Talk:Ambition (card game)/Archive 4

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Delete Just read the discussion below. Mike Church = problem user.

I just deleted references to Ambition from Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, and Clubs, where someone inserted it alongside games such as Hearts, Euchre, and bridge.

This is not-for-profit promotion of a product by its inventor. Not as bad as for-profit, but still obviously inappropriate. Jorend 00:34, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Ahem. I am laughing right now at you, Jorend. You just called me a "problem user". This, after you vandalized my page, making a few wise edits and many which were purely vindictive. Here: Learn about your kind. I accept that others will disagree with me on what deserves inclusion here, and sometimes they will be right. However, there are many things I do not appreciate and will not accept:

  • Being under link-attack.
  • Page vandalism. Deletion of facts important to the page.
  • Edits which create factual inaccuracies, which I have seen several times, including in the most recent edit.

Clearly, there is a vindictive spirit in much of Jorend's edit policy, and many of his edits I will have to reverse, with justification. This will require me to spend much time not only re-writing deleted sections, but also writing here about precisely why I was justified.

This is Wikipedia. You're certainly allowed to edit, cut, etc. articles for the sake of improving an article. However, you are clearly making your decisions entirely out of vindictive motivations. Some of your changes were improvements, but many of them were not. I humbly submit that you should develop your own talents, rather than trying to rip another man down. If you can't follow that directive, then you can ram it. Mike Church 01:29, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

you vandalized my page - Don't see me as vindictive. That's a mistake. Every edit I made was to improve the article.

I have to read the Dispute article before I can write more...

Jorend 68.237.133.107 14:40, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

(later) Dispute article wasn't particularly helpful (grin) ...

Bottom line -- This is a waste of our time. Strategy notes on obscure card games isn't encyclopedic but would make a great external link.

Mike, I say you're a problem user because you're primarily trying to promote this great game you developed. This doesn't make you a troll or a scaly fanged demon. It just means you've made some mistakes. No biggie.

You tend to take things very personally, too, which makes you become very emotional. That's another mistake. Having read way too much Talk:Ambition and Talk:Church's Criterion, I don't think anybody's out to get you or put you down.

No offense, guy, and good luck with your game. Keep making WP better.

Jorend 16:20, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

  • Delete This card game is an unpublished work in progress, and it's inclusion here (along with Church's Criterion) is pure self-promotion. It is akin to entries describing unpublished manuscripts ("all my friends like it") or family photo pages. While we may disagree about whether fame is an appropriate heuristic for the inclusion of articles, there should be some form of verifiable professional acceptance, such as publication or discrete community. - User:PilotPrecise 11:51 17 Feb 2004

Called to defend this page, I shall successfully do so. Mr. PilotPrecise calls this page "pure self-promotion". This claim is so patently false I will have to wash my hands after responding to it. Ambition is a game with general interest. As for publication, Ambition is currently gaining popularity on three continents. In particular, a Japanese gaming/puzzle magazine by the name of Nikoli is publishing my game this spring. This is not a case of "all my friends like it" because I had no prior association with the magazine: The editor saw an article about Ambition on the internet, asked me for permission to feature my game last January, I gave him my consent and best wishes.

Clearly, PilotPrecise is confused on issues of what belongs in an intellectual environment such as Wikipedia's. Fame and formal professional acceptance should not (we've had this debate before... Talk:Ambition/Delete) be the metric of inclusion, but general interest. Applied to Pilot's unpublished manuscript example: Clearly there's no general interest in analysis/critique an obscure, unpublished work-in-progress, and discussion thereof (always one-sided because there's only one person even qualified to comment) would have no place here.

Ambition is different, with proven general interest. It's played around the world. No, I'm not making this up or overestimating its popularity: I recieve about 10-15 requests per month for clarifications/strategic tips on my games, often from people I've never met before. Evidently, Ambition, as well as many other concepts I have developed, is on it's way up.

And the man said... bang! Mike Church 17:01, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think this page should be edited to remove all suspicion of 'puff'. If that doesn't happen, I shall probably do it myself.

Charles Matthews 17:04, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Mr. Church, I am sorry that you are feeling defensive; perhaps a bit of objectivity would suit.

The description of your game is already in the appropriate place: Pagat's site under "invented games". Quoting from that site: "This section of the card games site is devoted to new games played with existing cards. The idea is to provide a forum for card game inventors to publish their ideas, and to try out and comment on each other's games." I don't believe Wikipedia a site for people to share their new card games, quiche recipes, or blogs.

All information I can find related to Ambition are, in fact, the direct result of work by you. You are working hard to build a body of support, including organizing a tournament, linking in Wikipedia, etc. Great, but it is not material befitting an encyclopedia.

Honestly, I think this page could survive as Charles Matthews suggests. State the rules and limit the history to a mention of your name. But I am doubtful that will satisfy you.

Working at a rapid pace and often anonymously, you write in the third person, create phony game variants and interviews with yourself, assuming an establishment which you have not earned (or demonstrated), etc. I already acknowledged that fame was not a sole indication of acceptance, but that there must be some support for your arguments. Please understand that "I get a lot of mail..." or "So-and-so said..." are simply not valid arguments.

