would be enough for me but I'm anti-deletionist. TBH "significant coverage and rapid growth" (paraphrased) sounds like what Gab wishes for; maybe it is or will be true but I haven't see it ... yet. vsync (talk) 03:04, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
    Note that some of the cites in the Dissenter article are actually for statements about Gab (for example, the "far right" bit). GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:06, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
    Hmm, was mainly just looking at the reference list at the bottom (didn't even see that bit). There's already such argument here and elsewhere about whether conflation between the company and service is appropriate, let alone the userbase, that it serves us to be particularly circumspect in throwing something else into the mix. Especially now that some discussion points here have brought up some kind of (counter)-retaliatory framing we run the risk of a perceived merge to stifle criticism and the decision, whatever it is, must be well-supported by both policy and precedent and clearly explained. vsync (talk) 03:29, 1 March 2019 (UTC)— Note: An editor has expressed a concern that vsync (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.
This is not about a counter-retaliation attempt, but about common sense. The subject's past canvassing campaigns has conjured enough trolls, POV-pushers, and sealions to this page. Nobody wants another place that's a constant spotlight for such disruption and utter nuisance. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 05:29, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Merge for now I think for the moment it should be merged, since I think it's widely considered a spinoff project of Gab, but (in my opinion) isn't notable enough to have its own article. If it ever becomes notable and there are some good references for it it will probably deserve its own page, but that time is not now. AKA Casey Rollins Talk With Casey 21:22, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Don't merge WP:PRODUCT, article is notable enough, and has already received substantial media attention. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.107.79.14 (talk) 22:55, 28 February 2019 (UTC) CheckUser-confirmed block evader comments striked -- Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 21:29, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment: WP:PRODUCT obviously doesn't apply here; Gab Dissenter is less than 250 words long. Softlavender (talk) 23:47, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Don't merge WP:PRODUCT. This article isn't about Gab the company, it's about Gab the social media platform. Dissenter is an app and a separate offering with a a separate domain, and is described in separate and substantial media coverage which also describes the product as being separate from Gab. Articles for WhatsApp and Instagram aren't merged into Facebook. The article for the Periscope app isn't merged into Twitter. Articles for Dissenter and Gab shouldn't be merged either. Ginjuice4445 (talk) 00:07, 1 March 2019 (UTC)— Ginjuice4445 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
    This article contains information about Gab the company, and there is no standalone article about the company—just how this article should contain information about Dissenter without there existing a standalone article. GorillaWarfare (talk) 00:29, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Don't merge. The question should be revisited if and when this article is rewritten to describe the company as a whole rather than what was previously its sole service offering. This article is currently delimited as explicitly concerning the "social network" (singular) while my limited understanding is that the services are distinct. This article is currently so heavily focused on discussion of events related to that service that attaching a discussion of the other would be unwieldy. A rewritten article about the company and all (both) its services could accomodate both but the current article is unsuitable as a foundation. vsync (talk) 02:47, 1 March 2019 (UTC)— Note: An editor has expressed a concern that vsync (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.
  • Merge. There's an even chance the whole thing will be quietly forgotten in a month and the coverage of it just citations for the history of Gab. Pinkbeast (talk) 03:04, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Don't Merge. Dissenter will more than likely be used by people outside the traditional scope of the social network Gab. It may be huge and be used from people from all sides of the political spectrum. It would be unfair to integrate Dissenter within the Gab page and mischaracterise the (possible future) majority of people who will use the tool as Far-right for doing so. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.159.198.227 (talk) 03:15, 1 March 2019 (UTC) — Note: An editor has expressed a concern that 81.159.198.227 (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.
    WP:CRYSTAL GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:16, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
That seems exceptionally unlikely, but in any event it certainly hasn't happened yet and as such right now Dissenter isn't independently notable. Pinkbeast (talk) 03:44, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
Agree with distinguishing usage and caution in normative classifications of userbase. But the present should also be distinguished from the possible future. vsync (talk) 04:04, 1 March 2019 (UTC)— Note: An editor has expressed a concern that vsync (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.
