Hey all, I would like to make another proposal for a reform prior to the release of VIIR. The goal of this is to bring a reform to our "Creation and development" and "Trivia" sections, as well as to bring an (imo) long-needed reform to tl;dr:
First off, I believe that our "Trivia" sections are much too all-encompassing, whereas "Creation and development" is too limiting. For "Trivia", these sections shouldn't really exist. If information is genuinely trivial, it doesn't belong on the article. If it is actually useful information, it should be in the article itself, and not separated under a "Trivia" header away from the rest of the page. On the other hand, "Creation and development" sections are great, but there's no need to limit them to just that. There's a lot of out-of-universe information that could also be included. Therefore, I propose merging "Trivia" and "Creation and development" to Behind the scenes sections. I believe the name is all-encompassing for any information that is out-of-universe. The next thing I want to propose is replacing Thirdly, I would like to propose splitting "Citations" and "References", and drawing a distinction between them, which is more similar to Harvard referencing or what is (albeit inconsistently) done on a lot of Wikipedia pages. I did this on other wikis, successfully, such as on the above example, at w:c:ratchetandclank:Courtney Gears#Citations, w:c:ratchetandclank:Ratchet#Citations, and w:c:ratchetandclank:Pecker#Citations as examples. This looks a lot more professional, and avoids repetition if you're using the same reference multiple times (for instance, different parts of the same video, or different pages in the same Ultimania). Of course, if an article only has about two-three citations, then this isn't needed, but for larger pages (such as game pages, character pages, and the bigger location pages), it would be very beneficial. To help with the above, we would need separate templates capable of constructing a reference at the bottom of pages, as well as templates capable of constructing citations. This involves the creation of a merged Cite template and a separate Reference template. The latter would be used to construct full references to the relevant book, website, or video. I've made a Lua module that does this already on other wikis, and retains existing functionality to create automated Web Archive links for urls, so we can apply that here with minor tweaks. A Cite template would only be used when citing information from the games themselves. In the above links to example pages, you'll see where I cited script pages, and we can do this here also as well as for information in the games' code. This is just for information found in an obscure part of the game. Lastly, describing this in a new Project:Verifiability policy page. This would replace the existing Project:Citations and References, which doubles up as a help page; instead, information on this would be described on the template documentation for the new Ref, Cite, and Note templates, or just the Community Central Help pages. I moved over the policy here, again based on what I did on other wikis with tweaks to apply to us; there are no major policy changes, except that I removed references to the idea that information readily available from the games should never be given citations. I feel like it is reasonable to ask to cite which part of the game that the research is found based on. Beyond that, it's an elaborated version of the policy in the existing page. Please let me know your thoughts on this. If anyone requires further examples or etc., I'd be happy to do so. | |||
The professional referencing on the ratchet wiki looks overdone. "Stout, Garcia 2012"? That style of referencing simply isn't suitable for the wiki. We are a wiki about FF games, when referencing an FF game we can just state the game name and link to the page and that can be it. I think similarly with books, although including a publisher/author/imprint qualifier in some cases (e.g. Famitsu, BradyGames) will be useful just because people distinguish strategy guides by them. Some books have the same info but over multiple ISBNs.
I also don't believe info readily available in the game need be cited. It makes adding information to the wiki far more cumbersome for newcomers. I can't see it working here on our scale. Now I'm not against adding citations for scenarios and dialogue in the game if the editor feels it's obscure or a reader is questioning where it is from. I don't think making it a requirement will be fun for anyone though.
And so I also don't see the value in splitting Citations and References. Our sources are the media the things appear in, that is obvious. Anything revealed outside that media should be cited because that is not obvious. Our articles don't have many citations unless they're focusing on out-of-universe things, but in such cases it's not like we end up citing the same thing a lot. I see the Ratchet wiki makes a lot of references to some Developer commentary videos, but you should totally make an article for those videos, and the citations should link to it! You don't need to repeat all that Harvard stuff every time, just the page link and the timestamp. JBed (talk) 04:09, January 14, 2020 (UTC)
Addendum: If we're citing books and games not in our scope, adding more info to the citation makes more sense. Not Harvard levels, but the books should list the name, publisher, author, ISBN, and mebbe year. I can't really imagine there's any situation where citing a non-FF game makes any sense though. JBed (talk) 04:14, January 14, 2020 (UTC)
- You'll have to actually elaborate on why Harvard referencing is not "suitable for a wiki". We're an encyclopedia. We're meant to be a credible, authoritative source, and so presenting information the same way as an encyclopedia page or a research paper serves the goal. In what way is it not "suitable for a wiki"? If the opposition is just based on how much work is involved, then I'll point out that a) the ref templates require no more code than adding a sideicon (all information is stored in Module:Codename), and b) not every page needs to do this just as not every page needs a citation at all, but for ones where the editor wishes to go the extra mile to make a page more presentable, I can't see why one would blanket oppose this.
