User talk:Thibbs/Archive 5

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Scans

No worries! I really appreciate you doin this. CaseyPenk (talk) 23:06, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad to help. I definitely support the expansion of VB coverage. There is still too little well-sourced info on rare and non-Western gaming topics here at Wikipedia. Thanks for your efforts to improve the situation. -Thibbs (talk) 11:42, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

You are wonderful! Let me tell you something, I'm blown away at how much information there is about these games if you track it down, and from reliable sources too. It's pretty fun to dig through the archives. Let me know of any other underserved articles and I'll put them on my to-do list. CaseyPenk (talk) 11:47, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Well would you look at that. Goldeneye 007 and Mario Kart were under development for the VB.. this is why I love this stuff. CaseyPenk (talk) 12:08, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Happy to be of service. -Thibbs (talk) 13:08, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Fam. score

Is there any context with this score? [1] I'd like to add old reviews to the article. « ₣M₣ » 18:26, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately I don't actually own a copy of the Famitsu magazine used as a reference so I'm working from a grainy scan that someone sent me and about the best I can offer to expand on the raw score is that the reviewers gave it 10, 8, 9, and 10 respectively. The text of the individual reviewers' thoughts is sadly just at the boundary between legibility and illegibility. I can certainly pick out a word or two in Japanese that I'm already familiar with here and there, but for the rest of the text I can only get 50-75% accuracy on the kana, and the kanji is really illegible.

So for me the text is unusable. For a native Japanese-speaker, on the other hand, this might not be all that difficult to decipher. If you can find someone who can recognize the shape of fuzzy characters and is familiar enough with the language to use the context to understand what the author must have been saying then it could be usable. If you'd like I can make a copy available for you. Let me know if you're interested. -Thibbs (talk) 12:25, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Discussion link

Please see Talk:List of fictional badgers#Incident at Hawk's Hill. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:52, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. -Thibbs (talk) 01:59, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Famitsu score

Hello! Thanks for your contribution. The score for Golden Sun is 34, but I don't know the means of "Pt.2." (in ref). I'm learning English now, so could you tell me it's full spelling. Thank you!--铁铁的火大了 (talk) 13:41, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi, I'm glad to help. The "Pt.2" means "Part 2". The magazine describes itself as a Part 2 (中巻) to the actual Issue #915. I discussed this a little bit with another editor above. I hope that helps. -Thibbs (talk) 17:31, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you!--铁铁的火大了 (talk) 03:07, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

You're quite welcome. -Thibbs (talk) 02:51, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Acceptance

		The Barnstar of Diplomacy
		Awarded because you asked for then graciously accepted the Third Opinion offered at Talk:List of fictional badgers without adding to the level of possible drama. Binksternet (talk) 03:13, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Well thank you. As I said earlier, I disagree with the outcome from a strategic perspective regarding the future of the article, but I hold community-based decision-making in higher regard than I do my own biases. In a word, I don't agree with the majority says in this matter, but I'll defend to the death their right to say it. Happy editing to you too. -Thibbs (talk) 03:21, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Thibbs. You have new messages at MarnetteD's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

MarnetteD | Talk 17:24, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. -Thibbs (talk) 17:31, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Shamrock Rovers

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Why are you continually vandalising this page? Yet again Rovers are NOT known as "the" Shamrock Rovers. Paddy Coad reluctantly took over the manager's job and this is a direct quote from the book "The Hoops" by Paul Doolan and Robert Goggins. Do you know what a dead link means? That is why I have put in a live link for Jim McLaughlin. Yet again read the context of the Pat Byrne text. Your version does not make sense. Again the first game in the RDS was on the 30th of September 1990. This is referenced quite clearly in the book above. The date is wrong in "We Are Rovers". This book is a fans book. "The Hoops" is the official history of the club. I hope this clears it up for you because it is not hard to understand. Grateful if you could stop interfering with this page and leave it to fans of the club who know what they are talking about. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.44.102.9 (talk) 11:59, 30 June 2012 (UTC) Please let's stop pretending that the only thing you are "fixing" at the article is the entirely aesthetic difference between calling the team "the Rovers" as the Rovers refer to themselves on their club website and "Rovers" (which of course they also refer to themselves as). The issue here is that you have been stripping tags that request improvement to the references and you have not been replacing them with refs. That is unacceptable. Is there a reason that although you dismiss one published source in favor of another, you refuse to provide a proper citation to the new source you are talking about? It's fine to claim that there is a better source that has different info in it, but back your words up or else they are just empty words. Provide an inline reference including page number and you're all set. Your edit warring behavior is pathetic. Remember how I explained to you over and over again that proper references were necessary for the stadium seating issue? Newsflash: It's still true. Edit warring will only result in this page getting locked against your harmful edits as well. -Thibbs (talk) 12:29, 30 June 2012 (UTC) Its Rovers. End of story. Your behaviour is childish as you refuse to read or accept when somebody is trying to improve this article: Yet again read the context of the Pat Byrne text. Your version does not make sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.167.250.120 (talk) 17:05, 30 June 2012 (UTC) Your insistence that this is about whether it's "the Rovers" or simply "Rovers" leads me to suspect that you are trying to cover up your tag-blanking activities (which are quite obviously of more importance to the article than some aesthetic nonsense related to how you personally speak). Sadly I can still clearly see you removing these tags so your subterfuge isn't working. And until you can provide adequate sources these tags will have to remain in place. I wish you well in locating Wikipedia-appropriate sources. -Thibbs (talk) 19:17, 30 June 2012 (UTC) There is no cover up or conspiracy. The only nonsense is your refusal to accept the truth. It is not how I speak. Only americans refer to the club as the Rovers. To everyone else its Rovers. Newsflash: READ THE CONTEXT OF THE PAT BYRNE TEXT. Your version has bad english. How can you not understand this? I am after explaining this to you repeatedly. As for the tags they are not needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.167.250.120 (talk) 19:25, 30 June 2012 (UTC) Nobody cares whether it's "the Rover" or "Rovers" except you. Please stop blanking tags on these articles as it is counterproductive. If you want to make non-tag-blanking edits to this article then learn to edit instead of just hitting "revert". -Thibbs (talk) 22:44, 30 June 2012 (UTC) You care enough to get it wrong over and over. Learn basic english: READ THE CONTEXT OF THE PAT BYRNE TEXT. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.44.102.9 (talk) 09:40, 1 July 2012 (UTC) Example 1: repairing a grammar error Y RIGHT! Example 2: pushing the "revert" button in order to sneak in tag blankings N WRONG! Learn to edit before you try your hand at criticism. It makes you look very foolish indeed. -Thibbs (talk) 11:43, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Famitsu - Star Ocean

Hi Thibbs. So I know for a while there you were providing Famitsu scores. I was wondering if by any chance could help me with getting the score for Star Ocean, the SNES version in particular. Wasn't sure how you were getting them, but if you could find out, or show me how to find out if it were an online database or something, I'd appreciate it. If you can't, no big deal. Let me know some time. Thanks! Sergecross73 msg me 14:09, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Those Famitsu scores were partially from a handful of Famitsu magazines I had, and primarily from a single magazine I'd gotten hold of (a 2006 supplement to an anniversary collection containing hundreds of old cross reviews. Sadly the magazine only went back as far as 1999 and only covered a single SNES game, and I've gone through the whole magazine and added scores for all articles that existed on Wikipedia as stand-alone articles or as stand-alone subsections. So that won't be of any help. I do have another load of Famitsus that I will be uploading the scores from in August when I have more time, but they are all from 1993-1995 so they also won't help.

I have noticed that a lot of Wikipedia articles giving Famitsu scores have used as a reference a Turkish-English online archive (located here) that claims to faithfully record Famitsu cross review scores for a number of titles. I have no idea how reliable they are and frankly I was hoping to spend some time in August replacing these links with actual Famitsu citations because the site seems to fall far short of Wikipedia's RS standards (they have little in the way of explanation as to who they are or what their editorial policies are), but they do have a lot of scores that may very well be accurate. The WayBackMachine seems to be a good way to access older portions of their site and here you can find some scores for other games in the Star Ocean series, but not the game you linked above.

So no real help from me sadly, but I do try to pick up Famicom Tsushin issues from the 1990-2000 period, so if I see anything covering Star Ocean in the future I'll let you know. -Thibbs (talk) 15:23, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello!

How are you doing? I've still been working on and off with the fictional animal lists and I think I might've run into a slight problem. You know how I've been splitting the lists by media, and then creating sub-articles when needed... Well I started tackling the List of dragons in popular culture, trying to organize and maintain the list by creating List of dragons which is better than the former (I think) but my problem is List of dragons in literature already exists (and is far from a bad article, probably one of the better lists of fictional animal articles I've come across). The only problem is, I personally feel that it's more of a "List of literary references to dragons" or possibly "List of books with dragons in them" because it's listed by publication date rather than character name. So what do you think? Should this article be renamed or reworked? or should I (when needed) create an article List of dragon characters in literature to avoid the problem altogether? Can these two (related but still distinct) lists exist side-by-side? Or, more importantly, should they?

Thanks for the help. Ncboy2010 (talk) 12:27, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

I've got to admit that my involvement with these "lists of fictional animal X" articles has slowed to a crawl. I'm still technically in the midst of cutting out the non-sourced/non-article dogs from "list of fictional dogs", but I'm not likely to have any time to really go into it until after August and I was thinking of retiring from this kind of cleanup after that article is repaired. Most recently I've been voted down at "list of fictional badgers" so the consensus view has become that notability is not to be taken into consideration there. I think it's a big mistake but I guess that's my prerogative as the minority view holder.

In the way of a summary, I've collapsed my thoughts on the fictional badger situation immediately below:

What disregarding notability means for the list of fictional badgers

You can read the large "list of fictional badgers" argument on the talk page if you're curious (my frustration there mainly sprang from the fact that the other party to the discussion had been making WP:POINTy edits such as blanking the article when I started removing non-notable characters and removing the "notability" requirement that had been there for over a year with the summary "fixed", etc.). Anyway as I said in talk there, I'd long been concerned with the fact that per WP:SAL, all stand alone lists (like all articles on Wikipedia) need to be based on notable topics. Because there is next to no reliable source coverage of the topic "fictional badgers", or "fictional worms", or many of the list of fictional animal X articles, I'd been considering them to be split articles from the parent topic "fictional animals" (on which I think there is sufficient RS coverage). This allows the sub article to leech off the notability of the parent at the cost of having its non-notable members cut out (because cutting non-notables is essential for such a massive list). By declaring notability not to be a factor for list members, though, I think we're in effect declaring that the topic is notable enough to stand on its own and thus that it is independent from the list of fictional animals and that no non-notable list-members need to be removed for practical reasons (i.e. there is no danger of the list becoming IINFO). With this in mind, I've made a serious attempt at building a proper lede for the article and after quite a bit of research I was able to track down one or two useful sources that start to demonstrate general notability of the topic of "fictional badgers". Hopefully that will be enough to save the article from deletion, but at this point I'm burned out on the article and hopefully the other party to the original disagreement will pick up the slack by improving it a little himself.

As for the dragon situation, I think that both lists wouldn't exist comfortably side-by-side and that they would eventually be merged, but I'm not sure which one should be the one that ultimately remains. I tend to favor inter-article consistency so if all of the other lists of fictional animal X articles are split by media then I feel that the same should be done for dragons. On the other hand, the current list is pretty decent (though I agree the title is not so clear) and there may be strong resistance to such a clean-up. I think the thing to do would be to start making inquiries about how best to proceed at the talk page. If nobody responds then you could either go ahead with a merge/reworking/conversion of the "List of dragons in literature" from a date-of-publication division into a media-based division or you could take the question to WikiProject Fictional characters or initiate a merge discussion for broader community input. If you run into problems, please let me know. Hopefully it will be a smooth transition though. The arguments I've run into over these articles have really worn me out. -Thibbs (talk) 15:12, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

I had taken quite a long break from any heavy wikipedia editing, and only just now started back... although I feel it's a constant uphill struggle (if only against the constant tide of IP's additions). I read through your issues on the list of badgers article and I'm sorry that this has drained you so much. I'll probably continue (at a much slower pace) but my heart will likely not be 100%. And eventually, I'm sure, I'll completely abandon it as I get fed up with the pointless politics and screaming die-hard fans. Sorry I'm not so eloquent with writing. But I guess you understand my meaning. Ncboy2010 (talk) 21:43, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Oh don't worry about me being drained. I just need a break from cleanup-type of editing. I may go back to it after a while, but for now I think I'll be shifting my focus to expansion-type editing. Specifically, I am turning more and more toward sourcing activities. The resistance I have encountered in trying to clean up some of the very low quality Fictional Character articles I have run into has been disappointing, but Fictional Characters is not a topic I am particularly interested in anyway to tell the truth. A Wiki-topic-break in this realm will hopefully improve my effectiveness in other editorial tasks.

I hope you don't get as burned out as you're predicting. If you need input on topics related to the fictional animals lists, please do let me know so that I can weigh in on discussions related to them. Although I don't plan to be as active in this area in the future I have spent a great deal of time thinking about what would be the best way to organize and edit these articles and I would appreciate the opportunity to share my views. -Thibbs (talk) 00:23, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Well one good thing, at least, is it seems that most of the lists are just there, without anyone doggedly watching them so there's that. I'm also happy to say that I've finished cleaning and wikitabling most of these articles. I'm not sure if I want to even bother with the list of badgers, though. Ncboy2010 (talk) 11:07, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah your work with these lists has really impressed me. You've really put in a huge amount of work on them even if there was no resistance to many of the cleanups. I assumed that most of them were non-maintained due to the shabby state they were in, and I can say that there have been a few of them (some of the bird ones notably) where the editors who were there were happy to work with me to repair the article. For the few articles that are maintained by editors who disagree with the application of policies like WP:N, the job becomes more tiresome.

I think the best thing to do in such a case is to argue in favor of applying WP:N as well as possible and if the person doesn't change their mind then request outside views then you must request outside views. In general, I think most Wikipedian editors tend to promote WP:N as it is a guideline and guidelines are usually considered just short of policies. But if the consensus that develops is to disregard WP:N then I think the best step is to be fatalistic about it. Consensus can change in time so I think that if all of the other lists are cleaned up and made to abide by WP:N then momentum may eventually swing the other way. It's best not to let any localized problems like that turn you off editing for good though. There are a lot of areas that can still be improved without getting hung up on the problem areas. -Thibbs (talk) 13:44, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Well thanks! I've been working on the list of fictional mustelids article recently, merging skunks and raccoons back into it (as well as adding the few notable badgers I could find). I actually created this article as a split a while back: List of mammalian alien species, and I've come to realize that this is a very poor article and there's no way to even verify the mammalianess of any one thing on that list. I've listed it for deletion after someone removed PROD. If you care to weigh your opinion in on the matter, you're much more well-versed in actual guidelines than I am and could probably word it better than I ever could. But only if you feel that my reasoning left something to be desired. I think I might go edit it to mention WP:N, as I know it fails it. Ncboy2010 (talk) 21:50, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I've weighed in. I voted "merge" because I imagine that "fictional aliens" is a notable topic, but I agree that many members of the list should probably be removed because they are simply non-notable and as you know I support "individual notability" as a criterion for these sorts of lists. I don't think that pursuing the dream of turning Wikipedia into an almanac detailing all instances of a certain fictional trope is a worthy goal mainly because I don't think it's remotely feasible. New fiction comes out constantly and if we look at all genres of fiction for all age groups and in all languages/cultures since the dawn of fiction as a concept then we are looking at a ridiculously huge number of list entries that would be very difficult to safeguard against vandalism. Failing a perfect list of all fictional characters of X characteristic, we are left with a list of the small number of contributing editors' favorite characters which is a shining example of systemic POV.

