Talk:Moral panic/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Examples section (again)

In the past this section has suffered from wiki-bloat, with many people adding their favourite idea of a moral panic. What resulted was a compendium of original research. After some discussion on this page, it was decided to use narrative, rather than list, style and to request, in a commented out note, that editors ensure that examples of "moral panic" are supported by reliable sources. That solved the problem, at least for awhile. Now the section has again accumulated a number of examples that do not seem to be supported by reliable sources.

I've gone through the section, verifying citations. Here a tally:

• White slavery and sex trafficking - citations do not support moral panic related to white slavery, only the paragraph on "sex trafficking" is supported by reliable sources.
• 1920s film industry - citations do not support moral panic
• 1950s comic book industry - source given is Goode and Ben-Yehuda. These authors specifically refer to this phenomenon as a "moral crusade" and distinguish it from a moral panic.
• War on Terror - no sources given
• Cartoon Crisis - no sources given
• Obesity - one source states: "The exponential increase in mass media attention to obesity in the US and abroad seems to have many of the elements of what social scientists call a ‘moral panic’." The author discusses the question of whether it is a moral panic vs. a health crisis and doesn't reach a conclusion.

Here's what I am proposing to do about the foregoing:

1. Remove paragraphs on white slavery until specific sources can be presented confirming this as a moral panic.
2. Retain the paragraph on sex trafficking. It is short, so should, perhaps, be combined into another section.
3. Remove sections on "1920s film industry," "1950s comic book industry," "war on terror" and "cartoon crisis." If someone can find reliable sources to support any of these, lets discuss.
4. Retain the section on obesity but rewrite it to represent what the sources say.

I've boldly made the changes and also combined short sections and expanded the section on crime in Japan to refer to crime rates generally and give Japan as an example. If anyone disagrees, let's avoid an edit war and discuss these changes here. Sunray (talk) 18:32, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

This article is prime real estate for original research. Lists are especially problematic.Kcchief915 (talk) 20:19, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

What the lad above says. In its current form (May 2011) it starts Ok, then quickly wanders off into puerile discussions of backwards recording and fat people. I can't be arsed to try and fix it though, seeing as all that rubbish keeps creeping back. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.144.86.143 (talk) 13:25, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Also in agreement, the examples section is somewhat of a victim of original research. Sure, the section on the usage and history of the term is well put together, but specifically the Dungeons & Dragons section is lacking citation on the last portion. A citation should either get slapped on it quickly, or the sentence removed since leaving it alone makes it look like conjecture. If it were to be removed entirely however, then it'd only be a stub- should it even be kept then? The video game controversies article does examples pretty well. 104.174.150.240 (talk) 09:33, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Western response to 9/11 in the "Pogroms, purges and witch-hunts" section

I am not sure why the section the sentence "Various actions in Western countries following the September 11 attacks ... have been referred to as moral panics" is in the "Pogroms, purges and witch-hunts"? It seems hardly relevant to that section. In addition, I am not sure that the source is very reliable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.142.8.48 (talk) 22:23, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Sexting?

Seems to me it should be in examples. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.67.113.65 (talk) 20:44, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

comic books?

An editor added this material, which was then reverted:

In the 1950s, a well-respected psychiatrist Frederic Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, a book which argued that comics were dangerous to children and a major cause of juvenile crime. This led to a national outrage, resulting in laws, ordinances, censoring, banning and mass burnings against comic books and later to the Comics Code Authority. Frederic Wertham further suggested that Batman and Robin were gay partners and that Wonder Woman was a lesbian who had a bondage subtext.

---

---

I'm not saying that this material belongs, but I'm not sure that it doesn't, either. From the Coville ref: quotes him as saying ""effects of these pulp-paper nightmares is that of a violent stimulant...hypodermic injection of sex and murder..." and then that "law makers were goaded and prodded into action, and many did their best to please and appease the angry torment which had been unleashed" and so forth. Not having investigated further, does this not describe a kind of moral panic type event? Willing to be instructed otherwise. Herostratus (talk) 17:05, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

To my knowledge, the comic book mess was a moral panic. Pretty much addressed in the movie Comic Book Confidential, if I recall. I've never come across any journal articles to this effect, though. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 02:04, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

It may have been a moral panic, though I've never come across a reliable source that documented that. I've removed the entry: The section has plenty of examples. If someone comes up with a RS, we can add it back in. Sunray (talk) 12:23, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

BTW, as I mentioned above, Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994) discuss the comic book phenomenon as a "moral crusade" and distinguish it from a moral panic. Sunray (talk) 12:30, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Global Warming Neutrality

The statements (and sources) about Global Warming are extremely dubious Kuke (talk) 04:29, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Indeed. This is very much POV, and stimulated by a recent editorial in the WSJ whose lack of scientific value has been denounced even by sister publication Forbes. It should be removed ASAP. 70.81.18.28 (talk) 15:05, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah no kidding. This is not appropriate material and I removed it. Herostratus (talk) 18:32, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Please provide a source for your assertion about the Forbes article. Also, please justify your statement that the scientists who wrote the WSJ article are unable to provide "scientific value." Until then, I will replace the deleted material. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blicious (talk • contribs) 04:00, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Also, the statement "some have said" is accurate sourced to the film referenced -- Bret Stephens explicitly compares global warming hysteria to moral panic, referencing the mad cow scare of the 1990s as another example. (Blicious (talk) 04:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC))

Since what you wrote is clearly POV, it will be removed. You putting it back in will only get you banned from editing this page. Here is a link to the Forbes article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/01/27/remarkable-editorial-bias-on-climate-science-at-the-wall-street-journal/ Here is an article about the economist cited in the WSJ who disagrees with how his work was interpreted in the editorial: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/scientists-challenging-climate-science-appear-to-flunk-climate-economics/ And finally here is the Met Office saying that David Rose's article (allegedly based on their research) is "entirely misleading" : http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/met-office-in-the-media-29-january-2012/ Please, stop using Wikipedia as your own personal propaganda outlet. Thanks. 70.81.18.28 (talk) 16:09, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I guess the thing about a "moral panic" is that it's only a panic if it's unjustified to some extent. I don't think any sane and knowledgeable and fair-minded and disinterested person holds that global climate change isn't a serious problem (not counting trolls and persons being deliberately contrarian for effect), so I guess it doesn't belong here. Thinking about this some more, it seems there are situations that are the converse of moral panic -- things that people should "panic" about but mostly don't. The prospect of global thermonuclear war for instance. I guess there's no word for this and so no article... Herostratus (talk) 17:43, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Agree with 70.81.18.28 and Herostratus. Sunray (talk) 23:59, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Homosexuality (org rel)

A better writer than I should consider an entry on Homosexuality, which, with its corollary subject, marriage law, has been engineered by the social order as the current moral panic to replace minorities, drug war, etc.

