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Input please

Just wondering if I could get some input on the following articles: Lara Croft and Maniac Mansion. The discussions are:

Maniac Mansion has been under A-class review for a while now, and I would certainly appreciate some input to finish things up. Lara Croft did not pass it's recent FAC, and one reviewer was kind enough to provide feedback afterward, but we are approaching it from different angles. Outside pairs of eyes would help bring these to a conclusion. Thanks. (Guyinblack25 talk 15:15, 28 June 2011 (UTC))

Also note that I am still chugging away on the review (well, more went from a "review" to a "collaboration effort") of Dragon Warrior, which is also up for A-Class review. AFAIK, Jinnai has been busy IRL lately, so I understand the delay there. –MuZemike 19:27, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
I'm back here somewhat. I think we need another person to come look at MM because there are some issues that its not clear what should be done. I believe one thing while Guyinblack believes another.陣内Jinnai 01:36, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Microids (Software Game Publisher)

I've been doing some researching about the company and found some information to be innaccurate. It appears Encore, the North American distributor of their titles in North America has discontinued many of their products sold in the USA. So the info in the article may be somewhat obsolete. JasonHockeyGuy (talk) 06:49, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Top 100 Modern Games

[1] - For anyone to add to articles. - New Age Retro Hippie (talk) (contributions) 10:29, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

FLC input still needed

Hi everyone-

Just so you know, it has been one month since I nominated the article List of songs in Rock Band 3 for featured list status, and there still hasn't been any substantial input apart from the layout notes and other comments from the FLC directors. The article isn't a terribly long, and any input (positive or negative) would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks! –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 14:18, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Plot citations (incl. in FAs)

Which is better? [2] or [3]? See also discussion at User talk:Thumperward#Planescape: Torment. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 13:28, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Standard means of dealing with fiction is that the primary source is always acceptable as references for the plot, as rarely will a third-party source cover the entire work. (That's not to say if you can find third-party stuff, you shouldn't use it - it should always be used). Its also implicit that the core work is the main source for the plot, and thus doesn't need the same density of citations as one would expect in, say, development and reception sections. I'm not a huge fan of dropping tons of quotes from a game to substantiate plot aspects that are obvious as you play through, but do support them on major revelations which may sneak by the user if they're not paying attention, so its a matter of being sufficiently selective. -MASEM (t) 13:36, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
Per some guideline I cant be bothered to find right now, sources are only needed for material which may be challenged. If the content in the plot section has material that may be thought false by some people(IE: Unexpected event which may seem fake), then it should be sourced. Otherwise, general knowledge about the plot probably does not need to be sourced, and is automaticly thought to be sourced to the work itself. Blake (Talk·Edits) 13:44, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
So do you reckon that just putting a ref to the game itself at the end of each plot paragraph would be sufficient? It would certainly be better than having a quote ref for every sentence. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 14:30, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
You shouldn't even need that, because again, its assumed that the game is the primary work and a reference itself. But if the game provides strong divisions that you can say "this happens in this section of the game", whether its chapters, levels, or the like, that might be good to place after each section that happens in that part. --MASEM (t) 15:05, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
As far as fictional work and especially video games are concerned, primary sources (the game itself or manual) are perfectly fine. In fact, as pointed above, even that is not required by WP:V unless contested. No one should demand secondary sources for plot. But being a reference geek, I do prefer cited plot sections, and think in-game quotes are very much suitable. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:36, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
I try to cite everything in the article, even the plot. A little extra work, but no one's ever challenged the cited content at a review. I say better safe than sorry in cases like this. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:33, 24 June 2011 (UTC))
In my opinion, some kind of plot citation should be required for video game articles. With books, films and comics (static media), for example, the plot is set in stone. However, video games are interactive and therefore flexible. Their plots will always been potential subjects for debate, because no player experiences the same events the same way. Citations allow Wikipedia to remain neutral. Just my two cents. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 21:38, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
Uh....how many games have you played? Outside of maybe Western RPGs, video game plots tend to be pretty static with maybe minor variences in some cases that would hardly affect a plot summary. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 22:06, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
With regard to major events, yes. But, technically, any action taken by the player is part of the "story". If we were writing the plot section for a piece of fiction with little-to-no plot—The Dead (short story), let's say—we would focus on small events. He makes small talk at a party; he dances with one person instead of another; he screws up his dinner speech. If I were to write the plot section for a game with a minimal story—Half-Life, let's say—focusing on small events would lead to a subjective description of the plot. For example, let's take the first time Gordon sees a soldier attack a scientist. You actually have two options, even though they aren't specifically stated in game: watch it happen, or kill the soldier before he finishes off the scientist. This small scene, which is technically important to the story, could unfold in two different ways depending on who's playing. Therefore, in order to maintain neutrality, a source is required. If none exist for that specific scene, you use a source to generalize: "Soldiers begin killing scientists". The source could be either secondary or primary, depending on the subjectivity of the game and scene in question. I could give more examples, but I think I've clarified my point well enough. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:54, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
To expand on what Jimmy is saying, there are plenty of examples where the plot is not straight forward (Limbo (video game), Braid (video game), and the Silent Hill games come to mind) even if the prevailing perception about games is that they have simple plots. Also, it's arguable that some games are so difficult for the layman that they are not easily verifiable.
Regardless of any argument for citations, the only negative to adding them is that they can be time consuming. And that's never been a strong argument when discussing article quality and strength. (Guyinblack25 talk 14:35, 27 June 2011 (UTC))

I always cite plot sections with in-game quotes and sources close to the original material, but I might add that this has caused problems on our two current featured article nominations (Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri and Resident Evil 2) because it implies a heavy reliance on primary sources for the whole article. Prime Blue (talk) 19:34, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Just citing descriptive claims "James is the evil villain" is usually enough. If the plot is extremely complex, some more specific citations can be added, but I've never found the need to put more than a few references in most games, unless you're being detailed for a reason such as backstory.陣内Jinnai 01:46, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
I think the FAC comments dealt with developer interviews as well. So the comment was directed at all primary sources.
Regardless, I agree with Jinnai: most plots can minimize the number of citations by sticking to citing contentious plot info. That and looking for third-party citations are a good practice for all articles. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:35, 30 June 2011 (UTC))

Amend template {{Video game release}} for convenience

Suggest to add some additional lines to the {{Video game release}} template to make multiple-region release dates and publishers easier to add. So far, we always had to insert these manually, that is, simultaneous releases in North America and Europe had to be {{vgrelease|[[North America|NA]] / [[PAL region|PAL]]|January 1, 2000}}. Suggest to replace this with a simple "NAPAL" field for automatic formatting. Would not change the usage of the current template, just makes these special cases easier and faster to insert. Addition to template is in the page source. Prime Blue (talk) 21:02, 27 June 2011 (UTC) | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

Oh and also allow it to sort on how the data is input to the template. As far as i know it will automatically sort the data as JPN, US, EU, AUS regardless of the order we input into the template, because lets face it not every game is released first in Japan even if the majority are. Salavat (talk) 16:29, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
I have requested automatic sorting by dates about a year ago (at a coding project whose name escapes me), but it was never put into practice. Don't know if we have a template where it's already implemented. If all else fails, separate calls still work for sorting (and might even make more sense as the template is used for publishers in addition to dates). Prime Blue (talk) 17:08, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
I started working on a an updated template to do that in my userspace a while ago, but haven't gotten around to finishing it. I know there is another template that kind of does this, but I'm not a fan of it, mainly because of the code, so I'm not going to link to it, but it is there. I feel the original suggestion above is unnecessary, and that a complete re-write would be more beneficial. MrKIA11 (talk) 18:23, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
Unless your rewrite is finished (this here, I suppose), I still think that implementing the above-mentioned changes (not the automatic order) would be beneficial, as they make work easier for these special cases without changing or hindering the functionality of the template itself. Saves time and is less annoying. Prime Blue (talk) 10:18, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Kirby Article Help

I had requested a peer review for Kirby (character). One of the suggestions included "contact(ing) the most relevant WikiProject" for help in making the article a good article once again. Is there anyone here willing to help out with this? --Newimagekirby (talk) 10:50, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Should articles of released video games be added to categories that the game will belong to in the future?

Should articles of released video games be added to categories that the game will belong to in the future? For example, should Minecraft or Limbo be categorized as Category:Xbox 360 games and Category:Windows games respectively even though they have not yet been ported to those platforms (announced in RS though). —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:50, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

  • No. I will give the same argument as on Minecraft's page: We would not add Category:2011 deaths to John Smithy (serial killer) even if reliable sources reported he is to be executed in October 2011. A game is not a Windows game until it runs on Windows, and no game porting is "almost certain to take place" (WP:CRYSTAL). —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:50, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Agreed, no. Wikipedia content needs to be verifiable, and things that haven't happened yet are not verifiable. (Can note that we could easily make a category grouping games that have had ports to whatever-platform announced but not delivered, though, if we liked, because the announcement of the port is verifiable.) —chaos5023 (talk) 17:55, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
So you are saying that all games in Category:Upcoming video games should now be removed from platform specific categories? For example Gears of War 3 should be removed from the Category:Xbox 360 games? --Mika1h (talk) 19:47, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
I think in my ideal world I'd rather see them in an "Upcoming Xbox 360 games" subcat, but I don't feel so strongly about it that I'd be motivated to disturb a currently functioning status quo. It seems more important in the case of already-released games to me because it's much more confusing in that case. —chaos5023 (talk) 20:06, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
Just to reiterate that this is about released video games, so none of those articles will be disturbed. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:25, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Image tagging

For those who may be interested, a user is rapidly tagging all "invalid Fair Use rationale" images, including many covered by this project. If you'd like to rescue pictures for video games, take a look at The ongoing tagging, (he's up to 'F') there are video games' articles on there; I'm trying to catch as many as I can, but extra sets of eyes & fixers would be appreciated! Skier Dude (talk) 00:55, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Have just checked, its not strict alphabetic order, he started around 18 June; RoboCop (video games) has already had all of its images deleted due to them not being used on an article. He removed them all from the article stating over use, then the delete bots did the rest. - X201 (talk) 09:02, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
I've started on his edit history from the 18 June and worked forward, I've got as far as 00:32 on 23 June. But its doing my eyes in. I've only been looking for VG articles, but the absolute thousands of images that he's tagged; and that will get deleted if no one does anything about them, is heart breaking. Its made me wonder if I want to carry on with WP to be honest. The fact that someone would rather damage an article by removing a problem with a quick press of the submit button on their auto-edit browser, rather than fix it. - X201 (talk) 13:06, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
Well, recently he has been fixing the rationales instead of removing the images. I guess he got tired of all the angry comments. Blake (Talk·Edits) 20:50, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
There's an attempt on the admin board to get him topic banned from FUR activities. - X201 (talk) 08:53, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

On a related note someone has been uploading a bunch of video game logos to Commons. I'm not sure if Template:PD-textlogo applies to all them. Someone more expert on the subject could look at them: [4]. --Mika1h (talk) 12:40, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Arvale: Journey of Illusion

The article Arvale: Journey of Illusion has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Advertisement, not notable

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Bulwersator (talk) 09:51, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Is this Twinkle or some script that announces these to the project? I usually skip them, but I've seen several in different places now. It looks like user-targeted template. Personally, I don't think this page has high enough importance to warrant a project-wide announcement. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 11:39, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Cosmetic improvements on the VG barnstar

Whipped this up in my sandbox last night; basically some slight cosmetic improvements to the barnstar design (actually, fairly radical compared to the rest of the barnstar formats). Basically, the wikitable has been replaced with a simple div and span tag, and more regular wikicode is used; also, I changed "VG Barnstar" to "WikiProject Video games Barnstar". Finally, being a fan of rounded borders and box shadows, I implemented both of those to give a better look. Any thoughts before I implement it in Template:Barnstar VG? –MuZemike 20:14, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Looks fine. You could probably run this by Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wikipedia Awards if you want this to be the default look. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:19, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
The only thing spoiling it is File:BarnstarCVG.png, it looks a bit blurred. - X201 (talk) 07:42, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
I think the changes look nice.
On a related note, what about alternate images? I remember creating a composite of the BarnstarCVG.png and a magnifying glass a while ago for our members that make good contributions via article reviews (PR, GAN, FAC, and FLC). I'm sure we could make specific ones for vandalism, copy editing, and other areas too. We could add a simple parameter to switch out the standard image of the VG barnstar. Any thoughts? (Guyinblack25 talk 14:57, 28 June 2011 (UTC))
File:Video Game Barnstar Hires.png is a better version of that image X201 mentioned above, and I think it's currently an option on Template:Barnstar VG to use either/or; however, we can get rid of that and make usage of this better-quality version mandatory. And, if other images that recognize other specific tasks are out there, as long as we document it properly, I don't see how that can hurt. –MuZemike 18:26, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
Note that there was no consensus for implementing .svg alternatives as the default selection for barnstar images. "Better quality" remains quite subjective. That said, this can be reviewed on individual basis. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:39, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
This is definitely an improvement, and I do prefer using the high res star compared to the other one. I'm all for it. Nice work. --Dorsal Axe 10:25, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I went ahead and implemented the improvements to Template:Barnstar VG; we can make additional changes as needed. While on the topic, is there a reason why we have Template:The Gamer's Barnstar, which is identical to Template:Barnstar VG? Should we redirect that one? (Also note that I just redirected Template:WikiProject Nintendo Barnstar to Template:The Nintendo Barnstar for the exact same reason.) –MuZemike 03:32, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

I see a slight problem, and that's the proliferation of those templates (border-radius and the other) embedded in the CSS. Might run afoul of substing guidelines (as I recall barnstars are substed, no?). Might be easier just to include the CSS directly rather than as templates. --Izno (talk) 05:48, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

I have no problem with that, and that was actually my original intention; that will give a little more "code bloat" to the template, though. –MuZemike 16:15, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
I think we should pull the vendor specific CSS. While I understand its use, it's a graceful degradation if someone is using a browser which doesn't understand it. For the most part, the browsers which will understand border-radius and box-shadow in the near future will probably be the ones with the vendor prefixes anyway. As people slowly upgrade to better browsers, the CSS will start looking prettier.
But that's only a problem if you're truly concerned of the bloat. While I advocate pulling the vendor specific implementations, I also don't care enough about the barnstar. --Izno (talk) 00:24, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Newsletter about ready to go

The newsletter is already pretty much ready to go, and I can send it out with my bot sometime today. If somebody wants to take a last check over the "feature" and "featured editor" parts on the draft page before I go ahead and create those subpages, that would be great. –MuZemike 06:41, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Where did I miss that it now goes out on the 1st of the month, rather than the first Wednesday? Just curious. MrKIA11 (talk) 14:01, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
I was not aware it was the 1st Wednesday, as I always thought it was just arbitrary when it came out :| –MuZemike 14:14, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, that was the decision a while ago. MrKIA11 (talk) 14:23, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
Ugh it's July already? Give me a day and I'll try and finish up the feature... sorry for the holdup I entirely forgot. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:20, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
MuZemike- I believe the interview is done.
David- I'll help out with the feature as I have time today. (Guyinblack25 talk 15:24, 1 July 2011 (UTC))
Thanks. I've got a basic draft but I'm probably not explaining things properly or forgetting things or spelling poorly or all the above :) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:36, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
Should we bump it back to Wednesday for consistency and to give some time for the feature? MrKIA11 (talk) 15:50, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
If you want, go ahead; I don't really mind. –MuZemike 16:51, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
I reverted it back to next Wednesday, mainly for consistency, and so Fuchs & Guy have some more time to clean up the feature. MrKIA11 (talk) 17:49, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
←It should be ready to go now, thanks. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 14:23, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
OK. I'll get everything updated and sent out by my bot in a few hours (as I will be on the road shortly). –MuZemike 18:28, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

I apologize for making so many of these. Anyway, I'd like a few opinions on whether or not to exclude an article from my work-in-progress Looking Glass Studios games topic. The article in question is Jane's Attack Squadron, a game that experienced an extremely convoluted development cycle. Until recently, I didn't think it would be necessary to include it. However, I read up on it a little during the writing of Flight Unlimited, and now I'm no longer sure what to do. This section of Flight Unlimited briefly summarizes what I'm talking about. Basically, the game was developed on the side by Looking Glass for something like 5 years, only to be canceled near completion because of the company's closure. At some point, another company (Mad Doc), which contained a few former LGS members, picked up the game and "finished" it. A publisher with no previous connection to the game or company, Xicat, then released it to universal derision in 2002.

