Talk:Internet Diplomacy
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[edit] Reworked it a bit
"Fleshed out, fixed a few minor inaccuracies, added some structure, see talk page about server self-promotion"
I tried to make the page a lot more neutral [diff]. Before I got the feeling the page was about play-by-e-mail, and web based was an afterthought. A more general definition of Internet Diplomacy is in there now that isn't related to e-mail specifically
I padded out the history a bit, again adding some web-based history where missing and filling out e-mail history where weak or confused. It wasn't very clear what a "Judge" was so that should be a bit better now The problem with the padding is that there are no references. There were none before of course, but there was less text before; now it's more obvious that there's no citation. Hopefully this'll improve with time
There were a lot of problems with self-promotion in the links. (Full disclosure: phpdiplomacy.net is my link) I made them into sub-sections to add some organization, and I put them into (what I think is) chronological order.
The reason for that is the Playdiplomacy guy put his site up at the top, presumably to try and get more hits to his site. He also called it "Internet Diplomacy" or "Online Diplomacy", so I can only guess he was trying to get it placed in the article so that people would stop looking after seeing his. (Note that his site ended up below mine in chronological order, but Diplomaticcorp got placed above mine, so this wasn't for the benefit of my link)
Also he said "fully-developed" in the description, but right at the top of his site it says "beta - Dec 2007" and "Bugs will be fixed within a month". After removing all the opinion and lies there wasn't much left
That entry was easily the worst, but a lot of them did it to some extent. It's silly seeing how "blarDiplo is the first to do this, the best at this, got the most of this, and is much more popular than asdfDiplo". I tried to remove anything where a description was comparing itself to other sites, giving opinion on itself, praising its own features, etc. I think the site blocks should do nothing except describe the site's features, and not refer to any records it claims to break or other software it claims to be better than
People mentioned below about variants, and how it was claimed that internet diplomacy took credit for all variants. I also noticed that and thought it was mistaken so I changed it to "non-trivial" variant (i.e. with a new map or new rules). I don't think face-to-face has any exposure to extra maps or rulesets (but correct me and the article if I'm wrong, preferably with citations)
Someone may decide one of the issues wasn't taken care of so I'll leave it for someone else to remove the talk points below, and here, as they see fit
Kestasjk (talk) 13:34, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Bias
While I don't deny that user Kestasjk (talk) has done some good work on the structure of the page (seperating e-mail/web variants and making them chronological), he obviously is biased and will not stop promoting his own website phpdiplomacy.
Every time someone makes a contribution about a Diplomacy website that is NOT phpdiplomacy, Kestasjk (talk) removes the text again so that only a maximum of 2 lines of text remains. Of course phpdiplomacy gets the biggest write-up with 8 lines of text.
Kestasjk (talk) also edits the description of competitor websites to make his own website look the best.
Someone should really get a neutral opinion in here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lawine (talk • contribs) 08:40, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Re: Bias
All the changes being made by 84.193.140.205 [84.193.140.205 (talk)] are getting rid of cited facts, cutting down phpdiplomacy's size and removing any data on phpdiplomacy features, adding playdiplomacy features and adding that they are "advanced" and "complex", adding comments about my bias to my user page, tagging images which I uploaded and have absolutely no copyright attached as being in violation of copyright, and calling my site "obsolete".
All I've been doing is undoing the changes that have been made. 84.193.140.205 is certainly a biased individual, very possibly the owner of playdiplomacy, who can get away with calling me biased because he doesn't use an account and admit to any reasons he may be biased, whereas I let everyone know openly for the sake of full disclosure. But there's a difference between keeping any biases I may have in check and freely changing and removing cited facts.
Also note that 84.193.140.205 was the person to first add the section on PLAYdiplomacy months ago.. Look at the PLAYdiplomacy section he added a few months ago, it reads like an advertisement. Also look at this edit here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Internet_Diplomacy&diff=218699959&oldid=218699644 When someone added that PLAYdiplomacy was based on open-source software, which is now publicly known and admitted, the comment was removed by 84.193.140.205. The idea that I'm biased and 84.193.140.205 isn't is insane! The idea that 84.193.140.205's edits should be kept as the unbiased truth while mine are removed is absurd.
All my changes have been trying to add citations, remove anything that's opinion or tries to compare sites, and all the changes being made are reversing that process.
See my talk which I added below [above] from a few weeks back; look at the page before and after that edit, and tell me that I'm biased and trying to promote my page, and not being objective. Compare that to 84.193.140.205.
Also I don't know why you're reverting the site to changes made after 84.193.140.205 has made his biased edits, and not considering the version before the edit-war began as the version which should be taken as the default until further notice. Why are all the edits made by your account related to this internet diplomacy page? Who's biased here?
Kestasjk (talk) 09:26, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Third Opinion
Hey guys,
I have to say some of the edits by a a number of users could be classified as bias, and are bordering on blatant promotion of the various web based gaming sites. Alot of the information in this article seems like original research. The underlying issue here is a lack of verifiability and a lack of notability. It is important to know that forum posts are generally not considered acceptable. (In a nutshell: you don't have reliable sources to back up the claims you are making in this article).
What I think needs to be done:
Find reliable secondary sources about internet diplomacy. Use them to shape this article. The list of websites among other things will probably have to be deleted unless you can find a reliable source which mentions their significance. If there isn't enough content to write a good article I suggest merging this article with Diplomacy. Hope this is helpful. Ziphon (ALLears) 12:19, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Notability??