Also, perhaps there should be more information regarding the function of organized religion as pertains to creating or benefiting from the bolstering of moral panic. Tangverse (talk) 09:29, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Dungeons & Dragons - removed text

I removed the following text as it does not seem to conform to the article's demand for disproportionate acts towards the group in question:

At various times in its history, Dungeons & Dragons (a fantasy role-playing game) has received negative publicity for alleged promotion of such practices as Satanism, witchcraft, suicide, pornography and murder. In the 1980s especially, some religious groups accused the game of encouraging interest in sorcery and the veneration of Demons. Throughout the history of roleplaying games, many of these criticisms have been aimed specifically at Dungeons & Dragons, but touch on the genre of fantasy roleplaying games as a whole. It has been suggested that the recent drive to regulate video games is another instance of moral panic over the content of popular culture. The industry response has been to create a self-regulatory ratings system similar to that used by the film industry.

Narssarssuaq (talk) 16:34, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

In my reading, we can see Dungeons and Dragons as an example of a moral panic, as there was a fairly widespread outcry against it from a significant section of US society, with parents actively forbidding their children from playing this game as a result. Couldn't that be seen as an disproportionate action? I will therefore restore this text so we can has this out. Perhaps we can work on clarifying the "disproportionality" section? Martijn Faassen (talk) 21:44, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Erm, maybe. I don't remember any widespread outcry. Looking at the ref, it kind of looks like one person (Patricia Pulling) got on a hobbyhorse (understandably, since her son was dead and people in that situation are prone to looking for a reason that will make this make sense). It doesn't look to me like BADD made much of impression beyond a small circle of folks inclined to see Satan everywhere anyway. I don't recall D&D being excoriated for anything beyond nerdiness. The part beginning "It has been suggested..." is on entirely different matter and should not be intertwined with D&D I don't think... if all the material is kept separate paragraphs might be in order. Herostratus (talk) 00:14, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Maybe you grew up in a more enlightened part of the world. I saw a lot of moral panic about D&D in the early to late 1980s. And a glance at the Patricia Pulling article does seem to show strong similarities to SRA in her language - assertions of a large number of Satanists living in secret, fixation on the Necronomicon, and so on. It was a significant enough movement that TSR/WOTC sanitized AD&D for the second edition release. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 20:49, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

OK. I don't feel strongly about it, and you may well be right, but I'd like to see an actual magazine (or at least newspaper) article or something added as a ref... Herostratus (talk) 04:20, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that goes without saying.... AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 23:52, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

References

Stan Cohen

"Others have criticized Cohen's work stating that not all the folk devils expressed in his work are vulnerable or unfairly maligned."- This line does not have a source backing it. It appears to be an original research. Besides, it also seems to be the logical fallacy ad hominem to me, but I'm not sure on that one. Unfortunately I don't have the wiki knowhow to change this.(haha I do not know how to say it's sources are not cited wiki style) So I'll just leave this here. 173.22.14.84 (talk) 02:02, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

OK I tagged them. Herostratus (talk) 02:16, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Origins and Use

How can Jock Young be the person who first used this phrase it if Stanley Cohen was the guy who crated the word? This article doesn't make coherent sense to me. I think that Stan shouldn't be mentioned in the article until this section. Rather than being mentioned in the beginning summary of the term itself. This is my opinion of it btw. 173.22.14.84 (talk) 02:24, 6 November 2012 (UTC) (edit added signature sorry)

Dubious

Part of the article mentions the "American" problem of mugging and its importation into the UK. This does not make any sense. Muggings happened in Victorian England and earlier. I don't know if the problem is with the source not knowing, or perhaps use of the term in a special way, or if there was some hysterical ignorant belief that muggings were allegedly never a UK problem and that those pesky Americans brought it over, or what. That part of the article needs to be clarified, because as it stands now it's very misleading. DreamGuy (talk) 15:01, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Going by memory here, but upon reading your comment I immediately thought of Cohen's book. It might be it's mentioned there as an early example of US press-generated "moral panics". Don't have a copy, but it's a place to look if anyone really wants to back up the statement. Though presenting "examples" of moral panics without the theoretical context and analysis should probably be banned from this article. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 19:21, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

In in Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order, Stuart Hall and his colleagues are not arguing that mugging was unknown in the UK prior to the middle of the 20th Century. Their thesis is that it was not regarded as a significant problem until this time. Suddenly, the British media began to cover mugging as a "new problem" imported from the US. This was portrayed as evidence of a rising crime problem. Hall et. al. argue that this was, in fact, a manufactured problem and a classic example of a moral panic. The authors are well aware that mugging is not something new to the UK. Their theory, has to do with the cultural production of "consent." They see moral panics in this light. Sunray (talk) 06:28, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Original research?