I am considering turning my attention more toward crafting ledes for these articles in the future in order to determine for myself the suitability of the article in the first place. If and when I return to improving "list of fictional animal X" articles it will most likely be in this capacity. -Thibbs (talk) 13:39, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. I've done my best to use your original lede as a template for the other various lists of fictional animals. I'm currently semi-attempting to slowly go through the List of alien species A thru Z and it's proving a bit daunting. Nevertheless, I'll press on as long as I find the time and ambition. Merging may work for the short term, but I still feel that claiming any character/species (not from earth) as mammalian must be original research without a source specifically saying "This species is mammalian." But thanks again for your weigh in and thank you for all the work you've done on these types of articles. You're one of the very few people that actually helped and I truly appreciate that. Ncboy2010 (talk) 14:59, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad to help when I can. And I do agree that determining aliens to be mammals is most likely original research. As you and Clarityfiend from the AfD pointed out, the definition of "mammal" is rooted in biology and largely renders alien characters non-mammals by definition. -Thibbs (talk) 17:08, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Strike series/GameFan

Hi Thibbs, just wondering if you have the following GameFan reviews and if you might have time to send/summarise them:

• Soviet Strike (Saturn version), GameFan 51 (Vol 5, Issue 3), March 1997. There's also a preview in issue 47 which may or may not be of use.
• Nuclear Strike (Playstation), GameFan 58 (Vol 5, Issue 10), October 1997. There's a preview in the previous issue, 57. Much obliged, bridies (talk) 09:05, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Ah, very interesting. I'd actually been intending to start expanding Soviet Strike myself in the near future. As such I do have ready access all of the material you've requested and I'd be glad to pass them on. I could either summarize the contents or I could just make scans for you and let you figure out how best to present the material. Either way works for me so let me know what's easiest for you.

Regarding Soviet Strike, I also have an earlier review of the PlayStation version in the Dec 1996 issue of GameFan (#48) if you're interested. Let me know about that as well.

In addition (and honestly one of the big reasons I was interested in expanding these), I have access to a review of Soviet Strike that appeared in the Russian magazine "Great Drakon". Great Drakon was arguably Russia's best-known and largest gaming magazine from the 1990s and its review of Soviet Strike seems to me to be a fascinating opportunity to expand Wikipedia's coverage with an intimate reaction to the characterizations presented in the article. Its use in the article would also provide a very good illustration of: "when a game depicts Y country or aspects of it, then reviews from Y country can provide reliable, detailed, and direct reaction to the depiction". If you're interested then I could either send you a scan of this as well or if you aren't familiar with cyrillic script then I could summarize this for inclusion in the article. My Russian is far from perfect, but I've already made an attempted translation so I'd be glad to share it. Let me know what works best for you.

I'm excited to see how it turns out so keep me posted! -Thibbs (talk) 12:48, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Ha, yeah, I hadn't thought about including what the (former) Soviets might have to say about it... I'm actually not at all familiar with either of these games. I worked on Desert and Jungle Strike articles a while back and wrote off Urban Strike due to lack of available research. A request was made for entries on the last two games and so I've approached the series again. Sadly, the GameSpot and IGN articles -linked in that discussion- are the only reviews I've been able to find for Soviet Strike. Nothing via Google, Highbeam, online print archive, Metacritic or Retromags that I can see. There's another user has a Next Gen review so that would make a handful of articles in all. Not sure if you're aware of anything else. bridies (talk) 13:16, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not aware of anything apart from the GameFan, Next Gen, and Great Drakon sources offhand. I was actually planning on contacting you to see if you could offer any advice on the topic since I am largely unfamiliar with the games myself and I'd noticed that you had been the main editor for Desert and Jungle Strike. I haven't scoured the sources online, though, and I don't have a Highbeam account (yet) so there may be more material out there... Regarding the sources I mentioned above, would you prefer scans or summaries? -Thibbs (talk) 14:25, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I took a quick look through some of my records and I've got an article on the Strike series as a whole that appeared in Retro Gamer #45. I've also located reviews for both Soviet Strike and Nuclear Strike in issues of the Brazilian magazine, Super GamePower, as well as a brief previews for both of them in the same magazine. Are you interested in any of this material? -Thibbs (talk) 15:31, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Anything you can find would be great and either scans (my email's enabled) or summaries are fine, whichever is most convenient (it's just some don't like to make scans due to copyright concerns. Ahem.). I also don't mind waiting if you prefer to draft content from them yourself; there's no hurry. Another option would be to add things piecemeal to the current series article and then split it out, but I think that would disqualify it from any DKY attempt. Alternatively (preferably?) feel free to add anything to User:Bridies/Sandbox/Soviet Strike and/or User:Bridies/Sandbox/Nuclear Strike. Nuclear Strike is a tad more viable: Allgame has a review and I found a review (albeit of a demo) in the New Straits Times via Highbeam, so that'd be at least half a dozen sources if the print reviews come together. I actually just asked Guyinblack about that Retrogamer feature; he referenced it extensively in the Desert Strike article. bridies (talk) 17:03, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

OK I'll get some scans up when I get a chance then and I'll post to your talk. These won't be super high quality scans and I am providing them strictly for educational purposes (insofar as they are being used to source an educational article), so I'm claiming fair use when I provide them. I'm not worried that I could meaningfully detract from or diminish the value of the original work by providing a scan of a single article anyway. But I know some people are sensitive about this issue so it's nice of you to respect that. I'll be fairly busy (unable to commit to any projects of any depth) until August/September, but I'll be glad to help out with the article construction however you'd like then. -Thibbs (talk) 18:31, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I think I'll probably need a translation of that Russian article... I can probably figure out Portuguese, but not Russian, haha. Also, I've just realised that sadly Guyinblack hasn't edited for about 6 months so if you you could also send me the Retrogamer feature, that'd be great. Thanks again, bridies (talk) 10:10, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Sure thing. I'll get the new scans up later this week or this weekend and I'll post the Russian translation at the same unless you need it earlier. -Thibbs (talk) 02:32, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

• Nuclear Strike is up finally (got a bit distracted by the Cannon Fodder games). Onto Soviet Strike... bridies (talk) 13:04, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Looks great! I'm somewhat occupied with a lengthy side project at the moment but I'll probably be free in a few weeks and can go over it in detail. Thanks for keeping me current with the status of these articles. -Thibbs (talk) 22:18, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Soviet Strike is finally up (side-tracked by some ocean-deep ANI stuff the last couple of weeks). I think I probably messed up the citation for Great Drakon... I also didn't take that much from it - obviously not being all that confident with the language - other than the fact it praised this or that. Feel free to add more. Anyway, on a related note, I'm still trying to finish up the Strike and Cannon Fodder series and as such would love: the Cannon Fodder (Atari Jaguar version) review in GameFan 25 (Vol 3, Issue 1; Dec 1995), and the Urban Strike review in GameFan 22 (Vol 2, Issue 10; Oct 1994); if you get time. Thanks again, bridies (talk) 15:21, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Looks like you've done a fine job with it. The Great Drakon stuff you've included does give the general impression that they were positive about it and I think that's the main thing worthy of note. The Russian perspective of a game set in Russia goes a long way, I think, toward presenting as broad a critical reception as possible which reduces POV while giving the readers a depthy understanding of how the game was perceived by the gamers of the day. Even if it's just a basic response, the general idea comes through just fine.

As for the other GameFan articles, I'll post them to your talk page. -Thibbs (talk) 16:47, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Invitation to wikiFeed

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Thanks! RachulAdmas (talk) 20:20, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't actually follow any Twitter or RSS feeds currently so this tool is of limited use to me, but thank you very much for bringing it to my attention. I will definitely look into it if I drift in that direction. -Thibbs (talk) 15:40, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

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Thanks very much for this opportunity. I intend to make full use of it. I've already begun a few preliminary Highbeam searches and there seems to be loads of information on some of the obscurer topics I've been interested in expanding. Cheers. -Thibbs (talk) 04:00, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Some bubble tea for you!

A late appreciation of a merger you did of Play (animal) into general Play (activity). I thought the segregation of play by human VS the rest of the animals was uncalled for. Glad you acted boldly. Tesseract2(talk) 11:09, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh thanks! I'm glad I could help at that article. It's a fascinating topic. -Thibbs (talk) 03:56, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Re: your recent vandalism

Next time just live an informative comment in the edit summary so that all this can be traced and evaluated. Reverting other editor's comments in talk is serious business. Diego (talk) 06:32, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I was using the common Wikipedia shorthand "rvv" to mean "reverting vandalism". The editors who have been involved with the page I edited are by now familiar with this problematic editor and would not have needed further explanation, but as I indicated to you earlier I can see how a newcomer to the article might not be aware of the situation especially if he was just passing through and was unfamiliar with the underlying problem. I am sorry to see your continued assertion that my edit was an act of vandalism and I repudiate this charge completely, but I am willing to accept your critique that I should have left a more detailed edit summary in order to meet Wikipedia's best practices. Although even leaving any edit summary is of course not mandatory, I try to follow best practices whenever possible and I will certainly take your advice under consideration. -Thibbs (talk) 22:06, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

PS - Kudos on championing the side of a minutes-old IP editor account over that of an experienced registered editor. Although I disagree with your assessment of my part in the action, I commend you on your lack of IP bias - a prejudice that is hard for the best among us to avoid after a few years on the anti-vandal beat. -Thibbs (talk) 22:41, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Date vandalism

Your last comment at SVT struck me as interesting, specifically how you describe the edits as "automatic" because I've suspected there might be some of that going on. Let me elaborate. About a year or two ago (I don't remember exactly when) I came across a very prolific editor from the Houston area doing date changes (sometimes just adding more specific dates that were either wrong, or just couldn't be verified), and there were some other edits that were similar that pretty much guaranteed they were deliberate errors. What's more is this editor had multiple IPs, like on the order of dozens. Some were probably the home IP, others were mobile providers (where IPs hop), and others were a local school. So there was a clear profile of this editor. What's strange is that they'd been doing this (and getting warned, sporadically) from these various ranges for years before I noticed it. What's more, when they were blocked, they'd start editing again within sometimes hours of the block expiring--this was on 6 month and 1 year blocks in some cases. I kept after it for a while, and I still monitor a few IPs. I doubt they've quit but I haven't seen the exact pattern of that editor for a while.

Anyway, that experience, and others similar to it (including one that involved cartoon articles), lead me to not trust the majority of dates associated with "release dates" and other similar hard to verify dates. I don't think there's a pending solution other than addressing them as they come up. A policy that required verifiability for certain classes of facts would be a step in the right direction, but I don't see that happening soon.

I share your skepticism, and while I suppose many of these editors are adding data in good faith, they need to explain where they're getting it from. Editors that add or change random factual data that is very hard to verify, and do a lot of it, without explaining where they're getting it from should be suspect until verified. But you'll probably get opposition from people too who don't understand how pervasive this kind of vandalism is.

Keep up the good work, if I get a chance I'll try to look at it too and see if there are others. But without a full fledged SPI and a lot of detective work it can be hard to track down the affected articles. Shadowjams (talk) 23:08, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement. I've looked a bit online to see if I could find the source of the automation tools that they might be using. Aside from the typical nonsense at places like E.D. and the Bob B. vandal group (I'm speaking obliquely here to avoid search engine hits), I have seen some small discussion about the possibility of creating tools like this at Wikipedia Review. If I had more time I would like to work on getting access to such a tool. Given the general unfamiliarity with what sneaky vandalism looks like among the admins at AIV, RFPP, and AN/I, I feel like one of the goals of the SVT should be to raise awareness among the administration in particular. But there may be a great opportunity for outreach here as well regarding WP:SUP. The problems caused at Wikipedia via a malicious automatic tool should be easily countered by a corrective tool tailored to the malicious one's MO. This is exactly the sort of thing that large numbers of Comp Sci students could help immensely with. There is always the risk that this will start an arms race and that some of the very students might be working for "the enemy" (or would be seduced by the idea on encountering it for the first time), but it may be worth considering. I have read a little on the topic in the academic literature already (e.g. this 2010 article) so I know the concept is not entirely new. Anyway it may be worth keeping in mind as an idea for the future. I considered posting this to SVT but I balked at the idea that SVT may attract a lot of unwelcome attention too and there's no reason to tip one's hand as to plans if one can avoid it. -Thibbs (talk) 13:36, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Creating something to automate those sorts of edits is something fairly trivial, and I assume most of that, if it's done, would be rolled out specific to the job. But I've been surprised before so maybe I'm incorrect. The edit filter (more properly known by its original name, the abuse filter) is a really good resource for this sort of thing, and that system works surprisingly well. You might investigate that if you're inclined. To stop scripts operating so automatically though probably requires something server-side.

SVT probably could have more presence, or could merge with the CVU or something like it. Part of the problem is my own; I haven't promoted it or done much to encourage a forum of discussion there which was my original goal. There's also the problem of having it encourage that sort of vandalism and inform it as much as it does to fight it. Wikipedia Review also had some unkind things to say about me and it a while back too.

Perhaps something (and maybe i'll write something to do this if I get some time) would be a program that tracks long term blocks and looks for those that start within some short time-frame of their block expiring. Or looks within small IP ranges for the same. And from that we could see how pervasive these edits are. Maybe they're just persistent coincidences, or maybe there's something else. Let me know what you find. Shadowjams (talk) 23:12, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

OK I will. Don't blame yourself for any problems in SVT though. It's a full-time job hacking back this kind of vandalism and you've certainly done your share of work for the group. If I thought I had the time to meaningfully contribute then I'd be more active too. I think the mere existence of SVT does help to instill hope in those who have struggled fruitlessly against these vandals in administrative areas like AIV, RFPP, and AN/I. So thanks for creating the group and I wouldn't give up on it yet. -Thibbs (talk) 00:40, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks :) Shadowjams (talk) 06:14, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Hey, how are you?