Should this qualify as a "collaboration", as with System Shock 2, or did the game officially pass out of the realm of Looking Glass? I honestly can't decide. Any advice would be great. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 07:28, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I would include since it seems that LG did the most work on it. Reminds me very much of Duke Nukem Forever. Different developer finished it with a different publisher, but it's still mainly a 3D Realms game. --Mika1h (talk) 23:40, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
I guess that means I have another article to work on. Oh well. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 12:31, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Merging "New Super Mario Bros. Mii"

Could everyone please put in your vote for merging New Super Mario Bros. Mii into New Super Mario Bros. Wii over at this talk page? This is a very short page that could work fine being merged. --Nathan2055talk 00:23, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Beyond the Labyrinth

Could members of this project give their opinions on this AfD, couldn't find a notability requirement for computer games, if we have some could you also point me in the direction of it. Mo ainm~Talk 22:30, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

500 GAs

I just noticed the project has made 500 Good Articles. Hooray for progress! GamerPro64 22:14, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Umm... 461.(assuming you're counting GAs separate from FAs and FLs) –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 22:26, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Plus the A-class articles (which there are 39). GamerPro64 22:27, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Level (gaming) fixed

While working on a game article, I stumbled upon a bit of ambiguity for the term level. I found this old conversation about it, and apparently no one ever followed through on the consensus. So I fixed all the confusing redirects and pointed Level (gaming) to Level#Gaming. Just a heads up for future reference. —Torchiest talkedits 23:34, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

64 Kbps a rule, now?

Check this file's notification: File:Anox_Democratus.ogg

There's a suggestion on the template: "Such tools can also be used to reduce the bit-rate to below 64 Kbps." Was there some kind of consensus that 64 Kbps is the maximum threshold? If so, I've got several samples across a few VG featured articles to brutally reduce in quality. Sigh... By the way, if anyone wants to trade copyedits with me for Anachronox, it'd be great. I'm going to make the same offer on peer review soon (overall, not the VG peer view). ZeaLitY [ Talk - Activity ] 22:32, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

It goes back to how WP:NFCC#3b is interpreted. I know, for non-free images, the rule-of-thumb has always been 0.1 megapixels or less for resolution, so it would make sense for a similar guideline to apply for bitrates of sound bytes. –MuZemike 23:52, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
See WP:SAMPLE, we use the lowest reasonable bitrate for audio files to keep them low resolution. --MASEM (t) 00:09, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
Depending on the audio file, I think there's a compelling defense to be made for keeping fidelity high and overall length short—dropping audio too low begins to crunch everything and could possibly misrepresent the work. Ideally it should be a balance between the two in relation to the original whole to meet the "unsuitable for illegal use"/"portion of the work" criteria. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:22, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
I would agree- reducing the bitrate too much materially misconstrues what the sound was. I've sever seen anyone complain about too high of a bitrate - the only rule of thumb I know of was that the length of the sample should be something like 10% of the total work or less. --PresN 19:45, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Proposed move of Alternative character back to Alternate character closing soon

I've listed the proposed move of Alternative character back to Alternate character at WP:RM, so hopefully it will get closed in one way or the other when its week is up. If you have an argument to register on it, now's the time. Arguments in both directions rely heavily on nuances of policy and guidelines, so any insightful contribution may weigh heavily. —chaos5023 (talk) 04:07, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

FACs needing attention

Resident Evil 2 hasn't had any activity in five days, and could really use more reviews. Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri also needs more feedback—particularly, SandyGeorgia requested source checks for adherence and/or plagiarism. If anyone has time, please review one or both of these articles. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 05:27, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

  • Done been source reviewed now. RE2 still needs a source review and a plagiarism check, as well as some substantive reviews- I've long suspected that the FAC delegates, especially Sandy, completely ignore one-sentence supports prior to any long ones. --PresN 21:00, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Thanks again. And you're right; RE2 could do with some heftier reviews. The meat of my review came during the peer review, so my cut-and-dried support on the FAC page doesn't carry much weight. Anyone got time to look at the article? JimmyBlackwing (talk) 23:09, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Resident Evil 2 needs a source review for close paraphrasing/accurate representation/plagiarism, would be nice if someone found the time. Prime Blue (talk) 18:13, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I'll see if I can jump in today or tomorrow. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 18:52, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Resident Evil 2 and Super Meat Boy are in dire need of reviews. Terra Nova has been up for over a month and seems to have a sufficient number of reviews, but it hasn't been promoted. I assume the delegates want to see more feedback. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 01:40, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
I've given RE2 a paraphrase spotcheck, which it was missing. --PresN 02:42, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for your help, PresN. Hope it was not too painful with the abundance of sources. Prime Blue (talk) 03:43, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Super Meat Boy, Terra Nova and Resident Evil 2 are still up at FAC. Terra Nova is now the oldest nomination on the list; RE2's only 2 spots ahead of it. We need reviewers ASAP. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 19:50, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Can anyone take a look at Super Meat Boy? It's near the bottom of the list and only has two reviews (both supports) - it's about a couple of days away from being archived due to inactivity. --PresN 19:24, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

  • I'll review it later today. I would have done it by now, but Super Meat Boy and McMillen are something of a pet peeve of mine, so I was trying to avoid it. That's not a good enough reason to let the nomination get archived, though. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 20:38, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

FLC List of songs in Rock Band 3 is now the older featured list candidate on the list. It has two supports and no opposes, so just a couple more opinions should hopefully be enough to complete the FLC. All input would be much appreciated. Thanks! –Drilnoth (T/C) 22:11, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Project activity

Updated project activity charts here. Note that Wikipedia isn't refreshing the images as quickly as it should so you may still see the old charts until it does. SharkD  Talk  06:25, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

It's probable that someone went on a WP:VG tagging spree in the second time period. The first time period I would suspect correlates to the addition of the File and Category classes to the VG tag. --Izno (talk) 19:50, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
The thumbnails still haven't refreshed unfortunately... SharkD  Talk  03:36, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

RPG narrative dispute (again)

We need more input about this dispute. SharkD  Talk  04:32, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Figuring out a consistent way to list publishers

Okay. I'm tired of going to pages and seeing links to IGN and then 1UP.com. One format should be used, imo, the former, because that's what the publisher is called; we don't say "Jinnai from Wikipedia.com" after all. Either way, this does cause issues when articles go up for feature reviews.陣内Jinnai 14:14, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that "1UP.com" is the name of their site - in addition to being their URL, much like Amazon.com is the name and URL. Of the major VG RS', it is the only one that reads that way. This, for 1UP.com is to separate the site from their affliates of networks (eg the "1UP Network"), as I am reading it. --MASEM (t) 14:19, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Correct - 1UP.com is the actual name. --Teancum (talk) 14:36, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Technically, 1UP.com is the work and the publisher is the parent--used to be Ziff, now it's... 1UP Games? As a project we've kind of been misusing publisher in many cases for a while (I'm still guilty of this), but I'm not in a hurry to change it across the many thousands of refs in the articles I watchlist. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:20, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Jinnai, if you mean "either URL or not URL", then that's next to impossible. Every site uses a different name to identify itself: for example, it's GameSpot and GameSpy, but 1UP.com and GameTrailers.com. I don't see a big problem with that, though, and neither has it come up at the featured article nominations I've seen so far. Just try to keep it consistent within an article and you should be okay. Edit conflict – to David: 1UP.com currently is by UGO Entertainment. That said, I always use the site name as work, and use the owning company (if it exists) as publisher. That usually puts all site names in italics (as dictated by the MOS for "online magazines, newspapers, and news sites with original content"). Otherwise, I remove the italics manually for sites with non-original content, such as GameRankings and Metacritic. Prime Blue (talk) 15:27, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Actually, Prime Blue brings up a question I've been thinking about for some time now: are sites such as GameStop technically considered "news sites with original content"? If we should be italicizing those sites, it looks like I have a good number of references to fix up then. Nomader (talk) 18:10, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
I've never seen anyone receive flak for not italicizing the sites according to the MOS, so I guess it's more of a preference-based thing. Consistency is more important. Prime Blue (talk) 18:25, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, I've never once italicized a website that didn't also have a print variant (like a newspaper/magazine) and I've never once had anyone complain about it. Reference styles aren't required to be identical across articles, so just be internally consistent. I also never try to track down what the parent "publisher" is - no one knows or cares what GameSpot's publisher is they just want to know that the ref is from Gamespot. As to the original issue- I use 1UP.com as the name. It's pretty much the only one, though- while the name may be officially 1up.com, I'd be fine with moving the article/references to just 1UP. --PresN 19:53, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Given that the cite web template does not italicize the "publisher" and italicizes the "work" fields, I always fill it in like that - a website-only thing is a "publisher", while if there's a printed equivalent, it's a "work". --MASEM (t) 19:58, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
I do something similar to what Masem outlined for the exact reason. I add italics to the publisher name in the parameter. Different path, but the output is basically the same. (Guyinblack25 talk 13:47, 15 July 2011 (UTC))

As an aside since I brought it up, 1Up is the official name of 1UP. That they use the ".com" on a logo doesn't matter; if they put "1up.butmonkeys.com" its still just a logo. First off, go to the bottom of the page. They list their staff as "1UP Staff" not "1UP.com Staff"; ditto with jobs.

I brought the issue up because Halo 3 was under an FARC and the page couldn't even decide (at the time I brought up the review) between [Bunjie Studios and bungie.co.uk. They also did post 1up.com as the pulisher, but did not give the same treatment to IGN. It's been an issue for other articles I have brought up to FAC that we improperly use urls for publisher. This project is the only place I know that views publisher as something other than the company that published the material.

Now am I expecting us to go through thousands of pages immediatly and change this? No. Maybe for our feature articles though. Mostly, I just want people to go with one way and use it for everything not "its 1up.com, but not IGN.com"陣内Jinnai 03:11, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

User:SCB '92

Can someone please talk to User:SCB '92? I have looked at his contributions and he has placed 3 articles up for FAC without editing the articles before nominating them, with two of the nominations up right now. GamerPro64 18:06, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

  • I've noticed him too. He has also nominated an article at GAN (GoldenEye 007). I've seen him upgrading articles to A-Class in a drive-by fashion as well. If someone diplomatic could discuss his changes with him, it'd probably be for the best. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 18:50, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Many lists of MMOs

We have four separate lists of MMOs:

Some of these at least should go. SharkD  Talk  04:28, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

The 3rd could be merged with the 2nd. Technically so could the fourth, but size issues would likely have it split again. The other idea would be to merge the first and last.陣内Jinnai 03:16, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Need help

Could I have a couple more eyes on List of LittleBigPlanet 2 downloadable content packs please. There's a user who has been making the same disruptive edits to the article for a couple of months now. They add false information (usually release dates) and have now also taken to copying over a ref that is already in the article. They started as an IP, were blocked and have now continued the same edit style as User:TheDarkPyrano. They never communicate via discussion pages except for one occasion when they asked a question on the article talk page (The Portal 2 section). Would appreciate some help. Thanks. - X201 (talk) 19:05, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Making our project page more accessible to newcomers

I was recently reading up on Wikimedia's strategy, and, particularly during the "Increase participation" section, I started thinking about how it applied to WPVG. In my opinion, we could be doing more to attract new people to our project, particularly with regard to our front page. I'm going to be blunt about a few things, so bear with me. Here are my thoughts:

Our front page is cluttered and disorganized. The page has grown organically over many years, and, unfortunately, it shows. Structurally, it's chaotic and difficult to navigate; the layout doesn't make any kind of coherent sense. I hate to always bring up the comparison, but let's take a look at MILHIST's front page. Now, I realize that we are not MILHIST and never will be. Our project is unique, and this uniqueness needs to be apparent. However, look at how simply they've organized the key subjects that any potential contributor would be looking for. Their purpose, goals and participation sections are concise, and placed above all other project-related information. The page is short and geared particularly toward newcomers. They use tabs to store more specialized material, like their list of high-quality content.
Now look at our page: a long scroll of information that is mostly aimed at project members, with a Participation section beneath our Project Structure section, and buried by a mess of images. Below that, we have a lot of colors (our graph images and assessment box), numbers and lists, organized in no particular fashion. Ask yourself: "If I was a new user looking to contribute, not knowing what to do, hoping to find a bit of guidance without needing to ask on the talk page—how would I react to this page?" My answer is, "With confusion." In my opinion, we are placing a boundary between ourselves and potential newcomers, putting them off before they even have a chance to join.
To elaborate: our project can't continue to exist without contributors. Obviously, VG articles will always be edited; however, the project's infrastructure has been critical to our success up to this point. And, like the Wikimedia strategy page says, not enough is being done to replace the core editors who lose interest in our project. Treatment of vandals and misguided newcomer editors has improved in recent years, even though there's still room for improvement. However, our project page—which many will examine before they make even a single edit—has only gotten more obtuse. Something, I believe, needs to be done.

I apologize if it came off as a rant, but I believe that we need to think this subject. It's critical to discuss how our project functions, how it attracts editors and how it will be sustained into the future. The excellent discussion far above this one, which dealt with streamlining the project, was a great start. More can and should be done, however, and I believe that the topic I've addressed here is an important element. Thanks for your patience during this long post. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 11:01, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree, for a while I've been worried about pointing users to WP:VG for fear they would get lost/overwhelmed/put off by the front page, and have recently decided to point them directly to WT:VG instead, so at least they can instantly see where they ask a question. - X201 (talk) 11:20, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
I disagree that that it's "organised in no particular fashion". Project related crap at the bottom, "about" sections on top. Could it be reorganised? Sure. Could the wording of everything be simplified? Of course. Much of the actual content extends all the way back to the earliest days of the project. Those were different times, and when we redesigned the page, we mostly carried everything over and simplified it from what the chaos that existed before even that. I am strongly opposed to splitting everything off into subpages like MILHIST though. It's extremely convenient to have everything accessible on one page. The page is useful to me as an editor, and I imagine others feel the same. We need to find a balance that will be accessible to newbies, while accomodating existing editors. The worst thing we could do is alienate our editors here by dumbing it down for everyone else, which is my main concern with this proposal.
Anyway, enough of my blathering. I made a rough start here. Feel free to tweak it. --Dorsal Axe 11:58, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
Have to say, I like the changes you've made! --PresN 18:38, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
Agreed. You can prolly also chop out "featured" and "good content" at the bottom since they are linked on the side. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 19:11, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
Nice work, Dorsal. Improvements could still be made, but you've done a very nice job so far. At the moment, one suggestion comes to mind: perhaps our progress bars could be separated from our "Goals". They've always thrown my eye off in their current location, even though I'm the one who put them there. Perhaps they could have their own section, or at least a unique heading? If we had a few more of them, like the ones MILHIST uses, it'd be a more justifiable split. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:21, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
Also, the "Related WikiProjects and task forces" bar looks like a heading when placed like that. Perhaps it could be moved to a better location? JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:37, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback everyone. Yeah, I'm not quite sure what to do with that bar. I saw MILHIST had something similar though, and it seems much better than the current list shoved to the side of the page. So I just randomly shoved this in for now to see if everything would look okay. I too am thinking about seperating the progress bars, but again, I'm not sure what would be the best way to go about it. Like you said, there really needs to be more in order to make a seperate section worthwhile. Anyway, I'm off to bed now. Everyone is free to tweak and change and test as they see fit.--Dorsal Axe 23:24, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps a third progress bar could be added: "10% of all articles C-class or above". That would give us an interesting new goal—one that would help us illustrate the superiority of C-class articles over Start- and Stub-class articles. MILHIST has a similar goal, but it's B-class. That's a bit too ambitious for our project, I think. Anyway, I've made some tweaks to your page, but more would be appreciated. My Wikipedia code skills are non-existent. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 01:34, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
I like it; for WP:SE I went with 100% above stub, but that's unreasonable for a project this size; I like the idea of 10% C. What's the current percent? --PresN 02:55, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
8.5%, apparently; added a counter to the proposed page, feel free to remove it. --PresN 03:19, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
Looks good. And thanks for adding the bar; as I said, I'm no code whiz. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 03:32, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
One more suggestion: I think that the "Make sure you are familiar with the following pages" stuff could be moved up to a subsection of "Participation". It's largely meant for the uninitiated, so it should be placed accordingly. Just my two cents. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 03:42, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we can make some more (radical) changes to the main project page, in order to make it more informative for everybody, not just newcomers. Maybe I'll whip up something in my sandbox in a little and pass it along to see what others think. –MuZemike 20:01, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Just playing the part of cheerleader- There are good ideas popping up here. I'm sure we can find a good balance between serving current members and attracting newcomers. (Guyinblack25 talk 22:13, 29 June 2011 (UTC))

Is there something we can do about the blur of color at the bottom? The project statistics are out of date and confusing, and not terribly helpful in my opinion, while the articles by quality/importantance is a loud mess, especially since they added the book/cat/disambig/file/etc segments. Is there a better way to display that information? Do we need to have it on the main page? --PresN 03:31, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

It's irrelevant to me whether the stats get kept or not, but just to say, I still update the stats every month in case someone wanted to create updated charts. MrKIA11 (talk) 14:28, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
I might get around to making new charts at some point, but I don't think they are that important to have on our main page either way. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:11, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps the quality and traffic charts could be reduced to wikilinks in a small paragraph? Both have separate pages as it is: here and here. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 02:22, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

MuZemike's layout

I've been doodling around with the general layout of the page (sandbox), and I personally would like to see some better, less "blocky" layout than what we currently have – or at least something that makes it look more 2011-style than 2005-style. Thoughts? (Note that it's not 100% perfect codewise, and I'm always open to other suggestions in that direction.) –MuZemike 19:22, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

  • That looks pretty good, actually. If further improved (section "bars" are a must, in my opinion) and combined with the content rework in Dorsal's sandbox, the project page would look very slick. The sidebar would need to be redesigned as well, though, since it clashes with that modernized border. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 23:03, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
I've updated my draft a little bit more (see here). Basically, I've included a big title upfront with some slightly larger text for the very beginning since that is more important. Otherwise, the plan would be to have all sections to have these "rounded box" layouts instead of the "blocky" style. The biggest part of my draft suggestion is that wikitables would be replaced with more flexible <div> and <span> tags and some crafty, but not too difficult to understand, column layouts. I have also done that to deprecate the tabular layout in the Sidebar, as you can see, and instead inserted a much simpler layout. As far as "section bars" are concerned, I went back to L2 headings, which produces that horizontal line in both the Monobook and Vector skins, but I can try other things is that is still not desirable.
As far as testing is concerned, this seems to work fine on the latest versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer, though I know for sure box-shadows and rounded corners don't work on older versions of IE, but I don't know if the general layout is compatible on older IE versions or not. If others can view the page in Opera or Chrome and make sure they work, that would be helpful.
My goal is to create a more modern, yet more simplistic-looking, layout which may be more appealing to newcomers and hopefully attract more people. –MuZemike 03:05, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Looking at all of the work being made to revamp the main page, it made me wonder: should be also redesign the talk page? GamerPro64 20:34, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
(To MuZemike) - hey, coding problem with the sidebar (at least in FF4) - if you expand enough sections (like taskforces) the sidebar runs over the participation section. When it gets long enough it pushes down the bottom of that section properly, so it just needs to do that to the top of it too. --PresN 20:54, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
@GamerPro64: I don't think much would need to be changed (as, if this is fine with everybody, would also revamp the Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Sidebar page as well), unless you feel we should likewise do the same with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/To do list, in which I'll leave to others if they wish to change it.
@PresN: In the current layout, I know if you expand everything in the sidebar, you get a whole bunch of whitespace in one of the main sections in the "Participation" section to offset that; I currently don't have that set in my sandbox, but I can probably get that to work and hopefully regardless of browser version. Also, keep in mind that other tweaks may also need to be made to make this work with Dorsal Axe's content proposal, which will affect how stuff can be laid out. –MuZemike 21:32, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
I tweaked it to fix the Firefox problem. No comment on trying to find a way to make it work, except to say that the only way to make it work is probably Javascript. --Izno (talk) 23:19, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm having a look at MuZe's draft, and only commenting on presentation:
  1. I can only say that I personally dislike and discourage round corners. It doesn't really work (in general) on the Internet, and especially not on a site so "straight" as Wikipedia. If you look around the site, almost nothing has curvature.
  2. Similarly, I dislike the shadow on the boxes (which comes as a side effect of using Template:Rounded corners), for much the same reasons. There's no reason for that much styling on borders; it's not important content.
  3. I suppose, with those two points in mind, you need to question the presence of the divs entirely. They don't add to the structure of the page in significant fashion, imo. Yes, this makes our page look more like the generic Wikipedia page. /musing
  4. Either way on those questions, I would reinstate a border on the sidebar, and the background should be appropriately colored as well. Right now it looks like "the white space that could have been" rather than a key navigation point in its own right.
--Izno (talk) 23:19, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
I think that we should stay away from code that doesn't work in all browsers and serves only as visual fluff. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 23:20, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Implementing the new project page