You can't write "The term first appears in the English language in The Quarterly Christian Spectator, a publication from 1830" since you don't know if it was the first or not. There is no way to exhaustively search all English literature. Actually the phrase was used in print even earlier: William Hayley, "The young widow; or the history of Cornelia Sedley", Dublin, 1789, vol. 1, page 68: "You have made us laugh at our own moral panic, as I may call it, concerning the continence of Edmund." You can argue whether this has a meaning which is related to that of the modern phrase, but the same argument can be had over the 1830s sources, diving dangerously into original research. Zero^talk 02:23, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, agreed. My first thought was that this material definitely does not belong in the lead. It might be part of the section on "Use of the term," but would need to be re-written to avoid it being original research. Sunray (talk) 00:29, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Cultural revolution

The cultural revolution was political theatre, not a moral panic. The article linked to did not contain the text quoted and did not refer to any moral panics. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 11:30, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Why do you believe the Cultural revolution was "political theatre" and the Red Scare and antisemitic pogroms were not?Jimjilin (talk) 15:29, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Link: http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/08/26/willy.column/index.html

Quote: Witch hunts galore. In the early phase of the Cultural Revolution, Mao said he would lock up all "cow gods and snake demons," earthy parlance for sinister, plotting crooks.

Link: http://www.agner.org/cultsel/chapt8/

Quote: Bergesen mentions as examples of political witch-hunts the purges during the chinese cultural revolution, the terror regime during the french revolution, the stalinist show trials, and McCarthy's persecution of communists in the USA. In accordance with this theory, Bergesen finds that witch-hunts are most common in one-party states where the ideology is most immanent in everyday life.Jimjilin (talk) 15:29, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

The CNN article doens't use the term "moral panic", a "witch hunt" isn't the same thing as a moral panic.

The second link isn't a reliable source, it appears to be a personal webpage. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 23:27, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

The Cultural Revolution wasn't a moral panic: there were no moral entrepreneurs campaigning against a new threat to an established conservative set of moral values, and the media wasn't manufacturing belief in something patently false in order to increase readership. Without those, all you have is an old-fashioned totalitarian propaganda campaign. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 22:41, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm also a little skeptical of presenting the Cultural Revolution as a moral panic. It depends on what sources say though, of course, and not what I think.

Certainly, though, "witch hunt" and "moral panic" are related, or can be. There can be witch hunts that aren't moral panics -- for example, the Benghazi thing. That's entirely a political witch hunt (in the eyes of some) but not really something that has engaged the population. However, it is possible for witch hunts that are started from the top as political exercises to evolve to moral panics in the population -- the Red Scare might be an example of this. So might the Cultural Revolution (I don't know, and am not well versed in the subject). It's difficult to get info on this since China was very closed off at the time and it's hard to say what reflects the actual feelings of Joe Average Chinese Person as opposed to what they felt bound to say to fit in or survive. But historians have studied the subject, and if Joe Average Chinese Person really was looking askance at his neighbors for signs of treason and so forth, and feeling genuine fear about this, and not just to curry favor with the authorities, would that not constitute a moral panic?

The Cultural Revolution was very big thing, and a complicated thing. I wouldn't be surprised to find strong elements of moral panic there, but at the same time mixed in were factional power struggles at the top and much else. So if we want to bring it into the mix here, we need to do it some way where we can expand on it, a few sentences at least (sourced of course) showing how historians see it as similar to, and different from, other moral panics. A short subsection or a paragraph somewhere. Certainly we do not want to just include it in a list, i. e. "examples of moral panics include White Slavery and yadda yadda and the Cultural Revolution". That is not a service to reader in understanding what we are trying to get at here. Herostratus (talk) 03:11, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Frankly I would just leave it out entirely, unless there is already a demonstrated consensus within the scholarly community that the cultural revolution was a moral panic. After all, scholarly consensus guides the rest of this article. WP:SYNTH, WP:NOR. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 17:13, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Another satirization example

Wouldn't "Gingerbread" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer also be a prime example?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gingerbread_%28Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer%29

Campus rape

reliable source standards

I reverted the addition of a section about campus rape being a moral panic. It cited only two opinions columns, which seems far from sufficient for such a contentious topic. The other sections (those which I would consider defensible, anyway) are sourced to academic papers/research and otherwise more reliable sources than an opinion column. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 00:38, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

@User:Rhododendrites: Any objection to these sources?

• http://time.com/100091/campus-sexual-assault-christina-hoff-sommers/
• http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/education/activists-at-colleges-network-to-fight-sexual-assault.html?pagewanted=all

• (see also http://www.thenation.com/blog/199121/furor-over-campus-rape-more-moral-panic which provided that link for more links)

• http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/01/19/barbara-kay-rape-culture-proofiness-feeds-moral-panic-over-non-existent-epidemic/
• http://m.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/290276141.html?section=opinion
• http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/articles/2014/6/27/conservatives-slamaexpandeddefinitionaofrape.html

Respectfully Rhododendrites, rather than removing the section a simple {{Refimprove section}} tag would have been a much better editorial choice. While the provided sources were definitely inadequate it would have been trivial to find that there are plenty of good sources for the material. The above were found with the following searches in about 5 seconds:

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

In fact, there are more than enough WP:RS to create a stand alone article on this precise topic, not to mention the WP article mentioned in the section you removed. I am therefor respectfully reverting your removal of the section (out of respect for the original IP's good faith edits) and adding in the appropriate tags as described above. 104.32.193.6 (talk) 16:17, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

The sources seem numerous enough and their publishers are significant enough (which is not the say they are reliable sources individually) that I don't have a problem leaving it alone for now. Why didn't you add these to the article rather than just reverting and adding a tag? When editing contentious topics in particular (but really anywhere), the burden is on the one(s) who want to include something to show that it's due weight to include, cites reliable sources, etc. Sourcing matters a lot for contentious topics as people add poorly sourced POV material all the time. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:29, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

I will note that the sources still are pretty poor. Opinion columns, political blogs, news stories, etc. rather than peer-reviewed journals and such. Compare to, for example, satanic ritual abuse. I'm quite dubious but will wait for other voices to get involved. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:31, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Respectfully I have to ask if you are editing/operating with something other than the official WP standards? Your description of the sources as "pretty poor" flies in the face of the policies and guidelines of WP and also the facts of the articles referenced. Every one of those five references above (excluding the sub-referenced blog which was only included as a source-of-more-sources) come from mainstream publications with legitimate and significant journalistic credentials. Most of the authors likewise have substantial journalistic credentials and some have respectable academic credentials as well. While "peer-reviewed journals" are certainly nice to have as sources that is not the standard that WP requires. Dismissing "news stories" as being poor sources is certainly not the WP way. 104.32.193.6 (talk) 16:42, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