Hey, hows the editing going? Having fun on Wikipedia? --UnhappyandNoFriends (talk) 22:48, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah I enjoy editing here quite a bit. It looks from your username that you're not having much fun... If you're interested in meeting new friends, you should check out Wikipedia:Teahouse. It's a friendly environment where experienced Wikipedians hang out to meet new editors and to help them out in the beginning until they get their bearings. I hope you'll find that this a fun place to contribute your time and that you'll become a successful editor here at Wikipedia. Welcome. -Thibbs (talk) 22:53, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I will see whats occuring in the tearoom. Thanks. --UnhappyandNoFriends (talk) 22:59, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

No problem. If you need help beyond that feel free to ask me a question on my talk page. -Thibbs (talk) 23:14, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Arcade game reception section

First part of the conversation

It looks to me that both Galaga and Galaxian cover more than just the arcade games. Regarding Galaga, for example, I noticed that there is a lengthy subsection covering "Ports and re-releases", and a little further down there is a short section on "Remakes". Likewise with Galaxian we can see a lengthy subsection devoted to "Ports". Although these various ports and remakes don't have their own articles on Wikipedia, I believe the idea is that the main article should cover them all and that if enough RS-based information on a port/remake/rerelease becomes available to justify a stand-alone article then it can be shifted there. According to this understanding, I would imagine that coverage of the ports, remakes, and rereleases of these games would only be appropriate within these parent articles unless a stand-alone article exists on the later version. Subsequent to your recent edits neither the Galaga nor the Galaxian article has any reception section, however according to Wikipedia:VG/MOS#Essential content a reception section ranks among the "minimum set of standard elements" for video game articles. Your edit summaries here and here suggest that the only reception valid for these articles is reception of the arcade version. But I don't think that this is consistent with any of the other video game articles on Wikipedia (e.g. with Halo: Combat Evolved (an FA) we see that the reception section covers both PC and Xbox versions; similarly with Sonic Heroes we see the reception section covering GameCube, PC, PS2, and Xbox versions, and at Mass Effect 2 we see reception coverage including PC, PS3, and Xbox 360). So I'm wondering if this is an inconsistently applied Arcade Task Force rule that I don't know about? And here I say "inconsistently applied" because there are many arcade game articles whose reception sections cover different versions, ports, and remakes (e.g. In Tetris the reception section covers the PC, Mac, Spectrum, and Amiga versions; similarly at Bubble Bobble we see the reception section covering both Game Boy and Spectrum versions, and at Double Dragon we see the reception section covering NES, PC, C64, and Mega Drive versions). Or is this really just a matter of keeping "classic" games "pure"? Keeping in mind that a reception section is one of the most basic standard elements of a gaming article, is there any reason that Galaga and Galaxian should be operating under different conventions than the rest of the gaming articles on Wikipedia? Certainly the reception section should not be 100% about a remake, but doesn't it make more sense to just add an {{Expand section}} template to the reception section for now until other reliably sourced scores can be located? -Thibbs (talk) 16:49, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

As a reader I would expect the reception section of an article about an arcade game to be about the reception of the actual arcade game not its ports. Consider the ports of 1980s arcade games were never of the same quality as the arcade game because home console/home computer hardware of the time was inadequate to fully reproduce the same graphics and sound so the reception of the ports would not be the same as the reception of the original arcade game (consider Pac-Man on the Atari 2600). Game Boy and Spectrum are good examples of this. The Game Boy is unable to adequately reproduce even the simplest of arcade games and the Spectrum is barely better, plus the Spectrum is an obscure system so this really doesn't provide very useful information to the reader. Arcade games should be considered differently from console video games. Consider arcade games which were uncommon, rare or unreleased prototypes, they wouldn't have a reception being rare or unreleased. As for Galaxian and Galaga they are definitely arcade games and I really don't see where the reception of their ports are relevant. If you find something that you can cite regarding the reception of the actual arcade games then by all means add it. As for Bubble Bobble, that section should be removed. It seems that a Spectrum fan has been adding similar entries to many video games articles.

Note there is no mention of the necessity of a reception section in the Arcade Task Force article guidelines so I would think that if a game originated as an arcade game then those guidelines should apply. Asmpgmr (talk) 17:17, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

You've said that "Galaxian and Galaga are definitely arcade games" you later referred to these titles as "the actual arcade games". It sounds to me as if you're making a distinction between "actual"/"definite" Galaga (the arcade version) and "notional"/"indefinite" Galaga (ports/remakes/rereleases). Is this in fact the case? And if so, can I ask what your definition of "actual"/"definite" is? As a layman these distinctions strike me as artificial and unhelpful. Wouldn't it benefit readers who wish to understand Galaxian and Galaga in depth to know that their later ports, rereleases, and remakes were of inferior quality? From your first few lines above it sounds to me like an ideal situation to provide in-depth coverage of all ports rather than to restrict the critical coverage to only the most respected edition available. This would also eliminate any concerns of biased coverage. What do you think? -Thibbs (talk) 17:23, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) - Regarding the Arcade Task Force (ATF), I believe that blatantly ambiguous areas like this would probably fall under WP:VG/MOS though. Are there actually explicit ATF rules restricting the reception sections of games with arcade editions (or games that began as arcade machines) to coverage of the arcade machines alone? -Thibbs (talk) 17:23, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Also note: Please try to hold off on performing controversial edits like this while we're still discussing the matter. Making Wikipedia match your preferred view before dealing with the underlying issues doesn't help us to discuss this neutrally. -Thibbs (talk) 17:30, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

The actual Galaxian and Galaga are the arcade games. They originated in the arcade so an article about them should be about the arcade games. I see no problem mentioning that there were ports (technically rewrites for other platforms) but I see no point in going into any detail about them or listing reviews of them. All ports of 1980s arcade games are of inferior quality due to the target inferior hardware, there is no need to mention this in every single arcade game article. Note emulations like the Namco Museum series are different as the actual arcade game code is being used. As for understanding the games, isn't that what the gameplay section is for ? If you mean understand the games technically then users can look at the infobox which lists the game's hardware (e.g. Galaga: 3 Z-80s, resolution 224x288, etc.) or if they're so inclined look at the MAME driver source code. The ports are just poor copies of the original arcade games on inferior hardware and often with a different video resolution and offer no insights into the original. For any games that originated in the arcade the article should focus on the arcade game. Asmpgmr (talk) 18:29, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

This use of "actual" to mean "original" smells like truthy rhetoric to me. And I don't think it addresses the issue at all clearly. Actual video game articles cover actual games that are released on multiple actual platforms. The article is only about a certain platform-specific version of the game if there is a good reason - e.g. to differentiate it from a different platform-specific version of the same game covered in a different article.

If a reader wants to learn the "full story" about a game then he wants to know about all of its appearances on other platforms. The ATF guidelines make that much explicit when they suggest that different versions should be listed if there are any. Where the ATF guidelines are silent on reception, the WP:VG/MOS clearly indicates that reception sections are part of the "minimum set of standard elements" for video game articles. In other words, a reception section is in fact needed at Galaxian and at Galaga.

Although this material may seem like redundant information to an experienced arcade game person, the critical reception of these games will be of interest to those who know very little about the subject. These very readers will also be unlikely to know that "All ports of 1980s arcade games are of inferior quality". The existence of a broad POV-reduced reception section would explain this to them. As I'm sure you're aware, the issue of neutrality is important to keep in mind here at Wikipedia because we try to present an unbiased look at these topics and although I am sure your intentions are pure in seeking to limit the critical reception to contemporary reception of the original game when it was an object of desire and wonderment, this simply doesn't paint a full picture of the game. Rather than seeking to stifle potentially negative coverage of (in your view) licensed but inferior-quality versions of the game, why not expand the coverage to include contemporary and positive reception in order to balance out the modern perspective? I'm certain that this will help readers more than it will confuse them. What do you think? -Thibbs (talk) 19:00, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Hey guys, I hope you don't mind me butting in on your conversation which I happened to notice on Recent Changes. As a fellow contributor to video games articles, my view would be that yes, articles about arcade games should feature the original arcade version prominently and centrally as the "source" of the game, but that ports are also important and fully deserve coverage within the articles. Ultimately the articles are about the games themselves and not solely about the arcade hardware on which they first appeared. A prime example is Street Fighter II. Obviously the arcade machine is important as the catalyst as it were, but while those machines are now largely collectors pieces, the game itself has transcended the platform and lives on in the home supported by a whole industry of specialist joystick makers supporting an obsessive fandom, many of whom may not even have played the game on an arcade machine. And these are no longer "inferior ports". To try to shove that genie back into the rather constrictive bottle of an article specifically about the arcade machine doesn't seem like a positive move. Equally, having an article about the arcade machine and then a separate article about where the game went then doesn't make a lot of sense either. SF2 is an extreme example, but the principle holds for other games with less lauded ports. I understand what Asmpgmr is saying about the reception not being about the original arcade machine so I'd add the caveat that reception should always come after the ports section. On a practical level, I think reception to ports is about as good as we're going to get because it's going to be a real struggle to get reception details for the original arcade formats other than those from fansites which are less likely to be objective. danno_uk 19:30, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

There is a huge difference between a port which is a rewrite of an arcade game for a home platform and an emulation which uses a CPU emulator to execute the actual game code and a hardware emulator to precisely reproduce the original game graphics and sounds. A reception section which details the reception of the arcade game makes perfect sense, the reception of a port of an arcade game is irrelevant. Again I use the Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man as a prime example: that was an awful port in every way. It looked and sounded nothing like the actual arcade game. I'm definitely not saying there should be separate articles for ports of arcade games. Heck I was surprised to find an article specifically about the 2600 Pac-Man but I guess that's there because it was so notoriously bad. Also a reception section is not needed, Space Invaders does not have a reception section and it was a featured article. Again I have no problem mentioning that there were ports and for what platforms but I really think that should be all that is mentioned as the ports simply are not the focus of the article, are not important and contribute nothing to the "full story" of the game. Galaga is an arcade game developed by Namco in 1981 and licensed to Bally Midway for North American distribution. Centipede is an arcade game developed by Atari Inc. in 1981. Space Invaders is an arcade game developed by Taito in 1978 and licensed to Bally Midway for North American distribution. These articles are about arcade games and that should be the focus. Asmpgmr (talk) 20:08, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Another thing, the critical reception stuff I removed tells readers absolutely nothing at all about Galaxian or Galaga and was completely pointless. Of course the reception of a port of an arcade game on the Game Boy wouldn't be great, the Game Boy isn't capable enough hardware. Now a critical reception section about the popularity of those games, particularly Galaga which was immensely popular and considered one of the most popular arcade games of all time would be useful. Also many arcade games didn't have ports, say Quantum or Tank Force. Certainly unreleased prototypes arcade games did not. The arcade game articles should adhere to a consistent set of guidelines that can be generally applied to all of them. Asmpgmr (talk) 20:31, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I understand that the versions/ports/emulations of a game are different, but my take is that ultimately the article is about the "stuff" of the game. Tetris is Tetris is Tetris, whether it's on a PC, an arcade machine or a Gameboy. Similarly Donkey Kong is a game about a little man climbing ladders and evading obstacles whether on an arcade machine, an NES or a Game and Watch. To restrict an article to being almost totally focused on the platform on which it made its début seems wrong. To re-use the Tetris example, the Gameboy version has differing playfield dimensions and rules to the PC original, but for many people it is the seminal version as it brought the game to a truly mainstream audience. That was a port and a technologically compromised one at that, but the game remained fundamentally intact. My view on arcade games is that the original arcade hardware is the key part of the game's history, but the game itself is the core. Apologies if I'm misinterpreting your viewpoint, but to me it sounds like if followed to its logical conclusion we wouldn't have any game articles but just articles about arcade hardware with a list of games underneath that they supported. I can point you in the direction of a great homebrew version of Omega Race if it helps sway your viewpoint ;) danno_uk 21:55, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Tetris is not a good example, it started out as a home computer game and there were several arcade versions by different companies (Atari, Sega, Jaleco, Akira). Also your description of Donkey Kong could describe any number of games which definitely aren't the same (i.e. Lode Runner). A homebrew version of a game is just another copy or knock off, it isn't the real game. The seminal version of Tetris would be the first system it was released on and that was the PC.

About arcade hardware, you do realize that most early arcade games ran on unique hardware. It wasn't until the mid-to-late 80s that system-based hardware like Atari System 1, Namco System 1 or Sega System 16 started to be used. Asmpgmr (talk) 01:11, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I have to say that I agree with Danno_uk on this. I think WP:VG generally treats the articles it covers as articles on the "stuff" of the game rather than a particular form that "stuff" has taken at one particular time in history. Clearly the focus of an article like Galaxian or Galaga or any of the arcade greats should emphasize the arcade version that served to popularize the game in the first place, but to strip out any reference to ports and remakes simply because they are of inferior quality really seems like POV-pushing. The focus of an article can rest on its most important aspect, but adding reception info on the ports and remakes doesn't exactly change the main focus. If anything it amplifies it by negative comparison.

Asmpgmr, you've repeatedly asserted that it is well known that all ports and remakes of the classic arcade games are rubbish and that they would obviously have been received more poorly. But this information doesn't appear in the article so the only way someone would know this is through the personal knowledge they bring to the article. Keep in mind that some of the readers here don't even remember the events of September 11. What's the harm in documenting the fact that the remakes were inferior with reliable sources? It makes little sense to me. Similarly, your assertions that the new information that was added "tells readers absolutely nothing at all" and that it "contribute nothing to the 'full story' of the game" is an extremely subjective comment. What you mean to say is that this information told you nothing at all and that it didn't contribute to your full understanding of the games. What is the problem that you are envisioning here? That the reception section will cover all of the ports and expand so much that it wrests the focus from the arcade original and centers it only on the remakes? Or perhaps you're concerned that the reader will get the false impression that the game was a rather terrible game after all because its remakes were scored too poorly? I don't find either scenario likely and I think the obvious solution to both would be to increase sourcing related to the original arcade version.

The fact that the 2008 FA, Space Invaders, does not have a reception section doesn't explain why the WP:VG/MOS should be ignored in the case of Galaxian and Galaga. No reception section is required if no reception exists, but if reception does exist then a reception section is strongly recommended according to WP:VG. That some arcade games don't have ports/remakes to cover in the reception section is not an issue here. Nobody is saying that port/remake reception coverage is required for all articles, but I am saying that if a port/remake has been reviewed then the proper place to report this reliable fact is on the article devoted to the game even if the game happens to have begun life in an arcade cabinet. And even though you think it adds nothing, WP:VG would seem to disagree. -Thibbs (talk) 00:13, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

There were certainly reviews of the actual arcade games in various arcade related magazines of the time, reference them though frankly I have to wonder why reference any specific reviews at all ? Reviews are POV of whomever is writing the review. In the specific case of Galaga, that's an arcade game. The infobox lists the hardware it ran on. Every other version was either a port - a rewrite of the game for a different platform which in all cases I'm aware of inferior or an emulation which is the actual game running. The reception of a port is simply not the same as the reception of the arcade game. I really don't understand why you are so intent on putting reviews of ports into the articles ? The ports aren't important. Someone reading an article about Galaga is interested in Galaga and that's the arcade game, not its ports. Asmpgmr (talk) 01:11, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Just to add in to this, generally in the past (and per previous discussions on the matter in regards to listing ports in the infobox) articles on arcade first titles are usually slanted towards the arcade. Hence the relevant arcade hardware info in the infobox and major part of the history, introduction/reception of the game, etc. That is also preciseley why the listing of ports in the infobox is supposed to be done via an expandable list to focus on the intro platform first (which is the consensus I was explained after the last discussion). That does not, however, preclude discussion of reception of ports if those ports do not have their own article. If they do not have their own article, than the main article - even if it is mainly about the arcade game - is the only place to include the reception of those ports. However, it should be clearly set up in a ports section vs. mixed in to the reception of the main platform of the article itself. And I can see Asmpgmr's issue if there is only reception of a specific port discussed in the article and not for the main platform - or in some cases just listings of reviews for that port such as what's going on in Gauntlet II or RoadBlasters (prose is always preferred over lists). But in that case the solution should be to rework the ports in to more of a prose and mention those reviews in relation to the reception of that port vs. remove it completely. Expand rather than cut. Likewise to find reception for the main platform as well if it's not present. As far as Space Invaders, I was involved in helping to bring that to GA and FA. There is indeed a 'reception' section in there, it's just been termed 'Impact and Legacy' instead because of how the content was covered. Just as 'ports' are under 'Remakes and Sequels.' Hope that helps the discussion a little. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 01:33, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I'm not against listing info about the ports in the Ports section, I have a problem with listing reviews of ports in the Reception section. All info about ports should be in the Ports section or similar. The Reception section of an arcade game article should be about the reception of the arcade game only. For example I would expect the Galaga reception section to mention something like: Galaga was an extremely successful game, so much so that it overshadowed Namco's next game Bosconian. In fact many Bosconian cabinets were converted to the more successful Galaga.

