Talk:Ruben Sim

hello! to anyone viewing this page wishing to dispute its existence, please note that it is fully compliant with the following criteria:

• does not violate WP:1E (the article proves sustained, multi-year notability)
• does not violate WP:BLP (the article balances unproven courtroom allegations with neutral public denial. note that, legally, simon was not required to admit wrongdoing.)
• does not violate WP:GNG (most major sections are anchored by globally recognized media outlets)
• does not violate WP:NOT (the article strictly focuses on events with real-world, legal or corporate consequences.)

please take this into consideration before attempting to take unnecessary action, thank you! 9koyami (talk) 23:32, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

@9koyami I saw that you removed the primary source on the paragraph of Ruben Sim defending himself. I personally see the paragraph as unduly self-serving as described in WP:ABOUTSELF. The limited scholarly sources about the lawsuit that I was able to find take a neutral () to negative () stance on Simon, and I see a similar trend among the reliable news sources. Allowing this much time to Simon in the article comes at the cost of giving less weight to these reliable secondary sources. Additionally, many of the allegations beyond mere harassment are not stated in the article, and going into them is not necessary for the reader. Based5290 :3 (talk) 06:03, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

i understand concerns about WP:ABOUTSELF, but there are a few things to keep in mind here:

• when it comes to WP:BLP and WP:NPOV in particular, there are multiple severe defamatory (and unproven) claims by roblox. inferring simon made "terrorist threats" in any way is basically libel outside of a journalistic context.
• it obviously cannot be proven or disproven that journals had prior knowledge of simon's internet activity, to the point where the secondary sources would know how to appropriately label simon outside of what roblox used to describe him.
• simon was not required to admit wrongdoing in the stipulated order. admittedly, it's my mistake for not having added it yet, as it was in my draft rewrites.

i will better acknowledge this by condensing the paragraph(s), per WP:CONSENSUS, though simon's defense through primary sources is still warranted and allowed. heavy focus on roblox's claims, or an omission of primary defense citations, goes against WP:BLPBALANCE here. 9koyami (talk) 06:30, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

reviewed citation #2 (i couldn't access #1), and this journal article is ass. the two paragraphs mentioning simon have textbook violations in both WP:WIKIVOICE and WP:ASSERT, and would NOT stand if cited. the tone of the authors takes roblox's (mind you, civil) allegations and asserts them as objective facts:

- "for organizing a cybermob to terrorize the platform,"

- "Ruben Sim had been banned... for right-wing extremist rhetoric,"

- "Sim's rhetoric escalated to ominous threats of violence,"

editorializing. "terrorize" the platform? not even the lawsuit says that. no claim or link to the alt-right has been made by any other source. and what "rhetoric"? not to diminish the tweets made, but those were largely references to other controversial users on-site. it's clear no independent research was done on that front. 9koyami (talk) 06:54, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Going point by point:

• Remember that the court ruled in favor of Roblox, and while the truth of the claims made by Roblox was not addressed, calling them defamatory is just as much of overreach as calling them true. While we generally tip the scales towards living individuals, that does not mean that they must get the same weight as the accusations repeatedly published by reliable sources.
• Much of Simon's activities were public (and probably archived somewhere), so it is not inconceivable that researchers from the second linked source could cross reference Roblox's claims with Simon's content and come to the conclusion that they were safe to state the accusation without attribution. Unlike us, they are free to synthesize the primary sources as they please. Of course, it's not really our place to second guess academic literature unless it is in obvious contradiction with a primary source (which this is not) or another reliable secondary source calls it into question.

I am okay with having some of Simon's defense in the article even without a secondary source, but I am saying that there is too much. In particular, the claim after he denied the corporation's most severe claims should be removed for not coming up elsewhere. The accusation that Roblox was silencing Simon in specific through this lawsuit also does not come up elsewhere and should be shortened to give it less weight for similar reasons. Based5290 :3 (talk) 06:58, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

see my above message for further replies, posted while you were typing your own.