I added in some more sources. It is too early for this issue to rely on social science papers. Propose reverting the tag for more source material?--Tosfot (talk) 19:13, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for adding more sources. I removed the tag. The issue now is that we only have a single line section with a long list of sources. Care to take a stab at building it out based on what you've seen in the sources? No obligation, of course. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:50, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

104.32.193.6, this is not an article on a pop culture term. It's an article on a scholarly topic that has been researched and defined within the field of sociology. So, this article requires a higher level of sources than opinion stories on websites. Now, only Peg Tyre's article in Politico refers to the scholarly definition of "moral panic": the other authors just use the term. Their articles do nothing to further the section except demonstrating that a person has used the term to describe the situation, which is something this article doesn't need since you have Tyre's article doing a proper job of it. So, I would use Tyre's article as a source, and maybe try to flesh out the section a bit based on her article. I'd agree though that you're not going to see this show up in social science papers for a while, at least until discussion around the topic becomes less emotional and political. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 17:17, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

@AllGloryToTheHypnotoad: How can this "higher standard" be communicated to the editors of scholarly subject articles? Is there a template and policy/guideline that could be placed at the top? 104.32.193.6 (talk) 22:29, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

As an FYI, this concept of variant standards is of serious concern to me. Again, I am fine that such variants exist, but I think it important that editors know of these variances on specific articles before they waste their time adding sources that will ultimately be rejected because of special requirements for sources. To this end I have started a discussion on that very concept at the Village Pump. This is not in any way a criticism of this article or the good work being done here, just an inquiry into WP:RS standards policies in general for which this article has highlighted a specific issue that I was unaware of before. 104.32.193.6 (talk) 05:42, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, 99% of WP sources fail RS. Nobody seems to mind in most cases and I'm not the boss of WP. In this case, though, this discussion evades the point I already made above: the Politico article is the only thing that could be called a "source". All the other articles added in that section were mere uses of the term "moral panic" by some guy paid to write opinions on the internet.

On WP you use a source to back up a "fact". "Campus rape is a moral panic" is a factual assertion, so you have to add a source. But the source has to establish that fact. So the source needs to make an assertion that passes a standard of evidence. The standard of evidence in an article on a Simpsons episode or an article on a crappy indie rock band from Montreal is lower than the standard of evidence in a scholarly topic.

Look at it this way: in an article on macroeconomics, say Zero lower bound, who do you want used as sources? Professional economists like Ben Bernanke or Mario Draghi, who have education and professional experience? Sure! Academic economists like Paul Krugman or Robert Shiller? Okay! Some clown with maybe a certificate in journalism who writes for Wall Street Journal who makes constant baseless assertions motivated mostly by his employer's political affiliation? No, because it adds nothing to the article. But if he says Arcade Fire's new album is great, fine use him as an RS for that. It's not so hard: where there is scholarship or professional work, scholarly and professional opinion will outweigh mass media opinion, because knowledge is not a democracy. But in any case, the bare minimum for a RS is that it make a factual statement or argument, not just use a word. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 23:17, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Oh and tangentially, as a Canadian, let me say that National Post does not have significant journalistic credentials: it used to be the propaganda rag of Conrad Black and used to be given away for free. An opinion piece from National Post is only slightly more journalistic than an opinion piece from the Toronto Sun or WorldNetDaily. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 17:17, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Good to know the reliability factor (or lack thereof) for that particular newspaper. It makes me shudder when I hear people talking about the "informative" articles they read on WND! :P

why we tag text

As for why I didn't "add these [sources] to the article rather than just reverting and adding a tag?" the answer is simple: I am not a competent subject matter expert on this topic. Just because I can find the sources does not make me qualified to write the article. I can find numerous sources for any number of subjects but you would not want me to write articles about advanced calculus, Asian history, or steamy romance novels. I know nothing about these topics and would be unqualified to determine the due weight of what was good to include and what was fluff or cruft or fringe.

I reverted because the material was fixable. Five seconds of research showed it was fixable. The material should never have been removed, it should have been left in place and tagged and that is effectively what I did. I also reverted because removing the material without discussion may have discouraged a new editor. WP is seriously hurting for new quality editors and we all need to avoid being accidentally bite-y. The IP contrib history (or lack thereof) suggests that the editor involved may have been a newbie and removing their good-faith contribution without discussion could certainly be viewed as an unintended "go away you incompetent noob" type signal. No effort was made to help that editor improve the article. No effort was made to help that editor to improve themselves as WP editors. Hopefully they will be back.

WP has many guidelines on dealing with poorly sourced material but at the heart of every single policy & procedure is the idea that we are attempting to build an encyclopedia. One can only build something by adding material, not removing it. Yes, sometimes bad materials have to be removed. We certainly want good quality materials and we want them properly installed. But the expected norm of behavior at WP is to tag it and wait to see if other editors who are familiar with the material can improve the article.

THAT IS WHY WE HAVE TAGS! It totally amazes me how often people miss this one ultra-obvious fact: TAGS EXIST TO ALLOW OTHERS TO FIX PROBLEMS. IF it was expected of editors to personally correct every article flaw they see WP would not need or have tags. IF it was expected of editors to immediately remove poorly sourced material we would not need or have tags. Tags exist to give others notice and time to fix problems. If, after a reasonable amount of time has passed, no one does so then the materials can and should be removed. Even Speedy Deletion has a tag-&-wait approach, albeit a very short wait typically.