If this is not the effort of an aspiring game inventor/designer attempting to use Wikipedia as a tool to promote himself, please explain. Why is it important for you to share your game and POV in an encyclopedia? - PilotPrecise 22:33, 18 Feb 2004

Hey Pilot,

You could have said much of that and we would have had a civil debate. However, we come to:

<<Working at a rapid pace and often anonymously, you write in the third person, create phony game variants and interviews with yourself, assuming an establishment which you have not earned (or demonstrated), etc. >>

First of all, you've got no fucking proof of those claims, and many are just patently false. Multiple contributors were involved in establishing these pages. The original Ambition page I had no part in. I wrote the second (current one) after the immature actions and poor writing of an associate of mine created a massive, ugly deletion controversy. I realized the best solution was to ask the old page shut down, and write a new, more informative page which, as well, did not interfere with an existing page (by being named Ambition (card game) instead of Ambition).

"at a rapid pace and often anonymously, you write in the third person"

I don't log in every time I edit a page. Reason: Laziness. Is that required? Am I supposed to log in every time I fix someone's spelling error? Well, fuck me then, guilty as charged. Trust me, I bear no malicious will, I'm not hiding in the shadows plotting anything. When I write anonymously, it's because I didn't bother to log in, not because I have some deceptive, diabolical plot.

Phony game variants? Those variants have, in fact, been play-tested. A half-baked game idea that's never seen the sun deserves to be called phony, agreed. If there has been actual work put into it (in the form of multiple-player testing) and if it develops support and a following, then it's a real game, by any respectable metric.

Interviews? Where does the word "interview" come up in any pages related to this?

There do appear some quotes from some essays I've written and other materials (emails, etc.) as I recall. I took a lot of those down today because I found them irrelevant to the topic and don't know why they were even put there.

Your primary fallacy is that you start from a predetermined conclusion (that I'm just some random asshole trying to promote himself at the expense of all else) and then attempt to justify it with whatever scraps of logic you can find. When there's a gap, you fill it however you see fit. For example, by the incorrect assumption that I'm the author of everything written re: my ideas, and that I work anonymously out of some satanic, deceptive plot. I'm surprised I have to tell you this, because you seem rather articulate in spite of the fact, but this is not' how logical arguments work. You've been assuming the conclusion and working to it, not working from accepted premises.

At some point, on the advice of Charles Matthews, I probably will do some much-needed concision work on this article, and I have no problem with doing so. A better-written, more concise article where unnecessary information is removed will benefit the entire community.

At any rate, since we're letting fly with the unfounded accusations, I'll toss out one of my own: Your user discussion page says that you are a game designer from Washington. Is it possible (scary music) that you've been dispatched by (duhn duhn duhn) Wizards of the Coast, seeking professional revenge after I stated a design flaw in Magic? Is it possible that you have other secret desires? Is it possible that you have a game starting with the letters "An" and seek to dispatch Ambition to further your own alphabetical advantage???

Of course, I'm not saying any of those are true. However, read the above paragraph enough times and you'll see how stupid people look when they let fly with unfounded accusations. Cheers. Mike Church 23:29, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've edited the page to what I consider a more reasonable coverage.

Charles Matthews 08:10, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)


The changes Charles Matthews made (thank you), I think I can live with, provided the unsubstantiated POV article Church's Criterion and links to it are deleted. But, again, I'd like to remain reasonable in explaining why beforehand and will move my further discussion to Talk:Church's Criterion.

PilotPrecise 09:11, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)


Meant to sign off on most recent edit. Mike Church 05:19, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Justifications for Edit Reversals

I do not wish to start an edit war. Therefore, I provide intellectual justifications for my reversals of several edits.

"To rectify this, Church intends a March 23, 2004 release of Official Rules for the Game of Ambition" was returned, though rewritten. It's an important fact about the game. When and how a game's rules were standardized are notable facts about its evolution. It's not an announcement, it's a fact of some importance.

No, it's not 'factual' or 'encyclopedic' at all. Charles Matthews 15:19, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

At any rate, the original user to add that comment was not myself, and the original note (which said April, not March) was incorrect. Perhaps it was a mistake, perhaps misinformation.

This section:

'Often, it is before the end of the first game that an Ambition player catches "the bug" and becomes addicted. Within a month, the Ambition player will be unable to resist, during any card game, the temptation to sort her hand with the 2’s after the Aces. -- Excerpt, released on March 6, from Official Rules.

I feel is valid in that it assists in expressing the feeling of the game. However, I understand that it may be seen as self-promotional. Without support of another user, I will not re-post it, though I would like to and feel I should have the right.

I re-added the word "improve" on line 37, which now reads, the game was renamed "Ambition" after structural changes were made to improve the game. This is not POV to say "improve". Whether Pepsi is better than Coke, or not, is POV. However, to say that, for example, fixing a house's plumbing improves it is to state a basic fact. To remove unnecessary rules from a game, improve its play dynamics, and give it a better name are improvements, no controversy. Trust me on this one.