Also I really think that reviews are questionable for inclusion in encyclopedic articles since reviews are basically POV of the reviewer and doesn't really add any factual information or neutral information. This insistence on including reviews, particularly of ports is also a personal POV.

As for the articles for Gauntlet, Gauntlet II, Pac-Mania and RoadBlasters, the anonymous user keeps adding reviews primarily for ports on the obscure Spectrum home computer series. He has done this to numerous video game articles. I don't see where this info helps the articles at all and frankly it comes across as a fan of the Spectrum pushing his favorite platform. Asmpgmr (talk) 02:18, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Asmpgmr, I think your view that the original version of a game is the only "actual" version of it is a view strongly in the minority (at least here at Wikipedia and at WP:VG). It seems clear from your posts above that the reason you are trying to keep out reception on the ports and rereleases is that you do not consider them "actual" games. And that view does not jive with the community view. There is clearly a problem when the only piece of reception listed in the reception covers an obscure and ill-conceived remake of the game for a platform it is not well known for, but as I've suggested a few times above, the solution is to add more info on the platform it is known for. It is not a good solution to remove the information under the view that it really isn't the same game in a purist's sense of the word. That viewpoint is non-neutral and it leads to a loss of information from the article. You may not find the information helpful, but your position here is at odds with that of the rest of the community. I know it can be hard to find reception material for games prior to the 90s, but that's no reason to limit critical reception coverage of these games to a pre-1990s bubble.

By using prose in an appropriate manner as Marty Goldberg suggested above, it should be easy to explain something like the following: "The game received glowing reviews at the time it was released,... in fact Jeremy Jones called it the "founding spark of modern gaming"<ref>source</ref> ... Later versions that were released in the 1980s and 1990s, however, received much harsher criticism. On its 1995 release, Japanese gaming magazine Famicom Tsūshin scored the Game Boy version of the game a 24 out of 40.<ref>source</ref>". By putting it in its proper context like this, nobody is likely to imagine that the score for this one version represents a score for the whole game, and readers will learn about the post-cabinet history of the game checkered though it may have been. -Thibbs (talk) 04:08, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

What Jeremy Jones (whoever that is) thinks about a game is definitely POV and absolutely irrelevant. Anyway saying that a port of Galaxian or Galaga on the Game Boy is a "founding spark of modern gaming" is a factually incorrect statement in addition to being ludicrous and blatantly POV. The only games that could validly fit such a description are Computer Space, Pong or Space Invaders. As I've stated several times now it's the reviews of ports that are irrelevant NOT the mere mention that the ports exist and some basic info about them. Frankly such a review espousing someone's viewpoint shouldn't be mentioned even if it was for the actual arcade game. Who cares what some reviewer thinks ? How is that possibly useful information and not POV ? Would it make you happier if all reviews are removed ? I would certainly be OK with that. Asmpgmr (talk) 05:41, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Jeremy Jones is the name of a reviewer made up by me as part of an example. No part of that example was intended literally. It is an example to show how prose can be used to put claims in context. Adding sourced POV statements in the reception section is what we do here at Wikipedia. By adding multiple different POV scores and by restricting them to reliable sources we can paint a picture of the way the game was generally regarded by the populace. The more notable the score the more worthy it is for inclusion. If all critical review is nothing more than needless POV to you then why do you think WP:VG/MOS requires a reception section? If you want a good crash course on why reviews are acceptable if used properly then please see WP:CRIT. If you want information specific to video game reviews, you can see this. If you're really arguing against the removal of all reception sections because you find that they all violate NPOV then I think you're arguing against the community consensus. -Thibbs (talk) 10:04, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

And again, Asmpgmr, I must seriously urge to stop making edits like this, this, this, and this while we are engaged in discussing the issue. As you may have noticed, your view that these reception materials are obviously harmful is not shared by all of your fellow editors. Even if the consensus goes to your preferred version, there will be time to remove these sections later - after the conversation is over. In case the consensus runs against you, though, you are just making more work for the rest of us when it comes to restoring this info. Please try to restrain yourself so that we can have a neutral and productive discussion on this matter. -Thibbs (talk) 04:23, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Did you bother to check this users talk page [2] and edit history [3] before making demands of me ? This user clearly has a Spectrum bias. Or is it that you think that any reviews that anyone adds no matter how obscure the system is must be kept simply because they're part of the game's "reception" ? In the case of Pac-Mania this user also changed the section name from Ports to Production even though the text is about ports and he removed the external link I added to the Arcade History database. Asmpgmr (talk) 05:58, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

To be honest with you I don't see much of a problem with what this guy has been doing. Sourced additions are usally acceptable even if they relate solely to obscure systems. In fact I would be grateful that he's been able to add obscure information like this to the article. If he scrambles the subsection headers and removes links then why is it necessary for you to to blank the reception section? Don't let him goad you into doing this while we are having this discussion because at the very least it could be confused with an anti-reception-section bias in yourself. As I said there will be time to right all wrongs after we've come to a decision here. -Thibbs (talk) 10:04, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Breakpoint

Look, Asmpgmr. Everyone who has been discussing matters here has said that they can see where you're coming from. And I can also understand that you are concerned that articles on classic arcade games should be focused on the game as a cultural artifact embedded in its proper history. In other words the main focus should be on the original version of the game when it had the most important impact on culture and society. But this doesn't mean that the article must be restricted to this topic. Adding details like giving specific reliably sourced examples to show how the game has changed and been adapted as it has been remade for later generations is information that is relevant to a full explication of the topic. Critical reception sections can be phrased in such a way that it is clear to the reader that the original game was lauded and the later incarnations were considered inferior. If the reception section is well written this shouldn't detract from the game in any way.

Both your views that (1) the only thing that counts as the "real" or "actual" game is the original version and that (2) even broad RS-based critical reception sections are inherently biased, are contrary to the community consensus here at Wikipedia. I want to assure you that nobody is interested in using this reception section as a way of subtly undermining the game or as an insidious tool to change the focus to the later history of the game. Rather, the reception section for these articles should serve as a way to tell a richer history of the games in a few words and figures without cluttering up the main body of the article. I really hope we can come to an understanding here because I don't think this is an issue worth all this fuss. -Thibbs (talk) 11:30, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

My problem is 1) reviews are inherently opinionated and the POV of the reviewer and therefore non-encyclopedic and biased. 2) on top of that you're pushing for reviews for ports and not the actual games. I'm not against a reception section, I'm saying this section should be objective and about the actual arcade game. For example:

Galaga was an extremely successful game, so much so that it overshadowed Namco's next game Bosconian. In fact many Bosconian cabinets were converted to the more successful Galaga.

Ms. Pac-Man is considered the most successful arcade game to date selling over 115,000 upright cabinets.

These are factual statements without any bias and they pertain to the arcade games.

If you want to talk about how the game has changed then why not mention that there were two revisions of Galaga: the original and an update to remove an easter egg added by the developer which allowed a player to leave a blue bug and after 20 minutes or so the enemies would stop firing. Or in the Tempest article mention that there were 3 revisions of Tempest. Other than ROM revisions the arcade game did not change. Ports are new and unique code written for an entirely different hardware platform often with a different CPU and therefore are inherently not the same as the original. Sure they're meant to mimic the original but they are what they are: facsimiles of the original.

Finally you are the one making a fuss about this. Why the heck are you so very concerned about reviews, especially reviews of ports and not factual information ? One of the reasons that Wikipedia is not considered a good source of information by some is a preponderance of subjective text. I agree this issue isn't worth all the fuss so why don't you just drop it and stick to just the facts and only the facts. Asmpgmr (talk) 16:36, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Both of the two problems you enumerated above are problems you have with the consensus perspective at Wikipedia.

1) Consensus here has led to the belief that the use of subjective but notable reviews can enhance understanding of the topic inasmuch as they help to paint a picture of the general popular sentiment regarding the game. Evidence for the fact that reviews are accepted and encouraged at Wikipedia can be found across most WikiProjects dealing with copyrighted materials. See, for example, WP:FILM's guidelines, WP:NOVELS' guidelines, and WP:VG's guidelines. If you have a problem with the guidelines then the place to address this is not on the frontlines through article-mainspace-editing (i.e. blanking reception sections when you see them), but rather by bringing your concerns to the community at places like WP:VG's talk page. Here you can get input from fellow editors on why the current system is in place and you can attempt to change the guidelines by explaining why they are not appropriate as currently written.

2) I don't want to sound like a broken record here, but your position that the only "actual" game is the original version is not a view shared by editors here at Wikipedia. In deletion discussions, one of the most common outcomes for borderline-notable and just barely non-notable items like remakes, re-releases, ports, collections, demos, etc., etc, is to Merge them with the related parent article. This is often accompanied by the creation of a redirect from the name of the port/rerelease/etc. to the parent article. The implication is that without detailed RS-based coverage of the remake/port/etc., the title is considered to be nothing more than a different version of the original and that any differences can be covered in the parent article. WP:VG's Manual of Style actually has guidelines directly on this point here. The vast majority of games with non-independently-notable remakes/rereleases/ports that are covered on Wikipedia do cover the remakes/rereleases within the same article. Separate coverage of the remakes/rereleases/etc. is actually quite rare. If you cut coverage of these versions from the parent article then this information will appear nowhere on Wikipedia and I think this would be a net loss to the readership and to the community.

Your suggestion of adding more coverage of the different release versions of the arcade cabinets is a good one. I think that this material would go a long way to sprucing up the development sections. However it doesn't have any bearing on the reception section which, as I continue to assert, should contain due coverage of the critical reception of the arcade original as well as due coverage of the critical reception of the remakes. This section shouldn't over-emphasize the remakes, but it shouldn't censor them either. Ideally it should cover them in such a way that readers are provided their proper historical context. -Thibbs (talk) 17:32, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Stop taking what I'm saying out of context, I never said to not mention ports at all but you already know that so your stuff about cutting coverage or censoring them is crap. I agree that all known platforms an arcade game was ported to should be listed and if there were notable differences then they should be briefly listed as well. I also agree that there shouldn't be separate articles for ports and I'm surprised that there is an article for the atrocious Atari 2600 Pac-Man port.

I've already given you examples of more appropriate critical receptions and if you have a valid argument as to why these aren't better than lets hear it. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia and by definition should be objective. Adding subjective and biased views only serve to diminish Wikipedia. In the specific case of articles regarding arcade games you already agree the focus should be on the actual arcade game so adding reviews which are inherently subjective and biased are bad but adding reviews of ports which aren't the focus of the article is doubly bad. Be honest, you know that your review text adds no factual information about Galaxian, Galaga or their ports. On the other hand finding out how many units were sold and adding that or mentioning that Galaga was one of the most successful arcade games and that many Bosconian cabinets were converted to Galaga is factual information and definitely details the critical reception of the game. Asmpgmr (talk) 18:19, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I apologize if you feel I've taken your words out of context, but I think you are misunderstanding me. When I speak of cutting and censoring I am speaking about removal of reliably sourced content from the reception section. And only the reception section. You have stated that coverage of the arcade version might be acceptable in the reception section, but you have repeatedly said that no coverage of the remakes/rereleases/ports belongs in any reception section because there are not "actual" games. This amounts to saying that this reliably sourced information doesn't belong anywhere on Wikipedia because no articles exist on the remakes/ports/etc. That is the negative effect I'm worried about.

Your suggestions for adding information on how many units were sold, etc. is a good one. But what I cannot understand is why you think this precludes the addition of critical reception of the remakes. We can obviously include both pieces of information as both are relevant to understanding how the game was received. Whether or not the POV introduced by attributed and reliably sourced critical reviews from notable publications diminishes Wikipedia is not something that is really open for discussion. These reviews appear all over Wikipedia and they are encouraged by the guidelines of the vast majority of WikiProjects dealing with artistic works. If you don't believe me, would you be willing to pose this question to WT:VG? I am only interested in upholding the consensus view consistently across all video game articles. If a special exception must be made for arcade games then it must be made by consensus rather than by individual editorial fiat. Would you agree to abide by the decision that emerges from WT:VG? -Thibbs (talk) 18:40, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Asmpgmr. Having had a quick look at the Gauntlet article, I have to say I agree with your view that the coverage being given there (and apparently on other articles) to Spectrum reviews is rather excessive. I don't think that necessarily makes reviews of ports redundant, particularly if those reviews provide some comment on the game's gameplay which should remain comparable to that of the original version. If you can provide reviews from the original arcade machine, that would be fantastic. I would happily add them but I don't have any. As Thibbs said, "subjective" reviews published by accepted sources are welcomed here as a way of adding colour to an article - Wikiproject Albums or Films would be in uproar at the suggestion of their removal and I don't really understand why games should be any different. They're consumer media and the opinion of influential consumer leaders (i.e. reviewers for well followed publications) is worth noting. I would love to see coverage of the arcade machines expanded to the point where the ports (and the reception thereof) are merely an addendum, but in the absence of that, stripping down the ports section to achieve that kind of arcade machine section/article ratio seems unnecessary so long as we curate the articles sensibly.danno_uk 19:12, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

And just to clarify, Asmpgmr, my requests for you to hold off on blanking reception sections represent requests without prejudice. In other words I haven't looked closely at the individual merits of the sections you've removed, I'm just asking that the principle of calm discussion be maintained by some temporary forbearance on your part. As danno_uk points out there is certainly a limit to how much reception coverage the spectrum version should require in an article so you may be fully justified in trimming out some of it from articles like Gauntlet. But I think it would be a mistake to remove all trace of it (the Spectrum's reception coverage I mean). -Thibbs (talk) 22:14, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm getting tired of discussing this with you Thibbs, you continue to take my words out of context and attempt to twist them to your own POV and you outright ignore what I say about having an objective reception in an encyclopedic article. I have absolutely NO interest in subjective text or "adding color" to articles and will not support this. Honestly I feel your argument is based in your own personal desire to add reviews for ports of games on a platform you are a fan of (Game Boy) from some old obscure magazines which you have. You are doing the same thing as the anonymous editor with the Spectrum games: bending guidelines to push your own subjective POV which is apparently to increase the profile of your favorite platform. In stark contrast I'm interested in just the facts NOT opinions. Reviews are just the opinions of whomever wrote the review and does not reflect on the overall reception as different people like different things.