The service's appeal and its current users are directly linked to Gab's existing user base. Futurism is not a indicator at all, especially unlikely ones, since it's been two years plus, and may be huge and be used from people from all sides of the political spectrum clearly didn't happen with Gab. Also more than a dozen services promising the same thing Dissenter does is now long dead.Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 04:58, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
Let's talk about the present then. Dissenter launched on Tuesday and claims to have racked up 22,000 signups in the slightly less than three days since, which is truly staggering. This is a fast-moving topic; I don't understand the rush by long-time editors of this page to take the product's own article down and incorporate it into their work on this page. If it flops, then merge it here and rewrite to tell the story about the company rather than one of its products. Dissenter seems to be getting earlier, faster traction than the efforts you describe, however, and readers of this encyclopedia will be looking for information about it, not about Gab. For that reason alone Dissenter definitely merits its own article and shouldn't be buried with a bunch of irrelevant information that has nothing to do with that platform. Ginjuice4445 (talk) 06:25, 1 March 2019 (UTC)— Ginjuice4445 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
@Beyond My Ken: IGTV is an extension of Instagram and it has its own article. X-Editor (talk) 04:44, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:52, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
It has its own article because someone took a unilateral decision to split it off and the apparently very small number of editors who edit IGTV didn't merge it back; it's hardly the best example. (That said, I guess very many more people use IGTV than a handful of Nazis from Gab, and its independent notability would be easier to defend...) Pinkbeast (talk) 04:57, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
@Simonm223:Dissenter has been covered separately from Gab by five Reliable sources so far[26][27][28][29][30] and coverage of the browser extension and website likely won't end any time soon judging by how fast the platform is growing. X-Editor (talk) 17:05, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Merge per GW - there's no reason to have a standalone article on this, the existing article (which covers the company and the main website) can easily accommodate this as well. GirthSummit (blether) 17:12, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Speedy merge: there's no need for two separate article on these closely related topics. --K.e.coffman (talk) 17:58, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose merge and ABSOLUTELY OPPOSE INSTANT CLOSING. I didn't see this discussed at Talk:Gab Dissenter, which is the obvious location for such a discussion. And if we let a group of editors turn up in a flash mob and claim a "snow consensus" a day after they proposed something, the Refdesks would already be history! There is a fair amount of content here and I don't see any serious effort has been made to integrate it at Gab. More to the point, Gab and Dissenter are two different websites and two different URLs ... if we follow the logic here, should all of the McClatchy newspapers in the world get redirected to one site? Wnt (talk) 18:40, 1 March 2019 (UTC)— Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Wnt (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.
  • Comment I asked an admin to step in at Gab Dissenter given the edit war among those who decided to implement the merge and those who are reverting it. I'll note that I did not ask them to take any particular action, given my involvement with this page. Edit warring over whether it should be merged is not the solution—we should let the RfC continue and be formally closed by an uninvolved editor. GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:47, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
    GorillaWarfare, thanks for your good-faith approach. We disagree on the immediate next step to take but I hope we can come to an eventual solution we're both happy with, and I've enjoyed working with you to improve that article in the meantime. I second your request for an uninvolved editor to close and am happy to do so formally on the Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Requests_for_closure (but does one typically do so only after a suitable period for the discussion to settle?). --vsync (talk) 18:21, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
    @Vsync: Thank you for your work on this as well! It might be on the early end to request closure, though I certainly wouldn't object to you doing so. There isn't a set time period for RfCs to be closed—it makes sense to request closure if discussion/!voting dies down, but people have !voted fairly recently. There's more info on when RfCs are closed at WP:RFCCLOSE. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:59, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
