[game_preservation] The role of comment/opinion on referencing game history articles/things

[Martin Goldberg]

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?

> _______________________________________________

> game_preservation mailing list

> game_preservation at igda.org

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

>