Talk:The Incredible Machine

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I am sure the "Kevin Ryan" link is going to the wrong person. Kevin of TIM fame works at GarageGames http://www.garagegames.com/my/home/view.profile.php?qid=105

[edit] Name?

I'm not sure how Wikipedia's naming guidelines go, but shouldn't the proper name for this be Incredible Machine, The?

--Powerlord 09:16, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

• Only when included in lists - for example if it was put into a category, it should be sorted that way. The article heading is fine as is, since the word "The" was part of the name. --Firien § 10:32, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
  • OK, thanks for clearing that up. --Powerlord 01:03, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MacOS

I remember this came out for the Mac; presumably system 8 and system 9. I believe there were at least 2 or 3 versions; but I have no idea whether these featured the same levels as the corresponding MS-DOS games. They were again Sierra games, but Sierra.com doesn't list any of the versions let alone the Apple ones so don't know how to correlate this with the current list... --Firien § 10:32, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] An external link

Hi, I maintain a website www.tim-exchange.com designed for people to swap Contraptions puzzles. I know linking to websites that you are involved with is bad practice on Wikipedia, so I wanted to get opinions from editors on Wikipedia as to whether it would be useful to link to it or not. The reason I feel it might be relevant is because it is a replacement for an official service 'WonSwap', which was discontinued. I am not aware of any copyright reasons why it should not be allowed as the puzzle files are simply instructions on where things are placed, and cannot be run without buying the actual program (hence Copyright rests with the creators). So, I'd like to ask, should this site be linked to from this Wikipedia page? Thanks, --Christopher 13:07, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

While normally as a fan forum this probably goes against the letter of Wikipedia's advertising guidelines, I think due to the age of TIM and the WonSwap it becomes more relevant, and being a free service doesn't go against the spirit of the advertising guidelines. I didn't come across WonSwap while I was playing TIM though - As an official service, it should have its own section, and its going defunct is notable, to which replacement sites should be natural descendents. My only concern is that tim-exchange is so small - I don't know whether it's possible for you to ask Sierra for the files that were on WonSwap and put those up for hosting, but as tim-exchange stands it seems likely that it fails notability guidelines. I believe that due to the good-faith nature this should stand; however it may fall to an editor who skims through and sees its small size, or I might be wrong. Wikipedia is not supposed to be a place to drive traffic to your site except in the case that the externally linked site provides content about the article subject that the article is unable to provide. I feel that tim-exchange, although currently small, does provide that - and I can only hope that it can gain enough content to be notable in the eyes of the next editor who comes through looking to clean up a little.

I suggest you add a section on WonSwap and through that lead on to the link, and I hope it gets enough content to stand on its own merit. I haven't played TIM in many years, but that wasn't helped by believing I'd completed all the levels; I played with the editor for a good while but in construction you know the solution so might well see if I can get it running again if tim-exchange gains more content :)

Best of luck with it! --Firien § 19:49, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I think I agree - tho' it might be a useful resource as it gets larger, it seems too small at the moment to be an appropriate reference on Wikipedia. Perhaps once the number of contraptions exceeds some threshold - e.g. 30 - from a varied range of users, then it might be worth posting. FYI, if you hadn't encountered WonSwap when playing TIM, it is probably because it was only available for the latest version of TIM (Even More Contraptions) (though my service should work with all versions). Thanks, --Christopher 10:18, 3 February 2007 (UTC)