• "Remember that the court ruled in favor of Roblox" verifiably false. this is misinformation. an out-of-court financial settlement is not a guilty verdict or a factual validation of a plaintiff's claims.
• "it is not inconceivable that researchers from the second linked source could cross reference Roblox's claims with Simon's content and come to the conclusion that they were safe to state the accusation without attribution" though true in concept, this is completely wrong in practice. see WP:NPOV, which this statement flies in the face of. "assert facts, including facts about opinions, but don't assert opinions themselves."
• "The accusation that Roblox was silencing Simon in specific through this lawsuit also does not come up elsewhere" this is only accurate for highly specific defenses, which i have already agreed to trim down. the core of his rebuttal, that he believe the lawsuit was "retaliatory" and meant to "silence his criticisms" is his fundamental right to reply.

i do not agree with any of the points made here. i reiterate i will trim down the affected paragraphs, per WP:CONSENSUS, but no other changes will be made in this regard as these claims don't hold up. 9koyami (talk) 07:08, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

• Okay, that was overstating it, but that still doesn't explain why you consider Roblox's claims "defamatory", given that no lawsuit has been levied against Roblox over these particular claims, no reliable secondary source seems to think they are defamatory, and in the settlement, Roblox got basically everything they wanted.
• Secondary sources are not required to follow Wikipedia's rules; otherwise, we literally couldn't cite any secondary source because every secondary does WP:OR. I don't see why researchers writing about right-wing activity in games would not do their due diligilence and risk getting sued. In particular, while the terror accusation is attributed to Roblox, the subsequent accusations are not, presumably because of the reasons I said earlier. If you think the source is wrong, feel free to write to the author or the journal explaining why you believe them to be wrong, but excluding the source from consideration right now seems to be the wrong move.
• Okay, go ahead and do that. I will note that there is currently a subtle WP:WIKIVOICE violation, ongoing criticisms of their child safety and moderation failures states in wiki voice that there were failures on the part of Roblox (compare Child safety on Roblox, which contains many accusations and controversies but is silent on whether these were moderation failures).

Based5290 :3 (talk) 07:23, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

it feels justified to say posting the wrong verdict in a case you pulled up scholarly articles for (which weren't even reliable) is a huge faux pas. i acknowledge the quoted sentence slips up on WP:WIKIVOICE, and i'm in the process of fixing other instances of it throughout the article.

though, on secondary sourcing, refer to WP:REDFLAG. major relevant claims by roblox, which showed up in multiple articles, were cited in the article. fringe allegations made by selective sources which editorialized the content of the lawsuit are not a sound basis, and are not included.

by the same reasoning, simon's right to reply means he can inherently deny or reject roblox's claims, and he has the legal right to do so, seeing as there was no guilty verdict, it was settled out of court, and he admitted no wrongdoing. all of which has sound basis: in the court, which roblox filed through. equal weight. 9koyami (talk) 07:34, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm still not sure how we get to a scholarly source being unreliable when it does not say anything that we know is categorically false (there is a claim in the Polygon source which very much tracks with the whole right-wing stuff). Even if we did want to scrutinize the source with the traditional components of source assessment:

• Publisher: Sage Journals is a reasonably good open access scholarly publisher. Games and Society seems like the right kind of peer reviewed journal to use for this claim, and the editorial board look fine. No signs of predatory publishing here.
• Authors: First author did their PhD thesis on combating misinformation and worked with the second author on it. All authors have experience in research on games.
• WP:USEBYOTHERS: 55 citations, I checked 10 and no one seemed to have qualms with the article.
• WP:REDFLAG/WP:FRINGE This source does not actually significantly depart from the other sources on this; at most, it uses stronger language than the others. It does not take a conspiracy theorist to go from allegeded use of racist and homophobic slurs to right wing. The fact that this is a seemingly peer reviewed, mainstream journal this is published in means that either someone is not doing peer review properly or it's not a fringe theory.

If feel like we've both lost the plot over the original WP:ABOUTSELF problems, so here it is again. Roblox's claims get one paragraph. The court order gets one paragraph. Simon's defense gets a paragraph which is about the same size as Roblox's and is entirely sourced to Simon himself. Almost all reliable sources, including the scholarly one, tip the scales in favor of Roblox. While we should tip the scales towards living people more, that does not mean that their claims must get the same weight. We don't extensively quote from If I Did It in Murder trial of O. J. Simpson for similar reasons. If I were to rewrite it, I shorten it down to:

After the settlement, Simon acknowledged creating several offensive Roblox accounts in his youth but accused Roblox of weaponizing past violations to silence his criticism of Roblox's handling of child safety.