The major exception to this tag-&-wait approach is for contentious material about living persons, not just any contentious material. This exception is because WP can not and will not tolerate any potentially libelous text being published for any length of time. For the rest of the problems editors should tag them and then allow time for others to fix the problems instead of removing the material without discussion. 104.32.193.6 (talk) 16:42, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Please understand that in this case, what you have is an article on a recognized academic topic of study, with several editors familiar with the academic work who follow and protect the article. Also, since you're familiar with Wikipedia, you know that some articles can easily spiral out of control if not actively patrolled, especially if they're on hot-button topics. Rest assured that the issue of including "campus rape" as a subject within the article is now a live option for the people following this article. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 16:57, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Rinse and repeat August 2015

Yesterday, I reverted the section-blanking by a first-time user whose only comment was: Removed section, all cited articles seem to be based on opinion articles from right-libertarian authors. The objectiveness seems questionable, quality of sources is better than quantity. Today I received a comment on my talk page from an IP user who said, after reading the talk page on the moral panic section, it seems that there is community consensus that not only the sources are bad, but the topic in itself is questionable. I believe asserting this as fact in wikipedia is incorrect, however I want to go about this in the right way. I believe that both statements are a suggestion that the article violates WP:NPOV.

The issue in question is the section that mentions that the The New Campus Anti-Rape Movement has been criticized as being a moral panic. That's actually about all it says, but it comes with no fewer than eight citations. Each of the eight does, in fact, link to articles where the movement is criticized as being an example of, or being like, a moral panic. So Wikipedia states that there is such criticism and then links to the criticism itself. So far, that is proper.

WP:NOV also states "All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." (emphasis in original). In another section, that same policy explicitly states, "As a general rule, do not remove sourced information from the encyclopedia solely on the grounds that it seems biased."

So the question is this? Are we missing some counter-examples that fairness would suggest need to be included here? I don't mean something that says "Rape is bad" or "Rape happens too often on campus" (both true, but they don't address the issue of a moral panic), but rather, opposing views from those who have gone on record to state that, despite any perceived flaws, the movement is not an example of a moral panic, preferably with their reasoning. Do such examples exist? I was unable to locate any during a brief search, but I cannot imagine that nobody wrote response pieces to any of the criticisms the movement has received. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  20:06, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

At this point the question is really WP:WEIGHT (the "proportionately" part of WP:NPOV that you quoted). The first thing to determine is whether including the subject here gives it undue weight (i.e. if we take all reliable sources about moral panics, what are the most talked about examples). Satanic ritual abuse, Dungeons and Dragons, AIDS, games, increases in crime, etc. -- the moral panic aspects of discourse on those subjects -- have been written about a lot (in popular press, but also in books, academic journals, etc.). Campus rape and internet trolling much less so (we weren't talking about trolling, but I think it's fair to consider both of them as being more on the margins of the subject of moral panics).

Over the course of the previous exchanges about this, sourcing did improve (I don't agree that they're all biased any more) and the language was stripped down to the point that, without enough time to conduct a more thorough literature review (in order to make a claim of WP:UNDUE), and absent greater participation on the talk page, I was (and, to some extent, still am) content to let it be.

They are, generally speaking, reliable sources, but they're not academic research or other kinds of sources that signify a concept is taken seriously by those that study/write about moral panics.

We shouldn't seek out countervailing opinions just for the sake of doing so (see WP:FALSEBALANCE). Such sources do exist (for example), but there are far more talking about it being a moral panic than there are not. For perspective, however, it's also true that there are far more sources talking about Dick Cheney being a death lizard from outer space than there are sources that take that claim seriously enough to make a counter-argument ("Dick Cheney is not a death lizard from outer space"). This is why sources on the level of academic research matter -- it means it's a perspective that people take seriously, whether or not it's true. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 02:13, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

You're right, of course, that when people accuse Dick Cheney of being a death lizard from outer space, he has not even bothered to dignify the accusation with a reply. (Or he may actually be one, and cannot lie about it, but I will assume that the US Secret Service would have noticed by now, so he probably isn't one!) That said, it often seems to be the case during any particular moral panic that those who don't agree that (such-and-such) is a problem, are accused of being part of the problem. In other words, trying to tell those who hunt witches that there is no such thing as a witch, will get you labeled as a witch yourself. You can replace "witch" with "communist" or "satanic abuser" or any other group -- real or perceived -- that have been the subject of moral panics. Of course, some moral panics have been directed against those who cannot claim not to be part of the group, but the moral panic takes the form of applying attributes to the group that are not accurate.

So if people are still making the claim that "one in five" women are the victims of sexual assault on campus, and if that statistic has been shown (by reliable sources) to be significantly inflated, then this is characteristic of being a moral panic, but having this characteristic does not make this a moral panic. Eventually, I believe that academic social scientists will write about this -- just as soon as they don't have to worry about administrative censorship, since this issue will have on-campus political ramifications, unlike most moral panics.

Regarding the concern about giving any particular example undue weight, are there better examples for the 2010s? While some of the other identified moral panics seem to still exist, I cannot think of any new ones that have popped up yet this decade (although, perhaps I am part of the mob and don't recognize the panic for what it is!). Etamni | ✉ | ✓  08:15, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Just as reminders: 1, "Reliable sources" does not include opinion articles. 2, as Rhodo. says above, just because some guy making 0.3 cents a word writing for a website says something is a "moral panic" does not mean it qualifies under the rigourous definition already established within academia. 3, I hadn't heard that Cheney was a lizard before, now I'm worried. The Secret Service is definitely in on it. Well, I'm off to buy more gold.... AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 18:58, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

My reading is that it unequivocally does not belong here. The only sources seem to be opinion pieces, which isn't really enough for an extremely contentious thing like this; the section reads "examples", not "allegations", and the term has a specific meaning in social sciences, so only things that have detailed scholarly journals or similar sources we can cite for statements of fact belong there. Talking heads and pundits tend to throw around accusations like these freely, and it is unreasonable to cover anything pundits or opinion columnists have accused of falling into this category on this page, in the same sense that we wouldn't list everyone who was ever called a fascist under Fascism. Compared to the other examples listed, the sources here are simply of a vastly lower quality and aren't really sufficient to justify its inclusion. Someone above said that they believe that, eventually, academic social scientists will write about this (and theorized about censorship preventing them from doing so today); that may be, but it is inappropriate for us to use these low-quality sources, opinion pieces, gossip magazines and so on to try and correct what one editor believes to be some sort of sinister censorship. Wikipedia is, after all, not the place to try and right great wrongs. --Aquillion (talk) 07:28, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

