Talk:Disney's Animated Storybook

Create Media Station, Inc. Article?

A good bit of content here is specific to Media Station, Inc., as quoted from Newton Lee's books. I saw that there is currently not an independent article discussing the history of this fascinating company. I think such an article would definitely be significant just given many of the sources cited in this article that are specific to Media Station and contain information beyond the Disney titles. I am a new contributor, though, so I wonder if there is a reason such an article hasn't yet been created. Npjg (talk) 18:17, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

As a co-founder of Media Station, I'd be happy to facilitate such an article. However, per what I understand to be Wiki official or unofficial policies, I have not authored such because I am not a third-party.

The current article also contains some technical errors about the engine, which I spec'd, designed, and coded, and attribution errors of who did what. If I were to edit this Disney ASB article, I'd leave out the engineer's names and remove most of the technical references, since Disney is the focus.

I also find it curious that the article does not contain a reference to the disaster of a release the original Lion King was, due to an incompatibility with Microsoft code and Compaq's computers:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/535838/worst_products_ever.html

Circuits in Burbank CA went down due to the number of Disney support calls made on Christmas Day. Disney and Media Station made the front page of the WSJ due to this.

There is a Facebook group of past MSI employees, so there are plenty of sources for interviews. I'm still in touch with the original founders.

I'm not sure how this would work, but feel free to reach out to me.

Henryaz (talk) 02:08, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

• Great to meet you User:Henryaz, I created this beast of an article. Would be very interested in seeing what information yourself and the former Media Station employees could reveal about this series and your company.

Something important to remember with Wikipedia is that content inclusion is based on 'verifiability, not truth', which means that if something is true only in the mind of the person that did the thing but it isn't recorded anywhere, there's no way to prove it.

So basically I recommend first getting the information in a public location - a great way to do this is to reach out to Frank Cifaldi, head of the Video Game History Foundation - a non-profit foundation for the archival, preservation, and dissemination of historical media related to video games. His organisation I'm sure would write articles and perhaps a documentary, as they did with Where in North Dakota is Carmen Sandiego.

Then, the information can then me placed into the article as it can be directly sourced from a reliable, third party source.

That said, if there are factual errors, or even possible copyediting to tighten up the prose, you can do it as long as the content is neutral and non-promotional. It's ill advised for people with conflicts-of-interest to do this, but you could in theory.

Also, I write in depth about the fiasco with The Lion King's launch in that section.--Coin945 (talk) 12:32, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Debacle over DirectX

I've been looking for sources that confirm this software was one of the major forces for Microsoft to create DirectX, and althought there's a portion of the text that does say that (just search for DirectX) it's refferencing a link that has no information about it. I'd consider removing it until a reliable source is provided. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2804:7F1:E00A:6521:7C4F:834E:5E62:E777 (talk) 17:35, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Overlinking

In these 2 edits, then these 10 edits, a well-meaning IPv6 editor added a bunch of wikilinks. I have removed many of these for contravening WP:OVERLINK. We don't need wikilinks for common words/phrases or concepts like "animator", "director", "budget" and we don't need multiple wikilinks for the same thing, for example, links to 101 Dalmatians, Aladdin, Lion King, Toy Story, etc. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 21:12, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Major merge

Why are the individual titles split out as independently notable when they just repeat the same information apart from a review or two? When each game doesn't have significant coverage, we summarize each in the parent article and only split out summary style. All or almost all of the spin-outs should be merged for a single complete article.  czar 05:03, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

@Czar can I split Disney's Animated Storybook: 101 Dalmatians? Not sure if this is enough [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] Timur9008 (talk) 10:47, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Those are really short reviews (apart from the Chicago Tribune) so my recommendation would be to build a section on the game within this article and then to split out if the size of the section overwhelms the article (i.e., summary style). czar 13:03, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Relativity

The prose in this series of articles could be improved by making its assertions relative. For instance, specific dates don't matter for almost all circumstances here, but it could be useful to say that within a title's "first year", it had sold X units. Same goes for the Reception section, which should look to stack what reviewers had in common. For instance, if multiple reviewers commented on the game(s)' brevity or value, generalize it as "reviewers criticized its brevity" and stack references rather than putting it in the long and repetitive form of X reviewer of Y publication said it was "too short" (rephrased with different terms). This is to say that concision would really make the intense research that went into this article shine.  czar 08:37, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

@Czar: thank you for your helpful critique of the article with advice on how to improve it. I've taken a stab at merging all the content together and re-writing the Critical reception content with a focus on the series as a whole rather than reviews of individual games (taking the cue from Madeline (video game series). To be perfectly honest, the notion of copyediting the entire article seems a bit overwhelming so I was wondering if you'd be willing to head to the article for a copyedit, perhaps actioning the 'brevity' concept you refer to above? I know that there's a great article in there somewhere, but it's lost behind all the content, and your help could really, as you put it, make the article "shine".--Coin945 (talk) 05:46, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Would love to but about to head back into work season—can you try me again in the future? Perhaps in advance of an American holiday or weekend a few weeks/months from now? Also will likely need to remove those multiple box art pics per WP:NFCC#8: no contextual significance (per our non-free image policy, we only show box art to either identify the sole subject of the article or when an image is needed to support a sourced claim that cannot be understood from prose alone). (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 07:06, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