As for your constant argument that ports of arcade games are the same as the arcade game. This is ridiculous, they are ports and obviously different code written for a different platform. By your questionable rules then should Space Invaders Part II be considered the same as Space Invaders and not its sequel ? Should the knock-offs Cosmic Monsters, IPM Invaders and Space Fever be considered Space Invaders ? They obviously look like Space Invaders and were made to cash in on the success of Space Invaders. Do you seriously consider Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 the same as Pac-Man ? Your arguments are purely POV and not based in facts or technical accuracy. Asmpgmr (talk) 02:13, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I appreciate that you are feeling frustrated and although I honestly don't think I'm taking your words out of context, I can see that we are having difficulty seeing common ground here. I suggested above that we could turn to the talk page of WP:VG to resolve this by asking for the input of the broader community. Would you agree to abide by such a community decision in this matter? -Thibbs (talk) 04:05, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Just to clarify as I'm becoming slightly confused, are the PC, PS3 and XBOX360 versions of Borderlands 2 different games? They are obviously different code written for different platforms, but the devs seem to think that they are the same game. In the interests of technical accuracy it would be good to know how we should differentiate between the various versions. danno_uk 02:01, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Is this really a serious question ? Obviously they're the same game since modern cross-platform games use an abstraction layer to separate the platform-independent code from the platform-specific code for each target platform but you probably knew that already. The term port is used too broadly. Technically a port of a game means taking existing code and adapting it to another platform. Gameplay logic wouldn't change but platform-specific code would. Ports of games where this doesn't apply are technically rewrites. For example the Pac-Man arcade game uses a Z-80 processor and has specific video and audio hardware plus the code was written in assembly language. Assembly language obviously isn't portable and most consoles/home computers didn't use the Z-80 and if they did, they had significantly different architecture. Also arcade game companies generally did not even provide their original source code to other companies to use as a reference so games with the same name on other platforms are truly the game in name only based upon observed behavior.

At this point I have really had enough of this discussion, what are commonly called ports of classic arcade games are technically distinct from the actual arcade games as the code is vastly different, whether you guys understand or accept this is irrelevant, facts are facts. Also any good encyclopedia should be purely objective and discuss only facts without any bias or opinions. To quote the game over screen of Missile Command - THE END Asmpgmr (talk) 00:16, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Breakpoint 2: Turning the discussion over to the community

I think we've hit an impasse here. Which means that it's time to get help if we want to resolve this issue. Asmpgmr, what do you think about the idea of posing this question to WT:VG to see what the community has to say? Would you agree to that? -Thibbs (talk) 02:26, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Don't make assumptions of me. I don't want to discuss this any further. There are more important technical issues to deal with. THE END means THE END. Asmpgmr (talk) 17:01, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry but if you're referring to my assumption that you will abide by a community decision, then I'm going to continue to hold that assumption as required by WP:AGF. You've been here long enough to know the rules and I will assume that you will respect a community decision even if you choose not to participate in the discussion. Do feel free to share your opinion, though, if you wish. I've posted the question here. -Thibbs (talk) 17:07, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Let me make this very clear. You are not my boss, I do not work for you and you are not paying me so do NOT expect me to do what you say. Also since we vastly disagree I would suggest that you not continue to reply my posts simply to avoid problems and I will do the same. This will be my final post here. Hailing frequencies closed. Asmpgmr (talk) 17:13, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm not trying to be your boss, but you do have to keep in mind that this is a collaborative work space. Wikipedians are expected to abide by community decisions. I've invited you to post your thoughts to WT:VG and to correct anything you feel I've misstated, but I am not forcing you to participate because if you wish to have any say on the community decision then you are expected to participate voluntarily. That's par for the course here. You can chose to do as you like, but you risk penalties if you engage in antisocial editing. -Thibbs (talk) 17:17, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Reception thing

Hi there Thibbs. Do you own the Famicom Tsūshin magazines? Cheers. --Hydao (talk) 02:09, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Hello. Yes I do own (most of) them. I'll probably be listing them at WP:VG/RL after I've finished going through them. Was there anything in particular you were interested in in the meanwhile? -Thibbs (talk) 04:12, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

No, not at all, thanks. I just asked you because I notice that you are adding the reception thing for many games. I used to buy this magazine, but unfortunately it's all gone. :( Keep it up! o/--Hydao (talk) 04:34, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I appreciate it. I am glad to be able to provide them for the WP:VG articles because I think the sourcing here is often rather modern-biased and Western-biased. My small personal collection ranges between 1990 and 2000 with the greatest emphasis on the 1995-1997 years, but it's far from complete. If there's anything you can use from them when I list them at the Reference Library then let me know and I can make you a copy of the required article. -Thibbs (talk) 04:55, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Thibbs, the magazines you own, do they have info about Captain Tsubasa 5: Hasha no Shōgō Campione? Thanks. --Hydao (talk) 04:23, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Sadly no. My coverage of 1994 is pretty spotty. Sorry. -Thibbs (talk) 04:26, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

PlayTime Review for Gauntlet II

Hi,

my scanner is currently not working, but I took two photographs of the article in question, I hope that's fine as well :) It's not a big article though. I'm not sure if you can decipher German, if not then let me know and I'll provide a rough translation Here are the images:

• upper half
• lower half

--Darkstar (talk) 16:29, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Ah that's great! I have some family that are German-speakers so I should be able to handle the translation. Thank you. -Thibbs (talk) 16:39, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

It was on page 82 and the author was Hans Ippisch. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Michael Drüing (talk • contribs) 09:26, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks again! -Thibbs (talk) 12:24, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Enjoy making Wikipedia a stupid non-objective resource which is not to be trusted

Second of Wikipedia Five pillars: Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view.

BULLSHIT !!

Well it seems that Wikipedia does NOT take its own policies about having a neutral point of view seriously and is truly a joke. I was warned not to waste my time with Wikipedia because it is not a professional peer reviewed encyclopedia and simply caters to a mob mentality. Too bad as it has the potential to be a great resource but disregarding objectivity makes it a non-trustworthy source. Just because a majority of people say something doesn't necessarily mean it is right. Consider a majority of people in the U.S. believes in primitive nonsense involving an invisible sky daddy deity and don't accept the scientific fact of evolution - their religious beliefs are a stupid position and should NOT be acknowledged or respected regardless of them being a majority. I have other information which I would have contributed after sorting through it but I have absolutely no intention of doing so now. I am done with Wikipedia as I see no reason to continue contributing to a sham encyclopedia which doesn't take its own policies seriously and would rather encourage the foolish and subjective editing of the stupid likes of someone like you who couldn't care less about objectivity, have their own stupid inane agendas to push and can only hide behind dubious "rules" like a sniveling little spineless coward because they have no real technical knowledge or ability. I have some other information which I would have contributed but will not since you proven that you are a bunch of unappreciative asses. Obviously not all users fall into this category but clearly Wikipedia likes the stupid little drones who congregate like a bunch of moronic bible belt fundies to form their silly little consensus of the month and simply quote the bogus nonsense "rules" without any critical thought. I am sure you losers will consider this a win because you got rid of what you see as a disruptive user but it is not. Alienating knowledgeable people who care about objectivity and want to help is really stupid and illogical and only serves to diminish Wikipedia in the long run.

If you want to know what you really are then remove the two 'B's from your username and rearrange the letters.

Don't bother replying I AM DONE and will never return. Asmpgmr (talk) 03:48, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Well I'm sorry you feel that way but I'm sure you know what's best for you right now and for what it's worth I agree that a break from editing here is probably for the best for all concerned. I am truly at a loss concerning your absolute refusal to take the multiple-times offered olive branches and to de-escalate the problems you got yourself into, but I think my record demonstrates that I made every effort with you. Curse me all you want, I still don't feel the same toward you. I really have no heard feelings. You made rookie mistakes like many new editors do and you were given a 24-hour slap on the wrist. If that was too much for a man of your sensitivity to handle then this really wasn't the right atmosphere for you. If you do decide to come back then you'll find me as willing as ever to discuss and collaborate. It's up to you, though. -Thibbs (talk) 04:20, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Wow. Just wow. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 23:07, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't know. In looking over our whole set of interactions I think my attempts to be be nice to him actually made him more angry. I suppose he thought I was patronizing him or something. It's a shame sincerity can't be better transmitted through raw text. Anyway this is nothing. You should have seen his other message. Suffice it to say I've now been slandered in Klingon. -Thibbs (talk) 03:09, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

I think that it's a real shame that Asmpgmr has chosen to withdraw his knowledge as he clearly has plenty on the subject (I was genuinely impressed by his response to my slightly facetious question earlier trying to get him to see the difference between his view on ports and the widely held version). Having said that, I don't think that there's anything that you did wrong or could have done better that contributed to that conclusion. I've been a wikin00b on the receiving end of faux politeness whilst at the same time being pinned by the throat with a stick made of arcane rules, but nothing in your interactions with Asmpgmr came across that way at all. You've been far more patient, conciliatory and tolerant of provocation than I would have been. I hope that given the time to chill a bit Asmpgmr decides that he can come back and contribute the technical stuff that he's so clearly versed in and tolerate the rest of us faffing about with our non-objective nonsense in the sections underneath without feeling that somehow denigrates his contributions. danno_uk 20:03, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree. I do hope he returns some day because I think the arcade game articles are somewhat under-loved (Marty Goldberg and a few others excepted). -Thibbs (talk) 22:11, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Nintendo Power Gauntlet article

You happened to get me at a good time: http://imgur.com/a/DOxzj Andrevan@ 22:31, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, this is perfect! -Thibbs (talk) 22:37, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Order and Priority of Fictional Organism Lists

There is something I want to ask and get some feedback. In the various lists of fictional organisms, the Literature, Film, Animation and other sections are in different orders on different articles. It would be nice if they were all in one convenient order for the sake of consistency. How do you think the orders should be done?

• Should it be done in alphabetical order? Animation first, Comics second, Film third and so on.
• Or should it be done in chronological media order? Literature Books existed first, followed by comics then film, then television, then finally videos games.

Either way sections like Other always go at the bottom. Deltasim (talk) 13:54, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

It's a good question. I have previously gone with more of a size-related approach in the past where the fullest subcategory is highest and the less populated subcategories go lower toward the bottom. Under this approach the order often goes something like: literature, film, music, video games, advertising, and then other. But that isn't really intuitively obvious and taken literally it would mean that there would be layout inconsistency between a "list of fictional X" where there were more notable literary Xes and a "list of fictional Y" where there were more notable film Ys. So I think your approach is better. Of the two you suggest, the second one sounds the most similar to the size-related approach I had embraced in the past because the longer the medium has been around the more fictional animals it is likely to have come up with. So of the two of them I suppose I'd favor that one. There is no problem with doing it alphabetically either, of course, but the important thing as you've suggested is that there should be inter-article consistency.

Another thing worth considering is the idea of merging some of the subsections to alleviate problems of overlap. For instance having a sections for "zebras in animation", "zebras in tv shows", and "zebras in film" has the potential to provoke threefold redundancy if an animated character appears in a tv show that has been adapted for film. I tried to come up with a good scheme for cleverly merging these subsections, but the best I could come up with is the following:

• Zebras in Literature
  • Zebras in Comics
• Zebras in Film and Television
  • Zebras in Animation and Puppetry
• Zebras in Song and Radio
• Zebras in Video Games
• Zebras in Advertising and Sporting Mascots
• Other fictional Zebras

The basic ideas are that 1)comics are printed material and so can be considered a subset of literature, 2)film and television are both moving pictures, animation is a subset of both of them, and WP-notable puppetry tends to be that which is captured on film, 3)song and radio are both audio media, and 4)advertising mascots and sports mascots are roughly the same. There was some minor discussion of this scheme as I laid it out here. Hope this helps, and let me know what you decide on or which way you're leaning. -Thibbs (talk) 15:08, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I think your way is best because indeed written and drawn material differs from animated material and filmed material and so on. However I have another question:

Puppetry sort of confuses me, because it's a hand puppet or string puppet filmed in sequence of a live action scene (e.g. The Muppets) OR it's a clay figure or marionette filmed in stop-motion (e.g. Frog and Toad). I think sequenced puppets should go in Film and Television and stop-motion puppets should go in Animation. CGI graphics of course count as Animation, not Film or Television, which mostly apply to live action animals. Deltasim (talk) 15:42, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Although puppets can be used for stop-motion animation, I think puppetry is generally considered to be a live-action entertainment either live (like Punch and Judy) or filmed (like The Muppets or The Fraggles). I'd consider stop-motion using any medium to be animation and not puppetry. But regardless, if some puppetry is animation then they could easily be merged as in my example and as for that puppetry which is non-animated, in my example it would still fall as a sub-subsection of tv shows and movies (which is how it appears when it's non-live). -Thibbs (talk) 19:20, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I have now updated List of fictional cats and other felines as a sample for your suggestion. Take a look. Deltasim (talk) 16:04, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

That looks pretty good. I would merge more of the subsections personally, but it's really fine the way it is. You might want to get some input from Ncboy2010 and Tahc on the issue as well since they both seem to be kind of involved in cleaning these articles up. Anyway thanks for the good work, Deltasim. -Thibbs (talk) 19:20, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

RE: Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition

I can see why you're confused about Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition. Officially Capcom considers Special Champion Edition to be the Genesis port of the arcade's Champion Edition. In reality, it's actually a compilation of both, Champion Edition and Hyper Fighting, much like Street Fighter II Turbo on the SNES.

From what I remember reading at magazines at the time, Sega wanted Hyper Fighting features in their port of Champion Edition, but Capcom already had an agreement with Nintendo to have Street Fighter II Turbo as an SNES-exclusive, so they just kept the Champion Edition name and added the word "Special" to the title.