    No, I'm fine with the standard 1-month comment period. The new comments seem to be bringing new arguments for consideration and I wouldn't want to preclude that. Just didn't know if we needed to post the request that it be an uninvolved editor. Everyone here is probably too invested at this point to do it credibly. --vsync (talk) 12:54, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Merge; Gab Dissenter lacks serious coverage distinct from Gab and isn't really a particularly noteworthy topic itself. WP:PRODUCT trivially doesn't apply - Gab isn't big enough to invoke it, either in terms of page size or as a company. Also, the spun-off page for Dissenter reads as a promotional article, and it seems unlikely to ever evolve into anything worth having as a distinct article - the sum total of unique, non-promotional stuff in there would add up to a bare paragraph or so at most, easily fitting within this article. --Aquillion (talk) 18:55, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Merge per WP:PRODUCT. ~ Rob13Talk 21:15, 1 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Merge thanks to whoever brought up WP:PRODUCT initially. It seems that this guideline would advise merging Gab Dissenter, considering its short length and the length of this article not exceeding recommended lengths. PeterTheFourth (talk) 08:36, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Do not merge - Meets the basic criteria under WP:PRODUCT to be separate from the other article. Certainly, the vigorous discussion in this RFC is evidence that Dissenter is going to garner much more attention in the future and is sure to be expanded. Let's not apply a stricter standard than any other of the hundreds and hundreds of software stubs we have. -- Netoholic @ 11:18, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
    • The basic criteria under WP:PRODUCT is "If a company is notable, information on its products and services should generally be included in the article on the company itself, unless the company article is so large that this would make the article unwieldy." I don't see how Gab's article is so large that including that relatively small amount of content would make it unwieldy. --Aquillion (talk) 11:29, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
    • The vigorous discussion in this RFC isn't really evidence of anything (well, at least not of anything good). Ongoing secondary source coverage independent of the subject is [31]. I should add that the most interesting part of this story is that no sooner did Gab propose this than I am being bombarded by alternatives alternatives for its various features -- Mastodon (software), Digg Dialog (one we should have covered, and now, despite the fame of the company, I'm having a hard time figuring out if this even exists), the now-defunct Google Sidewiki. Putting this thing in context with that kind of information from secondary sources is likely to be deleted as outside the scope of the main Gab article, but it's what I want, which is why I'll stand on WP:GNG and say no merge. Caveat being that I haven't actually seen as much continuing coverage about this as I had expected. Wnt (talk) 15:35, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Do not merge Per Netoholic, Wnt and Wumbolo, and per WP:GNG. The Gab article is already slightly bloated IMO, with a five-paragraph intro (that has somehow turned into a "criticism" section). The Dissenter stub is a fully fleshed-out article in its own right, and the service is only a few days old. Claims that it is promotional don't seem valid as of its present incarnation, the article is quite balanced (although strangely absent is any comment from the founder). The Dissenter article has received around 4 thousand views daily since going live, whilst the Gab article got half that. There is significant coverage of this unique service, and it's uniqueness seems to be the gist of most media coverage (besides the fact that it's connected to the "far right").
  • Vice: Users of far-right social network Gab can now comment on the entire internet
  • Cnet: Gab wants to add a comments section to everything on the internet - A tool called Dissenter lets you comment on tweets, websites and anything else with a URL.
The coverage indicates that Dissenter, regardless of other company's plans for future similar projects, is a novel experience for the Internet, which (besides ample RS) makes Dissenter unquestionably deserving of its own Wikipedia page. petrarchan47คุก 21:14, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Requested closure: Just noting that I've requested here that this RfC be closed, since discussion seems to have more or less wrapped up. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:19, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Merge For those that don't know, you have to have a Gab Account in order to get a Dissenter Account. Not sure what's "under the hood" but from the outside the two accounts appear exactly the same. FYI, this is despite my personal wish that both get their own Articles, given that merging the two will result in the loss of lot of interesting information about both. IMO, the "common account argument" trumps this.Tym Whittier (talk) 18:02, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
    • This argument rationalizing a merge just because you need a Gab account utterly fails to be convincing. Its like suggesting that Google+, Google Calendar,Gmail, etc. should all be merged into Google just because they all require a Google account. Apple, Facebook, and others likewise consolidate logins across several products which are notable enough to warrant distinct Wikipedia articles. I hope supporters will stop with this particular line of thought and focus on coverage of the Dissenter product itself. -- Netoholic @ 03:13, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose merge as this is an effort at political marginalization and squishy censorship - and because clearly there is certainly no hint of a consensus clearly it indicates political division and legitimacy. ~ JasonCarswell (talk)
  • Merge for now I didn't receive RfC until last week and was not familiar with this subject. I checked and it appears most of the hubbub surrounding this was limited to around it's release- though there was a new piece today.[1] I feel it's better suited as a section on the Gab page than its own page and that can always be changed later if needed.Tchouppy (talk) 17:57, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ http://theconversation.com/dissenter-and-gab-the-controversial-platforms-with-implications-for-free-speech-113392
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.

