[game_preservation] The role of comment/opinion on referencing game history articles/things
Martin Goldberg
wgungfu at gmail.com
Fri Feb 12 03:36:17 EST 2010
Andrew - somethings to consider:
Commentary should probably not be subjective in nature in a scholarly
database. I.E. if it's known for something, or the author has a
conflict of interest, etc., you'd want to reference (i.e. create a
link to) a reliable/verifiable third party source. Things in regards
to incorrect info can certainly be noted via an errata tag of some
sort. But with some sources you're going to be dealing a rather large
listing of them (such as Steve Kent's book History of Video Games).
Marty
On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 5:57 AM, Andrew Armstrong <andrew at aarmstrong.org> wrote:
> If I could solicit opinions here - I wondered what people's opinions were on
> the use of comment and opinion (as well as tagging, categorisation) of
> historical articles/books/videos/whatever when they are noted in some
> database, or otherwise on a site. Anything but the games themselves
> basically.
>
> I mean, for instance, sometimes data might be incorrect/not reliable, or the
> author might have a conflict of interest commenting on the subject (or the
> article itself being only an opinion - although where you draw the line is
> sometimes hard). I presume these are okay to note, especially if they give
> context for the why.
>
> Of course there is also plenty of opportunity for useful "praise" ("Contains
> the most...", "is detailed in the area of...", "Good resources to use
> for..." etc.), however on the other side - there can be negative comments
> about the work ("Too lavish praise of...", "Poor assumptions...", "Factually
> incorrect sources...", "Opinions stated as fact...", "arbitrary inclusions
> and exclusions..."). People generally don't like negative criticism,
> whatever it might be.
>
> Should that negative side be shyed away from? or is it entirely justified to
> make such lists more useful? Of course such additions to any kind of
> link/reference/list would be partially if not wholly opinion in many cases
> (IE: just how can you factually tell the author is a fanboy of a certain
> system?), but if you really needed to find the useful information out there,
> would this be okay?
>
> Does anyone have any experience of this kind of categorisation or comment
> system on resources and how to do this kind of thing? I wonder about legal
> problems to, libel and that, although if you comment on the work not the
> author that's fine right?
>
> I think I've brought this up a bit before, just would be interesting to know
> what people think about saying both good and bad things about a historical
> resource. I know people have commented useful praise and negative things on
> specific books and authors before (just for example) - things I never knew
> that helps me know more about game history :)
>
> Hope that's clear anyway - for myself I'm pretty okay with negative points
> on a piece (especially if it is actually outdated or wrong, and needs
> stating as such) especially if it makes it easier to find things later,
> although straying too far into opinions (about the author, motives, etc) can
> get into trouble thinking where to draw the line. I think if there was a way
> of separating more factual descriptions/tags/categories and short pieces of
> opinion and notes on a piece might be the best method.
>
> While I'm not there yet, this would be about the SIG database of references
> I'm still slowly designing and building. :)
>
> Andrew
>
> PS: Wow, that's long winded. TL;DR - would positive/negative opinions on
> things in a history reference DB be good/bad/useful?
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