I've included all information about the Genesis version of Special Champion Edition in the Hyper Fighting article for this reason. I hope that helps you understand it better. To be honest, I'm still not certain whether Special Champion Edition info should be on the Champion Edition article or on Hyper Fighting. Jonny2x4 (talk) 16:46, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

OK, so the Japanese "Dash Plus" is actually the MegaDrive version of "Hyper Fighting" and not "Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition", correct? -Thibbs (talk) 00:48, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Street Fighter II Dash Plus: Champion Edition was the Japanese version of Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition. Their different names for the same port. Jonny2x4 (talk) 02:04, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

And so the title that I have, "Street Fighter II: Dash Plus", is probably just a shorthand way of saying "Street Fighter II Dash Plus: Champion Edition" right? -Thibbs (talk) 03:01, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Pretty much. Jonny2x4 (talk) 17:10, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

OK great. Thanks! -Thibbs (talk) 04:08, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Reliable Sources

Hey, Thibbs. I'm pretty new to WP, so I didn't realize (until looking at the edit history and seeing that nearly all the edits are yours :)) that YOU should be making any additions to the VG reliable sources list. As soon as I realized the error, I was going to revert it, but it looks like someone else beat me to it. I'm sorry I jumped the gun... just got excited that one of my ideas was being listened to! ;) Monicabgalvarez (talk) 13:38, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh it's no big deal. And I'm not in control of that forum by any means. It's just a place to share our views on reliability. I try to be pretty active there because I know it's really frustrating for people to ask a question and get no response, but I'm not the only one allowed to add new RSes. I think in general unless it's a clear-cut situation where everyone says "No, that source is garbage" or "Yes of course that's reliable, it's been cited in a presidential debate" or something like that then generally there has to be a fair bit of input on it before it's added. If you want to discuss that particular source, you can bring the discussion to the attention of WT:VG generally, or even WP:RS/N. But again as far as your edits there's no harm done. I appreciate your willingness to jump right into the discussion forum for sources because a lot of new people hang back and the various talk-age fora really are the heart of Wikipedia. -Thibbs (talk) 13:45, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh yeah, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you enjoy your time here as much as I do. :) -Thibbs (talk) 13:50, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Thibbs! I feel welcome already. :)Monicabgalvarez (talk) 19:16, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject rankings

I don't normally intrude on other people's conversations, but I noticed a question you asked on Kirill's talk page that I may be able to answer. There are database reports ranking WikiProjects by number of articles, changes to articles, and number of editors watching the project's page. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to compare project membership since each project handles their membership lists differently and many lists are rarely updated to take into account members that have become inactive. Hope this helps! –Mabeenot (talk) 05:29, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Ah that's really interesting. Thanks for the info. That's very helpful to me. -Thibbs (talk) 11:05, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Newsletter

Hey, I finished copy editing your piece. I have to say I found it quite interesting, although I think it was a bit too exuberant in places and tried to tone it down some. It actually inspired me to start putting together, if not exactly a newsletter, then at least an annual report for another project I basically run by myself, as a way to hopefully increase project activity. Anyway, I suppose the next step would be to contact User:MuZemike and see if he's okay with including it in the Newsletter, then sending it out. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 14:59, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks again for your help. I agree that you're edits have improved the tone by muting it a bit. I'm unclear on the normal process with newsletter pieces like this - are we supposed to upload them to a holding area or is this just taken care of at the last minute by the person compiling the newsletter final draft? But I'll send a note to MuZemike so he can review the piece. Thanks for taking the time on this, Torchiest. Let me know if you need anything looked over in the future because I owe you one. -Thibbs (talk) 15:11, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

No problem. Hopefully we can both contribute more going forward. I just assumed it was being handled by a team, but have since realized it's a bit ghost town-y; I have no idea what the normal process is, but we can always start making up our own! :) —Torchiest ^talk_edits 15:14, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah that sounds good to me. We may be able to get some help from User:Nomader as well as he's indicated in the Newsletter talk that he'd be happy to help if the newsletter needs him. I've also had good interactions with GamerPro64 regarding the newsletter before his departure so we may be able to go to him for any questions we have. It's difficult to coordinate schedules, I know, but I've been thinking of new ideas for future newsletter articles so I will probably try to start one or two before the Q4 deadline approaches. That way we can just pull something out of the vault when it's needed rather than waiting for the last second. -Thibbs (talk) 15:47, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

On an unrelated note, I wonder if you all think it would be appropriate to note in the newsletter that I'm holding a competition to get a video game article to FA class, with the price being a free copy of Civ 5. Why? Because I have an extra copy of Civ 5. See the link for details. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:00, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

That's a very good point. I'm not sure how this would be best handled in the newsletter given its current format, but I wonder if we could start up a new "News in brief" or "Contests and Competitions" or "Briefs" section on the NL's main page. I'll try to contact people before the newsletter goes out since it's already way past due. -Thibbs (talk) 13:22, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Feel free to create a modified version for the newsletter, and just link to the original, if that'll work better. I'm not stuffy about formatting. I just want people to know about this contest, because I want it to be a success. Sven Manguard Wha? 16:30, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

We've agreed to put it in with the feature this time. You can see what it looks like here. No idea when the newsletter will actually be delivered, but I am hopeful that it will happen before the end of the coming week. -Thibbs (talk) 02:35, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

J-League Soccer Ole! Supporters

Thibbs, the magazines you have... do they have info about the canceled SFC game J-League Soccer Ole! Supporters? Here is the flyer: http://www.gamengai.com/bn_inf.php?id=933 --Hydao (talk) 14:52, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

I'll take a look, but it would help if you had a date. Do you know when it was canceled? Or when it was announced? -Thibbs (talk) 16:02, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Not at all. The only info I found is here: http://takuyah.x0.com/iblog/B1938488288/C1695255979/E1578731877/index.html ... the date is "November 1, 1995". That text was written by Takuya Hanaoka, the music composer (for this "canceled" game) who worked for Tecmo. --Hydao (talk) 16:08, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

OK well that gives me a target of some kind. I'll start with the Nov 1995 magazines and work my way out in both directions. Thsi may take me a few days, but I'll post to your talk page if I find anything (or if not then I'll just post here to say I found nothing). -Thibbs (talk) 16:11, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

D'oh! The fliers you posted clearly have Dec 95 as the projected release date. I don't know I missed that. Anyway I found a different version of one of the fliers in the Sep. 15, 1995 edition (p73). I'll keep looking again later tonight. -Thibbs (talk) 16:24, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the flyer has the date, it is very clear lol. Huh, that's nice! If possible, can you scan the stuff (good quality preferably) you find and send it to me? If not, then just send a picture or so. ;) ... btw, since you have all these old magazines, why don't you create a blog or something to show these things once in a while? As I said before, all my magazines are gone ;_; --Hydao (talk) 16:46, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Sure, I'll do it tonight. Hope you're not too disappointed, though. They are very similar. The only differences may be layout. The blog idea is interesting, but at this point I don't really have the time. I do plan to go through the magazines I have and make the contents available for the WP:VG Reference Library in the near future, though. Once I've done that then anybody can just skim through the magazine's listed contents and if they find material they are interested in using for Wiki articles then they can make a request. I'm glad to make articles available for nonprofit educational purposes relating to critical commentary. -Thibbs (talk) 17:40, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Thibbs, the picture is perfect, no need to get a "better" one. Hmmm, don't know why this game was canceled... I talked to the guy from SNES central and he didn't know about the game. Btw, I uploaded the picture here, if there is a problem I will remove it. --Hydao (talk) 02:34, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

No problem. Glad I could help you out. -Thibbs (talk) 18:34, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks :) Btw, I was scanning the manual of Super Formation Soccer 96: World Club Edition, don't you have the reception info? And how about Logos Panic? Sorry if I'm asking many questions at the same time. --Hydao (talk) 02:50, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Don't worry, it's fine. I wish I had more time to go through the magazines honestly because at this point I've only covered the Cross Reviews. At some point I intend to list all the article contents of the magazines I have in the WP:VG Reference Library section and then it should be easier to see what info I actually have available. I'll definitely let you know when I've gone through them and added the info to the Ref Library.

Regarding reception material for Super Formation Soccer 96: World Club Edition, I don't know of any that I have. I certainly don't think I have any cross review scores for either of those games. But I will check through the magazines I have and I'll let you know if anything comes up for those two titles. -Thibbs (talk) 03:56, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Well, I asked just for curiosity, it's not important. But yeah, if you have info in the future, let me know. :) Btw, someone want to delete this article: Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen, one of them said: Show me any signs of non-inherited notability (especially old magazines and foreign language reviews that I can't access) and I'll reconsider. ... Damn, the game is from 1991, how can I show them those old reviews? Sigh. --Hydao (talk) 21:04, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Hmm... I can't help you with print sources there since I don't have anything from that early, but it is sad to see that it looks like nobody there has attempted running through WP:BEFORE prior to nomming it for deletion. There does seem to be some obvious coverage of the game in the VG/RS sphere: First of all there's this Kotaku article, and then there are also entries showing release dates for various systems including Famitsu entry for Famicom version, gamespot entry for Famicom version, and Famitsu entry for MSX2 version. All of those would be reliable, although arguably only the first one is capable of demonstrating notability. For the record I think NOTINHERITED is being misapplied there too. It's pretty obvious that the unusual fact of a game being "produced with the permission of the Soviet embassy and featuring the former Soviet statesman Mikhail Gorbachev" is notable if this claim is sourced. The proper argument to make in this case is that it's not supported, not that such a fact is only notable due to inheritance. -Thibbs (talk) 03:40, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

You could also ask them to userfy it for you until you can gather the proper sources. That would prevent the work for being lost in case getting sources takes a bit of time. Just something to consider... -Thibbs (talk) 04:03, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Those sources are pretty interesting! Anyway, this blog talks about Ganbare Gorby! (the other game that features the "old man"): [4] and [5], interesting stuff. --Hydao (talk) 05:47, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, Ringbang's sources (esp. MSX Magazine) convinced me that it met the GNG criteria. Mine alone would probably have been insufficient because the Famitsu ones can only really be used for release dates. Now you just need someone to translate Ringbang's material and add it into the article. Sadly gaygamer is not considered reliable by WP:VG. I think it's a decently well-written review site, but at last check it lacked the credentials. Definitely an interesting topic though. -Thibbs (talk) 12:33, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Thibbs, thanks a lot for showing me that ad, much appreciated!! ;) --Hydao (talk) 20:01, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

No problem. -Thibbs (talk) 12:33, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Galaga, Road Blasters articles

Hi Thibbs, just wanted to let you know I answered your NP article requests on my talk page. Unfortunately there's not much there. Pagrashtak 22:10, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh great! I'll take a look and see if there's anything I can use. Thanks again. -Thibbs (talk) 03:51, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Article for deletion page flooding

I think I just noticed as an off that we have flooded the AfD page with our debate (lol) anyway as we will continue... --Olowe2011 (talk) 16:24, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh that's OK. That's what AfD is for. -Thibbs (talk) 16:35, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

PN Link

With all honesty do you think the official website for a group of internet trolls is going to be safe for users from Wikipedia. I think its better to side on caution and remove the link. It has been known for this group to use IP attacks ect after all so i'm not sure we could consider the link safe for anyone. It also states in the policy I referred to that links might not be added unless the organisation / company is large (but I used that as a base reason to remove) However, as stated above I really wouldn't recommend keeping the link. I say this out of experience. (PLEASE NOTE: Could you post any response to my talk page with same RE thanks) Regards,

• Update - I updated the template for the organisation bar to a more appropriate standard format such as displayed on the Anonymous Wikipedia article which includes more detailed information. I hope you like it and I look forward to your feedback. Regards,

--Olowe2011 (talk) 20:06, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't really care that much about the layout of the infobox. For what it's worth your changes seem fine to me. But I am concerned with your efforts to remove the group's URL. Are you saying that you know the website is unsafe (i.e. it contains malware, trojans, malicious scripts, etc) or are you just saying that because it's a troll site you imagine that it might be unsafe? Unless there's actually evidence then we'll have to restore it per WP:NOTCENSORED. I'll repost this on your talk page. -Thibbs (talk) 20:35, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

RE: MusicBlvd

Suggestion - Due to your clearly demonstrating skills in making a quality and well sourced article it would be amazing to see you re-create an appropriate and correctly named article Music Boulevard. I am sure you will do a great job and I look forward to seeing this article. As for this one it looks like a advertising pitch if you don't take a brief look and look into it in more detail you might find you agree with my comments. But as I said if you created that article as a history to this it would be great. (PLEASE NOTE: It would be preferred for you to respond to this on my talk page using the same RE format. Regards, --Olowe2011 (talk) 07:28, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

• Update - I have created a page with the correct referenced title that would be great for your contribution. It is located here. --Olowe2011 (talk) 07:36, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

• Notice - Due to some misinterpretation by another editor I have to make clear that what I have said in the suggestion is good intention and not mocking you. I believe that due to your past contributions and restructuring of articles that I have commented on before you could make great edits and contributions to the new article I have created with the correct referenced name. I just had to make sure for the benefit of opinion that me saying you are great at making quality articles is not mockery and as Thibbs knows himself I have made similar comments before in which he has then gone ahead and created great articles. Regards, --Olowe2011 (talk) 08:14, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Before you go further, please note that I don't really care that much if you are mocking me. I'm generally thicker-skinned than that. If you're not mocking me then all the better, but either way I won't let it get in the way of us working constructively together.
    Regarding your new edits, I've proposed that your newly created Music Boulevard be merged into MusicBlvd for two reasons. First of all, having two articles with largely identical content like that existing simultaneously in articlespace is called content forking. It's bad practice here at Wikipedia. If you want to move an article, you need to follow the instructions listed at WP:MOVE. That's the Wikipedia way of renaming an article's title. But in this case I've requested that "Music Boulecard" be merged into "MusicBlvd" and this brings up my second point - The website seems to be called "MusicBlvd," not "Music Boulevard." Although full names are generally preferable to shorthand forms, official company names are preferable to alternative names, and here it looks like they refer to themselves as MusicBlvd. The third and final point to make here is that the new page lacks an edit history like the old page and in order to preserve the edit history it makes more sense to merge in the recent article into the older one and then simply perform a "move" if need be.
    Regarding your suggestion that I should fix the MusicBlvd article up myself, I am actually rather busy right now. I may take a look at it if I have some time, but for now I can't promise anything. Feel free to try to improve it yourself, though. I can look over any edits you make at the page. -Thibbs (talk) 13:12, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Ooops

Sorry. I was scrolling through the list and my laptop screen starting glitching like crazy. And since I clicked the link for game informer- it deleted. It's fixed now I think. Sorry bout that. DEIDRA C. (talk) 18:09, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

No problem. Let me know if you are interested and need help participating in the Reference Library Project. -Thibbs (talk) 18:14, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Hope it doesn't happen again. I sure do know a lot about videogames. I can't tell if that is good or bad. What do you think? I think that I'm too much of a nerd when it comes to videogames. DEIDRA C. (talk) 02:59, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

If you're interested in helping with video game related articles, WikiProject Video Games is always looking for more members. There are a lot of smaller taskforces within the WikiProject that can also help you narrow your focus. From scanning your talk page it looks like you might be interested in the Call of Duty taskforce or you can work directly on improving individual articles like Resident Evil 6. If you need help on any specifics, editors on the main video game talk page (here) are usually quick to respond. And I wouldn't worry about being a nerd. I think a little nerdiness is par for the course at Wikipedia. You might be surprised, but I'd bet that most of the best editors here are nerds at heart. I probably am too. :) -Thibbs (talk) 04:57, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Haha. Alright thanks. I'm trying to edit things that I know about. Not much stuff. Hah. DEIDRA C. (talk) 19:45, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea to edit things you are familiar with at first. There's always time to branch out after you start to feel really comfortable with all of the rules and conventions here. It can be tricky at first, but I hope you'll enjoy your time here. -Thibbs (talk) 20:44, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Rovers Forever

