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

[Henry Lowood]

Marty,

this was an excellent summary of issues and put into words a few 
thoughts that were rumbling around in my head, esp. in the last two 
paragraphs.  I have always wondered about the restrictions on 
interesting contributions by important contributors (as reported) that 
ran up against rote guidelines on documentation, etc.   It seemed like a 
well-meant, but amateurish effort to impose guidelines on correct 
historical writing. (Frankly, one, that has driven me away from 
Wikipedia except in cases where they are "the only game in town" on a 
topic.)  In most cases that I have read about, historians would not 
apply the same criteria in the same way.   Well, those last two 
paragraphs give us the context.  Obviously, you are raising some really 
interesting issues, as well, about what exactly Wikipedia is trying to 
achieve by following these guidelines, e.g., the idea of sources 
dictating content is certainly provocative and puzzling.

Henry

On 1/20/2011 10:22 AM, Martin Goldberg wrote:

> 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

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-- 
Henry Lowood
Curator for History of Science&  Technology Collections;
   Film&  Media Collections
HRG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall
Stanford University Libraries, Stanford CA 94305-6004
650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood