Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Paintball

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WikiProject Paintball News edit

As of the 13th of November, RavenStorm is the new Lead Coordinator of the project! Big round of applause, everyone! *clapping* I have stepped down and assumed RavenStorm's previous position as Assistant Coordinator because I expect to be very busy in the upcoming weeks, and because, quite frankly, I think RavenStorm would make a better administrator. In other news, the last item in Paintball's FA To-Do list was completed today (the prodigious lists were finally culled) and now the Project's administration is pushing a reinvigorated drive for the article to attain FA status. Please give ideas and comments either at Paintball's talk page or at the Project's talk page. Hopefully we can get everyone's thoughts. We hope to have the article nominated for FA status within the next few weeks. Thanks! ~ Maximilli, Assistant Coordinator The WikiProject Paintball has attained 10 members! Not as many as we really need, but a great start. Remember to encourage regular paintball editors to join, we don't ask anything of you except to work as a team. Remember, our goal is essentially to have a tight grip on anything paintball so that quality, quantity, encyclopedic style and regular updating are assured. --RavenStorm, Lead Coordinator

Archived discussions - 1

Contents 1 Concerns 1.1 Encyclopedic style 2 Paintball Marker expansion 3 Hey everyone 4 Paintball teams and paintball leagues 5 Paintball as an FA article 6 Glossary of paintball terms 7 Regularity of editing

[edit] Concerns

[edit] Encyclopedic style

Several pages lack sources completely and are not written with encyclopedic tone. Since these are two of the primary guidelines of Wikipedia, it seems to me that they should take precedence over image placement. BIEB!! 14:18, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I have looked for reliable sources many times for the paintball article. Unlike many other topics in the world, paintball has had very little authoritative information published on the subject. Frequently, the closest you get to authoritative information is editorial pieces on the internet and in magazines. If we're going to start citing articles written in an editorial format, we might as well not cite anything at all. Or, I could start a webpage, write a small book with what I know, declare it creative commons, and paste it into Wikipedia with a citation. There are a couple technical aspects of the game that manufacturers have studied and put out a blurb on, but that's about as good as it gets. Very little about paintball is 'encyclopedic;' people publish entire books on the subject that are little more than an extended editorial and personal experience.

If you've got specific suggestions on what to do in this case, I'd be glad to hear it. I'm at a loss as to what to do for citations. - Toastydeath 15:55, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Toastydeath is right. The only place to go for authoritative information on paintball would probably be some of the tourney leagues - the NPPL, the PSP, et cetera. Of course, they would hardly be objective with their information, because they want as many people as possible to play paintball, especially speedball, because that's how they make their livings. No offense to them - I'd do the same if I were in their places. Maybe not. At any rate, the issue remains that we don't have any good places to go for citations, and until we do, we're just going to have to rely on the relative consensus of the editors we have on board here. ~ Maximilli, 21:35, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Paintball Marker expansion

Hey guys, I added a ton of stuff about paintball marker construction, and differences in markers (the Marker Construction and onwards part). Read through it for me, I really would like comments, and want to reorganize the whole page to add in more technical details to the other areas.

Any specific diagrams you guys want, let me know. I've got a few cad/cam packages, and might do some internal diagram stuff if anyone has specific requests. - Toastydeath 22:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Hey, I gave the article a very very quick look, and all I have to tell you is that the menu is way too long. If you could find a way to make it shorter, that would help a lot! --RavenStorm 23:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to collapse the whole article down, so that the performance items are all interrelated. Right now it's basically two articles - the marker part, and then the bits surrounding the marker. When I combine the two, it'll shrink signifigantly. - Toastydeath 23:32, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hey everyone

Just wanted everyone to know that I'll be back in about a week. I'm in Wilmington, North Carolina right now (that's on the American Eastern Seaboard for anyone not from the 'States) where I've been for the last few days, and I'll be back in a week, give or take a few days. I must say that I'm pleased with the amount of activity I've noticed (haven't looked too deeply yet, so I'm looking forward to that) but also I'm quite displeased indeed with a number of things that I've seen across the category, especially in woodsball areas. I'll be pretty busy when I get home, too, but expect a lot of change when I do get the time.

'Til then, good luck to everyone. ~ Maximilli, 00:47, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

P.S. RavenStorm, keep this message here. I'd rather not come back a week from now and find that nobody has a clue why I've been inactive all this time. Not to mention, I don't want anything to be a shock to anyone when I start working again, and this provides some warning.

It's alright, the Paintball project won't die if anybody leaves. I myself have a whole bunch of work to do, so I will not be very pro-active for a while. On the other hand, I have been keeping an eye on all paintball articles and making sure that everything is good.

Essentially, if you guys add articles or suggestions, I will respond, but don't expect me to start new articles or make the project advance right now. I'll be back on track next week or so. Good work to you all. --RavenStorm 03:21, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I have returned! No doubt this will bring more groans than "Yay!"s, but I have returned nonetheless! :D That was a joke, by the way. I'm feeling rather light this morning - yes, it's morning here in Minnesota.