The draft in Dorsal Axe's sandbox is looking fairly complete. Only a few tiny problems (a few bits of phrasing and a missing gray bar for "Editing Practices") need to be fixed, in my opinion. I believe that it looks much, much better than the current one. Does anyone disagree with this draft being implemented as the new project page? JimmyBlackwing (talk) 04:39, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

I like the new layout a lot, though it would be really nice if each section were transcluded, instead of having one large awkward table (as is a problem with the current page). This would make it much nicer to update, and make it easier on watchlists. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 06:14, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
That's a good idea; I've had problems with that table in the past. I'd implement it if I could, but I'm completely hopeless with Wikipedia code. Does anyone more competent want to give it a shot? JimmyBlackwing (talk) 09:23, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
That would need new sub-page to be made for each section. I think it would be best done straight in Wikipedia: namespace once the current page is replaced, rather than adding to Dorsal Axe's sandbox. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:37, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
Although if it's done in the sandbox, it's easy to move everything in one go, rather than moving the current format, and then breaking it up. MrKIA11 (talk) 16:24, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
Support. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:40, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
Support as is. While I understand the ease of transcluding, that means more pages to potentially watch. Really, aside from maybe some tables that should be transcluded into the layout, the VG project page doesn't need that much updating. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 17:06, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
Ditto Fuchs. --Izno (talk) 23:19, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Support as is - apart from playing with the wording, the page gets edited once a month- only the featured and good content pages see a lot of activity, and those are already subpaged. I'll move it in tonight or tomorrow if there's no objections; as this is a content shift we can still debate Muzemike's changes separately, as well as the above discussions on removing subpages from the infobox. --PresN 21:26, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 21:58, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
Ditto. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 08:11, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
I see that you've already done it. Looks great. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 08:28, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Merging proposals

Hey, we all seem to be pretty happy with Dorsal's sandbox as far as content goes. How are we feeling in terms of Muzemike's structure proposal? Do we want to try to merge the two together- to put Dorsal's content layout in Muzemike's rounded corners? --PresN 21:35, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Let's just wait until the dust settles/has support on both accounts. --Izno (talk) 23:19, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

This should be put back in. Most active wikiprojects do this. Why? Our scope overlaps with thousands of articles from different projects. We might not have an answer here and so there should be an easy way to direct newbies to other projects that cover a vast majority of the same pages we do. What pages are included is debatable, but the lack of it goes against what is being designed here: to make the main page more newbie-friendly.陣内Jinnai 03:00, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

It's there, hit show on "Related WikiProjects and task forces". --PresN 20:37, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Source discussion

We have some sources up for discussion at WP:VG/S again. Some additional comments wouldn't hurt. Prime Blue (talk) 12:38, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Automated updates to our Featured and Good content subpages

I'm no programmer, so this may well be a ridiculous question, but would it be possible for our Featured and Good content subpages to be updated by a bot? They usually lag far behind current events—understandable, given that they're a pain to update manually. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 17:23, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Is it possible? Yes, except we couldn't easily have proper subcategories ("Individual games", "Game series", etc.), and page titles probably wouldn't have proper italicization. Honestly, though, I'm not sure we need to have it updated automatically. How far do they tend to lag? I haven't noticed any significant delays. –Drilnoth (T/C) 17:45, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Out of recent events:
  • July 17 GAN Pilotwings is not listed.
  • Disco Kid, whose nomination failed on the 7th, is still listed as being at GAN.
  • Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri and Resident Evil 2, which both passed FAC on the 10th, are still listed as being at FAC.
There are plenty of other examples, but this gives you the general idea. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 06:40, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
Just throwing an idea out there. What if we had a bot update the nomination lists and an new or recent GC/FC section at the top? The bot could add and remove nominations, but only add to the recent promotions list. That would require an editor to move them to the appropriate section. We'd also have a running list of the new promotions. Thoughts? Is that even possible? (Guyinblack25 talk 15:02, 20 July 2011 (UTC))
Another question: is it really worth the effort? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:52, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
I don't think it is. If you install User:Anomie/linkclassifier, it is very easy to see which articles are featured or good (usually... it's been slightly buggy these past few days), making it easy to update the page manually. I highly recommend that script for most every Wikipedia user, for that and other reasons. –Drilnoth (T/C) 15:57, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
Oh hey, that's awesome! Always wanted something like that. --PresN 19:04, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
I guess it's not a realistic proposal, then. I thought that might be the case, but I wanted to make sure. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 18:00, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

User changing EU to PAL + Date changes

A user (See Special:Contributions/Darkness2005) spent yesterday making a a fair few edits where they changed the release region from EU to PAL; no refs were added or altered. The user also changed the dates on some articles without reference changes as well. - X201 (talk) 10:41, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Those edits should be reverted. PAL and EU are not interchangeable. They're not even close. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 12:11, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

List of video game console emulators and emulator articles - save from possible deletion

I have noticed that many emulator (namely Sega ones) articles are being redirected to List of video game console emulators. Is there any way that members could satisfy the concerns that it is just a directory of mostly, if not all, non-notable articles by adding direct secondary references to the article, and the emulator articles it links to? Otherwise, I fear a widespread articles for deletion will be made across all these articles and the aforementioned list on the basis of that Wikipedia is not a directory, the "Emulator Zone", failure of meeting reliable sources and verifiability and failure of meeting notability policies and guidelines. --tgheretford (talk) 17:06, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

You can save it from permanent deletion by copying it to Wikia. SharkD  Talk  18:13, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
Some of the emulators do barely meet notability guidelines, like DeSmuME and NO$GBA, which both have 2 good sources. If any of these went up for deletion, I would find more sources and save them. Blake (Talk·Edits) 19:17, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
To clarify what I'm doing - I'm methodically going through all the emulator articles. If an article appears unsourced, or sourced with trivial coverage, I will search for and request significant sources. If nothing is forthcoming I will take the article to AfD if it is unsourced, or redirect to the "List of" article if the software is at least verifiable. I am not going to take an article to AfD for a discussion on redirection. I'll also note I've had some success in verifying some of the software listed at List of video game console emulators - I am actually putting the work in. Marasmusine (talk) 05:50, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Let me get this straight. You're unilaterally bypassing AfD by redirecting articles and you think that's right as rain? ButOnMethItIs (talk) 08:50, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
I think Marasmusine was clear, he/she will first search and ask for sources. And I see in his/her contribution that this is exactly what he/she is doing. This is much more than most editors bother to do. And if there is a SNOW chance of surviving AfD, then redirect is the best venue. Any editor can later review the page and if needed AfD it or restore it with proper sources. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:08, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
There is a problem with Marasmusine's methodology, though: it leaves no trace that pages like Genesis Plus and Kega Fusion held content in previous versions, since users get redirected directly to the list page. Marasmusine should leave a merge tag at Talk:List of video game console emulators for each article redirected this way, as mandated per WP:MERGE#Performing_the_merger, to avoid this problem. Marasmusine's edits technically count as "selective mergers". Diego (talk) 12:22, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
I thought Marasmusine is redirecting and not merging? No content is copied over, is it? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:36, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
A "redirect is a page which has no content itself". The pages that Marasmusine blanked had content themselves, and that content is being made difficult to find, which was my point. I have been bitten by similar redirects in the past on articles with interesting content that could be rescued, but for which I didn't knew of their existence because of this same procedure. Diego (talk) 12:57, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Marasmusine is completely in process for not using AFD to discuss the aspect of "redirecting" since there's no admin requirement and the content can be restored via page histories. It also sounds like he is copying the basic aspects over to the list article. The information is not lost, you just have to go to the redirect page and review the history of the article (again, a non-admin action). --MASEM (t) 13:06, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

More reason to follow the merge procedure. I don't dispute that Marasmusine doesn't need to follow AFD. But following the link back to the redirect page is not obvious, since the "redirected from"... doesn't offer information as to whether the redirect page contains a history or was created directly as a redirect. Test it for yourself to understand what I mean. If you arrived at this page, how would you tell that this content existed in the redirect history? Diego (talk) 13:29, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

When you are talking live redirects and not ones in page histories, then when you hit a redirected page, right under the title of the page you land on will be "Redirected from blah blah". you can hit the last part of that and will be taken to the page with the redirection, from which you can look at its page history, and restore if needed. --MASEM (t) 13:34, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm not getting my point across, I already knew all that! What I mean is that "Redirected from blah blah" looks exactly the same when the redirect page has a long history and when it doesn't. In order to find out that a page previously had a significant history, and it was not just a 1-edit created redirect, you would need to follow all redirects you go through, just to check it out. The ideal would be that the MediaWiki interface would provide that information that the redirected page was not always so, but failing that, the {{Copied|from|to}} tag was designed to provide exactly that missing information. Diego (talk) 13:41, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Yea, I'm not seeing what your issue is. If you know the emulator name and find that it dropped you to the list (aka Kega Fusion), there's one click to get to the now-redirected page and one click to review the history to see if the redirect was new or over existing info. There's also "What Links Here" on the left toolbar that shows all pages, including redirects, that point to the list page. But I'm not seeing the "difficulty" of what you're talking about here, unless if you're trying to judge at one single time the state of all the redirected pages to the list. --MASEM (t) 13:49, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
So, are you willing to follow all redirects every time in your life that you find one? Or would you prefer that your fellow editor that created the redirect would leave a notice at the talk page to help you find which ones were created from a blanked page? My point is that one doesn't usually expect that a redirect page has history, because most of them don't; so expecting all editors to always follow all the existing income links in all the pages they try to edit, to find out whether some of them might include some deleted information, is overkill over compelling the single editor that created the redirect to notify of the exceptional situation, as the existing guideline already requires. Diego (talk) 13:55, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
First, the information is not deleted when a page is made into a redirect. It is simply pushed in the page history. Second, it is still the burden of those wishing to retain information to do the leg work. Marasumine has followed the process: notified the target talk page that he will redirect it within a few weeks if no sources are pending, and then after that, added the redirect. Yes, it would have been nicer if he had a larger coordination of this with help of others, but that in no way is required. --MASEM (t) 14:05, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
Masem, I'm not trying to attack Marasumine in any way nor imply that he didn't follow process. I'm trying to expose a flaw in the existing process so that it can be amended in the future, to improve the result. Blanking pages does make information more difficult than usual to find, as I explained above; and if there are cases in which some content from the blanked page was copied to the target it should be noticed at the talk page of the article which the redirect points to, to comply with the CC-BY licensing of the content. I'm not saying this is the case here, I've not checked all Marasumine's edits; I'm only pointing out the reasons why the merge guideline was created, since I think that the same motivations apply to this case. Diego (talk) 14:18, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
This is not the right venue for such a proposal though, you need to propose this at a broader discussion board. Finding hidden information is for those interested in it and back-tracing redirect and viewing history is relatively very easy on MediaWiki. This content is not intended for general reader; lack of notability is the reason why it was redirected in the first place. Also, I may be mistaken, but I don't see where Marasmusine copied original content from the pages, so merge guidelines do not apply here and nothing in redirect guidelines asks for a backlink. Plus, simply mentioning in the edit summary that the content is copied can be sufficient attribution. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:31, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
I think what they are doing is fine. Bypassing AfD is a good thing for articles which the outcome seems obvious. AfD stands for Articles for Deletion, and thus, only articles you want deleted should be taken there. Taking things to AfD that you want merged or redirected just kills the purpose of that system. Sure, sometimes that is the outcome of the discussions, but that should not be the nominator's wishes. If you think a subject that was redirected was notable, then restore it and find more sources. Blake (Talk·Edits) 15:10, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
I would also feel miffed if an article were simply redirected without going to AfD. It's pretty rude, IMO. SharkD  Talk  20:48, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Bot cleanup of Microsoft Studios (game studio)

User Darkquest21 recently went through and changed all instances of Microsoft Game Studios to Microsoft Studios per the recent rebranding at E3 2011. While he meant well we go by the historical name. I didn't think much of this as I figured a few of us could clean it up, but there are 250+ edits of this sort and I just don't have the time to do them all (I did the first page of 50 along with other users). Obviously unreleased games will likely have the new branding, but there's a big back catalog to fix. Can anyone help? --Teancum (talk) 13:26, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

It should likely be a task easy to do in AWB, but I don't have time at the moment to babysit a run through it. --MASEM (t) 13:32, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
I rollbacked/undid them already (of course if I'd read this beforehand, I would've let the bot do the work, oh well). --Mika1h (talk) 15:40, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Simplifying the Video Games project

A recent discussion on WP:MILHIST about simplifying their project structure and departments[5] made me think about whether a similar eye towards our own project might be in order. I'd say on first look that we're nowhere near as byzantine as MILHIST and never will be, owing to our demographics, but it might still be a good idea to see what departments are working, what are just a drain, and how we can trim down that looong VG sidebar to the right on this page. Thoughts? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 14:58, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't see what could be taken out except for maybe Video game images, which could be turned into a "guideline" instead of a "task force". Wikipedia:WikiProject_Video_games/Inactive_project_cleanup#Current would be useful for cleaning up inactive projects and task forces. Blake (Talk·Edits) 15:23, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Blake on the VG images department; it's pretty inactive. Perhaps the Assessment department could be streamlined as well. Our internal peer review system has bothered me for quite awhile, as many of the articles placed there receive less reviews than those in the larger peer review pool. Finally, I think our Reference library could do with some streamlining and standardizing to increase its ease-of-use. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 17:50, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
I'd say drop the assessment department- a seperate VG peer review made sense a few years ago, when you'd be much more likely to get a VG editor that knew what they were talking about as opposed to just crickets and an auto-review at regular PR, but in more recent times the local PR has dried up while general PR has gotten stronger. MILHIST seems to be coming to the same conclusion. We seem to be doing a good job with linking PRs from the main template (by which I mean GamerPro64 and MrKIA11 do a good job), so dropping the work of transcluding the PRs onto another page seems like a good idea to me.
As to other sidebar links, I don't think we need the "archive/history" subpage links for Assessment and Collaboration since you can get to them through the parent pages and practically never need to visit on their own. --PresN 20:04, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Also probably getting rid of the talk page links that don't actually support discussions would probably just direct people better. If we get rid of the PR we should prolly have a full-fledged discussion on it--but either way I'd want to wait and see what the dissolution of the MILHIST PR does to the peer review pool. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:10, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
I'm not so sure that there is much to be learned from MILHIST - their articles almost always overlap with other WikiProjects. Take Hundred Years' War, for example - is covered by WikiProjects: Middle Ages, European History, France and Military History. So if MILHIST simply went away, it wouldn't really prevent many articles from being reviewed. But videogames are different - it's relatively rare for our articles to be covered by other WikiProjects. Super Mario 64, for example is a majorly important article - arguably comparable to Hundred Years' War in importance - and this WikiProject is the only one that covers it. SteveBaker (talk) 16:28, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
I think that calling Super Mario 64 as important as the Hundred Years' War is pretty ridiculous, honestly. Anyway, MILHIST is probably the most organized WikiProject in existence, and none of the other WikiProjects that cover those subjects are even 1/10th as productive. There would not be nearly as many high quality articles without MILHIST, and, because of that, I think we should take as much as we can from them. We're one of the top WikiProjects, but we still fall well below them in terms of our number of quality articles. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 18:05, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
I didn't say that the actual hundred years was was less important than some video game...that would be ridiculous. (Although considerably more people played SuperMario than were involved in the hundred years war!) What I meant was that their respective articles are both "High" on their importance scales. I bet Mario gets more wikipedia readers than hundred years war too! SteveBaker (talk) 19:54, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, I imagine Joan of Arc might love Super Mario but would be miffed that she would get relegated to a footnote after discussing the N64 :P My point isn't to say we should do everything like Milhist--we are different projects with different cultures and far different editorial issues in general--but some overlap in common practices make sense to appraise. Keeping bureaucracy down is always good. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 18:11, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
That's really my point. The huge overlap in coverages between MILHIST and other projects permits a different approach than this project requires. The importance scale is the means by which projects like the ones to put the important bits of Wikipedia on DVD-ROM choose which articles to keep and which they don't have space for. Those kinds of projects need our help in identifying which video game topics are important and which are not. Super Mario 64, for example is important because it was really the first of a new genre - the 3D platformer. Giving it a "High" importance rating helps other people to understand that it's an important article. That MILHIST doesn't rate articles by importance is much less critical because other WikiProjects can pick up the slack for them. We don't have that luxury. SteveBaker (talk) 19:54, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Keeping the discussion going-
The ideas on the table are:
Thoughts or other suggestions? (Guyinblack25 talk 18:32, 3 June 2011 (UTC))
Agree with all the above (obviously :P) although I think we should hold off on the PR because I don't want to potentially dump more work on Brian, Finetooth, and the other reviewers at PR. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 18:36, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
I don't know about the peer reviews, as they can be helpful for in-house reviews in which peer reviewers outside the project (or the video gaming realm) may not understand how some things may be organized. However, I do agree on the images page, though that was not much of a "task force" per se; that can certainly be rewritten as a useful guideline, as we do deal with a lot of non-free images here. –MuZemike 19:50, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
I would redirect VGI to WP:VG/GL#Screenshots and cover art, myself. Were we thinking to remove all of the subpage links, or particular ones? Which, if the latter? --Izno (talk) 20:44, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
I think a separate page of guidelines for working with video game related images would be helpful. We could explain some of the more subtle nuances to selecting and evaluating images for articles.
As far as the removing links from the side bar, I recommend:
  • Naming convention is already briefly covered in the article guidelines
  • Assessment Archive and Bot log are also linked on the main assessment page. Requests can stay for ease of use though.
  • The Peer review Archive and Collaboration Collaboration are similar to the Assessment Archive.
  • If the image department becomes a guideline, I'd treat it like the Naming convention and remove it.
  • Popular pages is linked twice. Once under Articles and again under WikiProject.
  • Wikipedia 0.7 workshop has come and gone. I think we should remove it.
Thoughts? (Guyinblack25 talk 21:35, 3 June 2011 (UTC))
  • With regard to our internal peer review system, I'd argue that our excellent to-do list removes any concern about VG editors not being able to locate articles to review. Also, very few of our internal peer reviews actually receive meaningful feedback, but the ones placed in the overall pool often do. For example, I recently weighed my options when putting an article up at peer review, and decided that the external reviews were my best bet; I've seen too many internal ones sit idle. Sure enough, I received an excellent review from WPVG's own User:PresN, User:David Fuchs and User:Prime Blue, which shows the power of the to-do list. Even if they hadn't reviewed it, though, the article at least had a chance of being seen by a random non-VG editor in the overall pool. Personally, I don't plan on using the WPVG peer review system for any future articles; it seems simultaneously redundant and less efficient than the standard one. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 05:52, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
Hi, what's up? I've been working on some non-VG articles related to my degree under my real name account. But, on WP:VG, what about:
  • Fold WP:VG/RL into WP:VG/S, or the list on WP:VG/S into WP:VG/RL.
  • I'd ponder killing assessment alltogether. There's two points to assessing articles: (1) allowing articles to get feedback and editors to a sense of achievement, and (2) the whole Wikipedia 1.0 thing. PR, GA and FA do good enough on both accounts. Most people ignore assessment and go for GA/FA anyway. Is there anything that requires assessment? In absence of distinct benefits, concentration (into GA and PR) is good. If the VG editors that assess stuff now go for GA and PR via the to-do list no good stuff is lost. And that's coming from me, who's done a ton of assessment.
  • Kill collaboration of the week (.. again). I think we have to realise most people in WP:VG edit a small subset of articles they have a special interest in. The project can help with guidelines and common problem-solving/tips, but I can't see it working much...
User:Krator (t c) 14:41, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
Should we put all the various proposals to a vote then? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:25, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
Like a straw poll to get the discussions going? Or jump right into them like in sub sections of this thread? (Guyinblack25 talk 19:18, 6 June 2011 (UTC))
I think the article request section should be given the heave-ho. Relatively few project members are interested in it, since it requires spending time writing articles about subjects which you may not give a tinker's cuss about, the backlog's getting ever longer, and a large minority (if not majority) of requests are for non-notable games etc. which aren't suitable for creation, or articles which have been deleted (usually on reasonable grounds). Someoneanother 22:29, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Images department to image guideline

