Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2009-09-14

WikiProject Video games

The Video games WikiProject was founded in February 2004 by Greyengine5, who left Wikipedia later that year. Over the subsequent years, the project has become one of Wikipedia's largest—with nearly 1,300 members—and one of its most successful, with 125 featured articles, 33 featured lists, and 340 good articles, out of a total pool of more than 23,000 articles. It has also grown to include 28 task forces covering smaller topics, one of the largest such groupings on Wikipedia.

Today, we've asked five members of the project (David Fuchs, Guyinblack25, Izno, MuZemike, Nifboy) to answer a few questions about their experiences there:

1. What aspects of the project do you consider to be particularly successful? Has the project developed any unusual innovations, or uniquely adopted any common approaches?

Izno: Not to rap on any of the other popular culture WikiProjects, but I am of the opinion that Video games (and its members in general) is the one of the most balanced now with respect to WP:Notability. What I mean is that we realize as VG editors that sometimes, you gotta' cut the articles down to get to the meat of the topic. Certain editors informally (and successfully, imo) help guide the project in this matter, I would say.

MuZemike: If you look at our extensive lists of Good articles and Featured content, that speaks volumes as to the quality of articles and the dedication of a lot of the members in ensuring accurate, high-quality content. It is also, incidentally, how I got started editing Wikipedia myself over a year and a half ago. We also maintain our own list of newest video game articles and maintain a centralized deletion page, peer review process, new article request process, images department, and reference library (especially for those hard-to-find print sources for many older video games). There are also 26 currently-active task forces as well as 11 other WikiProjects that fall under or overlap with the scope of the video games project. As a result, and as what David explained in one of the below questions, one particular aspect that differentiates this project from others is that we have our own inactive project cleanup department, which assists in consolidation of old projects and task forces that are inactive. Recently, we have developed an informal, lightweight RfC process in which video game talk pages and other talk pages can elicit comment from the members of the project as a whole.

2. Have any major initiatives by the project ended unsuccessfully? What lessons have you learned from them?

Nifboy: Pokémon. Specifically, the Pokémon Adoption Center, which was a valiant attempt to clean up hundreds of articles and properly source them, reaching two Featured Articles at its peak. Then our article standards rose, culminating at FAR and eventually merging the whole lot of them into lists. It's something of a cautionary tale against pouring effort into excessive detail, and we learned a lot about what sorts of articles hold up under close scrutiny and which don't. I don't like the current solution of two dozen lists, but I'm not sure anyone knows what to do with them, if anything can be done.

Guyinblack25: To be honest, I think our major shortcoming is that we're just a bunch of gamers (or "video game enthusiasts" as we say in articles). Like every other editor, we're volunteers that only have so much free time to dedicate. In that respect, we tend to let smaller and midsized initiatives lose momentum. So while we've had some good ideas get off the ground, they tend to become inactive after a month or so. The lesson there is that we can't let our attention be divided too much. Even if a really good idea comes up, it may be better to put it off until we can focus on it properly.

3. Video game topics in Wikipedia have sometimes been criticized as being too concerned with trivia and plot details, and there have occasionally been efforts to have significant numbers of these articles deleted. Do you believe such criticism is justified, and how has it affected the project? Have you developed any special methods for dealing with such issues?

Nifboy: The Video Games project has a unique perspective because there is often so much else to talk about other than just the plot. Gameplay almost always gets top billing on any article, and we established pretty early on that we didn't want to be GameFAQs. So in some ways the balancing act is easier because there's always content to balance against, even before the article has proper reception and development sections. On the other hand it can be problematic when a game has little or no plot, and editors trying to flesh out the article start extrapolating from whatever nonsense justification got written into the manual. Sometimes two paragraphs of plot is too much.

Izno: Perhaps previously, this was the case, but I can see these issues being a problem endemic to Wikipedia's 'popular culture articles'; I see trivia and plot as an issue in other articles outside the VG domain (particularly in poorly done films and TV articles, but you'll also rarely see it in a poorly done math article). To say the least, I think VG has made a massive effort to work this particular kink out of the VG articles. WP:VGSCOPE is very helpful in this regard, as it quite easily locates what the project as a group believes to be inappropriate.

MuZemike: That depends who you talk to. Some do indeed criticize video game topics for having too much trivia and overdetailed plot. However, others similarly criticize the same topics for not having them. Perhaps this is just a part of the ever-ongoing deletionism/exclusionism/inclusionism wars that take place on and off-wiki. However, I put another perspective on this. Wikipedia is pretty much the first encyclopedia to contain extensive encyclopedic content regarding video games and gaming. Other topics like military history, philosophy, or the Classics have been in pretty much every encyclopedia since Diderot first published the Encyclopédie and likely before that as well. In addition, video gaming has only been a part of history and culture for the past 40 years roughly. People will still go back and forth as to what material belongs in video game topics in an encyclopedia, while at the same time keeping in mind that we shouldn't limit ourselves on what video game topics should be covered as Wikipedia is not paper. Going full circle with verifiabliity, it comes down to "what can we write with the accurate sources given" and "how do we organize such content"? We don't take sources from postings on Internet forums, self-published content, or blogs that some fan has created on whims. As with your topics on military history, philosophy, or the Classics, reliable fact-checked sources are critical in writing accurate quality content on the encyclopedia. The same should apply to video game articles. And if we're to get respect from both sides with regards to video game content, we must keep this in mind.

