[game_preservation] Should Wikipedia Be Responsible for Gaming's History?

[Martin Goldberg]

As someone who's very involved in the Video Game project there, I
routinely find myself straddling both sides of the fence.  I think the
biggest issue people outside of the Wikipedia system don't understand
is how the system works and what the purpose of the articles there are
vs. their expectations on how an encyclopedia is supposed to be (which
Wikipedia isn't).

It's not intended to be an indiscriminate collection of information -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information

To have it's own entry at Wikipedia, a subject has to satisfy
Wikipedia's notability requirements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability

Also, something that can be frustrating to contributors on the online
encyclopedia that "anyone" can edit - you can't do "original research"
or synthesis of sources -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Synthesis#Synthesis_of_published_material_that_advances_a_position

Also, any sources given have to meet Wikipedia's reliability requirements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources

On these last three, I had a frustrating experience recently with
another well known contributor from the project.  In the shoot 'em ups
history page there was a passage with a cited source to IGN describing
Moon Patrol as the game to introduce parallax side scrolling.  This is
of course wrong.  But because IGN meets reliability requirements and
the way Wikipedia approaches things, I could not have that source
removed or the statement altered.  Only a counterpoint added - and
even then that counterpoint has to be backed up by secondary
(non-primary) source that directly address the issue.  I could not
say, show a direct video of an earlier side scroller in the action of
side scrolling. Because that violates their reliable secondary
published source guidelines.  As the other person stated -

"I have no idea what parallax scrolling really is. It is not possible
to clearly demonstrate these techniques using a primary source without
the relevant technical knowledge. You pointing to a primary source and
saying "this is clearly horizontal planar parallax scrolling" is
original research."

I also could not provide several other sources that discuss
parallax-scrolling with relation to moon patrol and other games -
games that came before moon patrol - and use that either.  Not even in
conjunction with a reference to the copyright database or other
sources which identify an earlier release date for said game.  Because
they don't explicitly state the counter to the IGN article's claim,
and requires some sort of simple thinking and extrapolation to state
"Well this game was released the year before, and the source says it
uses parallax-scrolling so therefore it's an earlier example."  In
Wikipedia, sources dictate the content vs. simply supporting the
content.

So that brings us to the other major issue with Wikipedia editing:
It's the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, only the guidelines
and process are dumbed down to support (if not force) that lowest
common denominator.

I should also mention the actual goal of articles on Wikipedia - it's
not to be a complete and reliable source of all information on that
subject.  It's to meet the previously mentioned guidelines and pass
Good Article (GA) and Featured Article (FA) statuses.  Ironically,
these statuses are not readily apparent to the reader - you have to go
to the page's discussion page and look at the banner at the top to see
if it's passed that status.  These status processes involves peer
review.  The peers are simply other editors who routinely volunteer
regularly to do the reviews.  And so you understand, this is not the
same type of peer review one would expect in say a published journal
or periodical on the subject for instance.  They're not peers that are
experts in the subject matter and it's field, rather they're experts
in the guidelines and policies of Wikipedia.  That's the microscope
applied to the article.  It's ability to conform to the previously
described guidelines on what makes reliable information, vs. anything
to do with the quality of said information.


Marty


On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 11:27 AM, Jan Baart <jan_baart at yahoo.de> wrote:

>

>> The question should perhaps never be "Why shouldn't this be deleted?" but

>> "Why can't this be included?". More pages doesn't make it harder to find

>> info, it just makes it better :)

>>

>> Andrew

>>

>

> That's precisely the right question Andrew. I don't get Wikipedia's

> relevance-based approach at all. They don't that much extra storage for

> additional articles and I'm sure anyways that the actual webspace is not a

> significant cost factor. So, indeed, the question has to be: Why exclude

> anything at all? As long as its properly researched and worth its own entry

> instead of being a part of another one I'd say they should allow it. The

> amount of deleted worthwile content I've come across is astonishing. Imho

> Wikipedia might actually threaten its own strong position by this approach

> in the long run.

>

> Jan

> _______________________________________________

> game_preservation mailing list

> game_preservation at igda.org

> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/game_preservation

>