Let's get a consensus about switching the department to a guideline. Please state your position (support or oppose) and a reason why. (Guyinblack25 talk 14:12, 7 June 2011 (UTC))

Looks like we have consensus. I assume we'll let this sit until all the discussions are done. But someone is welcome to take it upon themselves prior to that. (Guyinblack25 talk 02:53, 15 June 2011 (UTC))

Retire VG peer review

Next up is retiring our project's peer review. This might be a polarizing topic, so please be concise and assume good faith. (Guyinblack25 talk 02:53, 15 June 2011 (UTC))

Ending the COTW (again)

If no one minds, I'll start things up again. The question: should we retire the Collaboration of the Week drive? Please state your opinion below. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:10, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

  • Support - I don't even remember COTW being consensusly brought back in the first place. However, it should be best to retire it since no one really works on the articles. GamerPro64 22:18, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Support - unfortunately. I think we all like the idea of COTW, but when it died the first time in 2007 it was completely un-supported, and within weeks of setting up the automated version in 2009 it was dead again (Quest (gaming), the 7th one, got 3 edits during its week.) Time to put it back to rest; there's just not enough people who are lacking articles to work on. --PresN 22:45, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
    • I agree. Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss became a featured article thanks to the COTW, but I can't think of a single example since then. It just isn't needed. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 00:57, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
      • And that one was basically all you, too. --PresN 01:04, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
        • Ha! I wouldn't say that, though. I took it the last 75% of the way, but I wouldn't have bothered if the first 25% hadn't been there. There was basically no article before the COTW, but, after everyone worked it over, there was a solid foundation. That's (ideally) the power of the COTW, and it's why I'm sad to see it go. But since no one bothers with it anymore, it's become dead weight—and an irritating reminder of the project's more active days. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 01:30, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong support - In the end we all work on the articles we like. A collaboration is good in theory, but it's just not realistic. --Teancum (talk) 22:53, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose The whole point of automating it was to allow people who suddenly decide they want to participate one day to do just that, without the rest of us having to establish the whole process again. Because every time we get rid of it, people keep demanding it back again. COTW in its current form involves virtually zero bureaucracy (we have no obligation to post diffs, although some kind person seems content to do so). I wouldn't be entirely opposed to repositioning the page so that the random article selector can be used for another similar purpose though. It's a really useful feature, and I don't think it's fair to automatically assume that no one uses it. --Dorsal Axe 15:22, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
    • I was leaning towards removal for this until I read Dorsal Axe's comment, which brings up a good point. The only point I can see against the Collab is that it's aesthetically in the way on the To-do list. Overall it brings more positives than negatives. It drew attention to Ultima Underworld. I would probably have never worked on Joust (video game) if it hadn't been the weekly collab. I'm sure there are more cases, albeit a small amount. The current form has helped and eats little of the resources we're trying to consolidate. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:35, 22 June 2011 (UTC))
      • That's a fairly convincing argument. Perhaps it could be repositioned on the To-Do list to look at little better, though. If we're going to continue featuring the COTW, why not give it a center-top position like in the old days? JimmyBlackwing (talk) 20:31, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment: Does anyone have anything else to add? If not, this section of the poll will fall under "no consensus", and we'll move on to the next point. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:03, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
How exactly would it be no consensus if there are three Supports and one Oppose? It would be more close to the retirement side on the scale. GamerPro64 22:15, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
Dorsal's argument convinced Guyinblack and myself, even though we didn't technically "vote". That makes 3 supports and 3 opposes, meaning that we're leaning toward a no-consensus resolution unless other people show up. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:50, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment - The reason I proposed bringing the COTW back in the first place was that there were several old failed collaboration projects laying around, and I thought the biggest problem was the nomination process. I'll be honest, I was more interested in implementing the automated selection than I was with the actual editing. I would not object if editors find this process counter-productive. but it is relatively harmless as-is. When it first started falling into disrepair, it was suggested that we switch to once-a-month. If this is kept open, even if this is a "no-consensus", I think a month is a more realistic timeframe. Also, if this is not already done, having the bot post a message on this talk page will help draw attention (I think a single unanswered post will not be archived). ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 01:27, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • In light of the recent comments, I'll officially !vote oppose. It is not harming the project's efforts; it's only not meeting the intended aspirations, which most of us would categorize as unrealistic for our project culture. I think Dorsal and Johnny's suggestions to reposition it on the todo list and tweak the format would help the process and assuage people's complaints. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:11, 24 June 2011 (UTC))
    • I agree with everything you just said. I'd also like to reiterate my belief that the new COTM (not weekly anymore, per Johnny) should be placed center-top on the To-Do list, like it was many, many years ago. I've never liked its current placement; it makes it seem like an afterthought. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 21:27, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. It's been tried many ways, but unofficial collabs of two or three or a small group of editors has always worked better with tangible results. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 17:32, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Change to COTM and have a bot advertise it. I think if we do that it can be salvaged. If its every week, people will quickly ignore it. once a month and they might actually check it out if the bot posts it on this talk page (and anyone who signs up).陣内Jinnai 02:44, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Closing the article requests page

The discussion above was more complicated than expected, but it looks like everyone's had their say. Let's move on to another issue: ending support for internal article requests. As always, please state your opinion below. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 05:18, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

  • Neutral: I've seen some good article come out of this page. And some of them may have never been created without the request. But the lack of attention makes me think that this would be best retired and tagged historical.
    On a side note, do we have way to track all our historical pages once they are removed from the side bar? (Guyinblack25 talk 15:35, 29 June 2011 (UTC))
Yes. --Dorsal Axe 15:44, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:19, 29 June 2011 (UTC))
  • Oppose closing. It may seem unused at first glance, but in the past year I've created at least a couple of articles based on requests that have been on that page. It's a great way to also draw in people interested in video games on Wikipedia who might not be so adept at creatin articles themselves. Nomader (talk) 15:58, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose I think it is good to see what people would want as articles. If these turn out to be un-fillable, then it is good to teach the users why it can't be an article. Blake (Talk·Edits) 16:13, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment: The initial comments are in favor of keeping the page. However, do we have any ideas about how to better maintain it if it is kept? (Guyinblack25 talk 16:19, 29 June 2011 (UTC))
    • I would also like to hear someone's opinion on that. Personally, I don't lean one way or the other on the issue of closing the page; Someoneanother brought it up earlier, and I thought it was important to discuss. However, I've worked on the page's backlog in the past, and it was not easy. More definitely needs to be done to maintain it. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:29, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Emphatic Support - Yes, good has come of it, but in the end the overwhelming majority of requests will never have the notability and coverage needed to merit inclusion. There are very few users who request that don't have the ability to create these articles themselves. To say that a few good articles came from it seems irrelevant. I dunno. I just feel like if there's interest in an article and there's coverage it'll get made. All this serves is a place for people too lazy to make articles. Saying it creates less traffic for the AfDs is also wrong - it's such an obscure page that you already need to know a bit about notability, reliable sources and WikiProjects to even find it. --Teancum (talk) 17:13, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose – Sorry, but I still think there is some utility behind this page, especially in the fact that it encourages smart article creation. –MuZemike 17:21, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Second on what Muze said. I have seen articles created from the request page and while some are stubby, some are now at GA status (example: Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner, Kid Klown in Crazy Chase). GamerPro64 20:46, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Support - as Teancum says the overwhelming majority will never be notable. While there may be a handful of those that are created, that isn't evidence they would not have been created if the page didn't exist.陣内Jinnai 02:47, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I brought Kid Klown in Crazy Chase, an article requested on there, to GA status. It clearly has its uses. - New Age Retro Hippie (talk) (contributions) 03:01, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Support I have created a number of articles requested there myself, so it's not that nobody ever fulfills them, but the set-up encourages drive-by dumping of hopeless cases, due to lack of notability, inacessability of sources or other issues. It is a great shame that so many articles that are created end up being deleted, but the request page doesn't salve that, it just dumps the problem onto other editors. The backlog, even after myself and others have spent large amounts of time working through the requests, is at more than 2 years old and rising. It would be better to provide help here for those interested in creating articles than encouraging them to leave requests which may not be eligible for creation or just get left for years on end, in my humble opinion. Someoneanother 17:32, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Improvements

Since it looks like most people want to keep the page, how can we improve it so that it functions better. I'm sure we can all agree that the backlog is too much, and I think that is were most of the support to shut down the page is rooted. Ideas? (Guyinblack25 talk 15:10, 7 July 2011 (UTC))

maybe we can advertise the request a lil more...maybe in the goals section or participation section of the articles. just a thought. some of the project pages seem to be hidden in that big list. just a thought.Bread Ninja (talk) 05:29, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Trimming the sidebar

Looks like the Requests page stays where it is. On to the next point, which isn't a straw poll so much as a discussion. Which parts of our current sidebar could/should be trimmed? JimmyBlackwing (talk) 09:59, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

As far as removing links from the side bar, I recommend:
  • Naming convention is already briefly covered in the article guidelines
  • Video game images should be removed now that it is a guideline for the same reason as Naming convention
  • Assessment Archive and Bot log are also linked on the main assessment page. Requests can stay for ease of use though.
  • The Peer review Archive and Collaboration History are similar to the Assessment Archive.
  • Popular pages is linked twice. Once under Articles and again under WikiProject.
  • Wikipedia 0.7 workshop has come and gone. I think we should remove it.
Thoughts? (Guyinblack25 talk 15:06, 7 July 2011 (UTC))

Hello maybe this is the wrong place to post. Can the engine be added to the sidebar? Has this been discussed?108.28.30.122 (talk) 03:34, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I believe the venue you are looking for 108.28.30.122 is Template talk:Infobox video game. @Guy, I think all those things are fine, and that if the talk pages for any other sections just link back to other funnel pages we should remove the links on the sidebar to prevent confusion. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:16, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Any more comments? Otherwise I think we can start implementing these... Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 15:57, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
I guess give it till Friday for good measure and then we start trimming. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:23, 20 July 2011 (UTC))

Implementing the changes

Looks like everything's been hammered out. Here's what's been decided:

  • The images department needs to be archived and reworked as a guideline. (this might have happened already)
  • The internal VG peer review system needs to be closed and archived.
  • The collaboration of the week needs to be reworked. (full discussion above)
  • The sidebar needs to be trimmed. (exact elements that should be removed are listed in the discussion directly above)

I don't feel comfortable performing any of these tasks, since my knowledge of Wikipedia's back end is very limited. Does anyone else mind starting in on the changes? JimmyBlackwing (talk) 21:48, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Update
(Guyinblack25 talk 14:06, 26 July 2011 (UTC))
Closed the PR process, marked as historical, removing from sidebar now. --PresN 18:13, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
I have changed the COTW to COTM. However, can someone create Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Collaboration of the month/History? GamerPro64 18:38, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
Should we move Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Collaboration of the week/History to preserve the edit history? (Guyinblack25 talk 21:34, 27 July 2011 (UTC))
Yes, done. --PresN 23:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
Great work, guys. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 03:31, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
One more thing: would it be possible to have an automated message about the COTM appear on this talk page? As in... each month, a new topic would be posted that declared which article was up for the collaboration, inviting users to join in. The concept was discussed above, and I think it'd be a good way to get the conversation going each month. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:48, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

vgrelease template, proposed addition

I've made one bold addition to the {{vgrelease}} template, by adding a WW parameter for worldwide release (as noted, "INT" is for international releases which are different beasts altogether). However, unlike the other parameters, I have not included a rendered abbreviation in the output because if you are using WW, that pretty much implies that there should be no other entries (worldwide being implied broadly, so if a title comes out in NA, most of EU, Australia, but for some reason not in Germany until 2 weeks later, it's still effectively a world-wide release). However, if someone can come up with both a good clear abbreviation for world-wide and an article to link to like for the others, that can be added.

But I would like to add parameters that allow the vgrelease to bring in the system identifications as part of the date. That is, for the example of Limbo (video game), there would still be four vgrelease templtes, but each one would bring in the system information. I propose it be done ala the following: {{vgrelease|system1=[[Xbox 360]]|system1sub=[[Xbox Live Arcade]]|system2=[[PlayStation 3]]|system2sub=[[PlayStation Network]]|NA=Jan 1, 2012|EU=Jan 12, 2012}} The system parameters would be completely optional and would not render anything if not present; making this change does not break any existing use of vgrelease. But if present, would render the text as such:

Xbox 360
(Xbox Live Arcade)
PlayStation 3
(PlayStation Network)
NAJan 1, 2012
EUJan 12, 2012

I'd probably include 3-4 system parameters, that would account for most from there. Note that this covers one cohesive set of release dates for one product on one or more systems. If there are multiple release dates in a region, you would still need a separate one for each. (Eg , Limbo would still require 4 vgrelease templates to cover all those date points) --MASEM (t) 15:26, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Edge republishes 150 classic reviews

[6]

These go all the way back to 1993. Mind you, they are for more influential titles, so if you're looking for sources on obscure games, may need to look elsewhere. --MASEM (t) 13:55, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

But I found a review for God Hand. I think that game is obscure is more ways than one. GamerPro64 14:09, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
An unfortunate lack of Looking Glass Studios-related material, aside from the System Shock 2 review. I'll take what I can get, though. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 19:00, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Wow, there are some real oldies (*chuckle* a few almost two whole decades old) in there. Very nice find. Thanks. (Guyinblack25 talk 19:06, 28 July 2011 (UTC))
Reading through all of the reviews, I am actually upset that they didn't have the reviewers name in them. GamerPro64 22:03, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Edge never do bylines on reviews. Its been a policy of theirs since day one. - X201 (talk) 08:08, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm disappointed in the lack of fighting games. Only two Tekkens, a few Street Fighters, Virtua Fighter and Soul Calibur. In a list of 150 games, there could've at least been a Mortal Kombat. Well, better something than nothing, maybe I can get cracking on Tekken 3. Sincerely Subzerosmokerain (talk) 23:50, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Wow. They definitely were not using the 7-9 scale for their old review scores. TIE Fighter scored a 7/10, SimCity 2000 an 8/10, Diablo a 7/10, AvP a 4/10, and DOOM a 7/10. Pretty harsh by today's standards. Or maybe that's just for PC games since console games scored a few 9s. SharkD  Talk  02:39, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
By today's standards, if you give a mainstream AAA game a below 8 review, you get spammed with their PR lawyers for libel or whatever. Just sayin' :) —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:02, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
Which reminds me, I should start work on Rise of the Robots when I get a chance ;) It was only the highest-rated video game of 1994. Oh, wait... –MuZemike 08:28, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
Hence, the 7-9 scale. SharkD  Talk  09:17, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Metal Gear COTM