Thanks for your input at MusstMike's page, I've re-opened Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Rovers Forever. GiantSnowman 23:59, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll post a comment if I get a chance. -Thibbs (talk) 00:01, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Tagging

Is it your goal to tag every single article on wiki? Serious question. If you do grateful if you could take care not to delete information in articles. 178.167.219.247 (talk) 00:58, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm only tagging the ones where there are problems. You can help by learning how to format references properly. It's not complicated. And it would actually make it less obvious that you're sockpuppeting. -Thibbs (talk) 01:20, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

But according you every article has problems. I have had a look at your contributions and boy you seem to have a lot of time on your hands. Perhaps you could then do what the tags need. That sockpuppeteting sounds like stalking. 31.200.168.45 (talk) 11:53, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

No. According to me only some articles have problems. Those are the ones I tagged for cleanup. I notice that you have a lot of time on your hands as well. Considering that I've gone to the effort of flagging the problems, you might consider making an effort to address some of them instead of simply deleting the flags. Deleting the flags does neither of us any good and it acts to hide the problem rather than to fix it. If you'd like I'd be very glad to explain to you how to fix the problems. I don't care if you want to edit while logged out as long as you don't use logging-out as a way to disguise your harmful edits. What do you think? Would you like to learn how to create proper refs on your own or shall I explain it for you? -Thibbs (talk) 12:51, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Dont be so patronising. You have way way more time than anybody here so you are more than welcome to fix those problems that you create. Please explain how the edits are harmful. I have made positive contributions to articles. If you think that is harmful perhaps you could log out.31.200.166.69 (talk) 16:28, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for inviting me to correct your references for you. I'll keep it in mind in case I'm looking for something to do. From looking at your 86 edits for yesterday and today, it's clear that you have a lot more free time than I do. If you look at my edit history you can easily see that it took me more than a week to make 86 edits. You have more than enough time to correct your own poorly formatted or unformatted refs, but if you refuse to do this you might consider spending a tiny bit of your oceans of free time to learn how to create proper references in the first place and then you'd notice that nobody is tagging your articles for cleanup anymore. But... Even if you refuse to clean up your own mess or to learn how to avoid making messes in the future, you can still try to restrain yourself from blanking the cleanup tags because otherwise you're standing in the way of other editors cleaning up your messes. Because that's how your edits are harmful. Again, if you'd like me to teach you how to properly format references then please let me know. If you would like to try to figure it out on your own then please visit Help:Footnotes. -Thibbs (talk) 17:00, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

It is truly remarkable that you could consider anybody having more free time than you: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Thibbs&offset=&limit=500&target=Thibbs

And you went to the trouble of actually counting edits!!31.200.166.69 (talk) 18:29, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. -Thibbs (talk) 18:30, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Help desk

So, you say that I can keep using my email account without fears? Thank you for your answer. Kennuser (talk) 14:09, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Yeah that's right. There may be a record of the incident logged with Wikipedia's central servers or something but it's all confidential and because there is no User:Kennethh account, even your IP address remains unshared. -Thibbs (talk) 14:12, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

But it does exist, check the "exists" part, and there says that the account was created on August 1, 2006. Kennuser (talk) 14:15, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Well then that user may have received an email that informed him that someone from your IP address had requested a new password and it will assign him a temporary new Wikipedia password. This is all assuming that the person gave an email address when he registered in the first place. Considering that he hasn't made a single edit at Wikipedia it's quite possible that he didn't. anyway he doesn't get to see the email address you provided in the request. -Thibbs (talk) 14:19, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Scan request

Hi. Sorry to bother you, but I'm planning on doing some work on Destruction Derby, and I was wondering if you could provide scans for the previews for the game in GameFan July 1995 and Dec. 1996. If you can spare the time, the material would be hugely appreciated. Thanks. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 04:21, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. I have the a preview for Destruction Derby in the July 1995 issue but the December 1996 issue only has a preview for Destruction Derby 2. Is that what you wanted or are you only interested in material on the first game? There is another preview for the first game in the August 1996 issue, and also I have more material on DD2 in other issues (September 1996 and January 1997) if you'd like. Let me know how many of these are needed and I'll be glad to upload them. -Thibbs (talk) 17:22, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Only looking for stuff on the first game. The July 1995 and August 1996 articles sound great—many thanks. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 20:35, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

OK. I posted them to your talk page. -Thibbs (talk) 22:01, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks again. These should be very useful. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 22:16, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

No problem. Glad to help. -Thibbs (talk) 03:50, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

SD F-1 Grand Prix

Hey Thibbs, how are you? Hope everything is fine. :) If you don't mind, let me ask you a question: does your magazines have something about SD F-1 Grand Prix? If/when you reply, please do it on your talk page, because I'm watching it. Thanks in advance. - Hydao (I was blocked temporarily for a stupid and kinda unfair reason) --92.250.93.116 (talk) 18:14, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I know that I do have some coverage of this game because I remember the artwork, but I'm out of town for a few weeks so I don't have access to those magazines right now. I'll post what I do have to User talk:Hydao when I have some free time, but I should warn you that the administrators aren't going to be pleased with you if they notice you're dodging a block. In my experience it's best to just sit it out and wait until the block expires. By helping you while you're still blocked I could potentially get myself in trouble too. I'll be glad to help you, but it will take a little while until I'm back home. -Thibbs (talk) 20:11, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Ok, thanks, take your time. :) Btw, this article Makeruna! Makendō 2: Kimero Youkai Souri was recently created, maybe you have the reception thing? - Hydao --89.214.123.200 (talk) 05:25, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I'll check my material for a Makeruna! Makendō 2 review and post what I can find, but again you're really taking a risk by dodging your block to make edits here. There are other people that watch my talk page besides me. Your block expires in 1 week. Doesn't it make more sense to stop using Wikipedia for 7 days than to risk resetting and extending your block? If you get caught you should expect a minimum 1 month extension starting from the day you get discovered... You seem like a useful editor here so I don't want to see you get blocked any more. Please don't take big risks by posting here if the issue can wait until the 8th. -Thibbs (talk) 13:39, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Hey Thibbs, thanks for your message. Yes, of course I want it. :) --Hydao (talk) 15:17, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

OK sounds good. I've posted it in your talk. -Thibbs (talk) 15:45, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Awesome stuff, thanks. No, the pictures are already good for me. :) So you bought all these magazines in Japan or through internet (ebay or something)? I think I'm going to buy these magazines too, but huh, it depends on the price. A week ago I bought Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen (mint condition), I paid something like 27 pounds, a little bit expensive. (...) Have a nice weekend. o/ --Hydao (talk) 16:06, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

I bought them online and then a friend who was visiting Japan picked them up and carried them back to me physically. The shipping and handling fees from Japan are crazy. Ebay might be a good option if you can find any for sale in the West, but they are often too modern for my tastes. The ones I got were all in the 1993-1995 range. -Thibbs (talk) 18:47, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

btw, Thibbs, changing the subject, I only noticed now that it was you who gave that "The Content Creativity Barnstar" to wikipedian gvnayr. I agree with you, the number of retro video game articles he created is "impressive" but the major problem is: he doesn't buy the games (ok this is not a problem at all), he doesn't even bother playing the games... that's why most of the time he adds text with completely false information about the game, makes some crappy rewording (using text from MobyGames most of the time), etc... when I see other sites like vg junk, sufami, videogameden, ETC, and then when I see his (gvnayr) edits, I lose all my patience. Other people/gamers give real/useful effort by writing those articles, taking screenshots, scanning stuff, etc, but gvnayr NO, all he does is copying and copying (in a terrible way). I don't think gvnayr is "creative", he's just... well, maybe is better not typing a bad adjective. I really don't mind if he's obsessive with his number of edits (yes, I noticed that he gives a lot of importance to his number of edits, maybe his "life purpose" is to be one of the top (by number of edits) wikipedia editors lol?), I just want him to stop adding false/lame information... About creativity, well, maybe this is creative: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Doan%27s_Hollow_Public_School&diff=524576434&oldid=524576084 ... "Katherine VanGoethem", now I know that his "relative" "Mr. Bison" had plenty of "concubines", and that Holmes (who?) has a copy of The Fifth Horseman... damn, I wish I could erase this information from my brain now... geez. Anyway, I'm leaving this comment because of that barnstar you gave, you were too nice for him... :) --Hydao (talk) 17:24, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Well I've noticed that you and GVnayR don't seem to get along very well here, but I think that you two are actually rather similar in terms of your topic area - older Japanese video games that are obscure to English audiences. I think that coverage of this topic area is extremely important to give Wikipedia more of an international feel and to reduce systemic POV and recentism. Doing work in this area can be difficult because sourcing is often difficult to find and as you know there are a lot of editors who spend their time hunting down poorly-sourced articles and nominating them for deletion. So I think both GVnayR and you deserve praise for your perseverance in this kind of work. I'm not sure "content creativity" is the best explanation of what I am trying to acknowledge, but in general the broadening the base of articles to cover non-English and non-recent video games makes the encyclopedia a much more interesting place.

When I gave GVnayR the barnstar I was doing it to recognize his efforts in this area since 2005. Although not all of his edits are perfect and brilliant, I think he's generally trying his best and he's done a great deal of work on these articles that almost nobody else pays attention to. Your work on these articles is also quite helpful and I appreciate it as well. It can be frustrating work, but I hope that you can persist in it for a good period of time like GVnayR has done. -Thibbs (talk) 18:47, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, I was going to reply with a very long (and probably annoying) message but better not, I just hope that he stops with certain kind of extremely stupid and non-sense edits, but I've already lost my hope... That recent Mr. Bison "tale" was just a lame example, there are worse.

I'm going to give you just one example about a video game... Two years ago, I created the Popeye (Game Boy) article. - Popeye was my first Game Boy game, along with Space Invaders :) - I was like: "ok there's no MobyGames entry about this game so let me create the page on Wikipedia (at least something "new"), then when I created the page... I was going to add the text but guess what, obsessive crazy gvnayr added something before me (check the page's history) and he wrote a sentence like: "Items like hamburgers and spinach can be used to increase Popeye's strength." ... When I read the sentence I was like "erm, what the hell?". At that time I thought that he was... I'm not going to say cool, but at least, let's say "non-stupid" or simply a responsible editor. Anyay, I recorded this video (before creating the Wiki page I guess), and he probably only watched it for a minute (or less) and then: "oh I'm going to babble few sentences on Wikipedia". Dude, Hamburgers aren't there to increase Popeye's strenght lol! Many months later I had to undo this crap added by him. Ok cool, Popeye marrying a baby, how sweet is that. No big deal about this though... Please note that this Popeye case is just an example, there are many others cases, countless... My question is: how can you write about something that you don't know about? yes, gvnayr often does that on Wikipedia. I told him to stop but I guess he has some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder, he insists on doing it (I guess he has calmed lately because I started warning him for the good of Humanity, but still once in a while he adds non-sense stuff on Wikipedia...). Imagine, if he made those useless edits with this "shitty" or non-complex game called Popeye, now imagine the other articles with more "complex" gameplay. Of course, after this Popeye incident, I started to pay more attention to his edits and past edits, and guess what, I found lots of crazy and weird things... really... Lousy edits, ugh. Sadly, that's gvnayr's problem, most of the time he doesn't know what the hell he is adding on Wikipedia. he just do it because he has nothing better to do with his life or he just want to make edits so that he can edit his own page by modifying the number of his edits. something like: "oh this week/month I made 99999 edits, I feel so productive and useful to the mankind, lemme update (increase) my number of edits, tehee. Damn, I just wanted to go to his page now and remove those numbers lol, but of course I'm not doing that 'cause it's useless and I'm not a vandal. I already told him many times: "If you want to write about games, then create your own blog "gvnayr Video Game Kingdom" and write all the crap/false stuff in there." I admit that I'm sounding a little bit "obnoxious" but damn, after seeing so many stupid edits by him, all I can say is that he sucks as a Wikipedian. :( As I said before, there are many people/gamers who write about games on their own blogs, they own/play/beat the games, share scans and other interesting things, these people deserve "praise". gvnayr doesn't, but of course, I'm just giving you my opinion... You gave that barnstar, in a certain way, that means he kinda fooled you, lol. (...) Thanks again for your cool photos, much appreciated. ;) --Hydao (talk) 01:54, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

P.S. One crazy thing is that a year ago I found a Wikipedia article entitled Janitor Man (created by gvnayr), and the text was like: "Janitor Man is a SNES game that never existed", something like it lol. I think the text was even more lame, that's why I can't remember now. That "article" was created in 2007, and no one (a respectable wikipedian) noticed about it until... 2011. sadly it was me who saw that ____ (insert adjective) and asked an administrator to delete it... oh Thibbs, sorry but no, gvnayr is not convincing. enough. o/ --Hydao (talk) 02:39, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the problem is between the two of you, but for myself all I can say is that I gave him a barnstar over a year and a half ago before the two of you met. I did it because I think he is trying to contribute positively in an area of WP:VG where not many people edit. You're another editor who is editing in this area and for that I thank you as well. But unless you're saying that GVnayR is purposely adding in false information or maliciously making prank edits then you have to be more careful about how you are talking about him here. This isn't really a private conversation. Like I said before, other people watch my talk page and whenever you edit you leave an edit history so it's not a good idea to say things that might be considered personal attacks or that assumes bad faith. I understand you're annoyed by him and maybe you have a legitimate reason to be, but please don't bring me into it. If he's causing problems and you've tried and failed to resolve them with him through appropriate communication then you should look for a third opinion. I'm glad to help you find information on game-related topics, but what's between you and GVnayR is your own personal matter. -Thibbs (talk) 05:21, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

You are totally right and decent (and maybe too polite which is positive), I'm sorry. Yes, sadly he's the ONLY editor that annoys me. I see many other wikipedians who edit about video games (you included) and there is absolutely nothing wrong with you guys. We have no problems with each other, the only problem here is... he edits about stuff that he doesn't know about... simply as that... I already gave you the Popeye example, now multiply it for 1000 or more. I'm nothing special as a Wikipedian but I can assure you that if it was not me (and perhaps wikipedian Jtalledo)... he would flood this site with the lamest info, and it seems that no one would care... Someone had to/must stop him. It is quite obvious that he is not adding false/non-sense info purposely, which is even more intriguing... Well, Thibbs thanks for reading my messages. :) Case closed "lol". --Hydao (talk) 07:06, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

It's generally best to try to stay above the personal issues. I have run into rather obnoxious editors in the past but I think the best way to deal with them (as long as they're editing in good faith) is to avoid them. It can be hard to do sometimes if the other editor is prolific or if he edits exactly within your interest, but still we all have to get along so the best thing to do in that situation is to talk it over with the other editor, let both sides express their view so the precise problem can be identified. Then if no solution is possible, go to the community to provide a consensus view, and accept the consensus view. I've been forced to accept the community view on a few things, some of which I still disagree with, but I'm a member of the community so it's my duty to act as one and part of that is to go with the consensus. -Thibbs (talk) 14:21, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

ROCK-IT

I bought the Parker/Hasbro Rock-It back in 2002 as a christmas present for my sister... then found something else (I don't know what), so it ended up sitting on top of the wardrobe for 10 years.