Is Decrypt Media reliable?

Latest comment: 5 years ago6 comments5 people in discussion

Tsumikiria recently made an edit summary[32] saying that a better source is needed for backing up the claim that StartEngine kicked Gab off its platform, that they won't return fees and that Gab plans to sue them. The only other source I've found is a Decrypt Media article[33], but i'm not sure if its reliable because Jorm said in an edit summary that it is a "Very questionable source." and Tsumikiria also said in another edit summary that I should take the discussion of Decrypt Media's reliability to the talk page[34], which is exactly what I've done. @Jorm: @Tsumikiria: @GorillaWarfare: @Softlavender: @Emir of Wikipedia: @Grayfell: @AKA Casey Rollins:, what do you guys think? X-Editor (talk) 04:17, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Decrypt claims on their manifesto[35] that they are "both editorially independent and technologically agnostic." I can't seem to find a masthead, but the website does say who the authors of their articles are and has pages on them, such as this one[36]. X-Editor (talk) 04:17, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
I don't see a masthead of any type, so the answer is "no, it is not reliable."--Jorm (talk) 03:20, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
If there's no other source then I'd say just leave it out. GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:22, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
This info is significant to the site, but it really should have a better source both for WP:V and for context. The site's stated mission is to promote blockchain, and its content mostly seems like standard startup-culture boosterism with a crypto twist. I could not find any reliable sources discussing this outlet, only others in the same cryptocurrency walled-garden (which has major reputation problems). Please ping me again if this goes to RSN, thanks. Grayfell (talk) 05:00, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
This is an interesting case. I don't think there are many corroborating sources, but Andrew Torba himself seems to say this in a Gab post, but as he does he directly quotes the DecryptMedia article[37]. However he did say that they got added back later on[38]. Seems a little circular but IDK since Torba is independently corroborating their report.
As far as DecrpytMedia, they are a newer website, launched in 2018, and funded by ConsenSys, a blockchain company. Doesn't sound like the most reliable of sources but my hunch alone isn't enough to prove that it's not reliable. AKA Casey Rollins Talk With Casey 03:09, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

The "Platform" and it's "Commentary"

Latest comment: 5 years ago17 comments3 people in discussion

"Antisemitism is a prominent part of the site's content,[23] and the platform itself has engaged in antisemitic commentary.[12][24]" I just think this is an incredibly bad sentence. I assume this means that some "official Gab spokesperson(s)" has made comments that someone has deemed "antisemitic". If that's the point the Article intends to convey, then it should detail who said it, who they said it to, and who deemed it "antisemitic", because the skeptical Reader can reasonably conclude just about anything from this statement; which means it's meaningless.Tym Whittier (talk) 01:49, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