Anyone interested in improving Metal Gear this month? It's kind of a mess, but I don't think that taking it up to B-Class would be out of the question. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 06:21, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Rugrats, version on PC

Hello, I posted a message in Talk:Rugrats: Search for Reptar, but nobody answered me. Can you see this please ? The article is a Good Article, so this is important ! MicroCitron (talk) 14:39, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

"distributor" field and digital distribution

I have seen a commonly recurring issue of "Valve" (among others, example) being listed as a distributor for games that use Steam/was released on Steam. The practice doesn't seem correct to me, Valve do not perform an active role in the distribution, they are licensing their software/platform/drm to whoever is publishing the game, and performing an online retail role. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Яehevkor ✉ 19:06, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that's exactly how the distributor field is supposed to be used. It's debatable whether or not the field should exist though. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 19:35, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
Is it really far removed from listing high street retailers as "distributors"? Яehevkor ✉ 20:17, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
If the distributor field is used like that, it's pretty much a duplicate field of redundant information, because Valve is the only possible distributor for Steam titles (similar to how the media field is restricted to platforms that have several types of media). In the same way, Nintendo is not listed as distributor for Virtual Console games, as these titles are not released by anyone else. Then again, the distributor field is pretty useless anyway: if a company handles a game in a specific region, it can be easily covered in the publisher field. And in a not-too-distant time, we should start a discussion on digital re-releases anyway, because more and more of those pop up every year. It's getting rather ridiculous to cover them all, and more and more, it seems like these are no more than promotional listings. Prime Blue (talk) 20:47, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Alphabetizing platforms

I noticed a user alphabetizing platforms Microsoft Windows, Playstation 3, XBox 360, which strikes me as very odd. It seems to me they should either be sorted Playstation 3, Microsoft Windows (ignoring the Microsoft), XBox 360, or Microsoft Windows, Microsoft XBox 360, Sony Playstation 3. I understand the current sorting is based off of the article titles, but that doesn't seem appropriate for alphabetizing. Just thought I'd bring that up. Some guy (talk) 15:08, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think it is appropriate. Can you add who the editor or IP address is that's doing it? GamerPro64 15:12, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
It came about because of petty fanboy edits (that still happen, although a damn site less frequently), consensus was reached that platforms should go in alphabetical order. We use the article name of the platform. if MS want to name the next Xbox as AaaaaaardvarkBox 4 then they're free to do so. - X201 (talk) 15:18, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Where are they being alphabetized? If it's in a navigation template, then alphabetical is the best way to be neutral. If it's release dates in an infobox, then chronological is probably best. If it's within the prose of an article, then it's very dependent on the context of the paragraph/section and the original source. (Guyinblack25 talk 15:50, 1 August 2011 (UTC))
Actually, it's chronological, then alphabetical (in infoboxes, as Guyinblack25 noted). Prime Blue (talk) 15:51, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
The user is Phrix89 (talk · contribs). He's a bit difficult to talk to. He's been alphabatizing in the infoboxes and prose. As far as the reason for alphabetizing, I realize it prevents fanboyism, I just have issue with the sorting criteria. I don't think the "Microsoft" part of "Microsoft Windows" should be considered during alphabetizing, as it doesn't fit within the naming scheme of the other two platforms. The Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 articles use their respective titles because this is common usage; "Windows" is the common usage for the operating system, but since it shares a name with a common building fixture the "Microsoft" is necessary to disambiguate. However, in common usage, nobody is going to say "Do you play Call of Duty on the Xbox 360 or Microsoft Windows?" - most people drop the "Microsoft" when referring to the operating system at all, especially in a computing or gaming context, so you'll get "I play on Windows". My two cents, anyway. Some guy (talk) 21:04, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
If you're going to use THAT argument, many people would just call it the "360". ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 22:09, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
True, but that's really beside the point that two of the names are being sorted by the product name and one by the company name, which I think is odd, but possibly not a big deal. Some guy (talk) 04:26, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
It's not used as a company name though. "Microsoft" is a part of the proper noun and trademark "Microsoft Windows". If they had named it "Shiny Windows", you would still sort it by "Shiny". It is also commonly (but arguably unencyclopaedicly if at first use) used as "Windows". And you would sort it based on how it's written at that particular instance. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:24, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
Ah, all right then. Some guy (talk) 23:21, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Comments needed at Talk:Dragon Warrior regarding the existence of the NEC PC-9801 and Sharp X68000 versions

Some additional comments are needed here with regards of the existence (or possible non-existence) of the NEC PC-9801 and Sharp X68000 versions of Dragon Warrior, as it looks like we're going to likely edit war over this. Any additional comments to help resolve this at Talk:Dragon Warrior#PC-9801 and X68000 ports would be greatly appreciated. –MuZemike 03:25, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Call of Duty and the Norway killings

at the talk page for Call of Duty someone is trying to add the mention of COD in Brevik's 'manifesto'. I have reverted, citing WP:NOTNEWS and WP:RECENTISM. Now the account that I have been discussing with is asking for input over at the talk page of the article on the killer. I could use more eyes on this, as, I may be completely off base in my interpretation, or I may be right. Either way, please take a look. Dbrodbeck (talk) 19:04, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Disruptive edits by G-Zay

G-Zay has brought the project way over the limits of disruption with his constant disregard of community consensus, edit warring and his addition of fanboyistic original research and misleading sources. ANI has failed to act even after all of his disruptions, and he does not show a semblance of remorse despite the countless warnings and reverts he has gotten from multiple project members. Consider this the last-ditch effort, because there's not much more I can do beyond that. Prime Blue (talk) 20:53, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Peer review

I wanted to put out a message that I've put Luigi and Wario under peer review at here and here respectively. The reviews haven't gotten much attention, but the articles deserve review. Please spread the word! --Nathan2055talk 22:39, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Peer Review has become an inactive department. Wario just got a peer review only 4 months ago, and only me and one other person commented on it(other then the nominator). This is mostly because many people who propose the articles for peer review have barely edited the article, and won't deal with any of the problems brought up by editors. So people have stopped commenting because it did no good.
The best thing to do(if you are serious about helping the article) would be to bring it to around B-Class quality, and then nominate it for GA, if you think it barely meets the requirements, and only needs some more people to give a second eye. Blake (Talk·Edits) 23:04, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Anyone with wikicode knowledge, please advise (timeline formatting)

I noticed in part with TurboGuy adding a timeline to Halo (series)#Games, but in trying to run through the syntax myself I eventually gave up. Does anyone know how to make these sorts of timelines go in descending order, from earliest to latest, rather than the mind-numbingly stupid latest-to-earliest format that they seem to take by default? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 16:08, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

I can recommend looking at Dragon Quest's timeline to make a better timeline of the series. GamerPro64 16:15, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
I recently created a new timeline table for Resident Evil, which doesn't look washed out like the template, and uses bigger text than the ones used in many series articles (such as the Dragon Quest one). It's still a bit clunky to use with the "<br />" line breaks, though, as I haven't tried to fix with the table attributes yet. Prime Blue (talk) 16:22, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
Sigh... both of those look a whole lot better. I was hoping there was a way to do it without wikitables, but if necessary I guess I'll muck with the beast. :) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 16:24, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
Talk about impatient. Give us retirees some time to answer at the snail pace we're use to. :-p
I believe this is the code you are looking for: "TimeAxis = orientation:vertical order:reverse". You'd have to set the date format to "yyyy" for it to work though.
On a side note- I've been thinking of making a set of templates so editors can easily create the wikitable versions. I switched to a wikitable because another editor cited WP:ACCESS. I believe the issue was that screen readers cannot interpret the timeline unless it is in a text format. Let me know if anyone would like to brainstorm on the templates. I think I could knock it out pretty quickly with some back and forth input. (Guyinblack25 talk 17:23, 30 July 2011 (UTC))
Hoping to get some input- How about something similar to {{Video game titles}} and {{Video game titles/item}}? We could have something like "Vertical timeline", which would provide the basic wiki-table framework, and "/item", which would insert the rows and text. Any thoughts? (Guyinblack25 talk 17:03, 5 August 2011 (UTC))
Are you talking about making a timeline based on the above templates? What issues would that fix? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 17:29, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Something for editors who are not familiar with wikitables. Just trying give editors more tools for article writing. (Guyinblack25 talk 18:36, 5 August 2011 (UTC))

Edit notice for source discussion page

In the last few weeks, most editors who brought up new sources at our discussion page usually just asked if the site could be considered reliable, which left the repliers with the research work. I think an edit notice on the page would help streamline the process a bit, and to create more well-prepared discussions.

An example. Any further suggestions? Prime Blue (talk) 16:02, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

  • I think it should start something like "If you are seeking approval of a new source please explain why...etc" So as not to discourage people who have found a reference from a less well known source in an article, and are asking for an opinion/guidance. Other than that, Support - X201 (talk) 16:08, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Change our GA goal

Given that we reached the 500 GA goal relatively quickly and I don't think we're going to slow down, listing the GA goal seems a bit pointless to me. Not that it isn't something we shouldn't strive for, but I'm sure we're going to do it just as fast with or without that goal listed. How about switching it out for something else? (Guyinblack25 talk 14:20, 26 July 2011 (UTC))

I got an idea. I saw Wikipedia:WikiProject Square Enix having a goal of "All articles higher than Stub class". Maybe we could reduce the stub count in the project if we make a goal of it. GamerPro64 14:48, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
I can see it now: Somebody at WP:BOTREQ will go, "Plz remove stub templates from VG articles. Thx."</kidding>. Not a bad idea, but isn't it somewhat redundant to the "C-Class or higher" goal? –Drilnoth (T/C) 15:27, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
Not a big fan of that goal. I think that it should be removed and replaced with my Stub idea. GamerPro64 15:35, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
The stub goal is basically impossible for a project this size- we're at 43.7% of ~40,000 articles. It's going to take tens of thousands of articles. WP:SE, when we started the stub drive, was at 80% of 377 articles- a much more attainable goal (though we stalled out around 90%). --PresN 16:33, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
One idea I had was to reach X amount of FA and GAs for Top or High importance articles. I don't know if we could set up this up to be automated though because we don't have a single category for FA Top articles and the like. Unless there's some special expression magic I don't know about? (Guyinblack25 talk 16:46, 26 July 2011 (UTC))
On a side note, it's only about 25k articles (big diff, right?!). The rest tagged are images, redirects, etc. --Izno (talk) 17:44, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
You're right, for some reason I have 40k stuck in my mind. --PresN 18:04, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd Say getting a percentage of our articles b class or higher would be a good goal. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 18:40, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd say focus our GA goal more. Instead of any article, specific ones, like "GA for all major genres/sub-genres".陣内Jinnai 21:57, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
I like that; the smaller and more focused the goal, the more likely that it will encourage people to participate in it. More manually coded, but whatever. --PresN 22:46, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I think stubs would be a good idea. I mean, aside from merging or deletion (and if such a stub article should be kept separate, it should be a primary topic or at least have enough substantive material to stand alone, and justify why it should be stand-alone), who wouldn't want to see stubs expanded? The problem is that we have so many that it would be difficult to sustain, not to mention, as I had to explain in a recent AFD, some of these articles are going to be very hard to find sources for coverage, as many of them can only be found in print, as well as in another language. –MuZemike 01:05, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

We have 27 Hign Importance articles that are Stubs, how about improving them from Stub class to A or B class? - X201 (talk) 08:45, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Just to summarize, here are the ideas that are on the table:
  • Improve all articles to Stub-class or better
  • Improve X amount of Top importance articles to GA or better
  • Improve X amount of all articles to B-class or better
  • Improve a focused group of topics to GA or better
  • Improve the 27 High importance stubs to B-class or better
Do we have any front runners or modifications to the ideas? (Guyinblack25 talk 14:29, 27 July 2011 (UTC))
I like improve the high-class articles to >Stub; 27 left out of 515 sounds like an attainable goal. --PresN 17:58, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
Its comes with the added bonus that there are also 27 Start class Top importance articles to do once the Stub ones are cleared - X201 (talk) 09:32, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm leaning towards the 27 stubs one. Anyone else so we can get a consensus or at least get the discussion going again? (Guyinblack25 talk 13:43, 1 August 2011 (UTC))
I Support the 27 stub plan. I can think of an article or two that could be improved greatly with this idea. GamerPro64 14:03, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Any more input? If not, I'll update the goals section with the 27 high-importance stubs later this week. (Guyinblack25 talk 14:18, 3 August 2011 (UTC))
I just tried to update the goal on our project page and it occurred to me that tracking the actual progress of the goal will be problematic with just the progress bar. Though there were 27 high-importance stubs last week, we only have 21 as of today. How do track that these specific articles made to B-Class or higher? The only idea that comes to mind are hidden categories specifically for this project goal. Any other ideas? (Guyinblack25 talk 13:39, 5 August 2011 (UTC))

serious sam 3 BFE

In the trailer for the video game I thought I recognized the voice as being Daniel Tosh of Tosh.O.I would like to know as to how to find the identity behind the voice. Any one have any suggestions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.76.205.186 (talk) 07:53, August 7, 2011 (UTC)

Hi, about the refs in the Final Fantasy article, I'm not sure refs with videos like GameTrailers can be archived. My doubt is: Can videos be loaded when they are archived? T.R.Elven (talk) 17:28, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I thought webcite archived all content on the site, including videos. If not, I'd like to know and look for alternatives.陣内Jinnai 17:30, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
In general, it's probably best to avoid video citations in general and look for print alternatives, as it's generally easier to archive or make sure it doesn't go OTN. I have no idea if webcitation.org actually does archive that content though. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 19:41, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, for the Final Fantasy article, GameTrailers did a big retrospective look across the whole series, a 13-part video series that's pretty irreplaceable for the article. T.R.Elven- note that you don't have to use webcite for everything, the internet archive does a bunch of archiving themselves, such as here, one of the gametrailers links used in the article. Looks like they do archive the videos (that's not the player that GT uses now), so we're good there. --PresN 20:32, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Which archives the videos, Webcite or internet archive? It matters as I have a video newscast which is irreplacable. If webcite archives the video, I should be safe, but if no...陣内Jinnai 20:55, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Following the PresN, I archived the links using the Wayback Machine (I did not know it). Thanks all for the comments. T.R.Elven (talk) 00:08, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
How do you get the Wayback Machine to archive on-demand? I've only done so with WebCitation, which inicdentally runs into a file size restriction on the below-linked FLV file. —Ost (talk) 22:26, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
You can't get it to archive on-demand, but I think the IA went through and archived all of the FF Retrospective videos a couple years ago, we just weren't using the archive links. --PresN 22:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
They appear to both work; Internet Archive definitely (the video player was different than the current one) and Webcite seemingly, though the only way to prove would be to find a video that no longer exists at GT and see if the webcite still works. My beleif is that Webcite archives correctly, though, so there's no need to worry. As far as I can tell, the answer to Elven's initial question is yes. --PresN 01:44, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Internet Archive does not work. For example, this link is used as a reference in Final Fantasy. The page loads up OK, it even archives the flash object, but that flash object actually pulls subobjects from the gametrailers domain. In this case, the actual video it points to is at http://trailers-ak.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/4831/t_finalffantasy_retrospective_pt2_gt.flv If that goes down, then your archive link will not work. You may be able to archive the video directly to avoid this, but I'm not sure if Internet Archive supports this. - hahnchen 19:45, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Merger

An adoptee of mine has asked about a merger of Scribblenauts and Super Scribblenauts. Could someone take a look at the discussion page and tell me what they think? Ryan Vesey Review me! 22:51, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

enough redlinks?

Does this table have enough redlinks? SharkD  Talk  01:58, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

You missed the four blue links on the row headings. That's means a 100% increase in the number of blue links. Could you please re-evaluate your assessment please ;-) - X201 (talk) 07:47, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Do the little "v · d · e" count too? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:39, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
The "v" and "d" do, but the "e" is technically an external link. –Drilnoth (T/C) 16:22, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
All joking aside, are we going to do anything with this template? The only three that I see with actual article potential are China, Japan and Korea. I doubt the rest would ever be more than stubs if created, like Malaysia. That being said, do we need a template for something like this? (Guyinblack25 talk 15:20, 9 August 2011 (UTC))

Inappropriate lists

Hello all, I need input regarding what people think it's appropriate to list in a video game article please! I'm having a bit of trouble with an editor who believes that listing as much as possible is desirable in the Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 article, and reverts if these are removed. The problem is that he won't discuss it, other than the short exchange on my talk page where I tried to explain about WP:NOT and the lists bit on WP:VG/GL, but to no avail. Haven't had a word out of him since then, despite another editor also attempting to engage him on his talk page and on the article talk page. Lists are a pretty major problem with most if not all the Pro Evolution Soccer articles - for example in Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 (the most recently released version) we have lists for the following:

  • National teams (with sub-lists:)
    • Africa
    • Americas
    • Asia/Oceania
    • Europe
    • "Classic teams"
  • National teams that contain "real" players
    • Africa
    • Americas
    • Europe
  • Leagues
  • Clubs taking part in the Copa Santander Libertadores
  • Other club teams
  • Stadiums
  • Commentators
  • Soundtrack
  • Kits updated in a patch
  • Boots updated in said patch
  • Kits updated in another patch
  • Kits updated in another patch
  • Boots updated in another patch

In other articles in the series we also find lists for players featured on the covers, teams playable in the demos, unplayable teams, unlicensed league teams, game modes, "balls"... some of the early games have such lists as individual players and even phrases you might hear the commentators say. IMO of primary concern is preventing this happening to Pro Evolution Soccer 2012, though edits to tidy up the older articles have been reverted by the same editor too. From what's been said before in various discussions on the rival FIFA (video game series), it's OK to list the leagues featured as they're really the major element of these games (and are easily sourceable) and give the reader an idea of what teams, players, stadiums, etc., are included anyway. And it's OK to list the soundtrack if it has had its own separate release or is otherwise notable. While the FIFA articles used to be just as list-heavy as the Pro Evo articles are at the moment, they have been pretty stable with just these two lists in each one for a couple of years now, and I think it's time Pro Evo followed suit. So, what I'm looking for here is a consensus of what lists are appropriate to these articles. Please comment! Miremare 19:36, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

GAR for Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

I have placed Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars up for a community GAR here. Please make comments and Support or Oppose if you think it should be demoted or it should keep its GA status. GamerPro64 15:53, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

VG categories moved today

I noticed that a lot of VG categories have been speedily moved today (all highlighted by this diff). I'm not exactly sure of the convention for this, but many of these categories have added what seems like unnecessary disambiguation such as Category:Imagineering games moving to Category:Imagineering (company) games, and Category:Athena games to Category:Athena (company) games. Presumably this change was made because the article on the company is disambiguated with "(company)", but do we need that to filter down into categories where there is no need for such disambiguation? Other than the company, there is no other "Athena" that makes games, and if there were, "company" wouldn't disambiguate between the two anyway.