I want to clear several things up.

First off, I'm going to bring part of one of Toastydeath's messages out of the Archive which RavenStorm thoughtfully created a few days ago...

Maximilli, you are truly well-intentioned. However, I feel you are misguided in writing many of the things that are in the woodsball article. You've completely underestimated my experience in woodsball, and have apparently made up your mind that my opposing experience is due to my unfamiliarity with woodsball and favoritism towards speedball play. Woodsball is not poorly known. It's what everyone starts out playing. Some people stay there, some people move on. They may move on to scenario games, or maybe speedball. The point is, people who really want the level of strategy you claim exists in woodsball move into a different area and then drill with a team. You have two people now, who have played plenty of woods games, plenty of speedball, and plenty of tournaments, that woodsball is not what you are making it out to be despite that being your personal interpretation. You have played woods games. That is an atomic aspect of paintball. Without having significant experience playing in other areas for reference, this is apparently giving you a very narrow view of what paintball strategy is and means. More importantly, you are seeing a vast and complex network of strategy and tactics where there are only ad-hoc teams, with the most basic and rudimentary strategy. This is what _recreational_ paintball is: ad-hoc. It is not structured, it is not organized, and it certainly has no strong developed strategy. As speedball is a bunch of people dressed as neon signs frantically running around on what appears to be a circus arena, woodsball is a bunch of people playing gi-joe in camouflage. There is nothing wrong with either, and both are great fun. But they are not complex and subtle beasts.

I urge you to stand back and look at what you've written in many different articles, and try to see where I am coming from. I certainly did to what I wrote, and I see where you have the impression that I am just another die-hard speedballer. It's what I presented to you through how I wrote in the articles.

It's this message that showed me that I am being quite misinterpreted. Allow me to explain. When I started work on the Woodsball article in the beginning of the year or whenever it was, I came at it with a single approach: apply all my knowledge of the sport, gleaned through years of experience (I've been playing seven-odd years or something), in one single article that would show woodsball at its peak, at its most advanced form. My reason for this was that Wikipedia, as I would imagine everyone here knows, is an encyclopedia that strives after top-of-the-line stuff. In other words, it is supposed to provide clear, objective and comprehensive information on every topic - that's the goal. I started writing the Woodsball article with the intention of providing an overview of woodsball at its most advanced - strategy, organization, all that is expected in the mainstream of scenario teams. I play woodsball for a number of things, and I confess, I'm in a rut. I play for stealth, mobility, strategy, and I always have and in all probability, always will. I built an organized team to play paintball - ALL paintball - in a natural setting, be it recreational, scenario, tourneyball, speedball...whatever. The definition of woodsball is any paintball played in a natural setting, and that's how one can have speedball in the woods. Right?

My team and I only play nowadays with other organized teams, except for the odd walk-on game or scenario game. We play airball tourneys as well, although I myself enjoy them less than others (no real application for camouflage, y'see). We've played all over the place, and the only time we get schooled is when we come up against a horde five or six times our number, who lose almost all their guys in the process, or we come up against another team. This probably sounds like bias, and I am biased, but organized woodsball is the most advanced woodsball. Surely everyone can agree on that? Think on it for a moment: y'start out with a bunch of guys running around in the woods with no cohesion and no idea how to play. They get better, they start talking to each other. They learn tricks: how to bunker a guy in a drawn-out one-on-one firefight, or how to use the foliage to block the wind and drop the shot right where you want it, or how to be invisible while advancing in close quarters through enemy territory. They perfect their styles of play. They know to call the one guy if he's really fast to run down snake-side or steal the flag before the enemy push out from the swamp. These last two sentences explain the entire concept of player positions in only so many words. The guys have advanced their play. They play advanced woodsball. See what I'm saying? What has been my error in communication is that for so long, the word 'woodsball' has meant 'advanced woodsball', so I didn't think that it would be interpreted as ALL woodsball.

I admit I am a very vague person, and this shows in my writing, and for that I must apologize, especially to those who drew the wrong conclusions from my writing - namely, I'm apologizing to Toastydeath, since it's pretty much been him with whom I've debated so far. (By the way, I want to make it clear right now that I've been debating and whatever rather light-heartedly on the whole and I hope that nobody's 'gone heavy', so to speak.) :) At any rate, please take this message as the conveyer of my true feelings on the subject. If there is more confusion later on, I might edit this to further clear up what I'm trying to say (vague AND long-winded! What a combo!).