- Citations for the videos, which link to the full reference for the videos, use "Stout, Garcia 2012", because otherwise you'd need to type out the full information of the video every citation. The references are there to avoid repetition. Citations for the game just use the game name followed by what is being cited, and the references for games (which are automatically generated and take no more code to add than just adding a sideicon, btw) are because a game is a source of information like any other.
- Information readily from the game does not need to be cited, the citations would indeed only be added if an editor (normally an experienced editor) feels the scenario or dialogue is obscure. It's added to provide further credibility to information on a page, but not all pages would need this.
- That said, if you can figure out how to hack open the games to find a bit of info, they can definitely figure out how to use a really simple citation template. These are not hard in the slightest to use, and it is reasonable to point to where they found it in the games' files as a courtesy to allow for independent verification, which requires the verifier to seek a source to ensure authenticity. So while I'm not suggesting we require all edits to do this, "makes it far more cumbersome for newcomers" seems like a silly reason to oppose adding the ability to cite obscure information with a cite template given how current citations have requirements like "use Web Archive every time you cite a web page" or "upload an audio sample for all videos" (the last one should go mind you. It's the writer's responsibility to point to a source, not provide it, same reason research papers don't attach copies of every book or study they cite).
- RE: "I can't think of a situation where we can cite a non-FF game" -- I can. Many voice actors first voiced their character in Kingdom Hearts. If we have to cite one of those games in reference to any information by the voice actor, we can cite those games. Should we do so, non-FF media should have equal weighting as an FF source, meaning that a Harvard reference should be used for both (though the reference template would have to include the extra information for the non-FF source whereas the FF source would auto-generate it).--
Technobliterator (TC) 08:10, January 14, 2020 (UTC)
- I mean it's not suitable. We're not writing academic research papers, we're writing articles about the contents of a game series. It's not really about effort, it's about excess. I know what "Stout, Garcia 2012" means. It just looks so out of place on a citation of a YouTube video for a wiki about a game series. I was going to make a comment about how not even Wookieepedia goes this far when citing websites, but to my surprise it seems that when citing journalistic articles they bother with date and author, "[surname], [forename]" and all! But for other citations they just use the product's name with a link when citing a product covered by the wiki, "[video name] on [channel]" when citing a YT video, and "[page name] on [page link|website]" when citing an official website they have a page for.
- That said, if you can figure out how to hack open the games to find a bit of info, they can definitely figure out how to use a really simple citation template
- Question: How would we even cite game data? Sometimes I've used third-party tools to extract files in a certain way, other times I've just read bytes from a disc image. Do you want a step-by-step on how the things were accessed to be detailed, or just a vague "Elevator Hall field weight calculation script"?
- "I can. Many voice actors first voiced their character in Kingdom Hearts."--but that's the thing-- why would we even use a citation? If the article states "X voiced Y in Z", then the source is obviously Z. We'd only need a source if they weren't credited in the game, in which case we won't be citing a game.
- ("It's the writer's responsibility to point to a source, not provide it" that's not what the archiving is for. A video no one can access can't be used as a citation.) JBed (talk) 10:06, January 14, 2020 (UTC)
- I mean it's not suitable. We're not writing academic research papers, we're writing articles about the contents of a game series. It's not really about effort, it's about excess. I know what "Stout, Garcia 2012" means. It just looks so out of place on a citation of a YouTube video for a wiki about a game series. I was going to make a comment about how not even Wookieepedia goes this far when citing websites, but to my surprise it seems that when citing journalistic articles they bother with date and author, "[surname], [forename]" and all! But for other citations they just use the product's name with a link when citing a product covered by the wiki, "[video name] on [channel]" when citing a YT video, and "[page name] on [page link|website]" when citing an official website they have a page for.