Also there are have been a fair few cases of seemingly redundant "Games" being added such as Category:Blue Fang games to Category:Blue Fang Games games, and Category:Firaxis games to Category:Firaxis Games games. I know that the "Games" is part of the company name in these cases, but is that really necessary? Miremare 15:13, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Judging by the removal of cats I've seen on film articles I watchlist, I think this is a trend not limited to games. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 17:55, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Looking at all the examples provided they were all done by the same bot. Maybe someone should report it somewhere?--76.66.180.220 (talk) 02:15, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
The bot does not do anything that an editor has not told it to do. It's the editors who initiate the tasks, see User talk:Cydebot. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:14, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

OnLive

I'm not a member of the project, but wanted to drop a note: I've run into issues with anons/SPAs running around listing OnLive in the "platforms" field of video game infoboxes, and adding the dates the games were added to the service to the list of release dates. I don't use OnLive, but my understanding is that it is not a platform but a service, like Netflix. One can play games via OnLive, but the platform is a PC/Mac, just as one can watch movies via Netflix but the platform is an Xbox/Wii/PC/etc. It seems akin to saying that "the internet" is a platform. It's certainly not a "console or operating system", which is what the infobox documentation describes as what's intended to go in the field. In fact one needs to be running one of a list of supported operating systems in order to use OnLive. It certainly doesn't seem pertinent to list what date OnLine began offering some game from the 1990s, just as it doesn't seem to be pertinent to list the dates on which old movies were made available for streaming on Netflix. What are others' thoughts on this? --IllaZilla (talk) 06:27, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

See the most recent (still non-archived) discussion above #OnLive_.28again.29 and the previous consensus: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Archive 87#Is OnLive a Computing Platform? —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:05, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

OnLive (again)

Previous discussion: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Archive 87#Is OnLive a Computing Platform?

I know, this has be discussed to death, but I'm really struggling to back folks up on the 'not a platform' debate, though I used to feel differently. What I'm proposing discussion on this time around is different than past ones. All I'm proposing is that we allow it to be listed in the infobox. Arguments can and have been made on both sides with sources to back them up, usually the result of WP:SYNTH to make the point. But if there's plenty of evidence on either side I'd submit that we can't simply ignore that several sources list it as a platform. Is it any different than a Roku device that streams Netflix and other video services? (for the uninitiated, Netflix would not be the platform -- Roku streams several types of media and has its own frontend) It's a device which allows play of a game -- the distribution method is irrelevant. The device has its own frontend/dashboard that it uses to interface with the player and stream data back and forth. If OnLive magically had a disc peripheral we're suddenly going to change our minds? In the end it is the device that allows someone to play the game, the fact that all the horsepower is on the other end of the connection seems like a moot argument, especially when nobody truly knows what platform those games are using on the other side.

I think the issue is that it's a dual-nature name. There's OnLive the device, and there's the OnLive service. Differentiating between the two is something we need to do. The device is, for all intents and purposes, a platform. Sources that understand that list it as such, while others focus on it as a service such as Xbox Live while ignoring what the player has in their hands. --Teancum (talk) 13:10, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Here's what I've come to accept them as: they are an emulation, effectively, and licensed to emulation the games they offer (as opposed to classic console emulation). But because the emulation is not an official product of the original developer or publisher, it should be treated like the availability of a game on any other emulated system - which is, no mention is usually made of it unless sources exist. I would not be surprised that at some point we will have a game that is published that includes "Online" as a list of supported platforms, in which case there it makes sense to add to the platform list. But a game that Online later got the rights to stream over, that's nothing special.
In other words, our "platform" box should be those platforms that the developer/publisher intended to release and support on (even included later ports by different teams but as an officially recognized title, ala Lemmings). --MASEM (t) 13:30, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict) As far as I can judge the previous discussion, the consensus is to not list OnLive in the |platforms= as it is not a true computing platform. Even for a rough consensus, it pretty much settles the base issue for any anon/editor arguing. I doubt anything has changed since. We don't call a beer tap "brewery", just because all the back-end is invisible to the customer. Btw, what sources describe it is as a platform? And not GameSpot listing it together with Windows and using the buzzword "platform" in the same way they use "next-gen" ^^. But as an actual article or news piece describing it as a computing platform, which is what the field is for and which is what the game studios decided upon as the first thing. I highly doubt there will be games any time soon where we won't know the platform. OnLive is just an added bonus. In very broad terms -- OnLive device is just a TV adapter that can stream stuff; OnLive service is just a web-page to buy game-time. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:42, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
I also left a comment at Talk:OnLive#OnLive_Platform, which appears to be a slightly different issue to what I though you were asking. In short, OnLive is a "platform" as per reliable sources. But it does not mean it is a "computing platform" the games are designed for and shouldn't be placed in |platform=. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 14:05, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
To be specific on my feelings -- I have no bias one way or the other, I just want to be sure we separate the service from the device, as that could have been something to differentiate there. I'm still not sold on the "emulation" argument--that implies we know their workings. I'm much more comfortable comparing it to video streaming devices if we're looking for comparison. I don't know that there are any reliable sources out there that state what the OnLive servers run. It could very well be a dedicated OS that emulates nothing and each game runs on code specifically compiled for the "OnLive OS". I'm not saying that's the case, I'm saying we don't know. I've seen version numbers listed for games such as Prince of Persia that don't match other release versions, which leads me to question whether it's running on some other OS. **EDIT** In fact, this seems to support the fact that they run an independent platform as they have a dedicated SDK and talk of porting. That doesn't sound like emulation to me, and SDK's require original source code to compile on. I guess that could be argued as adding any OnLive-specific stuff to whatever existing platform the servers run on, but that just proves the ambiguity. --Teancum (talk) 14:40, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
On their developer page they seem to make an effort to point out that they're not a different platform, pointing out that developers can use their existing kit and will not need Dev. kits etc. - X201 (talk) 15:50, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
So what? OnLive could run on PC hardware but a dedicated operating system. On the contrary most of the stuff I've found today seems to point to the fact that games have to be compiled specifically for OnLive, whatever that may mean. Hardware in this case is irrelevant. Since it's a cloud gaming system who's to say development isn't also done on a cloud? --Teancum (talk) 17:43, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I am almost certain game developers have to work with OnLive to make sure their products are compatible and this may involve branching their versions, but it's unlikely to be a huge change, just like with Steam. It's a small fix for third party. Anyway, do sources separate service/device? I'm sure they are mostly talking about the service itself. After all, the device is just a streaming interface, like a modem. But that's me speculating/ORing. Sources say more or less "OnLive is a gaming platform", and I doubt we'll get far trying to dissect it further if there are no reliable sources backing that up. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 15:56, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
I too find a distinction between video game platform and computing platform, though it's not well defined. You can buy it in a store, plug it into a tv, and play new releases. I think that's what many people take a game platform to be and you can't just ignore those people because you think they don't know what they're talking about or you think they're factually incorrect. As to the platform option in the infobox, we should keep an open mind about changing it rather than look to it for guidance. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 16:23, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
It's about what reliable sources say. If they say OnLive is to be considered a computing platform, then so be it, I won't bicker. But the sources of OnLive ([7][8][9][10][11]) don't actually say that. They describe it non-technically and vaguely, only calling it a "platform" of various interpretations. I don't want to sound dismissive, but I don't know what empirical evidence you have for "that's what many people take a game platform to be", but WP:VERIFIABILITY will trump it any day. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:15, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm calling into question the equivalence of computing platform and video game platform, which I think is at the heart of this issue. You seem to be asserting that the two are the same and demanding reliable sources to show that they are not. But what are the reliable sources showing that they are? ButOnMethItIs (talk) 18:30, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
Actually, I never said they are the same. In practice, the terms are misused by media. I ask for sources either way. OnLive currently has sources enough to verifiably identify it as a "platform". But not any specific kind of platform. I am also fine if we call it "video gaming platform" and don't wikilink. The sources do not say that it is a computing platform, so neither should we make that assumption. That's my only point here. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 21:25, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Any change or maintenance of the status quo, ought to consider similar services (Category:Cloud gaming) as well. - X201 (talk) 07:39, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

As per previous discussions, OnLive is not a platform. It's a service layer between the platform and the end user - the game still runs on Windows. - hahnchen 12:59, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Suggested improvements to Kinect Sports & Kinect Sports: Season Two pages

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this, but I just wanted to draw your attention to some suggestions I've made on the Kinect Sports and Kinect Sports: Season Two discussion pages. I wasn't sure if anyone gets notified when new content is posted to those pages or if I just needed to wait for someone to 'find' them?

I work for Rare (the makers of Kinect Sports) on their Web & Community team, and am aware of the issues relating to conflict of interest that prevent me from making any changes to these pages myself. I therefore thought the best approach would be to make my suggestions on the discussion pages for independent editors to consider and (where appropriate) action.

Hopefully this falls withing the Wikipedia guidelines, I'd be grateful if someone could get back to me with some feedback!

Thanks very much,

--Neal - Rare Ltd (talk) 08:00, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Can someone with image licensing knowledge answer Neal's question about screenshots on Talk:Kinect Sports please. Neal, have replied to your Kinect Sports queries on that page. Will try to do Season Two later. - X201 (talk) 11:41, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Discussion of MLGPro as a situational source

I'm wanting to take away the crutch that several Major League Gaming articles have. Many use majorleaguegaming.com as a means to establish notability, a primary source. Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Sources#MLGPro as situational. Thanks much. --Teancum (talk) 12:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Reception section for Ballance

I was after more opinions for the Reception section on Ballance. An IP editor is removing it because it is too favourable despite it being sourced by a review article at Adrenaline Vault. I suggested that balance would be achieved by the addition of a more critical review article but they just removed the section again. - Shiftchange (talk) 14:51, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

The section looks reasonable to me. –Drilnoth (T/C) 22:52, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

First ever TFL

On Monday August 15th, the project will have its first ever Featured List on Today's Featured List with the List of Donkey Kong video games. Hopefully we will have more in the future. GamerPro64 20:26, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

  • That's great. I hadn't heard that the TFL idea was picked up. I'm glad that the hard work of our VG list-makers will finally be recognized. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 21:06, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
    • I was actually about to bring this up (sorry for being gone for so long!), it's been vetted thoroughly so it should be alright but a few extra eyes to look over it would be appreciated. This is actually the first non-sports pop culture list to be put onto the front page, and I'm ecstatic that WP:TFL has come this far and that our project has helped contribute to it. Nomader (talk) 23:43, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Guys, just a quick cry for help here, I did a quick "check links" scan and seems that the list has six deadlinks, all to Gamespot. Would be most appreciative if these can be fixed before the list hits main page. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:36, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

It looks like Gamespot moved the Wii VC games to their respective platforms (SNES, etc) which is how it should have been in the first place. A lot of links are probably now broken. I don't imagine they can be fixed by a bot, so people will just have to fix them as they're found. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 17:44, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
Can we fix the ones on the list which is going to feature on the main page tomorrow please? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:12, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
I'll take care of it immediately. Nomader (talk) 19:50, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
Cheers. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:53, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
I've fixed the deadlinks, but the links don't really advertise that the games were released for the Wii; instead, they just say that they were released on that date in 2007 without specifying for which console. I've got to go pack some things up for the next hour or so in real life, but when I get back I'll see if I can find reviews from reliable sources which place the Wii Virtual Console dates better. Really disappointed in GameSpot right now. Nomader (talk) 20:23, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
And I've put up full reviews over the links I had out. I'll make one more cursory check of the article to make sure everything's in order before I head out for dinner. Nomader (talk) 20:47, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

As a side comment, it's one of the good things why Featured Lists are now featured on the Main Page, in that they are scrutinized much more before and during its time on the Main Page. –MuZemike 18:02, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Edit war with some IPs (DXHR)

Some IPs and myself are revert-warring over how to summarize the OPM review. I'm mentioning gameplay-specific elements, with the explicit score, while they mention comparison with other games without the score itself. Opinions would be welcomed. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:18, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

I left a 3RR warning for the most recent IP and reverted to your version because that version was clearly supported by the cited source. I don't have much of an opinion on the actual prose - it does seem that the comparisons to CoD and Fallout are less relevant in general, but I think the more important thing is that the summary article we linked to doesn't actually say anything about either of those games (unless they did so in the video). So as far as quoting the source goes, the "explicit score" version is far more appropriate.
That said, if the IP users want to present another reliable source for a review that does make those comparisons, I think it would be appropriate to include in addition to the review already there. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 04:18, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Question about video game list format

User:Kaldari has brought up some questions about the format of today's current WP:TFL, List of Donkey Kong video games, which is used in many other of our project's featured lists such as List of The Legend of Zelda media and List of Space Invaders video games. As such, I thought it might warrant further comment from other editors in the WikiProject: the discussion can be seen here. Nomader (talk) 06:00, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

On an unrelated side comment, I won't be able to watch the list for much of the day; I'll be packing my stuff up throughout and probably won't have too much time to check in. I'd appreciate it if the project could keep an eye out on it. Nomader (talk) 06:34, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Category:Crafting video games

I've been wondering if Category:Crafting video games is an encyclopaedic category and if it doesn't violate WP:OVERCAT? It seems a bit arbitrary to categorize games based on individual features. It does not look like there are many other category examples like this. I would think this is similar to categorizing something like Category:Video games featuring weapons. I haven't spent too much time looking at VG categories, so I'm asking here first before possible CfD. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:18, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I'd say it is an overcat just because there really aren't any games focused solely and mainly on crafting. I mean, even Minecraft is crafting towards the aim of actually building stuff. Unless there's documented evidence of this being a viable schema or subgenre, I don't think it makes much sense. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 18:02, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
What he said. (Guyinblack25 talk 15:07, 9 August 2011 (UTC))
Not only that, but its poorly defined. I was thinking it was just stuff like Cooking Mama and here I see The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar as a crafting game. WTF?陣内Jinnai 01:30, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
The line seems to be games in which new items are created rather than existing items are augmented. It doesn't seem to be a useful categorization and in practice is a bucket to sling the vast majority of MMORPGs and other randomly related games into. There may be a few games with an emphasis on item creation (in particular I'm thinking of the Atelier RPG series), but there can't be many. Someoneanother 20:11, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I have CfDed the category at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2011_August_17#Category:Crafting_video_games and took the liberty of copying the above replies there. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:48, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Updated WP:VG/FC

I just updated Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Featured content to better describe everything listed. Some one may want to give it look to see if further edits are necessary. I also added Robin Hunicke and Circle strafing in Featured picture and Former featured sections. Did I miss any other pictures or other Featured content? (Guyinblack25 talk 16:14, 16 August 2011 (UTC))

An anon has been placing external links in various articles [12] [13] from IMDB. Since that site is reliable, can it used as an external link? I also had the same questions with the wikias which are being added in various articles. Regards.Tintor2 (talk) 16:25, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

2¢ External links should be encyclopaedic or at least very useful. Some games have Wikis that indeed cover every miniscule detail and have a devoted fanbase to keep it updated and well-presented. No problem to include a link to such Wiki. IMDB on the other hand is case-by-case basis; usaully they only list video games/characters as directory entries, without any useful info. We don't link to IGN/Gamespot or whatever pages (at least I think/hope so), and neither should we to IMDB in such cases. On the other hand, if the character appears in a wide media franchise, it may be useful to link to IMDB. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:54, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks.Tintor2 (talk) 23:12, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

(Super) Famicom or (Super) Nintendo Entertainment System

Doing some edits in preparation for Dragon Warrior's FAC, several people outside of the project have had trouble understanding the usage of Famicom (and Super Famicom) and some copyedits have changed it to the NES/SNES respectively. Others have simply had outright confusion as to what they are are.

The issue with Dragon Warrior comes with the whole section devoted to its localization and people get confused because they assume its for a different system; that the Famicom and NES are not in any way related.