See the third paragraph of Gab (social network)#Antisemitism and violence. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:05, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
This is a rehash of the deleted tweets Article, neither of which seem to be particularly "Antisemitic" to me. One news Article from CNN about two deleted tweets, both of which could only be considered objectionable by someone with a vested political interest in finding something antisemitic about a platform that allows antisemitism.Tym Whittier (talk) 06:26, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
If you don't think the tweets are antisemitic, that's your prerogative, but that's not relevant to whether this article describes them as such. What is relevant is how they're characterized in third party, reliable sources, such as the CNN article "Social network Gab, a home for anti-Semitic speech, produced some of its own". GorillaWarfare (talk) 14:00, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
I don't think CNN is credible, particularly on this topic, and particularly given that this is opinion and not fact. Can YOU make the argument how those two tweets are antisemitic?Tym Whittier (talk) 17:52, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
WP:RSN is thataway. Have fun convincing them that CNN isn't credible; your opinion about that here doesn't mean shit.--Jorm (talk) 18:06, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Maybe you missed my point; that lack of credibility was multifaceted and conditional: As it applies to THIS article, it's the ONLY RS for the assertion (that "Gab itself" is antisemitic), that it was opinion (vs. fact). Also waiting for someone to explain how the two deleted Tweets could legitimately, reasonably be considered antisemitic, other than because some Authoritarian Leftists said so. I've seen the credibility of otherwise reliable RS diminished in other Articles for various reasons, and usually the solution is to find more than one RS saying the same thing. So I dispute your assertion that once a source has been annointed as "credible" they are given carte blanche to say whatever they want about any topic that they want and no one is allowed to question or challenge them. There's a difference between saying "Gab has X content." and "Gab is owned & operated by X.", and I think it takes more than one source about two old and deleted tweets to say that. Journalism is a highly competitive environment and Gab has been around for several years. If there was anything to this, someone would have published a detailed and extensive work making this point, and AFAIK they have not. I think the reason for this is because there's nothing there to publish.Tym Whittier (talk) 19:21, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
Per Jorm, if you disagree that CNN is credible (either on this point or in general), take it to WP:RSN. CNN is widely used as an acceptable source, so we're not going to discount that report just because you happen to disagree with its description of Gab's tweets as antisemitic. People are absolutely allowed to question or challenge their conclusions—we often use conflicting sources in Wikipedia articles to cover multiple viewpoints. But so far as I can tell, the only person making the argument that the tweets are something other than antisemitic is you, and you are not a reliable source. GorillaWarfare (talk) 14:06, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
"...the only person making the argument that the tweets are something other than antisemitic is you, and you are not a reliable source..." This issue isn't about whether or not the tweets were antisemitic, the issue is whether or not those two tweets condemn the entire platform. Between you ignoring my points and Jorm deleting my arguments, this is getting increasingly difficult. I can't help but wonder if there isn't something else going on, besides simply building a better encyclopedia and implementing Wikipedia Policy.Tym Whittier (talk) 04:00, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
This article is not condemning the platform. If you don't disagree that the tweets are antisemitic, then "the platform itself has engaged in antisemitic commentary" should be uncontroversial. GorillaWarfare (talk) 04:13, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
Do YOU think those two tweets were antisemitic? If so, can you explain them? Or does your "explanation" boil down to "because CNN said so"?Tym Whittier (talk) 14:53, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
I do, but my opinion on whether the tweets are antisemitic is no more important to what this article says than yours is. GorillaWarfare (talk) 15:34, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
Have you done the research and actually seen the tweets? I've asked several times for someone, anyone to enunciate a line of reasoning that starts with those tweets and ends with antisemitism, and have found no one capable of doing this. I also disagree with your assertion that opinions independent of the RS are irrelevant. RS makes mistakes all the time, and I find it very odd that you would say such a thing. If CNN said 2 + 2 = 5, would you be arguing in favor of condemning a math book that disagrees with that conclusion as inaccurate? I sense great reluctance to offer an explanation as to why & how those two tweets could reasonably be considered "antisemitic", possibly because the analysis for that conclusion would rely more on ideology and dogma than on common sense. I apologise for bringing things to this point (a direct, open, and probably lengthy discussion about the actual tweets), but most of my points have been ignored, plus the additional interference of having some my arguments deleted for stated reasons that seem to have nothing to do with anything pertaining to this Article, and this feels like there's more going on here than "building a better encyclopedia", "building consensus", and implementing Wikipedia Policy.Tym Whittier (talk) 14:00, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
We are not going to discuss the tweets. Doing so would be original research. This line of argument isn't going to work. Stop wasting people's time. --Jorm (talk) 14:18, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
You say "work" like I have an agenda and a goal in mind. I don't care what the Article actually says. As a New Editor, I want to know that a true consensus has been achieved on this Article, in accordance with Wikipedia Policy, and not blind adherence to ideological orthodoxy. As a New Editor, I want to know that the time & effort I'm putting into trying to learn Wikipedia Policy is meaningful, and that they mean more than a pretext. So let's "flip" this, then. Let's assume that Gab in fact IS "antisemitic". Not "contains antisemitic content", but through-and-through, to it's marrow, systemically, intrinsically, patently, hard-wired antisemitic. This fact shouldn't be buried in the middle of a lower paragraph as an afterthought; it should be added to the list of adjectives in the first sentence of the Lede (or thereabouts). If "Gab itself" is antisemitic, then let's modify the Lede to say "Gab is an antisemitic English-language social media website, known for its mainly far-right user base." If it's a fundamental quality of the website/media platform; why wouldn't that fundamental quality be listed in the Lede? I think the reason that it's not is because the source is weak, and putting that assertion in the Lede would be too obvious; it would get challenged and the whole assertion by CNN would get deconstructed and debunked in the Discussion Page. FYI, today the Lede says "and the platform itself has engaged in antisemitic commentary." and not "is itself antisemitic" (or words to that effect).Tym Whittier (talk) 14:48, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
Yes, of course I have read the tweets. I'm not going into detail on whether or why I think the tweets are antisemitic because, as I have said before, my opinion of them has no bearing on what this article says. Your CNN 2+2=5 analogy is flawed—there are endless sources saying that 2+2=4, and so ignoring thousands of sources to use one contradictory source to say that 2+2=5 would make no sense (not to mention there would likely be plenty of coverage in response to a reliable source such as CNN publishing a foolish claim such as that). However, in this case, the source is not going up against thousands of other reliable sources characterizing the tweets differently.
Your hypothetical argument about including antisemitism in the lead is also based on your own personal opinion of what should be highlighted, and not based on how Gab is widely represented in sources. It is the proportion of coverage in reliable sources that determines what goes in the lead, not individual editors' opinions of what is a "fundamental quality" or not (more guidance available in WP:LEAD). You are drawing conclusions about this article and the motivations of its editors based on a flawed idea of how Wikipedia articles are meant to be written. Gab is very often discussed as being far-right, and as being a place for neo-Nazis and white supremacists, which is why those are the descriptors used in the lead. Gab making anti-semitic tweets is relevant to the article, but the tweets are only mentioned in two outside sources (that I've seen) compared to many more that describe the site as far-right/etc, which is why the characterization is relegated to a brief mention further down the page rather than the first sentence of the article.
We have at this point been going back and forth on this for several days, and I don't think either of us has successfully convinced the other. Demanding I present my own opinions on the tweets is going to be fruitless, if that's how you're planning to continue this conversation. If you'd like to request more opinions on this please feel free to do so, but I'm not willing to engage with you endlessly. GorillaWarfare (talk) 05:20, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
Fine, then. If you want to "hang your hat" on a single source (CNN) that says that two old & deleted tweets condemn the entire platform then let's bring the source into the Article, and have it say something like "...according to CNN, Gab is anti-semitic due to two old and deleted tweets..." and then let the Wikipedia Reader themself decide how credible they think CNN is, and how condemnatory those tweets were. I'm not interested in "changing your mind", I'm illustrating 1) The weakness of your position and 2) Your inflexibility and unwillingness to collaborate.Tym Whittier (talk) 08:00, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Linking to Gab's #herorobertbowers Hashtag in the Article

