This is an archive of past discussions with User:TKD. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
We certainly need new blood in WP:MACHINIMA. My efforts over the last year have mainly been the odd revert or AFD of blatantly nonnotable productions, or maintaining the status quo of existing articles. The core problem is that of course 99.9% of machinima isn't notable, leaving us with little to work on other than the improvement of existing articles. I agree that merging into WP:VG may be the easiest way to get people involved, but I do fear the possibility of lowering of standards on what gets to be made into articles, be it due to the parent project's nature, or the potential involvement of those who have vested interest in certain productions. I could be completely wrong though, as I've barely read WP:VG and its subpages.
As for improving existing articles, unfortunately I'm still just as bad a procrastinator as before, if not more so. I have bit of a short attention span at times, and sometimes forget about a task I intend to do for months. Case in point, I volunteered to take the shears to the RvB page on Wikiquote, which had gotten to over 340K, but haven't laid a finger on it in over three months. I want to watch through all the DVDs again to refresh my memory and better decide what stays and what goes from the page, but I've been tardy on that front, having only watched through Season 1 so far. Still, I suppose it will give me an excuse to also listen through the commentary again and garner info to improve the general RvB articles. I actually took down some notes from the seasons 1-3 and Strangerhood commentaries close enough to two years ago, then forgot all about them.
TKD- Yes, I saw your response, but had started to shift from clean up/administrive mode to article writing mode. Thank you for the reminder though. I've got an article at WP:GAN and one almost ready for WP:FAC, so if it's alright I'll try to give the Project clean up a nudge next week. As far as the categories go, that's something I never thought about. I certainly see the merit of keeping them, and I will bring the topic up when things get going. (Guyinblack25talk16:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC))
Blu-Ray.com
Blu-ray.com is not an official site, believe me, I know. They have no affiliation to the BDA nor do the two Swedes who own it even have a clue about how the industry works. From the site itself:
"This web site is not affiliated with the Blu-ray Disc Association.
All trademarks are the property of the respective trademark owners."
Please stop attempting to endow them with official status. The staff their are so far outside the CE and movie industry, it's unbelievable.
The official source would of course be the BDA, but information from them outside of a .pdf white paper is hard to come by. Even then, it's nearly impossible trying to find the actual mandatory codecs, etc. anywhere on their official sites, the U.S. site being blu-raydisc.com. I've added refs to InterBluray.co.uk that list it all on one page, and in simpler language than Blu-ray.com. :-)
This issue we are trying a new type of newsletter feature: "Featured editor". This is a chance to learn more about the various editors who contribute to the Video games project as well as the roles they fill. If you enjoyed this new feature and would like to see similar interviews in future issues, please drop us a note at the VG newsletter talk page.
David Fuchs (also known as Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs), is a long time video games editor that has written a large number of the project's Featured articles. He has been ranked high on Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations, and has assisted in reviewing and editing more many. Recently David has begun to assist with image reviews for Featured article candidates, and branched out into other types of articles in addition to video games. He can normally been seen on the project's talk page offering advice and his input on the various discussion taking place there.
What drew you to Wikipedia, and what prompted you to begin editing?
I got involved due in part to (I believe, my memory is fuzzy) finding the site while doing research for Advanced Placement Europen History during high school. My earliest contributions (in December 2005) were creating topics based on what I learned, as well as creating an article for my high school with another friend. I soon became involved with editing topics related to Halo video game franchise, specifically the article on the parasitic Flood.
What got you involved in writing Featured articles?
I think for most editors it's a shiny accomplishment you are striving for, and natural for most editors to try and get an FA. I first nominated an article for FA in 2007, after about a year of inactivity onwiki; it didn't pass as it was poorly written and didn't follow our guidelines for writing about fiction; I also took a couple of tries to get my first video game FA (Halo 2).
What article(s) are you most proud of writing or exemplifies your best work?
I suppose Myst is a sort of accomplishment I can point to; I started work on the article on May 2 2008, when it looked like this, and submitted it to Featured Article Candidates one day later. I think that's some kind of record, but I dunno. In terms of being a good read or something I'm very happy with, however, I'd have to look at my more recent work, specifically Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Bone Wars.
How do you pick the articles you work on?
Whatever hits me. There's many articles I haven't gotten around to editing and improving as planned because another article has caught my fancy.
What advice would you give to editors seeking to write quality articles?
In the words of one of my favorite cartoon characters when I was a child, "We must do reeea-search!" Even in video games, online sources don't usually cut it. Even after getting an article to FA, make sure you continually trawl the internet and elsewhere for more information to add to the topic.
Note: This is an abridged version. To read the full interview, click here.
Yes, creating a list of machinima festivals seems to be the best way to go. AMAS festivals can always be split off later if the article gets big, yet they still dominate it.--Drat (Talk) 11:26, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
Userpage
Thanks for the advice. I'll revise the section some time. Most of the additions to the page were written ages ago; I only recently dug up the files and put them together, so I guess it was inevitable something was out of date or based on my older interpretations of policies.--Drat (Talk) 06:37, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
CSD Copyright Question
Hi,
I'm not quite sure where to ask this, but as I see you handle CSD a lot, I thought I would give you a try. On new page patrol tonight, I came across user:CCFSDCA, who is adding articles such as Africa Industrialization Day, Garifuna settlement day, and Ceremonie-yam. In these articles are statements such as "Original text from The Whole World Calendar Book of Holidays Around the World by Christopher Corbett-Fiacco, by permission of author.)" The author was advised on his talk page that in order to be able to do this, the work must be donated to Wikipedia.[1]. Judging from the user's username and another article he wrote, I am guessing that he is the author of this book, however I would like to know what the appropriate response should be in this situation; specifically, 1) is there a way to verify that the book has been donated, and 2) if it has not, should these articles be tagged for speedy deletion (G12)?