@Czar: Noted. :) Do what you have to do to make the article the best it can be. I welcome your edits without objection. After all, why would I ask for your assistance in the first place if I didn't acknowedge your expertise? Thank you for accpeting my request to help imrpove the article some time later this year, and I look forward to touching base soon. :)--Coin945 (talk) 08:39, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Merging

@WikiPediaAid: I came across this merge dispute through WP:NPP. I see you've rolled back the IPs efforts to merge some articles. While that's fair, it's not like the merge was out of order there had been a merge tag for 14 months and the only participant in the discussion was in favor of it. I don't really have an opinion about whether they should be merged or not but did want to express some support for the IP editor who was acting with-in WP:BRD. As you pointed out in one of your edit summaries having a discussion now is the right step in the process. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:57, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Support merge (from May 2017 and earlier) for the set of Disney's Animated Storybook: The Lion King Disney's Animated Storybook: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree Disney's Animated Storybook: Pocahontas Disney's Animated Storybook: Toy Story Disney's Animated Storybook: The Hunchback of Notre Dame Disney's Animated Storybook: 101 Dalmatians Disney's Animated Storybook: Hercules Ariel's Story Studio Disney's Animated Storybook: Mulan Disney's Animated Storybook: Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too on the a mix ofWP:FORK, WP:CRUFT, WP:PROMO and WP:N arguments (differing by page). Klbrain (talk) 20:49, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Merge titles into new, separate list article: Someone has merged a couple titles' articles back into this article and already the page is looking bloated again. While this partly has to do with duplicated information (both The Lion King's combined "Conception" and "Development" sections and Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree's "Background and development" section share virtually identical text), I could see readers getting tired of going through each title before reaching the main "History" section (provided they want to go through the whole thing) even if the duplicate info were culled. (There would also have to be a lot of clear templates to keep all the games' infoboxes contained.) The titles could be put under a list article titled List of Disney's Animated Storybook games so the content for each specific title can be properly covered without needing ten (or currently eight) separate underdeveloped articles doing the same thing, and leave the info relating to the series in general on the main article. The "Titles" section on the main article would have just the table and a main article link to the list article. Understandably, this might not be the best idea out there, but it's better than seeing a video game series article looking bloated and overly long to most users. –WPA (talk) 05:14, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree with WikiPediaAid on the partially implemented merge by drive-by IPs 2A02:C7D:B910:3D00:A5D8:C533:FB3C:B98F and 2A02:C7D:B910:3D00:8E0:26E3:6516:7EB0, and am reverting that poorly-implemented merge. I'll take a stab at resolving this, as it's floated to the top of the WP:WikiProject Merge#Open tasks work list. – wbm1058 (talk) 18:02, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

The infoboxes are mostly redundant. I merged the CD cover art into the table at Disney's Animated Storybook#Titles, which already has columns for the developers and release dates. The other parameters – publisher, genre, mode and platform – are mostly common to all ten titles and included in the {{Infobox video game series}} template which is the infobox for the merged (main) article. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:52, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

This main article for the topic was created in May 2013‎. The "summary style" spinoffs were created by Coin945 in Spetember 2016, by copying text from this article without giving proper attribution in their edit summaries. I'm not finding much original content in the spinoffs, indeed this is an unusual scenario where the parent article actually often has more detail than its ostensibly more detailed summary-style spinoffs. I'm not finding much mergable content except for possibly the "gameplay" and "critical reception" sections. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:07, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

On further review, the mergable content varies, some have "development", "promotion", and/or "commercial performance" sections. I don't see any compelling need to merge these; though I think the main article has sufficient encyclopedic content that there is no compelling reason not to simply redirect the sub-articles without merging much more of anything. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:27, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Coin945 merge

• As creator of this article and its spin-offs, I took a stab at merging all the content together. The citations and content need a bit of tidying up, but in general I'm pretty happy with how all the content fit into the same page.--Coin945 (talk) 04:47, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

OK, looks to me like everyone is happy now. I'll close out this merge proposal as merged. – wbm1058 (talk) 03:20, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Significant referencing problems

Many of the references in this topic are satisfied by highbeam.com, which is defunct. The articles are not accessible without a subscription, and new subscriptions are not available. -- Mikeblas (talk) 22:20, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

@Mikeblas: See Wikipedia talk:HighBeam#Discontinuation – wbm1058 (talk) 17:23, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Yep -- that's what I'm asking about. There are many highbeam.com references in this article, and it looks like they don't have suitable replacements. -- Mikeblas (talk) 17:56, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

Engvar

@Coin945, I just wanted clarification on what English variety this article uses. In skimming the article I've noticed there are a few instances of both British and American spelling. JOEBRO64 20:21, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

• Hey @TheJoebro64:, I'm using the Australian English variant (I'm from there after all). I know this is a US subject but force of habit means that's the natural way I spell things. But if I am using a quote from a source directly, I will use the US spelling.--Coin945 (talk) 21:12, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

• OK. Thanks for the clarification JOEBRO64 23:00, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Files for discussion/2019 January 21#Non-free book covers in Disney's Animated Storybook

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Files for discussion/2019 January 21#Non-free book covers in Disney's Animated Storybook. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:31, 21 January 2019 (UTC)