Talk:Speedball (paintball)

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Contents 1 Please expand 2 Redirect? 3 In the process of expansion 4 Positions 5 "Cheating" entry 6 Speedball in woodsball needs to go 7 General tone 8 Requested move 8.1 Survey 8.2 Discussion

[edit] Please expand

I've just created this stub in the hopes that some paintballer a little more knowledgeable about it than I, a die-hard woodsballer, would come across it. I would write it with my current knowledge, but it'd be contaminated with a woodsballer's slant on things, and that wouldn't be good. Oh, and if you by any chance come across this article and aren't already a member of the Paintball WikiProject, and are a paintballing Wikipedian or a Wikipedian with interest in the Paintball category, then please join. ~ Maximilli, 02:38, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redirect?

I think it should be merged into woodsball, seems to me like it would be better there and make a redirect page from here. Pogo 02:43, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, there's the little problem with the fact that speedball isn't woodsball. Check out this section of the Paintball article. Tourneyball and speedball, when played in certain circumstances, are essentially the same. ~ Maximilli, 13:48, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, speedball and woodsball are much diffrent, and this is coming from an obsessive paintballer..who plays both speedball and woodsball.. Caleb09 22:59, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Definitely needs its own article, I'm actually fairly surprised that one didn't already exist. Is speed paintball the official name for it? I have only ever heard it called Speedball Robogymnast 20:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Speed paintball isn't the proper name for it, no. It is called speedball. However, speedball is occupied by a disambigulation page, and I thought that simply expanding it like someone did for Scenario paintball (scenarioball) would work. ~ Maximilli, 20:53, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

In that case, might it be a good idea to move the page to "Speedball (Paintball)", just for accuracy's sake? - Robogymnast 18:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It might, but then we'd have to expand all the others like that too, for consistency. I've thought on a number of occasions about changing Woodsball to Woods paintball, for this reason alone. ~ Maximilli, 20:56, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it should be Speedball (paintball). That's the name the game had when it was started, and that's the name the game uses today.

I'm going to vote that the page be moved to "Speedball (paintball)" as well, for the following reasons:

• This article is the only place that I have ever heard the term "Speed Paintball".
• "Speed paintball" is only used once in the article - the first two words.
• A google search on "Speed paintball" has about 600 hits while "Speedball" + "paintball" has 300,000.

Speedball is by far the most common name for the sport, and I don't think that it makes sense to have the article titled something different. I don't believe that it is necessary to add "(paintball)" to the end of the other articles, however I think that it a better option than expanding their titles to a phrase that is rarely if ever used. - Robogymnast 00:05, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think that consistency should be one of our main goals. In some senses, it's as important as accuracy. Consistency comes across as professional. In fact, I just renamed every single player position article because one of them had to be changed. They're more accurate now, though, so it was a win-win. With this article, though, I think we should leave the name as it is. Speedball (paintball) doesn't sound very good, because of the repetition of the sound "all" at the ends of both words. 'Speed paintball', on the other hand, is simply an expanded version of the name, and still has the same meaning as 'speedball'. Don't get me wrong, I completely understand where you're coming from. If it were my choice, I'd rename all the articles as they're used in the public (woodsball, scenarioball, speedball) but this is the situation we have to work with. And I'm seriously considering changing woodsball's name to woods paintball. This would be more consistent. So, if this debate here is resolved in favor of keeping the current system, I'm going to change it to preserve consistency, and in doing so, our professional appearance. ~ Maximilli, 19:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Maximilli, I think you're getting caught up in details in the wrong direction here. How it sounds, and indeed, consistency, are not as important as being factually accurate. We can't change the formal names of something just to make it fit better with the way present articles are written. It's a specific game format, with a specific title. Speedball and Hyperball are not arbitrary names given to the variant by players through common knowledge; they're the names given to the field formats by the creators of those game types. Woods paintball/woodsball, in its present state, did not have a solitary inventor and was an evolution rather than a specific point where the format was invented. Thus, we can leave woodsball as either woods paintball or woodsball, but it's inaccurate to call Speedball or Hyperball anything else. - Toastydeath 22:32, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Very well. Two guys with the same opinion against mine, gives me the hint that I'm probably wrong. :) Unless anyone else has anything to say, we'll be changing the name to something that incorporates 'speedball' as a single term. However, I must maintain my stance that Speedball (paintball) isn't necessarily the best choice. I'm going to look into taking over the disambigulation page, since none of those other items look like they're as large as speedball... ~ Maximilli, 22:50, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Please leave your comments and opinions below in the appropriate area, guys. Thanks! ~ Maximilli, 02:33, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] In the process of expansion

I didn't remove or rearrange any of the old content, though some of it is repeated. I'm going to wait for comments/concerns/etc before doing that.