• Concur emphatically with the removal of this info - I made much the same argument over at NPOV/N a week or so ago. Having this in the "examples" section gives serious undue weight to one side of a - very much ongoing - debate. The "examples" section should only include things that a broad range of sources - preferably academic scholars - agree are "moral panics." The stuff Aquillion just removed does not fit that criteria and does not belong. I'd argue that the "human trafficking" section needs to go too, actually. Possibly some of the other items on the list too - someone needs to sit down, have a good long look at the academic literature, figure out what there's a reasonable consensus was actually a moral panic, and then ensure that those are the only things on the list. Fyddlestix (talk) 07:55, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

So let me see if I understand this.... You (plural you, as in both Aquillion and Fyddlestix) don't find the views of Christina Hoff Sommers, Harvey Silverglate, Megan McArdle, Barbara Kay, Peg Tyre, KC Johnson, Samantha Harris, or Cathy Young to be persuasive that the New Campus Anti-Rape Movement might be a moral panic. Oops, I apologize but I seem to have listed them incorrectly. That should be Christina Hoff Sommers, former professer and currently a scholar at The American Enterprise Institute; Harvey Silverglate, lawyer and co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE); Megan McArdle, yes, an author and blogger, but a notable one; Barbara Kay, notable author; Peg Tyre, education author (two books) and director of strategy at the Edwin Gould Foundation; KC Johnson, a professor of American history at Brooklyn College, known for, among other things, writing Until Proven innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustice of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case; Samantha Harris, J.D., Director of Policy Research at FIRE; and Cathy Young, author of two books and contributing editor at Reason. Six of the eight are notable enough to be on Wikipedia; two are academics while two others are lawyers. I doubt any of these are banging out articles at ".3 cents" per word. (Apologies for sounding a bit wp:pointy but sometimes, one needs to make a point.) Don't just read the headlines and look at where they were published: actually read the articles and then come back here and try to keep a straight face as you claim that they are not making a prima facie case of this being a moral panic. While Wikipedia is intended to be an encyclopedia and not a blog, it is also fair to say that elitism has no place here either. Furthermore, the article was written in such a way as to make clear that there are critics of the movement claiming that this is another example of a moral panic; it was not written in such a way as to state that it was established fact that it was a moral panic. Failing to include this information itself seems to violate WP:NPOV. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  10:54, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

• Correct. None of those are remotely convincing. In fact, seeing them listed like that made me realize how silly it was to try and use them to justify inclusion on this page in the first place. The 'credentials' you have listed mostly show that these people are political advocates -- talking heads with political agendas. Most of them work for think tanks or in political advocacy fields; Christina Hoff Sommers, for example, is literally (well, all right, figuratively) a hired gun for the American Enterprise Institute, meaning that (while she's paid at a rate somewhat higher than .3 cents a word) she is in fact paid to hold the opinions she holds and to make the arguments she makes. Now, we can still use such WP:BIASED sources (and make no mistake, this without exception a list of extremely biased sources), but we have to take their biases into account when considering due weight -- again, politicians or people from think-tanks calling their opponents fascists doesn't belong on Fascism, because we recognize that as a rhetorical device and unlikely to to reflect any sort of political-science consensus. Furthermore, the fact that everyone you've listed shares the same (extremely WP:FRINGE) viewpoints on gender issues gives me the impression that including them here would be giving WP:UNDUE weight to an opinion that clearly lacks mainstream academic support. This page can't become a clearing house for every set of culture-warriors with a chip on their shoulders and a fun new word to sprinkle over the editorial barbs they fling at their ideological opponents; we need high-quality academic sources -- published in an academic source -- to support such a dramatic claim. You yourself mentioned above that you believe those sources will appear eventually, so it's not a big deal, is it? Just wait until there is a publication in a reputable academic journal, and we can rely on that as a source. What we can't do is say "some conservative anti-feminist bloggers have written editorials and blog posts saying they think their opponents are totally engaged in a moral panic", because that provides no real insight into the term and no real support as a example beyond the fact that people in the US culture wars will use any term they can get their hands on if they think it makes a flashy editorial. _{(Yes, yes, I know. In CHS' case, anti-all-of-modern-mainstream-feminism.)} Their opinions on this topic are extremely WP:FRINGE; no mainstream sources agree with them. Given that (and given that, again, this is an academic subject with a clearly-defined meaning), I think it is clearly undue weight to put their personal opinions in the article. --Aquillion (talk) 11:53, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Adding to the above, I'll add that those sources are all WP:QUESTIONABLE. They are opinion pieces by people who not WP:INDEPENDENT of the topic in question -- they are, as far as I can tell, all professionals who have made the position they've taken on gender issues a major part of their career. As I've said above, CHS is literally being paid to have the opinions she has; she can never be considered WP:INDEPENDENT on gender issues. The others are similar in one way or another; all of them have careers that depend on holding the sorts of opinions they're expressing here. This makes them comparatively low-quality sources for a statement like this. And the claim that modern concerns over campus rape are considered a moral panic is clearly an WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim, so it requires higher-quality sources than that. --Aquillion (talk) 12:23, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
• I would support setting a higher bar for sources in this article. Maybe a minimum is some scholarly treatment in a journal or book (in line with Wikipedia as a "lagging indicator" of significance), and then doing without any opinion pages, [parts of] publications that don't have a reputation for fact-checking and editorial oversight, etc. It's a scholarly subject that, in opinion pages and political publications, turns into a social or political weapon to marginalize widespread outcry over a subject. I'm not saying that this is or is not a moral panic as that's not what we're trying to determine (i.e. it doesn't matter if we're persuaded by them as the problem is the nature of the source in relation to the subject of this article rather than the specifics of their arguments). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:29, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