Latest comment: 5 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion

I'm not proposing this actually be done, as I'm aware that it could seriously "stir the pot", but while reading the Discussion Page and then the Article I noticed there was great "to do" about this hashtag and all the terrible things it said. My first inclination was to copy & paste the hashtag into the browser and go take a look myself, and then my 2nd thought was, "Well, wouldn't it be convenient if there were already a link to do that in the Article?". So rather than making such a link, I decided instead to post the question "Is there anything in Wikipedia Policy that prevents someone from making such a link?" This question has several levels. First, is there a problem with the idea in general (directly linking to off-Wikipedia sites in an Article), and second, is there a problem specifically with THIS Article? Does Wikipedia have a special category for "bad", "forbidden", "taboo", "hate" sites, where links to those sites are prohibited. On the chance the answer is, "Yes you can, but not in this Article.", I'm posting the question here (since it's Article-related. If the answer is "No, never, not on any Article.", then please delete the question and I'll ask it in the Tea House (or wherever).Tym Whittier (talk) 14:18, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I will personally remove all links to gab from this article. It is not acceptable to link to antisemitic sites on Wikipedia.--Jorm (talk) 15:23, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Just because a site's userbase contains some horrible fringe stuff doesn't justify painting the whole site as such. Doing so is blatantly POV-pushing. Don't remove the links - I'm pretty sure someone who does will already know the risk from reading the article and will try to avoid such content. Kirbanzo (userpage - talk - contribs) 01:57, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
The anti-semitic nature of Gab is in dispute. You seem to have a very firm opinion on this, for someone that seems incapable of defending it.Tym Whittier (talk) 08:03, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
It would be quite unusual to include such a link in the article text, per the external links policy. Not because Gab is "bad" or "forbidden" or what have you, but simply because we don't generally link out to external sites in that way. Take a look at some of our articles that are entirely about hashtags, such as #NotAllMen, #AmINext, or #HomeToVote (just picked a few from Category:Hashtags). One of them links to the tweets using that tag in the "external links" section, the other two do not.
To go back to this specific question, we shouldn't link to the #HeroRobertBowers posts for three reasons: 1) The hashtag is only very briefly mentioned in the Wikipedia article (and I'm not seeing this "great 'to do'" you're describing); 2) linking to posts containing the hashtag doesn't further any encyclopedic goals; and 3) we should not be directing readers towards hate content in this kind of targeted manner. The article already links to Gab for people who want to explore it themselves (in the infobox, external links section, and in some of the citations)—we don't need to curate a list of particularly horrific hashtags to highlight for readers as well. GorillaWarfare (talk) 05:35, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Mention Dissenter in the lede