I will be the first one to admit that the woodsball article - or, for that matter, woodsball throughout the category - that I've contributed to or written, has all been advanced woodsball. Modesty aside, I'm not a newbie. Whatever I write about woodsball that's not advanced (I'll call it 'basic woodsball' until someone objects) will be colored by my own perspective, and I don't want that to happen. I know what I know, that's my cup of tea, and that's what I'll contribute. I won't stray into areas that aren't mine unless it's really needed, because honestly I feel that surely there's a person out there better for the job than I. Please don't take from the consistent application of 'advanced woodsball' in articles to be my opinion of what all woodsball is, and again, I apologize for giving that impression before. It's frequent that I'll need to come back after I say something and clarify, and I hope that you all will not find that too annoying.

Finally, to Toastydeath, please understand that when I said you seemed to have a poorer understanding of woodsball than my initial ideas, I had thought that I had made myself clear, and that you were reacting in accordance with what I meant. That's my bad. Again, my vagueness makes me rather 'interesting' to work with, to say the least. :D I do want everyone to know right now that it is my intention and always has been my intention to work cooperatively. That's one of the things I love most about Wikipedia - that people have the opportunity to work together to achieve a product that would be impossible if everyone was working singly. That's the entire reason why I created this project.

After that dissertation, I think I've said everything that I intended to say when I started. I hope everyone understands, and that all is well. I'm going to modify the 'Members' section to show my own field of knowledge, and I would appreciate it if others would follow suit. Thanks, and a lovely day to all! :D ~ Maximilli, 18:40, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Writing about advanced woodsball is fine. The problem is that you are presenting ADVANCED woodsball as representative of ALL of woodsball. It's not. It's, by definition, advanced, i.e., NOT THE NORM, and the woodsball article should not be presenting it as the norm, which is what you seem to be presenting it as.

192.48.179.6 23:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. The issue here is that simply writing so much about advanced woodsball is giving people the opinion that I think I'm writing about ALL woodsball. This isn't the case. I simply haven't written about basic woodsball. I'm not the best guy for the job. But you know what? I'm going to go and write a section on basic woodsball, because this detail seems to be difficult for many people to understand. ~ Maximilli, 00:20, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Hey all. I just joined the project and hope I can help. I've got a lot of paintball experience but most of my knowledge is in the area of scenario paintball. So, I was thinking of redoing the scenario paintball article a bit since it seams to be talking about woodsball instead of actual scenarios. Plus I'm planning to expand and talk more about scenarios/big games/ milsim and the differences there in. Any objections/suggestions? Also I know a good number of scenario teams and can help the editing of the pro scenario team list.

Someone's just gotta point me in the right direction. Swaim 17:00 Dec 9 2006 (EST)

[edit] Paintball teams and paintball leagues

Hey all,

I've included in the source code for this page the list of scenario paintball teams which currently resides in the paintball league article. I simply don't know where to put it. Suggestions? --Ravenstorm 21:43, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll create a list. The league articles pretty much amount to glorified lists anyway. ~ Maximilli, 21:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

List created. You can view it here. ~ Maximilli, 22:10, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Paintball as an FA article

Hello everyone! Please note that the last item on the FA To-Do list for the Paintball article has been completed today. The article is pretty much everything that a featured article should be, so I say it should be nominated. Thoughts? Suggestions? ~ Maximilli, 23:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

By the way, everyone, I think it should undergo a Peer Review first. Forgot to mention that last night. Again, any comments before we do anything? ~ Maximilli, 20:09, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Hey, just wondering: Once an article has been nominated, can it never be nominated again? (in case it fails to be made one) The Editor 2 23:41, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

No, it can be nominated again, which is a good thing, since I can still find one big error with it (the graphics are terrible). However, it can be undesirable for an article to be nominated, but fail the nomination. The nomination's failure is recorded, you see. For some editors, that's a black mark against the article. But the good thing is that after an article fails the nomination, it can be completely revamped by the article's proponents and re-nominated. ~ Maximilli, 06:24, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

That article is very short on references, as are many of the paintball articles. Many sections are without wikilinks or inline refs at all, such as the entire "Playing locations" section, which reads like someone's opinion. Assertions of specific fact could really use them. The equipment section needs a brief summary and rundown of equipment, not just a link to another article. The price of paintball really isn't important enough to go in the lead, and like a lot of other pieces of information sounds like original research/opinion instead of a sourced conclusion. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 12:11, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Glossary of paintball terms

I've moved the page Glossary of Paintball terms to Glossary of paintball terms, in an attempt to rename it. It wasn't proper for "paintball" to be capitalized. I seem to recall a page with a similar problem, but I don't quite remember what it was... Anyway, I'm telling everyone so we don't have fifty thousand redirects. If you notice a page links to [[Glossary of Paintball terms]] please modify it appropriately. Thanks everyone! ~ Maximilli, 21:53, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regularity of editing

I hope everyone realizes that I cannot be on and actually edit very much, so don't expect more than a minimum of 1 small edit a week (on average), and one larger one a month. Whenever I have time, I'll do more. The Editor 2 00:58, 15 November 2006 (UTC)