(insert citations as needed). Based5290 :3 (talk) 23:49, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

there's not gonna be a consensus here. i will not be responding to any further messages as there continues to be blatantly false and downright libelous claims in your replies, and i've already made several changes to the article in agreement with your previous corrections. i feel like i've appropriately addressed all valid concerns.

without arguing the veracity of scholarly claims (see: Media bias), there are four major problems with this reply:

• "(there is a claim in the Polygon source which very much tracks with the whole right-wing stuff)." VIOLATION. in accordance with WP:BLP, personal deductions like this do not constitute political labels.
• "It does not take a conspiracy theorist to go from allegeded use of racist and homophobic slurs to right wing." VIOLATION. this implication violates both WP:SYNTH and WP:LABEL in a single sentence. citing polygon's coverage of the roblox lawsuit in tandem with the sage journals article follows the previous point's logic. if secondary sources don't EXPLICITLY label simon's actions as "right-wing", wikipedia cannot either.
• "Almost all reliable sources, including the scholarly one, tip the scales in favor of Roblox." VIOLATION. per WP:NPOV and WP:WEIGHT, wikipedia doesn't "tip the scales" to decide who's right or wrong in a civil lawsuit, only to document what was alleged and how it was resolved.
• "We don't extensively quote from If I Did It in Murder trial of O. J. Simpson for similar reasons." VIOLATION. see WP:BLPTALK. arguing a defendant who settled without admitting wrongdoing for online gaming behavior as comparable to someone facing double murder charges (though, yes, acquitted) is editorial bias and a false equivalency.

additionally, i want to address this:

• "If feel like we've both lost the plot over the original WP:ABOUTSELF problems," this is the only valid point here, though very loosely, and here's why: i just forgot to add an additional source. yes, i did not have one added at the time, but simon's defense has already been validated in secondary sources. this means the paragraph won't be bound by WP:ABOUTSELF anymore, and i will make changes accordingly.

if you continue to believe i'm misrepresenting simon's case, please follow WP:DR, as i'm welcome to a second opinion, a mediator, or ANI intervention. this will be my last reply in this chain. 9koyami (talk) 00:32, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Most of these "violations" were meant as components of source assessment, not things which should be added to the article. I am not arguing that the label "right-wing" should be included in the article. I am saying that the scholarly source is reliable and should be considered in how we follow WP:WEIGHT. Based5290 :3 (talk) 00:36, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

WP:3O requested. Based5290 :3 (talk) 00:43, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

3O Response: 9koyami and Based5290: Oh, this is an easy one. Mandy Rice-Davies applies!

Oh... Oh...

In all seriousness, Simon's responses should at least be included in some capacity, per DENIALS. So that leaves us two options: two sentences of denials, or one sentence. I really think either option is fine, but I'm somewhat sympathetic to Based5290's DUE arguments, so I'm leaning one sentence.

On the topic of that scholarly source, I too am somewhat skeptical of their placing of Roblox's claims in "journalvoice". This is a literature review, and this claim is cited to a Wired article which I don't yet have time to listen to. I won't make any firm judgement on that claim as a result. However, I will say that I think it's exceedingly unlikely that this source did the sort of deep dive Based5290 describes, and that it absolutely cannot be used to say that Roblox's claims are true, per BLPCRIME. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 03:22, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

i'll maintain that i didn't object to either shortening the length of the denial response (which i did, though only by a bit, and further emphasizing undue "alt-right" / extremist / slur usage concerns) or switching the primary sources to reliable secondary sources, which i did, but then Based5290 immediately claimed this "failed verification". (though no source was cited as "generally unreliable" per cite unseen, and neither did any of the 31 citations in the article)

if, during the GA nomination or any other review, a request to shorten the specific paragraph is made, i will abide by it. though, adding my personal opinion would make this message three times as long, and i wish to avoid further disputes or edit wars. 9koyami (talk) 03:33, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

i've further shortened the paragraph to the following;

"Following the settlement, Simon publicly addressed several of the lawsuit's allegations, broadly denying the corporation's most severe claims. Simon maintained that the corporation weaponized his past terms of service violations to aggressively police his off-platform conduct and silence his ongoing criticisms of their alleged child safety protocol and moderation failures."

as it stands, i don't see this as violating any relevant WP: page rules. i expect a resolution. 9koyami (talk) 03:43, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

NOTE: in the live article, i've fixed the potential WP:SEAOFBLUE issue in "alleged child safety protocol and moderation failures." 9koyami (talk) 03:46, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

• ... that YouTuber Ruben Sim created an independent initiative to document explicit content on the Roblox platform?

• ALT1: ... that YouTuber Ruben Sim contributed to the FBI arrest of a prominent Roblox game developer for criminal sexual activity?

• Reviewed:

9koyami (talk) 21:28, 12 March 2026 (UTC).

Overall: Article is new enough, long enough. Hook facts are interesting, though I'd avoid ALT1 due to BLP concerns. No close paraphrasing found. Image has an OTRS ticket submitted.  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 22:15, 12 March 2026 (UTC)