So with that said, should we use the NES/SNES names and only mention the first instance that the system is called something different, ie "The NES (known in Japan as the Famicom)...", only use it for Japanese exclusive titles or not at all?陣内Jinnai 15:15, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Well they're not the same, so I think it would be a mistake to use Famicom and NES interchangeably. Usually you would just call it Famicom, wikilink it, and let readers figure it out, but if you think it's a problem you can throw in some explanatory language. I would probably use a footnote, but in-text would work just as well. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 15:25, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
I think that if you are talking about the Japanese version, you should call it the Famicon, because that is what it was. Don't call them something they aren't. If possible, just avoid using the words entirely to avoid confusion. Blake (Talk·Edits) 15:42, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Yea, the problem comes when you have to deal with different versions of a release like DW and the versions are radically different. I think the general public, given the statements I've read, will if I go with footnotes question why even bother noting the difference as it appears to be a simple name-change. I've actually had that said to me. I've also gotten that Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System link to the same page and even the same section (ie there Famicom goes to the top of the page), so I've also had people say its must be close enough that we should just use the NA name.陣内Jinnai 15:56, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
I ran into the same thing when writing Final Fantasy. It turned into a lengthy debate that found its way to this talk page a few years ago: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Archive 71#NES vs Famicom. I ended up using NES/SNES; the consistency avoids confusion. The regional names don't change the fact that the NES was just the Western version of the Famicom. That being said, we should use the term that the English-speaking layman will understand. I believe that to be NES/SNES. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:50, 4 August 2011 (UTC))

To me (and also as Blake pointed out above), it always depends on context. Another example would be whether to use "Sega Genesis" or "Sega Mega Drive" – if a 16-bit Sega game was released only in North America, then it would make sense to call say "Sega Genesis"; however, if a game only came out in Europe or was primarily known there, then "Sega Mega Drive" would be OK. In the context of Dragon Warrior, the 16-bit remake was only released in Japan, so it makes sense to call it by the Japanese name of the system, the "Super Famicom". –MuZemike 17:23, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)If its come up before, perhaps we should come to some kind of standard that is codified in our guidelines? I'm okay with using (Super) Famicom with Japanese-only games and (S)NES for games originally released in English, the trouble comes with those games that get translated, especially historically signifigant ones that'll likely be much more heavily looked at in an FAC like FF and DW.
Things get really tricky when you have remakes that only come out in 1 region like DW rename for the Super Famicom. Since NES would be used previously if we go with Guyinblack's way, using SF would just likely confuse an English audiance. On the other hand, switching between Famicom and NES also confuses them.陣内Jinnai 17:28, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
I think generalizing the name to (S)NES is the way to go because our audience will largely be ignorant to the differences. Having it be context sensitive requires us to also explain the context to the reader. That may be easy for some games that were released in only one region, but as Jinnai points out, it becomes complicated in other situations. I think using the common English name for all cases will serve our readers better and make writing easier for us. (Guyinblack25 talk 18:18, 4 August 2011 (UTC))
A similar situation is Pokémon Red and Blue vs Pokémon Red and Green. For example, are Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen remakes of which? Obviously Green version, but putting that in the article would greatly confuse 90% of readers because they have never heard of such a game, so it says that LeafGreen is a remake of Blue. Trying to explain something like that without being too wordy is very difficult. Blake (Talk·Edits) 18:41, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
Try "Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen are GBA remakes of the Gameboy versions of Pokémon Red and Blue respectively Blue uses the coding from Pocket Monsters: Blue, but the Pokemon and gameplay from the Japanese release of Green." - That wasn't as verbose as you claimed it would need to be. Yes, there was some additional text needed to clarify how LeafGreen was linked to Blue, but it doesn't take that much. It's only made more difficult when you want to rename the systems also.陣内Jinnai 21:04, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
I think it depends on context. For example only using the English console name would not make sense for the video game Mother (video game). The reason is it was released on the Famicom and then was later announced to be released in North America under the name Earth Bound but was later cancelled. In that case it would make more sense to use both Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System or we would have a case where it would be implied the game was released and cancelled on the same system. In that case it would likely be even more confusing if we did not use both names.--76.69.168.124 (talk) 23:11, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, there aren't all that many games relevant to the NES that are so different on the Famicom that it's worth noting the Famicom in particular. Most games that are Famicom-specific are either Japan-only games or are games that were made specifically for the Famicom and took advantage of features only available on that system (like Famicom Disk System games - Zelda, Metroid, etc.). This is even less the case for SNES/Super Famicom games, since (to my knowledge) very few cross-region SNES games used SuperFam-specific features. So I agree with stating NES/SNES since that's what the majority of our readers are likely to know, except for special cases. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 03:51, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Even with special cases (like the Earth Bound game mentioned above), I think you could avoid using the term "Famicom" by referring to the region(s) the release applied to. I believe that provides better jargon-free prose. (Guyinblack25 talk 03:34, 7 August 2011 (UTC))
So we use it even for games released exclusively in Japan?陣内Jinnai 01:27, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I think just adding some clarification would be the best bet here. For instance in the Mother article, after it says the game was released for Famicom, it should be noted that the Famicom is known the NES in the rest of the world, and then let it be. Famicom should still be mentioned as the platform the game was released for.--SexyKick 02:11, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
Well I just redid Dragon Warrior. I was able to remove all but 1 mention of Famicom/Family Computer and some for Super Famicom. The former is mentioned at the first point in development. The Super Famicom is kept because its part of a title. I would have removed the former, but its necessary for understanding the latter when it comes up.陣内Jinnai 02:27, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I think it should work out assuming that people don't try to go overboard. For example the Family Computer Disk System should not be moved to Nintendo Entertainment System Disk System since that device was never released or marketed under that name, the same for the Twin Famicom. Also on Mega Drive article mentions some of Sega's slogans for their system and I wouldn't think that falsfing a slogan is a good idea since Mega Drive does what Nintend'ont was never a slogen.--76.66.180.220 (talk) 22:25, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, of course. This is strictly for prose in articles. Different guidelines would apply to the article names. The prose in the respective console articles would also have more leeway given that the terms would be explained in the lead and the rest of the article. (Guyinblack25 talk 03:49, 14 August 2011 (UTC))

I previously stated that I was in favor of using "NES/SNES" in general situations, but a discussion on Talk:List of Donkey Kong video games has me thinking I should clarify my position: I think that when a singular release has occurred for both Famicom and NES at the same general time, or when the time doesn't matter (all we're saying is that it's out on both), then just saying "NES" instead of "NES/Famicom" should be fine. But in more specific instances, like the one being debated at the DK list, I think we should stick with the most accurate and specific term that applies to the entry in question.

In the specific case of the DK list, I disputed a reference to DK being released on the NES in 1983, two years before the American NES itself was released. I felt that saying it had been released in 1983 on that console was confusing and misleading - someone would have to know a lot about the history of the game and the consoles to realize that we really meant "Famicom" there. The fix I put in place for that specific entry was to go ahead and say "Famicom" for 1983, and make a separate entry for "NES" in 1985. But that, of course, might cause some confusion because now we're talking about two apparently-different systems, and again someone MIGHT need to have advanced knowledge to know the relationship between them. But IMO, that's what the article link is for - if someone goes "What's a Famicom?" and clicks on it, they'll be taken to the NES article which has info on the Japanese version.

Nutshell: I think the best policy is to use the more common name when both apply, to reduce wordiness and awkward referencing, but to be as specific and accurate as possible (within reason, of course) when referring to a specific instance. To me, DK in 1983 on the NES is wrong, but to say the game had been released in the 1980s on the NES would be accurate. Does that make sense? — KieferSkunk (talk) — 21:03, 22 August 2011 (UTC)


Genesis vs. Mega Drive

Does that mean we should also wipe out "Genesis" in favor of "Mega Drive" everywhere, even in prose referring to North America only? Or vice versa, even in prose referring only to other parts of the world? Anomie⚔ 04:14, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
Huh, I hadn't considered that. I'm inclined to say that we should favor Mega Drive for the same reasons I mentioned above. Unless there's a compelling argument that it should be an exception. (Guyinblack25 talk 05:40, 7 August 2011 (UTC))
In general I'd be willing to go with that, once the statement I just asked above is clarrified, save that it doesn't seem to be the most common.
This needs some more searching because it appears Genesis > Master Drive, except for the customized RS search we use. That one requires more care looking at the sources to see if they really are "reliable". However, even then I think it would only apply with WP:COMMONNAME for the article's title, not the body text.陣内Jinnai 01:28, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
Master SYSTEM, Mega DRIVE. Personally, I don't think this is a popularity contest. So long as we're consistent within individual articles, I don't think there's a right way or a wrong way to approach this. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 01:52, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
"Sega Genesis" is really the common name, the article is only called Mega Drive because that's the original name of the system.
  1. The Sega Genesis was the most successful brand of the Mega Drive, with sales accounting for over 55% of the consoles sold bearing the name "Sega Genesis".
  2. There are more native English speaking people in North America than everywhere else in the world combined.
  3. Genesis name is used on GameFAQs, GameSpot, GameRankings and other CNET websites, as well as MobyGames, Ebay, and Amazon.com. These are sites a user new to the subject would go to, and are considered valid resources for Wikipedia articles within context. (as Sega Genesis was the name which most controversy was sparked under)
  4. To date, no equal importance third-party websites shown using the Mega Drive name as a primary have been presented in this discussion.
  5. Sega continues to use Genesis branding for North America releases. See Sega Genesis Collection.
  6. Per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), by far the most English references used in the article use the name "Sega Genesis" or simply "Genesis".
  7. People new to the subject are more common for English speakers to encounter it as "Sega Genesis" due to the primary hubs used for information on video games for said group.
  8. Sega Genesis name is much more common to produce results in search engines over Mega Drive, and Sega Genesis turns up more google search results than Sega Mega Drive.
  9. Sega Genesis was the brand that was first presented to English speaking consumers.
  10. Original name doesn't matter - only common name.
That being said, here are three reasons why the Mega Drive article is not called the "Sega Genesis" article.
  1. The product was intended to be called Mega Drive in America, but a trademark dispute prevented it.
  2. The product is originally named Mega Drive in Japan.
  3. Apart from North American countries, the product was released in all other countries as Mega Drive.
I know it may not be this simple, but this is the best information I can present to this part of the discussion. I disagree with only mentioning one name over the other in all contexts. Mega Drive (Sega Genesis in North America) should be used when discussing a game that did not come out in North America, and vice versa.--SexyKick 02:03, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
First off, before using amazon, ebay, etc one should check their UK counterparts and perhaps also the AU one for ebay. (Google shouldn't matter so much as it hits the same sources, just different priorities).
Anyway new and correct search results:
I'll note our RS search seems to cap at 8 pages so the only general RS search that shows a difference at-a-glance is the scholarly online sources favoring Genesis 4:1.陣内Jinnai 02:24, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
Because more text has been generated about it by US based writers as opposed to other nationalities. Just because the population of North America is bigger, does that mean we have to change the name of everything to the North American version and become the North American Wikipedia as opposed to the English Language Wikipedia? - X201 (talk) 11:25, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Certainly not. Wikipedia only stresses to use common names for article names, while still listing the alternative names. What's important is that we don't go by just one name over another, omitting the other name completely (like some have suggested here in regards to Famicom). If (if) my understanding is correct, and more text has been generated about it by North American based writers, and more people in North America know about Sega's 16-bit console than the people in other countries, then, isn't that common name? Not only that but Sega's 16-bit console was introduced to English natives as the Sega Genesis, before the PAL release of the Mega Drive.--SexyKick 12:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I believe that alternating between interchangeable terms that the reader is unfamiliar will lead to confusion. There's no need to use gaming jargon, especially when region names will accomplish the same thing more easily for the general reader. (Guyinblack25 talk 15:37, 12 August 2011 (UTC))
I guess some of us are just a little confused on how stating the simple name of the system in one region is something else could ever be considered jargon? Now if we were simply spamming acronyms, that'd be jargon. As long as there's wikilinks and the reader has enough common sense to either read the intro, or click the wikilink then it should be all good. Right? That's two "well of course they'd do that" ways out right there.--SexyKick 15:52, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I consider it jargon in the same sense that we consider HP, unlocked, respawning, and the like as jargon; i.e. they are terms frequently used by gamers in the context of games. I've seen the terms used in a confusing manner too often—Famicom, specifically, is one of the worst offenders. I think Genesis/Mega Drive, however, is less of an issue. Regardless, I believe uniformity will avoid confusion and better serve our audience. Even if the wikilink is there for the reader, there's no sense sending them to another page just so they can understand the page they are currently on. Article pages should be fairly self-contained as far as providing information about a topic.
All that being said- If you can word the information in a straight-forward manner, then cool beans. But I think adding this to our style guidelines would do wonders. (Guyinblack25 talk 21:40, 12 August 2011 (UTC))
I would agree those three examples you posted are jargon, but not Famicom. Either way, if you're studying a new subject, of course you're going to have to use wikilinks and go all over the place if you want to understand. For example when I was using Wikipedia to learn about Sucralose, or Energy Drinks, I had to use about two dozen wikilinks before I was done. If I were to go learn about Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest, and I didn't know anything about the NES or Famicom, I would expect to have to learn about both systems.--SexyKick 05:13, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Those links are there to provide further information for those interested, but we shouldn't force a reader to leave the page just so they can understand it. I've done that many times myself and find it troublesome. And more often than not, it happens in a lower class article. Sucralose and Energy drink, for example, are B and start clase, respectively. When shooting for GA and higher (which is a common practice for our project), we should strive to construct the article as best as possible.
Regardless, the NES and Famicom are simply two regional names for the same system. The only real difference between the two is the regional lock out system Nintendo put on the NES. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:46, 13 August 2011 (UTC))
As Guyinblack says, Wikipedia is meant for the average reader to understand. Wikilinks are there for more detailed understanding for those interested, but the article itself should be able to stand alone without confusion. Thus when terms like Famicom, Super Famicom (and to an extent Mega Drive) are used, the average reader who is not stepped in the gaming history is likely to be confused. They probably have heard of the NES or SNES and the Genesis (even if they were in Europe). They probably will have a WTF moment when they see Famicom and for the majority of English readers, Mega Drive. That's not to say there aren't times when one can and should mention those names, but one should think "What does it add?" and "Can I explain this without using those terms?" Most of the time one can, but not always. I had to make reference to Famicom in Dragon Warrior because one of the soundtrack titles which was revewed used the term. However, had that not happened, it could have been left out entirely.陣内Jinnai 20:05, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
Ah. All right then.--SexyKick 23:33, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
Re-reading some of my earlier comments, I think I may not have been as clear as Jinnai just was. Sorry for the confusion.
To sum up and hopefully gain a consensus, I think that we should add something about regional names to our guidelines. Of course, being guidelines, they are meant to be best practices and are subject to case by case analysis. (Guyinblack25 talk 04:22, 15 August 2011 (UTC))

Proposed wording

This is the proposed worded for WP:VG/GL. Note I'm including games here also because they'd follow similar practices.

For systems and games, English terms are proffered over foreign ones when the difference would be beyond those who do not have the history and/or technical knowledge to tell the difference. For example, while the Famicom is not quite the same as the NES the differences are so minor that they are generally considered the same system. For systems with multiple English names, the one most widely cited by reliable sources should be used. For example, Sega Genesis is more widely used than Sega Mega Drive. Articles should generally avoid mention of the foreign names unless there is a good reason, such as it being part of the title, there are changes that rely on one of those specific regional versions, etc.

I'm not sure if we should allow foreign-released titles only to be automatically exempted. I'm not in favor of this after considering it because in most circumstances you can explain things with the descriptor "Japanese" or whatever country it is.

Thought?陣内Jinnai 01:04, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

On the one hand I consider this method to be generally less informative, on the other hand I understand why we're doing this. But, if Sega Genesis is the common name, should we change the title of that, and the related articles - List of Sega Mega Drive games and Sega Mega-CD?--SexyKick 02:34, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
SexyKick- This would apply to article content only. WP:COMMONNAME would apply to article titles.
Jinnai- The wording looks good to me. And I don't believe that we should automatically exempt foreign exclusives. When mentioning system names in the article, we should stick to the common English term. When mentioning the game title, I think we should stick to the common name, whether that is Japanese or English.
And I'm almost afraid to ask how this would apply to something like Aerith? (Guyinblack25 talk 15:02, 17 August 2011 (UTC))
I don't understand, how is commonterm different from commonname? I thought this discussion was 100% revolving around commonname.--SexyKick 15:32, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
No real difference. Just my terminology to differentiate from common name, which we typically use when discussing article titles. (Guyinblack25 talk 16:39, 17 August 2011 (UTC))
No difference, just where it applies.
As for Areith/Aeris, well that would really take a more fine-tooth comb similar to what we did with Goku/Son Goku spelling.陣内Jinnai 23:50, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Thoughts on moving Mass Effect (series) to Mass Effect?

I'm never too certain on how to interpret things like #5 at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(video_games)#Disambiguation. The article does meet the requirements (three video game articles, with the third one still announced but yet-to-be-released, with plenty of extra related articles like comic books, etc.) So is it time to move the article? Personally I just went to Mass Effect and just assumed that it would be the series article since the popularity of the series rises with each new entry, rather than the first game in the series having had an immediate impact when it was first released, so most references to "Mass Effect" would, I think, be to the series rather than the first game. Gary King (talk · scripts) 23:29, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Series with multiple games and spin off media. I would clearly say that the series is more recognizable than the first video game. --MASEM (t) 23:44, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Totally agree, more like massive effect these days. Not that I can stand the series (blech). Someoneanother 23:54, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Okay well another reason that I brought this here is because Mass Effect (video game) already exists, so an admin needs to perform this move. Gary King (talk · scripts) 02:52, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
I'd do it but I think a bit more time for discussion might not hurt since this was moved back and forth. Personally, I'd support the move though, the reasons mentioned above are pretty convincing. Regards SoWhy 19:38, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
There is currently a move request on the page for the video game which has yet to be commented by anyone other other than the user who made the request so comments should probably be made there.--76.66.180.220 (talk) 00:57, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Nexon Korea Corporation

This article has been constantly moved because editors can not decide what its name should be. It has been moved to Nexon Co. Ltd. but I believe it should stay at Nexon Korea Corporation as they refer to their company as such on their official website. I'm not sure about the guidelines for the article so I'm hoping an experienced editor would take a look at the article and tag it under the right project. Thanks! DragonZero (Talk · Contribs) 01:02, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

tbh, I would not know what you were talking about if you said Nexon Korea Corporation, but I recognize Nexon Co. Ltd., although I have never heard it called that before. I don't know what should be done, but I think the name you are suggesting seems odd, and if policy does not specifically back it up, I would rather it not be used. Blake (Talk·Edits) 21:45, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

August 2011's Today's Featured Article

Devil May Cry (video game) will be up on TFA tomorrow. However, it may need some improvement, like more info in the article's lead. GamerPro64 02:34, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

  • I remember when this was featured. I reviewed it pretty thoroughly back in the day, which probably didn't earn me any popularity points with the article's editors. Glad it's getting recognized. I thought it was in better shape than this, though. We lost DMC2 recently, and I doubt this will be far behind unless it's heavily expanded. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 02:43, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
Maybe we can get a second TFA this month to make up for July, which there was no VG-related TFA :) –MuZemike 19:47, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

WPVG's quality scale definitions vs. their practical use

There seems to be a decently-sized gulf between the way Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Assessment defines the various article classes, and the way they're used by editors. The following three are articles I've recently started--I know it'd be more objective to link articles others started, but I don't really have the time spare to research at the moment--which have been rated as Start (the first) and Stub (the latter two): iCade, iControlPad, Nyko Wand. While I may have some personal bias as to their quality, I think it'd be quite neutral to say their ratings as defined by the project seem not to line up with their status.