Sorry if you're the wrong person to ask... if this is the case, I would really appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction. Thanks! --Aka042 (talk) 19:51, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
I'll reply here, since that is your default preference. CSD G12 applies only to cases of blatant copyright infringement, where there is no credible claim of permission. Given what you suggested, it sounds as if the editor may in fact be legally able and willing to release his work, so in my judgment G12 doesn't apply. However, the important thing is that he needs to explicitly release it under the GFDL, not merely under vague "permission" terms; thus, it's still an issue. I would:
request the editor to follow the instructions at WP:IOWN and email the OTRS team as a written record of proper licensing under the GFDL. When/if this happens, an OTRS volunteer will lift the copyvio notice. If this doesn't occur, the page will eventually be deleted through normal non-speedy copyvio processing.
Looks like he's attracted a bit of attention from others, too. And they're right about this being an WP:ADVERT problem, if in fact the book exists. I was merely commenting on the copyright issue, but apparently no one can find info about the book, anyway. It looks as if he's stopped claiming that the text of his articles is "quoted" from his book and instead merely "citing" it. Even though we have no way of verifying this at all, it's probably not worth pursuing as a copyvio, since we can't seem to tell whether the material exists at all in the first place. In fact, I suggest rendering the point moot by trying to find suitable redirect targets for his stubs. I did one for Poinsettia day, for example. — TKD::Talk01:03, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Hey, thanks for the reply and sorry for the delay in response. I noticed the issue was brought up on the administrator's noticeboard and it seems like others have taken care of the issue (finding references and speedily deleting the ones where no references could be found). --Aka042 (talk) 22:17, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
The next Connecticut Wikipedia meetup will take place sometime during April 2009 at Real Art Ways cafe and arts center in Hartford, Connecticut. Please list on the meetup page whether or not you can go. Also please contribute ideas for topics and dates! Hope to see you there! This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 23:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
A Request, please
Would you mind deleting the page KAAI (currently a stand alone redirect) so that I may move 98.5 The Stream to it's correct call sign location as requested by a recently close AfD? I would appreciate it. - NeutralHomer • Talk • February 9, 2009 @ 06:13
Many thanks :) Take Care...NeutralHomer • Talk • February 9, 2009 @ 06:20
Hi there; am I missing something? you blocked this IP for 31 hours, when as far as I can see he did not vandalise after final warning. If I have missed something please do not hesitate to tell me; this is how we learn. --Anthony.bradbury"talk"22:18, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Hello. :) Since you have been involved in editing the article Spider-Man, I wanted to let you know that we have nominated the article for "Good Article" status. You can view the review page, and if there is anything you can do to make the article better, please do so. :) There are a number of concerns to be addressed and some work to be done, so pitch in if you are able, make any suggestions that you think might be helpful, or at least just be there for moral support. :) BOZ (talk) 01:15, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
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That'll be really handy, thanks! Sorry for the late reply, I've been a little busy, and you know my capacity for forgetting things.--Drat (Talk) 07:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for getting the protection up so fast on that one. And thanks for getting the IPA fixed while you were at it! Gnowor (talk) 23:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia Signpost — 2 March 2009
This week, the Wikipedia Signpost published volume 5, issue 9, which includes these articles:
The VG Project Collaboration of the Week is a new effort to improve important video game articles of low quality. Every week, an article is random selected by AnomieBOT from the Stub-, Start-, and C-class categories that are rated either High- or Top-importance. Such topics can offer a reader a good deal of encyclopedic information about video games, but are often too underdeveloped or lacking the proper level of writing and sourcing to accomplish this.
All editors are welcome and encouraged to participate by offering their insights and suggestions. Having a pool of different editors, both old and new, will help maximize improvements to the articles as well as our editing skills.
History
Collaborative efforts have come and gone within the VG project several times before. The first such effort, the "Gaming collaboration of the week", began in October 2004 as a result of the several otherweekly collaborations popping up on Wikipedia. It proved to be quite successful at improving articles to meet Wikipedia's standard at the time, but the effort eventually saw less and less participation. A second effort, the "Improvement Drive", began in August 2005 with the intent of improving articles to FA-quality. However, few nominations and articles were selected. The decline in participation in the collaborations and peer reviews resulted in a third effort. It began in February 2006 as a workshop, but never got off the ground.
Numerous discussions have taken place on at WT:VG to jump start collaborations and improve the process to prevent its decline again. While previous collaborations selected any video game article, most editors felt focus should be on video game topics more encyclopedic in nature—topics that are also generally in poor shape because of lack of attention. A common problem mentioned was that previous nomination processes were lengthy and hindered participation. The current idea to automate the process was brought up by JohnnyMrNinja, which was further discussed to iron out the details.
Current collaboration
The current collaborative efforts began in mid-January 2009, and several articles have been improved by editors. The random choice is intended to minimize the selection process, which allows editors to focus on article improvement. Improvements include better organization of content, massaging and copy editing the prose, removing excess non-free images, and much more. The random choice is also meant to encourage participation from editors of varying interest and help prevent burnout. If the present selection is not to your liking, wait until next week. Editors are encouraged to add Template:Collab-gaming to their watchlist to see which article is selected. Recently selected articles are:
May I know under which WP policy/guidelines was the Office assistant in popular culture section removed? A very large number of WP articles on diverse topics have "In popular culture" sections. :-) - xpclientTalk14:06, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
No problem! By the way, I am actually working on that readthrough of the machinima article, and making changes and notes offline, but then I installed a bunch of games and got distracted. I'll try to get back to it.--Drat (Talk) 10:08, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
— 16 March 2009