I noticed from your contributions, there is some dispute about this product.

I have just listed mine on eBay... with a picture of the front and back of the blister packaging... not a box. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.35.204.163 (talk) 12:56, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

The dispute was whether or not this was considered a member of the "Bop It" line of games. From everything I could see it looked like the so-called "Rock-It" is actually the fan name for Hasbro's "Nu Jam Guitar." And the words "Rock It" included on the box art were intended as a suggestion that the user "rock" the "Nu Jam Guitar" instead of an implicit suggestion that the Nu Jam Guitar was a new kind of "Bop It." Anyway the toy appears to be largely non-notable so unless we can find reliable sources that can verify its notability I think we should leave it out of the Bop It article. If sufficient reliable sourcing can be gathered, though, then perhaps we could write a new article just about the Nu Jam Guitar. -Thibbs (talk) 13:16, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

RE: Chex Quest cover image

Honestly, I believe when I was filling it out, I was just going by the logic that the developers would have been responsible for creating the image, and therefor the copyright holders? But, it appears you're correct about the copyright listed. I've gone ahead and listed both companies, though, just in case. —SpaceCow4 (talk - contribs) 22:39, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. When I contacted Mike Koenigs back in 2006 he suggested that the logo at least had belonged to Digital Cafe for some time. It's always complicated tracing IP rights when organizations get sold or go out of business. Thanks for your help. -Thibbs (talk) 23:07, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Galaga edit

Hi Asher196, I notice that in this edit you've recently reverted an edit I had made earlier today where I had added a link to the other platforms this game has been released for. I see that you left an edit summary (The infobox in this case is for the original arcade release.) but I don't understand it. Is this a rule for all games that have an arcade release or only for the Galaga article? And is this actually a rule or is it just a local consensus? The reason I ask is that although I've edited a lot of video game articles in the past I've never seen this sort of a limitation to the platform field of the "Infobox VG" template. From looking at the examples provided in Template:Infobox video game it seems that listing multiple platforms is often permitted. Am I missing something? -Thibbs (talk) 04:15, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

The problem as I see is that the technical information in the infobox pertains to the original arcade version of the game, and by adding other platforms, confuses reader, who may think the technical information applies to all platforms listed in the box. I have no good solution for this problem.--Asher196 (talk) 16:23, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Hmm... I see your point but I can see an identical problem concerning readers who look at the "platform(s)" field to see which platforms the game has been released for instead of which was the original platform for the game. The problem is exacerbated by the "(s)" that is used for this field because the plain-meaning understanding of this really suggests that it is intended to list the "platform or platforms" for which the game was released and thus the listing of a single platform implies exclusivity of the game to the listed platform. Clearly that's not the case for games like Galaga.

Whereas other (non-arcade) video game articles list all platforms individually in this field I think that using the term "Various" as an umbrella term linking to the list of ports and rereleases for an arcade game should prevent readers from confusing the arcade-only technical info with the wrong platform. After all, to see what "various" means, the reader would have to click the link and then they would immediately find out that the other platforms were non-arcade platforms. If you think it would help we could add a line at the top of the "Ports and rereleases" subsection mentioning that the technical specs for the arcade system do not apply to the ports and rereleases. But otherwise I think it's best to somehow list all platforms even for games whose original version was an arcade cabinet as this would bring them into line with the Style section of WP:VG's MOS (Bullet #5). That way the arcade game articles would be treated consistently with other video game articles which I think is generally a good idea since the Arcade Task Force is only a constituent part of the WikiProject Video Games. Let me know what you think. -Thibbs (talk) 17:29, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Seeing no further input on this I've gone ahead and restored the edit. I'm considering bringing this issue up at WT:VG (and the Arcade Task Force), though, because I think your concerns are valid and I think the idea of using this "Various" terminology is a good workaround compromise to the problem. Do you think this would be a good idea? -Thibbs (talk) 05:57, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

GameFan – Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

Hello Thibbs - I'm currently overhauling the Legacy of Kain series' articles, and you're listed as a contact for material on the original, PlayStation version of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain in DieHard GameFan. If you have time and it's not inconvenient, could I please ask you to send along any scans or things you might have from the relevant magazines? The reference library lists that there's a feature in issue #44. updates in #45 and a review in #46. I'm particularly interested in the latter, but anything would be highly, highly appreciated. Thanks very much for all your efforts! --LoK Wiki (talk) 16:38, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd be happy to. If possible, I will try to have them up by the 12th. -Thibbs (talk) 18:47, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

That's deeply appreciated. Thank you in advance. --LoK Wiki (talk) 20:06, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm really, really grateful. Thanks so much for tracking these down, and earlier than expected too. They'll be of great help! Many kudos for giving the precise details for referencing as well. Surprises me though that GameFan's review doesn't actually appear to indicate a score - it seems like a bit of a swindle on that writer's part for him to say he'll rate it properly in a later magazine. --LoK Wiki (talk) 15:58, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

No problem. Glad I could help. I didn't look at the text of the articles so I didn't notice that the rating may appear in a later issue. I'll check my copies and if I see the rating itself (which they often include in summary form in a different section of the magazine) in a later issue I'll send that your way as well. -Thibbs (talk) 17:00, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Well it looks like they never included one. I've checked through issue 50 now and I see nothing. I can't imagine they'd have reviewed it more than 3 months after the article came out... Sorry about that. -Thibbs (talk) 01:03, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for December 9

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Games 100, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Civilization (game) (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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Thanks DLP bot... But I clearly already knew that and I was the one that tagged it for dab. -Thibbs (talk) 14:21, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Torres (board game)

I deleted your redirect at Torres (tabletop game) and replaced the link at Games 100 to the correct link Torres (board game). Jeepday (talk) 14:32, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

OK. Whatever works. I have never played the game and when User:Tahc replaced Torres (game) with Torres (tabletop game) (here) I assumed it was classified as a tabletop game. If it's not then by all means delete the unneeded redirect. -Thibbs (talk) 14:35, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Curly quotes

Hi Thibbs - no bother about the "curly quotes", and I do not get offended when others amend my incorrect edits. My fun on wikipedia is adding sources, especially stuff from old newspapers, to history articles. Unfortunately I am slapdash about following correct editing procedure: but on the other hand, I try hard to make my quotes accurate. Swings and roundabouts:) RLamb (talk) 18:35, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear that. I try to behave in much the same way. There's something very satisfying about adding information that is harder to find like older newspaper articles, for example. Thanks for reassuring me. -Thibbs (talk) 20:00, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Allgame?

Thibbs, is this site "reliable"? For the past months (or years) I saw gvnayr adding/flooding the reception thing from Allgame, but when I visit the pages I see nothing useful in there. Only some crappy screenshots, "AMG Rating" and nothing more... honestly, even GameFAQs is better, can't even compare. --Hydao (talk) 01:14, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Allgame is considered reliable here. A lot of the information on specific Video Game source reliability can be found at WP:VG/RS. If you think Allgame is a poor source, you could suggest that they change its designation at the talk page there. Sometimes they reevaluate websites. -Thibbs (talk) 03:08, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

But there are many pages on Allgame that are not 100% reliable, just like Wikipedia, MobyGames, etc. I don't think Allgame is a poor source, but for example, the other user (you know who) added the Allgame "rating"/link for Track Meet, and there's nothing in there, only a tiny picture, year, and the so-called rating. So who gave that rating? A random guy/girl who works for the site Allgame? hmm... Btw, "the other user" is adding that System requirements for many games, sigh (only DOS), so Wikipedia only accepts system requirements for DOS? how about Amiga? Do you know something about this? Is the system requirements really needed for an article about a multi-platform game? --Hydao (talk) 02:00, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't know much about Allgame. I've never examined it thoroughly. Generally I just go by what they have listed at WP:VG/RS. In the checklist at the bottom it looks like Allgame has been discussed at least 10 times regarding its reliability so you should read through those discussions to get an idea about why WP:VG considers it to be a reliable website. As for the system requirements, the ones listed are supposed to be for the original version of the game according to Template:Infobox video game#Syntax guide. So if the game was released in DOS first then it should have DOS system reqs listed. If it was an Amiga-first release then it should have Amiga system reqs listed. -Thibbs (talk) 02:15, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I never used the site Allgame at all... maybe it is "reliable" for the new generation games, but for the old-school games... I really doubt about it. For the old-school games MobyGames and GameFAQs are definitely the best sources. Ok, thanks for the info, so it seems that he added the "system requirements" for games that was released for the Genesis, Super NES first. or at the same time... --Hydao (talk) 02:35, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

No problem. I know the reliability rules can be kind of confusing, but WP:VG/RS basically covers all of the details. Ironically neither MobyGames nor GameFAQs are considered reliable here at Wikipedia according to that page (WP:VG/RS). I guess the underlying rationale is that MobyGames and GameFAQs are all fan-contributed and random fans are not considered reliable since they have no expertise. That's why I often try to just stick to print sources. They are usually pretty safe because they have oversight staff and editorial policies. Anyway let me know if you have any other questions about WP:VG reliability issues. -Thibbs (talk) 03:40, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Featured Section

Hey Thibbs. We are getting close to the end of the year which means its almost close to the new Newsletter. Do you have any ideas for the Feature section? GamerPro64 16:02, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I've been thinking about this the last week or so. What about a piece highlighting some of the underutilized aspects of WP:VG? I'm thinking of stuff like the assessments request page (specifically the infamous A-class issue) and the Collaboration of the Month. Another angle would be to rally members to help work on reviewing each other's work more, with GAN, PR, and FAC reviews. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 16:49, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Good point, GamerPro64. It's amazing how time flies by. Both of those sound good, Torchiest. Without getting into the acrimonious details, we could incorporate some of the lessons learned from the Niemti-GAN business (i.e. it is an important community value that GAN noms should try to spend some time reviewing other GANs even if it's not required.)

Meanwhile I've been sort of mentally assembling two different topics, but I've been busy with classes for the last few weeks. I'm on vacation now, though, so I may have time to work on drafting them before the holidays hit. I think it would be good to have multiple articles going, by the way, so that we have a pool to draw from when the release date approaches. I've collapsed my top ideas below in a frame for now:

Future plans for Newsletter articles

One of my ideas concerns the differences between different WP:VGs in other language versions of Wikipedia (relative size and scope compared to en.wiki and each other; what they're doing differently than us; what seems to work and what doesn't, etc.) My other idea is to do an editorial on how to handle WP:TRUTH when editing VG articles specifically with regard to reliable sources that are simply wrong in their details. This would basically be my personal view of how to balance editorial discretion with the dangers of OR and SYNTH bias, and it might take me a little longer especially because I'd like to run it by a few people at the Newsletter before it is published (I'd like to present a balanced perspective and I especially don't want to advocate for something that violates some rule I'd neglected). I have a third idea that I really want to save for Q1 of 2014 (this is planning a ways in the future, I know...). Basically I don't think it's on anybody's radar right now, but WP:VG turns 10 years old on February 5, 2004. So I think we should do something special to mark that. I'm gathering material on a history of WP:VG and I thought the interviews for that issue should be for ancient founding members like User:Greyengine5, User:Mrwojo, etc. And we could ask them things like "what's the biggest change that you've seen here at WP:VG over the last decade?" etc. Digging these people up for an interview may be a real challenge even if they have left email addresses, so I think I'd like to start trying to reach them during Q3-Q4 2013.

So today is a clean-up day for me at home, but I should be a lot more free to work on some of these things today, tonight, and in the next week or so. -Thibbs (talk) 17:19, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh also, something that is currently developing and may be good for a "news in brief" note is discussions concerning a large-scale structural redesign of WP:VG/RS spearheaded by Odie5533. -Thibbs (talk) 17:27, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Alright. These ideas sound good. Pick one and we can get it finished by the end of the month. GamerPro64 22:31, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Game Boy game

Hey Thibbs, when you have a minute please check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Chiky%C5%AB_Kaih%C5%8D_Gun_ZAS ... do you know someone here on Wikipedia who owns old magazines about Game Boy stuff? --Hydao (talk) 09:23, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Sadly no. There is some coverage of Japanese Game Boy games in Famitsu of course, but that game is too early for the sources I have. Also I'm currently on vacation so I don't have access to them anyway. I probably won't until February. The best place on Wikipedia to locate other editors who have print magazines covering video games is at WP:VG/RL. Everyone there has agreed to help each other by providing copies of articles from the print sources that they own. I don't see anything that is specific to Game Boy, though... I checked and I dont' see anything for English-language sources for the game online, but I'll look to see later today if I can find any Japanese sources online. -Thibbs (talk) 15:05, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

OK I did some searching. The best RS I could come up with is this from Famitsu.com. It's not good enough to show notability, though, because it's only trivial coverage and not "significant" coverage as required by WP:N. So I'd say your best bet at the AfD is to argue that some of the sources not listed at WP:RS are actually reliable. I'd be comfortable calling the disgruntleddesigner.com source you mentioned an RS because Chris Covell is a significant and reliable author in the world of VG sources. The others are more iffy. Forum and blog posts are usually not allowed, for instance. Some of the sources listed at the hg101 link you provided are at least borderline, though I've seen racketboy and blamethecontrollpad cited here at Wikipedia before, for example. Realistically there may not be enough time to make the case that these are RSes, though, because you'd probably have to go through WP:VG/RS and AfDs don't tend to last very long... Your best bet may be to request userfication of the article until you have the time to argue for reliability of some of these sources at WT:VG/RS. I haven't looked at it too deeply yet, but I can tell you that I'd !vote RS on Chris Covell's writings at disgruntleddesigner at the very least.

So let me know if you need any further clarification of what I wrote above. Or any help going through the steps. The policies here can be a little confusing unless you're used to them. -Thibbs (talk) 16:27, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Ok thanks a lot. :) I think that article will not be deleted. Btw, that Famitsu link has nothing at all. --Hydao (talk) 12:21, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Nothing apart from the release date and the platform of course. So yeah like I said, nothing "significant" within the meaning of WP:N. -Thibbs (talk) 16:24, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Notability of stand-alone lists

It's not a COI, it's called an opinion. ;-) Diego (talk) 14:19, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Maybe COI isn't the best term, but my point is that you're kind of involved as an editor right now and so it has the appearance of non-objectivity. I assume good faith on your part, but I think it's generally best to discuss such an edit first and possibly to reveal your interest in the outcome of the matter as it relates to the simultaneously ongoing discussions you're involved in. -Thibbs (talk) 14:29, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

A cup of coffee for you!

n/t ;-) Diego (talk) 14:55, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. -Thibbs (talk) 05:20, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Thibbs. You have new messages at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Stand-alone_lists#Most_of_the_best_lists....
Message added 15:24, 21 December 2012 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Re. about the "most of..." sentence Diego (talk) 15:24, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll get to this as soon as I can. -Thibbs (talk) 16:40, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

OK I've responded there and I'll address the WT:N issue when I get another moment. -Thibbs (talk) 05:20, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.