I reinstated "Ambition++ is considered an advanced variant and it is counterproductive to teach hand-draft to beginning players, who will probably not know how to assemble an effective hand." Here, I would guess that the controversy centers on the word advanced, on POV rounds.

No - 'considered' by whom? We are getting well away from anything an encyclopedia would want to include. This is just POV stuff. If I wrote 'is too complicated', that would be POV the other way. Charles Matthews 15:19, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It's true that something like "Locke was an advanced philosopher", or "George W. Bush is not an intellectually advanced man", would be POV. However, to say that a more complicated variant of a game is for advanced players is not POV. I did not mean to intend, in writing that, that I was an "advanced" game designer for coming up with the idea. Rather, that Ambition++ is a variant which requires some knowledge of Ambition itself, and therefore requires some level of advancement/comfort with Ambition before they are to learn it.

Mike Church 14:08, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Mike, I have to say, if you continually push your luck with this article, testing the limits of promotion of your game on WP, I will mentally class you as a problem user. It would be very easy to argue that you should come back with a page on this, in a year's time, when you have a definitive game to talk about. Charles Matthews 15:19, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Mike you were the only person to vote for your own game on that list. I already showed that and you admitted it.

By January 2004, Ambition had a noticeable presence on many American college campuses, and appeared on Aaron D. Fuegi's canonical list of games. It entered the top 1000 on March 1 at #981, with few votes but the second-highest average rating of games among the top 1000.

PilotPrecise 09:20, 13 March 2004 (UTC)

  • Ah, I stand corrected: one other email address voted too. PilotPrecise 09:22, 13 March 2004 (UTC)

Questions on Conduct

Mike, in light of your continued efforts to promote yourself, despite the spirit of the agreement I thought we had reached, I have more questions. (To think I seriously rented time at an internet cafe while vacationing in O'ahu to post a thank you for you cooperation...sigh.)

In the original debate over this page, I noted there was a bit of dishonesty at work with the VfD voting. Apparently the original author of the Ambition article made a series of phony votes, changes to other editors posts, etc. The moment they were caught in the act by Onebyone, the real you was called in to set the record straight. Odd, I am growing more and more suspicious that you were the original author and VfD vandal and are acting deceitfully. Reason?...

  • Who are the two people listed below? Why do they both, almost exclusively, edit pages only related to you (as of this writing)?

See, after you nominated your own article about your own unknown game for Wikipedia:Featured article candidates, Draconic shows up for the first time, and within a few minutes is adding what amounts to both a "yes" vote/endorsement for your article, along with a nice subtle request for even more information before the article should be featured.

Then there's Zepter who shows up around the same time as Draconic. Doesn't have much to say except about Ambition (card game) and then on that he doesnt waste time! His first action in WP is to add your game as a link to 2004. Then a promotional statement in the article. Then he's quiet until days later, he appears again to make a change to Community card poker after someone removed your own personal game variants you'd added. He seemed most concerned about the removal of the link to this article though: "revert. helping a man under link attack"

"Link attack?" Hadn't heard that before nor again until you used the very same phrase in your above response to Jorend. Incidentally, in this same above response, you make an insulting link to "your kind" (indicating Jorend) that is actually to troll. Aside from being a juvenile insult, it also reminded me of the very recent vandalism by Zepter where my own user tag in two posts was modified to PilotPrecise (a Troll). Now, of course I remember how quickly you jumped to calling me "a tool" (in an edit comment) so I figure, it's at least a reasonable assumption that you might be using Zepter as an alias.

I'll be trying to get more info to verify, of course, but I thought I should ask you directly.

Sorry Charles Matthews, you had tried to moderate this, I hoped it was over, but this guy is treating me like a keyboard and is touch-typing all my buttons! PilotPrecise 11:53, 13 March 2004 (UTC)

Mike Church and PilotPrecise, please look at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. Please both assess where you are on the scale outlined there. Escalation of disputes is bad for Wikipedia. I'm not offering to intervene here; in fact I shall be offline for a few days, shortly. Give yourselves a week to see if you can both adhere to the guidelines laid down there for Step 0 and Step 1, before assuming there are difficulties that can't be sorted out simply by applying normal Wikipedia house style to articles.

Charles Matthews 14:19, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I listed the article on Wikipedia:Requests for comment and would prefer that we can just get the article put into NPOV and left there, with links to it where appropriate. It's all I want: the article to remain in proper context. I'll be at GDC for the entire week following this, but will check inPilotPrecise 04:57, 14 March 2004 (UTC)

Neither Zepter nor Draconic, though I have a good idea who those users are. I know who the vandal last fall is, because there was such a small pool of people from which said vandal could have come.

I guess I can accept the edits made now. There's no need to refer to the fact that it's at position X on the list, especially since that will rise (I just held a tournament, hence more votes) and speak for itself.

At any rate, I guess I can admit there was some puff in the article a while back that needed to be removed. At any rate, I'll have Official Rules sent to pagat.com later this month, and there's no need for puff. The game speaks well enough for itself, at least for those who've played it. Mike Church 08:17, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)