[game_preservation] Wikipedia thoughts?

[Andrew Armstrong]

Jim Leonard wrote:

> I gave up on Wikipedia a long time ago when I wrote 90% of the CGA 

> article only to have entire sections jettisoned with "no original 

> research".  That's not why I gave up on it -- I gave up on it when I 

> took the exact same information and put it on webpages I host, then 

> put it back into Wikipedia with references, et voila, it was accepted. 

> That's idiotic.

Urg, not a nice story :( I see why you gave up on it. Like I said, I 
have avoided it, this won't make me want to start now I think.

> MobyGames is at the mercy of the people who contribute to it; some 

> games have a ton of information you can cull; others don't.  MobyGames 

> tries to keep the descriptions objective, but the reviews and trivia 

> contain a lot of the hidden details.

Well, the trivia is good for some odd details (and descriptions limited, 
bit fairly okay), but there are other missing bits and pieces 
(intentionally left out or not :) ) that other places have. These are 
things like deeper information about how the game worked, the story or 
gameplay, and so forth. Basically, a give database entry is fine, but 
you don't usually have much of a clue on how a game might play, or why 
it was good/bad, what it used from past games, what future games took 
from it, and where it fits into people's histories.

BTW: I don't mean reviews as such, which (let's be honest) barely 
contain any information about the game, since they're so short and 
written by people who either love it or hate it, hehe.

In fact, that's one reason I sometimes need to check Wikipedia or Wakia, 
is to know more about how it plays, and any important details about it 
(despite it's flaws, like not even having the game on record, or 
removing large amounts of the useful information).

It's difficult to, however, draw the line I guess between Database and 
more general sites. :D Thanks for explaining that. If you do solicit 
possible changes to the site's content fields, I'd be happy to help with 
some of it, but no worries if it's "okay as it is".

I'm going to try and get the canon games the SIG has written up in some 
detail this year, with what research I can cobble together from third 
parties and my own experiences, hopefully that'll give me some 
experience at seeing how such a site goes to a degree, heh.

Andrew