This page has gained a bit of POV, but that's unavoidable since only one person's been working on it lately. :) I'm going to go over it sometime this weekend if I have time and apply my knowledge, such as it is. Thanks for the contributions - I'm glad to finally have a speedballer working on this article. ~ Maximilli, 17:59, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Positions

How bout we add a section about the different positions involved (ie. Front, Middle, Back)? I'm gonna have to do a bit of research first as I am a bit rusty, maybe will get to it this weekend. - Robogymnast 19:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I actually added the positions to paintball strategy yesterday. If you'd like to copy it in, or incorporate it somehow, be my guest. - Toastydeath 19:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I actually think those positions would do better if they weren't in the Paintball strategy article, but in this article instead. I'd advise a summary of the positions (like, one or two lines) in Paintball strategy, and have the text itself be moved here. You can use the Woodsball positions section as an example of what I mean. ~ Maximilli, 19:31, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

By the way, Toasty, if you're interested, I'd be glad if you would create the player position pages that RavenStorm and I have listed on the project news template. I'll put it up on your talk page to make sure you get it. ~ Maximilli, 19:52, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Cheating" entry

This is not a NPOV edit, and the reference used is hardly authoritative. A journalist does not conduct studies, and asking a couple people hardly qualifies as such. I can carefully pick the people I interview to get a complete opposite response. The article presented makes a gross exaggeration of the cheating in speedball, and presents ongoing debates in tournament paintball - ramping, ref eliminations, etc - as hard line cheating. Different people want to play under different rule formats, and different local tournament formats are accommodating both kinds of players. Attributing the inclusion of ramping modes is hardly caving to cheating, but rather, the set of paintball players that enjoys playing with ramping triggers.

People cheat in speedball, woodsball, scenarioball, and games that aren't even paintball (football, baseball). If we are going to make a mention of cheating at all, I suggest it be in the main paintball article.

This isn't enough of a problem to even be worth mentioning, much less mentioning in the highly POV manner that it is now.

It's not factual, and I'd like to delete it. - Toastydeath 22:00, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd have it deleted. People cheat everywhere. Cheating is rampant in woodsball. I've had to beat up at least six people 'cause they wouldn't back down from cheating, and I don't know how many more guys had to be pulled by the refs. Yet, we haven't really mentioned it there 'cause it's not an important part of the game. I think it should be a pretty basic guideline for the whole category - cheating isn't integral to the sport, so we'll leave it how it's discussed in the main article. My two cents. ~ Maximilli, 19:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Speedball in woodsball needs to go

Some of the information should be massaged into the rest of the article, and this entire section needs to be removed. Perhaps even the "differences from woodsball" needs to go, or be moved elsewhere (into the main speedball section, mabye?). These sections don't help the articles, and are very out of place where they are now. -- Toastydeath

I'm going to go and remove it. I'd intended it for the Woodsball article anyway, and copied it here way back when the article was only three sentences long or something, as temporary information. ~ Maximilli, 18:31, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] General tone

First, congratulations to all for the amount of work done to the article. It's looking good. I would like to see it rival the Woodsball article someday.

Second, I've noticed that the article seems to be presenting information not out of the blue, but in comparison to woodsball. While at some level I think that's appropriate, because the majority of paintballers do play woodsball, but still it'd be more politically correct and, put frankly, fair for the speedball article if the tone didn't involve woodsball so much. I'm glad to see the comparison, because the two game types are very important, but I still think the article would be better off with a more independent tone. Either that, or I'm making a mountain out of a mole-hill. ~ Maximilli, 19:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move