There most definitely are critics of the The New Campus Anti-Rape Movement who say it is an example of a moral panic. Someone previously criticized the claim as not being supported by enough sources, and someone else found more sources. The issue seemed settled since Wikipedia, in Wikipedia's voice, was stating only that there is criticism of the movement, and that the critics were calling it a moral panic; and Wikipedia was not saying that it was, in fact, a confirmed example of a moral panic. When I started this section in the talk page, my primary concern was that the relevant section be presented in a balanced way. I didn't have a strong opinion one way or another regarding whether the critics were right, I just wanted the article to be balanced. Now, the elite are saying that only social science scholars whose politics are approved may criticize the movement, and that anybody else's claims are just WP:FRINGE, and that even mentioning that there is such criticism violates WP:NPOV. I think this attitude decreases the accuracy of Wikipedia. Meanwhile, this talk page has become a huge time-suck for me, and I am going to go back to my watch list, back to removing juvenile vandalism, back to welcoming new users and inviting IP users to register accounts, and back to making little improvements where I see they are needed. Happy editing. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  03:02, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

I'd just like to say that "politicians or people from think-tanks calling their opponents fascists doesn't belong on Fascism, because we recognize that as a rhetorical device and unlikely to to reflect any sort of political-science consensus" is a very concise way of ending the discussion. I wish I could have said it as simply. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 18:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Since someone has re-added both this section and the videogame one, I'll reiterate what I said above: To use something as an example of a moral panic, we need better sources than this -- ideally high-quality academic sources or the like. Editorials and op-eds can't be used for statements of fact, and an example section for a contentious label like this shouldn't just be used to repeat those sorts of accusations -- it should focus on established, well-known examples. --Aquillion (talk)

It isn't a requirement for sources to be academic. The magazines are reputable. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 16:03, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

When the rest of the article deals with moral panics as discussed in academic literature, not just popular media -- and especially when the latter comes in the form of e.g. opinion columns, which unlike academic material is not the sort of place that undergoes scrutiny upon employing a particular term -- it's WP:UNDUE to include lest the article become a WP:COATRACK for what anybody has ever called "moral panic". Standards for reliable sources are contextual. There's no publication/author/publisher that's considered reliable for use in all contexts. Here, there's been a sense that, since high quality scholarly sources exist about this subject, and thus it's treated as a subject well defined by the highest quality sources, there's no reason to use lower quality sources just for the sake of expansion. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:28, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

I'll explain it so it's easier to understand: a reliable source can be reliable without it being *notable* for the article. An opinion piece can be reliable without it being important for every topic under the sun. We follow not only reliability here but also things like undue weight. One rule that supports something is not enough; most if not all policies must support something. DreamGuy (talk) 17:16, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

I've found some academic sources from an academic search engine, but I don't know which kind of sources are wanted. Is this okay: PDF ? --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 18:26, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

That still wouldn't make it notable. Yet. You see to want to be POINTy here. That's not what this article is for. I somewhat agree with this stance, but it's nowhere near important for this article. True or false is a different question than notable. 15:14, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I was asked for a source and I provide a perfect one which clearly talks about moral panic. And this is being pointy? What? And how is the source not "notable"? --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 15:32, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

And since I'm now more accustomed with accusation rules, I have to point out you're having bad faith here for accusing me of being pointy and POV pushing for some reason for handing out that PDF. The bit you added to the bottom about rules was hindering conversation so I moved it up a bit. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 02:24, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

There is a very well written article in the WSJ by Carol Tavris here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-very-model-moral-panic-1438980250. It is thorough, and written by a prominent academic in a prominent publication. It disturbs me that the editors here require "established fact" as the base requirement for including a topic in a WP article. This is an ongoing discussion, and there are prominent views on both sides. The discussion itself is significant, whether or not the issue they are concerned about is "fact," and should be cited as such. I am proposing reverting, but perhaps in a special section, where it is not cited as an established example, but rather as an "ongoing discussion." When the Wall St. Journal, Time Magazine, Slate, Politico, FIRE, AEI, Forbes, Bloomberg and The Boston Globe all think this is significant for discussion, WP should reflect this significant consensus, at the very least, with regard to the issue's prominence in national debate, whether or not the issue at hand is factual.

Given the nature of the issue as sociological, establishing fact is anyway beyond the capacity of the discipline, as this is not a natural science, but rather a social one that relies on theory and ethnography. It is also a unique issue, where the majority is caught up in it, as one of the central characteristics of moral panic is that the majority will censor the minority as "other" and insignificant, not worthy of being heard. One natural consequence is that the majority will use their "majority consensus" to censor WP. We should be especially vigilant of this. I therefore promote that this segment be reinstalled, with the caveat mentioned earlier, as we wait for more established peer reviewed journals to catch up with national debate. Tosfot (talk) 19:05, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Additional examples?

The examples in the article (as it currently appears) date from the 1970s -- despite the coining of the term well over a century earlier. I think that it should be possible to find a few well-documented examples from earlier time periods, and perhaps from outside the English-speaking world, as well. A few candidates include: blood libel; witch-hunts (both European and American); and McCarthyism. There is also the claim that Hitler tried to create a moral panic about Jews, at least within Germany (but I don't know if an actual moral panic existed then). Finally, I'm not sure if the controversy regarding the Harry Potter books constituted a full-blown moral panic, or just the attempt at creating one, but might also belong in the section.  Etamni | ✉  09:17, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Read the sources. Witch hunts and blood libel are mentioned in the important books on the topic. As for Hitler, no, his anti-Jewish tirades were propaganda - moral panics are defined as bubbling up from the masses and not narratives imposed from above by absolutist politicians. Oh and frankly I wish Wikipedia still had an article on the Penis melting robot combs, that was a great one from days gone by. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 18:53, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

We do have an article on Koro (medicine), but is doesn't specifically mention the comb panic. From [ http://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/1126/ ] and [ http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/976.htm ]:

"No doubt, this comb was a laser-controlled surgical robot that penetrates the skull [and passes] to the lower body and emasculates a man!! I wanted to tell that man who fell victim to the electronic comb: 'You jackass, how can you put a comb from a man you don't know to your head, while even relatives avoid using the same comb?!' ... That man [i.e. the mysterious stranger], who, as it is claimed, is from West Africa, is an imperialist Zionist agent that was sent to prevent our people from procreating and multiplying."