Class Criteria Reader's experience Editing suggestions Example
Start An article that is developing, but which is quite incomplete and may require further reliable sources.
More detailed criteria
The article has a usable amount of good content but is weak in many areas. Quality of the prose may be distinctly unencyclopedic, and MoS compliance non-existent; but the article should satisfy fundamental content policies such as notability and BLP, and provide sources to establish verifiability. No Start-Class article should be in any danger of being speedily deleted.
 Provides some meaningful content, but the majority of readers will need more. Provision of references to reliable sources should be prioritised; the article will also need substantial improvements in content and organisation. Real analysis
(as of November 2006)
Stub A very basic description of the topic.
More detailed criteria
The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to become a meaningful article. It is usually very short, but if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible, an article of any length falls into this category.
 Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition. Any editing or additional material can be helpful. The provision of meaningful content should be a priority. Geodia gibberosa
(as of July 2009)

"Very little meaningful content" doesn't seem to me like an accurate description of the iControlPad or Nyko Wand articles, and contrary to the definition ("quite incomplete"), the iCade article is about as complete as it's possible to be for a niche topic like this. It covers the device's development, a laymen-friendly description of the technical concepts behind it, the device's reception, and the only really incomplete part, the list of compatible software, which is the nature of lists of current-gen software releases. I'm not taking these descriptors personally at all--they're Wikipedia articles, not Vague Rant articles, and the definitions pretty clearly don't apply, so there's very little to be offended by. I have noticed this tendency toward low quality-class rankings on other articles, so I'm just trying to gauge whether the project feels the issue is in application or definition of the classes.

If anyone desires to reclassify these articles, that's fine, but not really the purpose of this discussion, as the phenomenon is far more widespread than the few I've noted here. - Vague | Rant 18:50, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I didn't read them, but just looking at article length, layout, referencing, etc., I'd say all three of those should be C-Class. Perhaps Start, but certainly not Stub. –Drilnoth (T/C) 19:08, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
I hazard to guess many C+ articles are tagged as Start/Stub is because no one has bothered to re-rate them since the banner was placed. Anyone is free to reassess them following the criteria, but no one is forced to do so. VG is a project which gets a lot of fan edits, so relatively many articles develop beyond Start. But those may not have an established editor doing the major work and anons/new editors don't know about or don't feel comfortable changing rating. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 19:17, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Irony - you're actually the one who rated Nyko Wand as a stub, yesterday, when it looked basically as it does now. :) In this case, I'd say the ratings mismatch on the articles is more likely due to the fact that new articles tend to get rated very quickly, and in batches- since the rating is very easy to change, most people don't worry over-much about being perfectly accurate, since the VG project tag itself is more important than the actual rating. --PresN 19:22, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
In my opinion, we tend to "overmark" articles as stubs when they really are not (i.e. should instead be Start-Class). That said, it wouldn't hurt for us to go through them, though needless to say, that would take time. –MuZemike 19:59, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
LOL, sweet irony! Yeah, PresN's right, I was going through User:AlexNewArtBot/VideogamesSearchResult tagging redlink talk pages like I usually do when I see an update. My excuse is that my attention span isn't long enough to read them all for proper quality assessment (and there is no easy tool to do this either, except manually). The banner is more important than the rating/importance, and it's best I place a banner quickly than the article gets tagged for deletion and not reported anywhere, like WP:Article Alerts. (Don't forget to watch and follow VG Alerts. </anotherShamelessPlug>) Not that I couldn't have been a bit more careful. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 20:39, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
You don't have to give it a rating to tag the article. If you don't set quality or importance attributes, the article will show up here and can be assessed later. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 01:11, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
Given that most ratings are invisible to the average readers, they really are more of a project and editorial tool then anything else. Overmarking prolly is a problem but better to underestimate progress than overestimate :) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 19:52, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
Maybe if turnaround for those assements would be quicker. In general most requests can be done in WP:Anime's assement in 1 day, sometimes 2-3 if no ones watching.
However, the clarrifications are a bit clearer over there, especially the checklist to go from C -> B.陣内Jinnai 23:36, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Dota 2 at GAN

I just noticed this at GAN. It thought that articles about unreleased games were ineligible for GA and FA unless the industry had deemed it vaporware. Unless the article is not current and the game has been canceled. (Guyinblack25 talk 22:30, 23 August 2011 (UTC))

Unreleased games in active development (like Dota 2) are commonly considered to be inherently unstable, and thus ineligible for GA as per criteria 5, and is mentioned in Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles ("The article specifically concerns a rapidly unfolding current event with a definite endpoint") as a good reason to quick-fail the article. --PresN 22:44, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

I have quick-failed the GAN, as PresN is right. No way that article is going to be stable until sometime after its release, preferably after all the hype and buzz have quieted down. –MuZemike 22:56, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Comparison of Donkey Kong ports

I'm certain that we discourage articles like Comparison of Donkey Kong ports without a massive amount of third-party sources directly about the topic. But I'm not certain if we redirect or delete such pages. Should I take it to AfD or start a discussion to redirect it? (Guyinblack25 talk 16:48, 18 August 2011 (UTC))

I've PRODded the article (of course, can be taken to AFD if contested). The release dates and consoles should already be in the Donkey Kong article, and that feature comparison chart would not stay in the DK article if a merge was considered. –MuZemike 17:26, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
Looks like an IP removed the PROD.[14] I'll try to AfD it later this week. Unless anyone else more on the ball would like to beat me to it. :-p (Guyinblack25 talk 23:06, 24 August 2011 (UTC))

Metal Gear

Metal Gear has seen drastic improvement since it became the COTM. User:Tintor2, User:Game-Guru999 and I (but mostly Tintor) have been working on it without any real game plan or intentional collaboration, but the article is looking much better than it was before the drive. Seems like making it monthly instead of weekly really was a better idea. Considering the jump in quality, I bumped it from C-Class to B-Class. If anyone else wants to tweak the article, the more the merrier. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:50, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm actually planning on separating the soundtracks into articles of their own next week. The Soundtrack section seems cluttered. GamerPro64 23:10, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
You mean into a list of soundtracks? Some soundtracks already have their own articles like Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake Original Soundtrack, and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (soundtrack). There is some information from the music and CDs available in various of the game's sections that may help with them. Regards.Tintor2 (talk) 01:14, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes. That's what I meant. I'm planning on making the layout like Music of the Final Fantasy series. GamerPro64 02:24, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
Any progress on the separate article? JimmyBlackwing (talk) 20:04, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
I have problems with looking for reliable sources. I don't know where to start looking. Anyone know where to find sources for video game music? GamerPro64 20:31, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
[15], [16], [17] [18] and it looks like some of the music was played at Video Games Live. It might be better to just slam the album articles together as the overall series music article; it doesn't seem like the music as a whole has had a whole lot of commentary, as most of the RSs are reviews of the different albums, so the article might need to focus on that. --PresN 21:54, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, that's what I'm planning do doing. Thanks for the links, Pres. Though, it seems weird that a website that's called Square Enix Music has music not by Square Enix. GamerPro64 03:16, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, they're rebranding to something else soon- it was originally just SquareEnix music, then RPG music, now it's video game music in general. The name's always been a problem, as they're not associated with SE in any way, but the name looks it. --PresN 04:48, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
I think it's safe to call the Metal Gear collaboration a resounding success. Good work, everyone. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 20:51, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Video game ratings

What should we go with for ratings in the infobox and prose? Specificially I'm asking when a rating was changed due to structural changes, such as those with CERO rating. Should the initial or latest rating go in the infobox? How do you add the rating to the prose (probably under release) when you don't have date changes? I'm asking because Oshiete! Popotan was changed from CERO 18 to CERO D. I don't have any dates for this as the packaging wasn't changed I just found out because of an edit to the infobox.陣内Jinnai 23:31, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I think in that case it would make sense to use the new rating since CERO 18 was replaced with two different ratings CERO D and CERO Z. One is for 17+ and the other 18+. Cero D is for 17+ so it seems the rating changed from 18+ to 17+ so I think it should be mentioned since it seems to be technocally a rerating.--76.66.180.220 (talk) 02:56, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
As far as I can tell only one was re-rated.陣内Jinnai 05:59, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Ratings don't cease to exist just because they've been superseded. Unless a particular game has been rerated, it should be described with the old rating. I think taking it upon ourselves to describe a CERO 18 game as either CERO D or Z would constitute original research. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 09:41, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd say use the original rating. We don't often mention ratings in prose anyhow, unless it's particularly notable (re-rating, commentary regarding performance based on rating, what have you.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 16:06, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Zynga AFD binge - incomplete and not guud

There are several listings on Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Article alerts of Zynga games, though the nominations weren't completed, including games like Cityville. At first glance they don't look like they're eligible for deletion in the first place. Not sure what to do, um help? Someoneanother 20:41, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

If the AfDs for any reason can't go forward, an administrator can Ignore All Rules and delist the articles and remove the AfD templates. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 20:57, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
These articles were listed for deletion by an IP, and IPs cannot create AFD pages. I would WP:AGF and create these deletion discussions for the IP. If that should be done, I'm not sure as to whether lump this all into one AFD or spread this all out on separate ones. –MuZemike 01:42, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
If one places the AfD tag, but does not start discussion, or ask on WP:AFD for it to be created, or leave a talk page message within reasonable time, it can be simply removed. In good faith, one can complete the nomination though if they feel its reasonable. But these ones weren't really. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 07:12, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Thank you all. I'll try to shore some up regardless, running a little low on time ATM.. Someoneanother 10:50, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Personally, I won't lose much sleep at all over it if they don't go to AFD. –MuZemike 07:04, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Super Robot Wars

I know this may just be looking for trouble, but I can't stand this anymore.

I'm dealing with two editors who insist on doing things their way, while claiming that I'm doing the same. I've been able to refute nearly every point brought up (because a lot of it simply didn't hold) and they haven't even bothered to take any of it into consideration, immediately going after very specific statements. This really tells me that they are not interested in why the article should stay or go, and they do not seem to understand that this sort of logic must apply across the encyclopedia, and last I checked we don't do things like this. For the sake of reason, can someone please help me out here? Despatche (talk) 00:58, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what you think you need help with. If you can show that one name is more widely recognized than the other among English speakers (I don't think you've done this decisively), it's pretty open and shut that the article should be renamed. No one in the discussion seems to be acting in bad faith. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 01:45, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Image issue in The King of Fighters XIII

The video game The King of Fighters XIII is going to be released in consoles for the PS3 and Xbox 360, but both ports feature notably different artwork: Xbox image and the PS3 image. Since the previous image, the game logo, did not provide too much illustration, I replaced it with a console cover, but mayber a poster would be more suitable. Any thoughts? Regards.Tintor2 (talk) 02:28, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

It's not every day we see arcade games getting converted into home console games any more, but since that is the case here the arcade flyer could be a get-out-of-jail-free card and nip any potential console-wars sniping in the bud. Unless the flier itself starts an argument.. nothing's simple :/ Someoneanother 03:53, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Linking to publisher and work entity articles

Hello, there is a bot approval request at WP:BRFA/H3llBot 9 for adding wikilinks to work/publisher fields where the entity can be unambiguously identified from a pre-selected list. Since I want to run video game article first, giving a ping here too. Comments welcome, thanks. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:20, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Ripples (video game) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Ripples (video game) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ripples (video game) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. RJaguar3 | u | t 20:14, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

The featured topic I'm working toward is "Looking Glass Studios games". This naturally excludes the company's main article and the ones for its employees. The articles I plan to include are List of video games developed by Looking Glass Studios, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds, System Shock, Flight Unlimited, Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri, British Open Championship Golf, Flight Unlimited II, Thief: The Dark Project, System Shock 2, Flight Unlimited III, Thief II: The Metal Age and Jane's Attack Squadron.

But I still don't know if this scope is appropriate. Looking Glass's history was very messy. They went through at least three name changes, one or two mergers, and the attribution nightmare that was Jane's Attack Squadron, a game canceled because of the company's 2000 bankruptcy and finished/released by a different company.

The problems start at the beginning of the company's life. Paul Neurath and Ned Lerner went to college together in the early '80s, worked together on an Elite knockoff called Deep Space, and then separated. Lerner worked on a few flight games, including the then-acclaimed Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer (1987); Neurath joined Origin Systems and made Space Rogue (1989). At some point during this time (sources get foggy through here), Lerner founded a company called Lerner Research. Again at some point, his company began developing a game called Car & Driver. In 1990, Neurath founded Blue Sky Productions to make what would become Ultima Underworld. The team used code from Lerner Research programmers, including assembly code straight out of Car & Driver, to create a prototype of Underworld. During the game's development, Lerner helped to fund the team and Lerner Research programmer Chris Green created the all-important texture mapping algorithm for it.

Car & Driver and Underworld were both released in 1992; the latter in March, the former at an undefined time. Underworld's opening credits identify Blue Sky Productions as the developer. That year, the two companies merged to form Looking Glass Technologies. The Lerner Research part of the team was the one that moved. There's rough evidence that Car & Driver was in the final stages of development after the merge. When it was released, the box attributed it to Lerner Research. The opening screen reads "Looking Glass Technologies".

Now for the questions. Since Looking Glass was the result of a merger, should games from both halves of the company count as "Looking Glass games"? That's not the standard practice of video game history writers. Normally, Blue Sky is considered to be just an early name for Looking Glass. It's kind of understandable, since the vast majority of the employees from this time who went on to be counted as "Looking Glass employees" were from the Blue Sky part of the company. But in a 1992 post-merger interview, Neurath estimates that only half of the company's employees were originally Blue Sky people. Perhaps all pre-merger games should be left out? Again, it's not in the sources. Standard practice is to place Underworld at the beginning of Looking Glass's history. Even when we consider these factors, the placement of Car & Driver does not become clearer. Was it a Lerner Research game or a Looking Glass game? How do we decide when the sources almost never discuss it? In short, I have no idea what to do.

Next up we have the ports. LG created several ports for other companies' games during its lifetime. These include Madden '93 for the Genesis, Command & Conquer for the N64 and Destruction Derby 64. None of these appear to be viable for splitting. But what do I do? Consider them unconnected and leave them as they are? Fix up these articles that are only slightly connected to my topic scope? Again, I'm at a loss.

Then we have Jane's Attack Squadron. Last time I asked about it here, I was told to include it. I'd like a few more opinions, though. To avoid having to write another massive paragraph of history, I'll just direct you here. The game's absurdly convoluted development cycle is briefly addressed in that section.

Thanks for having the patience to read this giant text-wall. I look forward to resolving these problems, as they've been worrying me for quite awhile. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 23:34, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I kinda feel sad that you didn't feel like asking the delegates at Featured Topics. They could help you, especially since one of the delegates is me. :) GamerPro64 23:47, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Featured topic questions. (no opinion on the question at hand, just pointing out the "standard" place for topic questions). –Drilnoth (T/C) 23:58, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
I totally forgot about that place. Thanks guys; I reposted it there. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 00:22, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Could use some more input over there. Wizardman only offered his opinion on one aspect of the problem. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 20:43, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
I'd really appreciate some more input on this issue. There really isn't another topic like this (only similar one is "Video games developed by Key", which has much clearer attribution), and I'd like to get a clearly defined scope before I do any more work on it. In particular, the stance that all the ports should be included in the topic doesn't make sense to me. If I were to create a topic for Gearbox Software, would I have to include Halo: Combat Evolved because of its PC port? Or Half-Life because of its PS2 port? I think we need a wider consensus on this in order to set a precedent for future VG topics. Input on the attribution status of Car & Driver and Jane's Attack Squadron is also appreciated. If you have time, please comment in the relevant discussion. Thanks. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 20:51, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
Ports of yesteryear weren't like they are today where you rely on SDKs and middleware and you just fine tune the result until it's playable. The hardware was often so different that ports could need a complete rewrite with new assets. But I think the question you should be asking is how you can justify not including the information. "They're just ports" doesn't cut it. It's obvious enough to me that the games should be included with a footnote that says they're ports and not completely original works. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 22:00, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
I was under the impression that featured topics shouldn't overlap. The point I'm making is that including the ports creates an overlap with three other (admittedly non-featured) topics. Why include articles that may very well be moved to other G/FTs in the future? It seems counter-intuitive. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:26, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
Show me the policy or guideline that says that and I'll show you why your understanding is way off. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 22:39, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
Why the hostility? Anyway, it's in the WP:FTC. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:45, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
No hostility. I'm looking at the criteria (WP:FT?) and it lists the following as a recommendation: "The topic does not overly overlap with a current good or featured topic." I suspect this recommendation is there to ward off articles like this. That article shouldn't exist, but I'm sure there are more subtle examples. If we interpreted the recommendation as you suggest, a number of articles could never become featured topics because of overlapping content. Every game series that includes crossover games would be ineligible. ButOnMethItIs (talk) 23:06, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
Hmmm... I see. Good point. I've never actually seen an overlapping topic; combining that with a strict reading of that recommendation, I assumed they weren't allowed outside of very special cases. Oh well. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 23:16, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
There used to be a few; there was a dispute about them about 6-9 months ago as there were some that overlapped 67% - as in topic 1 was articles A,B,C,D,E,F and topic 2 was articles A,B,C,D,G,H. Other editors believed that the only reason the topics weren't merged together was because they would have required articles I and J as well to be a complete topic, and that was not held as a sufficient reason to have two topics that were so similar. I don't recall the exact topics; I think the issue was raised during the second topic's nomination so it's not easily searchable. It's perfectly reasonable for a 16-article topic like LGStudios to include 3 articles that would also fall under the scope of other topics- that's not a huge overlap. --PresN 00:02, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
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