Latest comment: 5 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

Dissenter has become a major part of Gab and has gotten a ton of media coverage. Based on this, I think it deserves a mention in the lede of the Gab article. X-Editor (talk) 02:13, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Yep, probably. I'll add something in but feel free to tweak etc. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:36, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
@GorillaWarfare: Other than a slight grammar mistake, which I fixed, the new paragraph is good addition. X-Editor (talk) 05:14, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
Oh, thanks for the catch. GorillaWarfare (talk) 04:39, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
@GorillaWarfare: No problem. X-Editor (talk) 16:22, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Changes by PBZE

Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi PBZE, recently you made some major changes to the lede and the wording we use, primarily to water down or downplay the alt-right aspect of Gab. Why do you feel that this aspect should receive less coverage in our article? PeterTheFourth (talk) 07:38, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

I felt that the former version of the lead was too opinionated and too overwhelmed with the external reception of the site. I don't think I removed any coverage at all, the coverage of the website's alt-right issues were still there. I just made it less opinionated. PBZE (talk) 07:44, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Separate Torba from "Users and Content"

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

From the organizational perspective, headlining "Users and Content" and then immediately launching into Torba is confusing to the Reader. I think the sentence where Torba says "Gab is for X" (whoever) can work, but his political leanings and voting does not belong in this section.Tym Whittier (talk) 08:11, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Proposal to change the short description to "American micro-blogging Internet service"

Latest comment: 5 years ago17 comments8 people in discussion

The term far-right is subjective and potentially harmful. We currently do not call Twitter a "Far-left micro-blogging Internet service", despite its founder Jack Dorsey fully admitting a left-wing bias. Though we currently do not have naming conventions (WP:NC) for social networks, if we are to apply the same standards to all social media short descriptions, I suggest we keep it as short and as objective as possible.

Let's have a look at the various social networks, and how they compare with Gab's description.

  • Facebook - Global online social networking service. Global because it's used worldwide, social networking service because that's what it is.
  • Twitter - Global micro-blogging Internet service. Global because it's used worldwide, micro-blogging Internet service because that's what it is.
  • Google+ - Social network owned and operated by Google LLC. Same here. One could argue "operated by" does not belong there.
  • Instagram - Online photo-sharing and social networking service.
  • Tumblr - Microblogging and social networking website.
  • LinkedIn - Social networking website for people in professional occupations. This one has a stated purpose, and is clearly only for people in professional occupations.
  • Reddit - online news aggregator. Probably should be capitalized, but still okay.
  • VK - popular social networking service in Russia. Probably should be capitalized and changed to Russian social networking service.
  • Bebo - Social networking service.
  • Douban - Chinese social networking service website.
  • Odnoklassniki - social networking service.

Based on all of these, I think the most fitting description would be American micro-blogging Internet service. Since it's a micro-blogging service, much like Twitter (in fact, it advertized itself as a Twitter alternative), and is based in the US. The decision to name it a Far-right social network came from a very short discussion and I think should be reconsidered, if we are to apply the same standards across all social networks.

