User:Nifboy

I'm now a mostly inactive user on account of work work. I keep half an eye on WP:CENT and am sometimes inspired to do some WikiGnoming, particularly with respect to assessment banners via WP:AWB, but otherwise don't edit nearly as much anymore.

If you want to use AWB to clean out redirects in your 1.0 stats, check out User:Nifboy/AWB.

Links for my own use:

• Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Video game articles by quality
• wp:vfd
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer and video games/Essential articles
• User:Nifboy/list
• Wikipedia:Requests for comment/All
• User:Nifboy/Organizing articles on fiction
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Character lists
• CGW museum

Link for your amusement (hopefully):

• My TASs (make sure to read this first, and check out the main site later)

My to-do list:

1. Assess The unassessed whenever I have time.
2. Dig through the released 1-100 copies of Computer Gaming World (here), use to expand articles. I certainly don't need to have played the games; that's what CGW is there for!

   Status: Done with 1988 (#54). (For reference, #100 is Nov. 1992)

   Commentary:

   • Glad to see the WWII games go back this far in history.
   • I will be SO glad when I get to the modern era where reviews and strategies are given separate distinct sections of a given mag.
   • Crypt of Medea, from the August 1984 (#17) issue, is the first article I've come across that already cites the article I'm looking at (not counting the double-dose of Lode Runner).
     • The second one? Star Saga, four years later (August 1988, #50)
   • Man, '85 was a slow year. Two of the first four magazines do not have any corresponding articles.
   • Note: I'm not looking so much at the Amiga/C64 sections, as they devote maybe two paragraphs to a given game.
   • So many reviewers turn off the sound, or complain about not being able to.

   There is a similar archive for Zzap!64, which I won't be trawling through and is questionably legal (compared to CGW which was intentionally released).

3. Periodically check my project of choice and clean out the redirects that accumulate.

Reference for reference:

{{reflist | refs= <ref name = "CGW">{{citation | date = Jan 1989 | author = Scorpia | last = Sipe | first = Russell | periodical = [[Computer Gaming World]] | title = IBM Goes to War | year = 1989 | pages = 24–25}}</ref> }}

Random thoughts:

1. A good Wikipedia article requires honest-to-Goddess research.
2. Based on the discussion at WP:WEB, I am now against any criteria based on numbers (Alexa rank, Google whatever, N forum members) as we are indiscriminately allowing in those comics that merely pass criteria. WP:NOT "You must have this many hits to ride".
3. Wikipedia is not and should not be a place where anything gains recognition: It is a repository of things that have already been recognized.
4. I like GOOPTI (in the sense that it is both a better explanation and term than "fancruft").
5. "If you want it to be possessive, it's just 'ITS.' But, if it's supposed to be a contraction then it's 'I-T-apostrophe-S, ' scalawag." - Strong Bad
6. The WCCAs are not notable worth using to determine WP:N because I voted in them. Placing any sort of faith in them is trusting, amongst others, people who drew stick figures in high school.
7. Why is it when a webcomics fiction's clique swarms in on an article's AfD, the article almost never improves?
   • Is it possibly because there really isn't anything to say about the topic?
     • (The Whiteboard doesn't count because it was put on AfD four days after creation)
8. PvP podcast 12 = the entire webcomics/Wikipedia controversy condensed into two hours (well, more like the first hour).
9. "I have complete confident that the genuinely important ones will be covered by such sources before the publishing deadline." -- Guy aka JzG, on the Wikien-l [1]
10. WP:WAF is the solution to all life's Wikipedia's (pop culture) problems.
    • Corollary: Any article based on a fictional work could do with a heavy dose of reality.
11. This user does not believe in infoboxes, nor in describing him/herself in the vaguest third-person terms possible.
12. Policy pages do not scale. As the amount of attention attracted to a policy grows, so does the chance a fundamental disagreement will be unearthed in detailing it, and it will never go away through normal wiki processes.
    • The current list of pages I am aware of so affected: WP:ATT (and by extension V, NOR, and RS), WP:N and children.
13. "At best we can write a free "Who's Who" entry, and we're not that kind of project." -- Tony Sidaway
14. Highlight of the month: an image I uploaded got put on the front page of Kotaku. :D
15. The in-universe to out-of-universe ratio is directly proportional to the odds of talk page discussion turning towards canon.
    • The longer high ratios are maintained (relative to article traffic), the more likely of said discussion will turn lame.
16. Avoid telling the same story two or three times across articles (i.e. a book's article, the series's article, and one or more individual character articles). Retelling the same plot from the perspective of five different characters and the nation the story takes place in does not make a good encyclopedia.
17. Regarding the creation and vetting of new articles: Please assume AfD hasn't heard of it and therefore hasn't heard of anyone hearing of it before complaining about the deletion of "obviously" notable topics.
18. The fact that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia is why there is also Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks (including Wikijunior), Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, and even all the wikis hosted on Wikia.
19. "Sometimes, it's easy to get lost in "notability" and "appropriateness" and the sort of Wikispeak and stilted politeness, and lose track of why we're here: to make an encyclopedia that doesn't suck." - A Man In Bl♟ck
20. "By way of analogy, a great many episodes of CSI have the address of a suspect or witness, finding out what that address is, and arriving at the scene as crucial plot points, yet the actual, made-up address, e.g. "3425 Jackson Blvd.", is of no significance whatsoever." -- User:SMcCandlish.
21. "It is complicated to write a good article without consulting reliable sources, such as books, magazines and newspapers." -Jimbo, Re: Episodes of The Simpsons.
22. "Anyone that has edited Wikipedia know how frustrating it can be dealing with the obnoxious self-appointed "gate-keepers" of information that has more time to spare in making revisions to self-claimed articles."
    • And my response - Wikipedia is built on self-appointment and self-claimed articles. That's how FA's get made and maintained.

		The CVG Barnstar
		GASP, nobody ever gave you this barnstar!?! Well you certainly deserve it! JACOPLANE • 2007-01-3 00:40

		The VG Barnstar
		Though you may have not have the shiny article stars other editors do that often receive this award, your work within VG project is equally as deserving. It's because of editors like yourself that chime in at peer reviews, deletion discussions, and help with the tedious tasks over the years that make WikiProjects possible. Just wanted to let you know that your efforts do not go unnoticed, and are greatly appreciated. (Guyinblack25 talk 22:53, 27 January 2009 (UTC))

A quick survey of the situation:

• WP:WAF is a unique, wholly Wikipedian creation. There isn't anything like it on the internet, in terms of scope and emphasis. We emphasize third-party research and putting the work in a greater context, rather than attempt to convey the experience of the work or explain it exhaustively.
• We have a low success rate indoctrinating new editors who have the "fan wiki" mindset. The result is a steady stream of dissenters who either aren't aware of WP:WAF or actively disagree with it.
• In terms of raw fictional coverage, other fan wikis have sprung up, cheerfully declaring "There is no such thing as notability here". This was true as far back as 2005 with the creation of Comixpedia for webcomics.
• Some projects have a critical mass of research-oriented editors who, amongst other things, are more likely to trim articles above the bare minimum threshold of WP:N. These projects tend to be stable in terms of consensus at AfD and elsewhere.
• The most controversial merge/delete discussions tend to be in areas of low participation and equally low quality where neither side has familiar knowledge of the subject matter, often citing a lack of due diligence on both sides. Merging tends to be more accepted in situations where experienced editors have already had a stab at improving the article and still fall below standards.