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General: Fun With Wikipedia
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com columnist Justin Webb writes this look at Wikipedia and discusses ways in which it may not be this industry's best means of recording its own history.
Recently, Eurogamer did a great interview with Dave Jones as part of their GDC APB coverage. Dave is one of the pioneers of the UK game industry. After reading the article, what really interested me was reading comment #6:
FTA "worked on the likes of Lemmings for Psygnosis before co-founding DMA Design, later Rockstar North, and co-creating Grand Theft Auto. "
Think EG need to have a look into the history of DMA/Rockstar... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockstar_No...
Pedantry aside, this is a very interesting comment. To take issue with Eurogamer’s brief introduction of Dave Jones at the beginning of the article is one thing. To be so angry as to then leave a comment regarding the paraphrased biography of Dave Jones is another. But to then quote a Wikipedia entry as a matter of fact is the icing on the cake.
This got me thinking. Wikipedia is clearly a fantastic resource, but how accurate is it at documenting and recording the history of old(er) online games?
I decided to look up on Wikipedia some old games that I used to play, the first being my favorite MUD-like game: Terris.
Read Fun With Wikipedia.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
But thats why Wikipedia is so good.
One person comes along and lays down the foundation and then others come along and tweak/edit it until it is a solid piece of info. While it would be awesome to have a comprehensive game history done up by a proper historian (or 5, to reduce bias) it would simply take far too long to do. Wikipedia offers users the chance to edit as much or as little as they want to constantly ad to the history of the game/company/genre. Any errors or missinformation eventually gets fixed and there are people who really do care for this sort of thing and they try to keep things as accurate as possible.
In short: While wikipedia isn't perfect it is easily the best and quickest way to generate a history of this genre and i doubt it will be surpassed for many years to come.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
Wikipedia, should be great, but isn't. Because anybody can say anything and it doesnt necessarily have to be true. I know its been used before to get character renames in some mmo's that normally dont allow character renames unless the names are offensive in some way. Also too much opportunity for revisionism on the fly.
F2P/P2P excellent thread.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/282517/F2P-An-Engineers-perspective.html
But always remember Justin, one reason there is no Terris page as such on Wikipedia is because fans like you didn't write one....
There are 'incidental' links referring to it, such as the mentions in this page -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Barnett_%28video_game_designer%29
which actually links to the 'official' Legends of Terris page
But for all it's weaknesses - and there are plenty - something NOT being on Wikipedia is more likely to be because us people didn't put it there than any other reasons..... but just to be clear, I reckon anyone using Wikipedia as a sole source for anything is very, very silly..
Wikipedia has been tested and comes up as reliable as any encyclopedia or general news source. In other words, there will be some inaccuracies that slip through (like there are in any encyclopedia), but the vast majority of it is accurate and informative.
If you want evidence of this, go ahead and attempt to post falsehoods on Wikipedia and see how long they last. If you post on a little known or unpopular subject, you may get away with it for a few days. But eventually the super-users/editors will catch up with your falsehoods and remove them. The urban legend that "since anyone can edit it, it must be full of lies" is a tired canard.
Of course, as pointed out by this article, the same editors that watch for errors often prevent accurate but unverifiable entries. Yes, Wikipedia and the Wikipedia system are not perfect. But much of that is because those who work on it got annoyed by the constant uniformed claims of Wikipedia inaccuracy and thus became overzealous in trying to insure accuracy.
I agree. While I will use wikipedia as a basis for information on a subject I want to learn about, I will almost always look for other sources of information - especially if I have to write about that subject.
Don't get me wrong, wikipedia is useful. It's just that I wouldn't exactly trust it as my sole source of information on...well, anything. For many of the reasons cited in the article.
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
I consider Wikipedia something to be taken (like the rest of the "Internet") with a grain of salt. Just because someone typed something and put it on a webpage doesn't mean it is accurate. And due to the fact that you have a bunch of people with no lives and nothing to do but sit around and bicker over what should and shouldn't be there, sometimes good content gets deleted because it isn't 'properly' referenced, and sometimes downright erroneous content stays because there are citations and references (that are just as erroneous).