4. Your project has partially adopted the task force model for subsidiary groups. Do you find this model to be effective? How might it be improved?

David Fuchs: As with any task force, the successfulness of an offshoot groups depends on the people crewing it. In some cases task forces are too hastily started and interest wanes quickly. Other times sister wikiprojects are decided to be better off as task forces. To address those issues, we started an Inactive project cleanup in early 2008 which has since resulted in a more focused division of tasks and projects. Generally, larger subprojects and task forces for bigger game franchises (WikiProject Halo, for example) tend to thrive, but occasionally a small group of hardcore fans can dramatically improve quality on obscure and neglected topics.

Guyinblack25: Right now, I'd say the model is not ineffective; we've had mixed success with it. Some task forces have such a small number of active members that they lack the capacity to be as effective as they could be. But the ones that do have a good sized member base have done great work in their scope. The only improvements that come to mind are consolidating smaller task forces together and putting a roll call process in place. I think that would foster an environment that encourages collaboration more by showing editors that there are others within the project that want to work in similar areas.

5. What experiences have you had with the WikiProjects whose scopes overlap with yours? Are they useful collaborators, or do you feel that they have little to offer you? Has your project developed particularly close relationships with any other projects?

David Fuchs: As part of a way to hopefully invite broader feedback about video games articles and network with other projects, WikiProject Video Games has partners with WP:MILHIST for peer reviews. Users for either project can list their articles for review and can leave a talk page notice alerting people that a partner peer review is open. This not only alerts others to flock to a review, but I think that each project has something to offer the other--MILHIST chaps can tell us gamers what parts of the gameplay section are too inaccessible, while we can do much the same in pointing out technical terms for weapons, etc. that the casual reader would get bogged down in.

MuZemike: I've had some very positive interactions with the Anime and Manga WikiProject, especially when colloborating with other users there for Good article nominations and reassessments. A lot of the articles that I've been working with in that regard have been visual novels. They have been very helpful in improving several old Good articles and getting them up to the current standards and quality required of a Good article. In my other reviews, WP:ANIME members have been very receptive to feedback that I give them. I kind of say that we and WP:ANIME are in a way similar because we cover similar topics and types of articles.

6. Your project was last interviewed 18 months ago. How has your project changed since then?

Guyinblack25: Expanding on what the others have stated above, a lot of the changes since then are how members interpret and enforce Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Our guidelines and assessment practices have undergone significant changes. Several lengthy discussions involving numerous project members have occurred that resulted in the language becoming more clear and in line with Wikipedia's. This in turn helps veteran and new members be on the same page when editing articles. The inactive cleanup also helped consolidate resources (assessing, peer reviews, discussions, etc.) that were split among several WikiProjects. I believe our project has grown in active membership and become more focused as a result, which is a great asset when trying to improve such a large scope of articles.

MuZemike: Well, a few WikiProjects are no more, more notably Nintendo, Sega, Warcraft, and more recently Final Fantasy – all of which are now task forces under the Video games project. Is that a bad thing? For me, not necessarily. When I helped transition WP:NIN from a WikiProject to a task force about a year ago, my feeling was that things would be less structure and more freeform – basically less things to worry about. Some benefits of such taskforcification have been the change to one central assessment scheme rather than two redundant and identical assessment schemes and the capability for a fresh start for a project. After updating our membership a couple of times, the Nintendo task force have increased from 27 members to 43 (though the task force is currently updating its membership, so that number may change).

7. What is your vision for the project? How do you see the project itself, as well as the articles it shepherds, developing over the next year? The next five years?

David Fuchs: Video games in general and video games articles on Wikipedia in particular have always had something of a bad rap for being poorly written, sourced, or thought out in general. My hope is that we can address those (often valid) issues and work towards every-increasing quality articles. Steps like the overhaul of our Reliable Sources page reflect an increasing attention to the values of scholarship. Keeping up and improving our articles is always the first priority.

Guyinblack25: David hits the big issue right on the head. Improving the image of video game related topics by improving their quality will always be an important goal. Another goal is the improvement of how video game history is recorded. A lot of reputable sources provide some pieces of history about a game, series, genre, or developer. But Wikipedia gives us the opportunity to compile all those pieces into a complete picture that's available to everyone. We've made good progress in improving the quality of historically important articles as well as popular ones, and I believe we can continue that momentum. Ultimately, I would love to see the day when we've improved our articles so much that someone wanting to learn about video game history checks Wikipedia first.

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