Alex.osheter (talk) 07:54, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

We don't call twitter a Far-left micro-blogging Internet service" because it isn't one, and there are no reliable sources that say it is one. There are, however, many reliable sources that say that Gab is filled with Nazis. You need to go convince those reliable sources you are correct, not here, I think. The description shall remain until reliable sources change their minds.--Jorm (talk) 15:10, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
Shouldn't the description of a service be what its intended purpose is, as opposed to what some sources say it is? Especially given how the aforementioned sources have a strong left-wing bias? Coverage changes, but stated purpose rarely does. Gab's purpose is being a micro-blogging Internet service. Its userbase doesn't change this fact. Both Facebook[1][2] and Twitter[3][4][5][6] are filled with Nazis, but we don't call them that. A social networking website is not defined by its userbase, unless that's the stated purpose of said service (See: LinkedIn).
Please consider this and look at the facts objectively, we don't tag any other social networking service with similar labels. Chinese Sina Weibo is heavily left-wing, and despite there being actual scholarly studies on its bias and userbase[7], we still don't call it a "Left-wing microblogging service". Why is Gab given special treatment? Alex.osheter (talk) 18:18, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Dean, Sam. "Facebook decided which users are interested in Nazis — and let advertisers target them directly". latimes.com. Retrieved 2019-05-02.
  2. ^ "Neo-Nazi groups allowed to stay on Facebook because they 'do not violate community standards'". The Independent. 2019-03-24. Retrieved 2019-05-02.
  3. ^ Molitch-Hou, Michael. "Twitter's Nazi problem is still out of control". The Outline. Retrieved 2019-05-02.
  4. ^ "Twitter's 'fix' for its Nazi problem is making things worse". The Daily Dot. 2017-06-22. Retrieved 2019-05-02.
  5. ^ "New Philippine U.N. Ambassador 'Invoking Nazis on Twitter'". Time. Retrieved 2019-05-02.
  6. ^ Levin, Bess. "Jack Dorsey: Twitter Nazis Are Here to Stay". The Hive. Retrieved 2019-05-02.
  7. ^ Sundqvist, Gustav; Lagerkvist, Johan (2013-05-02). "Loyal Dissent in the Chinese Blogosphere: Sina Weibo Discourse on the Chinese Communist Party". Studies in Media and Communication. 1 (1): 140–149. doi:10.11114/smc.v1i1.121. ISSN 2325-808X.
"Shouldn't the description of a service be what its intended purpose is, as opposed to what some sources say it is?" No. If we followed this logic then I could simply say that I was President of the United States of America and you'd have to use that as my short description. Facebook and Twitter are not primarily known by their userbases; Gab, however, is known mostly because it is filled with Nazis. If that weren't the case, we might be able to call is something else.
This is not going to happen, what you're requesting.
Someone should close this thread as it is only going to become Yet Another Gab Enthusiast Who Doesn't Understand How Wikipedia Works Wasting Our Time.--Jorm (talk) 19:00, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
"If we followed this logic then I could simply say that I was President of the United States of America and you'd have to use that as my short description." What I said specifically applies to social networks, since there isn't a set standard. The current short description violates WP:SHORTDES guidelines for short description content - Avoid anything that is, or could reasonably be construed as, controversial or judgemental. No need to be confrontational, I'm simply trying to make this article consistent with other, similar articles. Alex.osheter (talk) 19:10, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS isn't an argument, and sources already indicate Gab's unordinary user base. Reflecting what sources tell us isn't controversial by any measure. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 19:15, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
Just as there are scholarly resources citing Sina Weibo's pro-Government user base and heavy-handed censorship. We don't put this in the shortdesc, since this information belongs in the article and does not reflect what the service actually is. Gab being a far-right website is not a universally accepted fact. Alex.osheter (talk) 19:27, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
No, but it is what the overwhelming majority of reliable sources say, and so that's what the Wikipedia article (and its short description) reflect. There are not per-topic-area rules on short descriptions as you're implying, and blindly reflecting what the subject of the article says about itself would go against WP:PRIMARY. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:30, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Could you clarify on how it goes against WP:PRIMARY? Alex.osheter (talk) 03:36, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Sources writing about themselves are primary sources, and should not be relied upon in articles except for basic details. GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:46, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
The difference is that, based on the sources, Gab's far-right user base is what makes it notable. Hence it has primary focus in the description and short description. --Aquillion (talk) 01:34, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
We don't base the short description on notability. If we did, Avatar (2009) would be "Highest grossing movie of all time", which it isn't. It's just a 2009 movie by James Cameron. The Nazi Party would be "political party in charge of the holocaust". etc. Alex.osheter (talk) 03:36, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Jack Dorsey may well describe himself as left wing, but it would be more accurate to describe him as either (Redacted) depending on how charitable one were being. PeterTheFourth (talk) 03:24, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
@PeterTheFourth: I've removed your characterization of Dorsey; it's neither productive nor in keeping with WP:BLP (which does apply to talk pages). GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:44, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
@GorillaWarfare: Fair enough. I'm sorry for any annoyance I've caused. PeterTheFourth (talk) 06:02, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Piling on to add to the existing consensus. We follow what the majority of secondary sources say about a subject, not what it says about itself. We don't need the fact of GAB's being a far-right site to be universally accepted (there's little in this world that is), we just go by the majority view of secondary reliable sources, which appear to support the current wording. I agree that this thread should be closed, this isn't going to happen. GirthSummit (blether) 10:19, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
FWIW I liked the "known for it's right-wing..." because it leaves open the number, or ratio of far-right Users, but Gab is certainly KNOWN for them, no matter what their numbers. No one doubts the existance of the hard/far/extreme (pick one) right, the question is whether or not their existance defines the entire platform. It used to work, IMO, until someone came along and "fixed" it.Tym Whittier (talk) 05:21, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Gab_(social_network)/Archive_8&oldid=1136748087"