FYI - most colleges do not allow citing anything on Wikipedia as a legitimate source. I agree with this. Anything that can be edited by *anyone* and everyone cannot remain accurate.
As for the history of the game in question (and other MMOs), perhaps this site should begin compiling some kind of history database on games. I think it would be a nice addition to the material already here.
I like this idea. It'd be interesting to have a history database on games located here. God knows I already look here (and link back to here) for information on most of the games I play and/or am interested in, and honestly, many of my guildmates are in my age range, and a little history so we can show the young 'uns that life before Halo really was kind of fun might be interesting.
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
I've never heard of Terris in all my years of watching mmo forums populated with former aol and mud players.
If I had to guess what the two things were, the falsehood and the misleading I'd say the falsehood was that PC Zone ranked Terris higher than Diablo as you can't possibly have any proof of such and it sounds rather unbelievable, for a MUD, and the misleading being that Marlon Brando played it, given that perhaps you know or have known someone by that name who just doesn't happen to be a star.
Do I win the NO prize?
Comment seemed like textbook trolling to me. If so, it worked really, really well.
Ah, but now that you've written this article, you (or anyone) can now cite it as a source for proof that your game exists. Get's us back to the whole circular referencing, eh?
And to some of the comments on Wikipedia's accuracy--true, but he wasn't referencing the accuracy of what is printed but what is NOT printed. The absence of a page on Wiki can be used to prove (with all it's fallacies) non-existence!
Hey Justin!
Great writeup with a lot of truth to it. The problem having an opensource encyclopedia that anyone in the world can edit is that anyone can edit it. What I feel the solution is that someone needs to write a book detailing the history of MUD's, MOO's and the history of the online gaming genre. Oh wait, its been done. Well, it seems that maybe the person that is writing this caption on wiki is not reffin' this book correctly. If this book is then deemed credible, which I feel is the key for jockeying for cred' on Wiki.
I am in college AWS and wikipedia is not a source that we can use for our term papers. What I do find useful is the list of bibliographical links to either A) books and
websites. The links don't always work, but most of the time I can find the book on amazon.
If I was a staff writer for MMORPG.com I would say "Hey, I need this book!" and read it. Then I would edit the entry that I needed correction or create it entirely. Watch it for a bit and if wiki corrected it, send a copy of the books reference to the editor/creator etc. with a note that said "fix my caption bitch!"
Well, maybe not the last part but....
Maybe this is why I am not a mmorpg staff writer, lol.
All the best,
Inktomi
Wikipedia was never intended to be the primary source - it's intended to be for reference to what knowledge exists in other places, not to be the authoritative repository.
It sounds like what is needed is for someone to write a history of games as an actual old-fashioned, well-researched book - something which could then could be digested into a collection of wikipedia articles referencing it.
I noticed recently that the Wiki article for Everquest seems to no longer credit Jeff Butler:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverQuest
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
You say you know about terris very well and that wikipedia doesn't say much truth about it. But you didn't sit down and correct those wikipedia pages with the right stuff and referencing your text did you? You just complained that noone has not already done it for you...
"The person who deletes it won’t care if the things you know are true, only whether you can verify them or not."
So you just want to write in wikipedia whatever you want and claim that is true and everyone belive you, without any need for proof. Yea ofc thats a very nice way to make a completely useless encyclopedia.
> PC Zone ranked Terris higher than Diablo as you can't possibly have any proof of such
It's true - I own the issue that it was reviewed in (and was in fact working for them at the time it was written).
The most people I ever saw online at once was about 1200, back when AOL US had just introduced unlimited time for a flat fee. Many of my friends have nostalgia for Terris - it was a great game for it's time (and cost me a fortune in AOL fees and phone bill!)
"Because anybody can say anything and it doesnt necessarily have to be true"
Exactly. You have to read it with the idea that you are not necessarily dealing with facts here. You are reading someone's opinion which is not always the way many others saw it.