--Guy Macon (talk) 16:00, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

From the same article: "I think people mostly just like repeating the phrase because it sounds cool, but I guess it could also be used to refer to any instance of extreme gullibility. For instance, one might say to a friend, 'that's a rather penis-melting-zionist-robot-comb-like belief you hold.'" Aw man that's gold right there. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 13:53, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

As an engineer, I am thinking that maybe there is money to be made in designing laser-controlled surgical robot combs that penetrate the skull, travel to the lower body and melt the penis. The perfect Christmas gift for that special someone! --Guy Macon (talk) 15:00, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

NPOV: Jonathan Bishop

Have removed material "internet trolling" as one of the examples. It had three refs, two are for papers by Jonathan Bishop and the third is just a link to details of a conference where one of the speakers is... Jonathan Bishop.

Bishop's website states, "My opinions on Internet trolling, cyberbullying and related descriptions of Internet abuse and data misuse generally fall more towards free speech than censorship, more towards naming and shaming than criminalising, and I advocate parental and not state-responsibility for managing the protection of young people online." ...consequently his papers all are written from that pov. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 05:44, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

As I mentioned the trolling section above as another example on shaky ground (along with campus rape), I would support its removal pending better sourcing. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:05, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm okay with this too. Thanks. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 13:51, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Globalize

Have added a Globalize/US template to the examples section. All the examples in the examples section seem to be from the US. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 06:02, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

@The Vintage Feminist: It will eventually be possible to detag this, as the quoted Goode and Ben-Yehuda source has examples from Brazil, France and Israel. In fact, the Brazil example is the first example they give, at least in the 1994 edition. It's nicely "fucked up" when a key source is used (de)selectively, somehow either "overlooking" or "looking over" the examples, and blind spotting them. I will add them when I get a chance sometime in the next few days. FeatherPluma (talk) 03:00, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Video games

This section seems a bit sparse (and fairly dubious overall.) It has only three relevant cites; of them, one is a blog, and one is labeled 'comment', which makes me assume it's just an opinion piece (it's also a dead link, so I can't tell for sure.) There is one academic paper, but it only seems to use the term in the title, without mentioning it beyond that; I'm not sure a mention in passing is enough to support a section here. --Aquillion (talk) 07:54, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I do strongly suspect I once came across some journal articles on a video game moral panic, years ago. But the section can be rewritten someday in an improved form when a WP editor finally does the research on the subject. Certainly it's not one of the top examples of a moral panic anyway. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad (talk) 18:21, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I recommend doing some research on Video game controversies. 180.200.139.40 (talk) 08:24, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Two of them are academic studies. The "comment" part means nothing, it's a large paper: http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/hulr44&div=19&id=&page= --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 16:05, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

I took another go at this section, starting from scratch, more or less. It's still a little rough (especially the latter parts), but I did see more than enough scholarly sources to support the section. I noticed I was coming across Christopher Ferguson repeatedly. I don't typically like to cite the same author so much, but he comes up in other sources, too, which leads me to believe he's something of an authority. He's certainly published a lot of papers on the subject. Also worth pointing out the section I added is "Video games and violence" rather than just "video games", which seems like it would have to be a catch-all (i.e. I don't think there's one moral panic about video games in general). Past my bedtime but I might have time tomorrow to improve it a bit more... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 05:00, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Recentism and POV-pushing

I don't know about this article. Most of the Examples section and Talk page are trying to label/unlabel current topics as a Moral panic. Can we try for notable topics and cover the history in more detail? DreamGuy (talk) 00:23, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Care to make any specific comments? I'm not saying I necessarily disagree, but your section heading doesn't look to connect to your comments and I don't know what e.g. "can we try for notable topics" would mean in this context. Only cover moral panics when they would individually qualify for a stand-alone article? Do you just mean those that are well supported by reliable sources? Because that's precisely what we should have. Which do not? What moral panics are supported by reliable sources but are not represented here? There are many, to be sure, but high quality sources about "moral panics" (vs. what we might use original research to call a moral panic) do not go back all that far and much more easily address events in relatively recent history (ease of writing about contemporary events vs. historical events and, perhaps most importantly, overlapping with the rise in popularity and pervasiveness of sensationalist news/media. In short, why is it WP:RECENTISM? How would you propose fixing it? Why is it POV-pushing? How would you propose fixing it? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 04:01, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

We have Dungeons and Dragons listed as a moral panic, but you oppose listing video game violence as a moral panic? I even provided an example of a study done on the matter: PDF which you then called pointy. I think Rhodo did a fine job on the matter, whipping up a detailed historic on the matter out of nowhere. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 03:59, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and I were thinking of a general Video games section with D&D under it — as in I were going to merge the D&D section with it, but I don't know if it would fit under the violence section now. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 04:14, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

@Mr. Magoo and McBarker: I don't follow why D&D and video games would go together (or one a subsection of the other)? D&D is a tabletop/live action role playing game. There are D&D video games, but that's not really what it's about. Maybe I misunderstand? FWIW there were multiple sections that seemed poorly sourced. I can see why the video games section was swept away with them, but I don't think it'll be controversial with its present sourcing (which is hardly exhaustive at that). The campus sexual assault section is the one that was much more controversial per the sourcing. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 04:36, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I see your point. I was a bit misguided there. I'd also like to mention that mainly Ferguson focuses on the panic aspect but quite a large number of scholars have studied and published papers about whether video games actually cause violence or not, with an example here: Video game violence: A review of the empirical literature (cited by 390). The video game controversies article is quite comprehensive and well-made, a person named Grossman (On Killing and Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV, Movie & Video Game Violence - cited by 233) is quoted and then Ferguson right after with a retort: "Citing David Grossman, Funk also notes that it has been reported that the U.S. Army frequently uses violent video games to desensitize soldiers during training.[52][53] However, Ferguson has argued that the alleged use of video games to desensitize soldiers is more conjecture than fact.[54]" Grossman is also talked about in another section of the article. Then we have the likes of Jack Thompson. My point writing this isn't to prove something to you but to anyone else. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 04:42, 19 November 2015 (UTC)