I noticed that Ziphon recently added a notability tag to this article, but has not offered any explanation for doing so. Could you please tell us why you don't think this article meets notability guidelines, Ziphon?? It seems to me that it clearly does. In any case, I will remove the tag if no explanation for it is given within the next few days. 71.231.87.53 (talk) 13:11, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Neutral Opinion / Consensus
I believe that we are unlikely to get any truly neutral opinion that is knowledgeable about diplomacy since those people are likely to play at one diplomacy site or another. Instead of that, we should try to reach a consensus about what to include:
My suggestion is that:
a) Description of each site should include:
1- Their dates of creation 2- Their aims (if any) 3- The unique features that they have which can not be found in any other sites 4- The code/source/whatever they're based on.
b) Description of each site should NOT include:
1- Comparisons: ie, newest / fastest growing / best / greatest / most stylish / best looking. These are mostly subjective and impossible to verify.
2- Any kind of advertisement
3- I also believe that whether the creator of phpdiplomacy stopped coding or not should have nothing to do with this article. Maybe if one day there's a separate entry for him or the phpdip project.
c) Suggestions to prevent a continuing Edit War:
1- Try not to make changes before agreeing with others here.
2- Do not make any changes without accounting for it here
3- I think site owners should be able to contribute as they know the most about their site, but they should openly state which site they own and their edits should be monitored to prevent advertisement / unverified information.
What do you say? Babutsa123 (talk) 13:45, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
My specific suggestions:
I believe these additions and alterations would help. I'm posting them here so that we can discuss before the change is made.
1- I don't know what happened to the paragraph for phpdiplomacy.com, but we should probably re-add it and work on that as a basis in establishing a more agreeable article.
2- Remove the bit about the creator of phpdip stopping development. It does not belong here.
3- There seems to be an edit war about the 'based on phpdiplomacy' bit in playdiplomacy's description. I think an appropriate way to solve this would be to stop adding that and instead list the sites/ports based on phpdiplomacy under its own paragraph.
4- Perhaps we could put a screenshot of the gaming window of each website, with care not to breach copyrights of course.
5- We might want to agree on features that all/most sites have and add it to the description of internet diplomacy itself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Babutsa123 (talk • contribs) 13:55, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Response
I agree; in fact if you look to the section below which I wrote after reworking the page you'll see that I made a few of the same suggestions to try and tackle the bias. I'll re-add the missing paragraph referenced below and the image that keeps on getting removed, and remove the part about how I'm no longer working on the code.
As you suggest I'll also add that playdiplomacy is a phpdiplomacy derivative in the phpdiplomacy section instead of it being in the playdiplomacy section. (I don't see why it's biased or undesirable to have it in the other section, but if that's what it takes to stop these petty edit-wars.)
Thanks for giving an unbiased view, but I think my reversion will be re-vandalized again without regard for your comments or mine, as it has been before.
Kestasjk (talk) 14:08, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Response to Response
I'd rather we waited for more people to comment before making the changes so that
1- we deal with any possible problems 2- we have more people agreeing so there's a stronger consensus 3- possible vandals and bias is marginalized.
I can't guarantee that moving it to phpdip's paragraph will end the edit war - We should probably wait and see whether those objecting to it will agree. Another option would be to add it to the end of the paragraph of playdiplomacy, along with the other code it is based on such as diplojudge etc.. I can understand that it makes the playdiplomacy.com look bad if the first few words of its paragraph mention phpdiplomacy
Babutsa123 (talk) 14:15, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Re:
Sorry, I reverted before reading this, although to be honest it looked more similar to the way it looks now before the edit-war started. Also it looks like someone else has added their project, and didn't put it in chronological order like all the other projects, and had a thumbnail which was oversized.
I'm going to try and take a step back now; now that some unbiased 3rd parties are paying attention I hope this can be brought under control.
I am happy with the way my section is, and am happy to see PLAYdiplomacy's admin add distinguishing features and remove the phpDiplomacy reference, as long as value judgements aren't given to the features like you said. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kestasjk (talk • contribs) 14:24, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Re: Kestas
I removed the phpdiplomacy reference in playdiplomacy's paragraph since it is mentioned under phpdiplomacy now. I also agree that the owner of playdiplomacy.com should be encouraged to expand his paragraph as long as we all make sure that none of us make comparisons / try to advertise.
Perhaps we should try to contact the owners of other diplomacy sites and invite them to expand their own sections since none of us seem to be qualified to do so? Babutsa123 (talk) 14:36, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Internet Diplomacy
I suggest we either get the other sites' paragraphs to the same quality and length as Internet Diplomacy or try to curb Internet Diplomacy's article. I prefer the former.
Would it be feasible for all the site owners here to suggest a paragraph for their own site IN DISCUSSION so that we can agree on the actual paragraph before adding it?
Babutsa123 (talk) 14:20, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] phpDiplomacy
Started in December 2004[1], phpDiplomacy is an attempt to make Diplomacy more accessible to people who haven't played Diplomacy before as a board game. Orders are entered by choosing valid options from drop-down lists, instead of being entered in with text, and a points system is used to let players find people of their own skill level to play with.
Since it's open source it can be used to help create new web-diplomacy sites more easily, such as Facebook Diplomacy, Strategery, and PLAYdiplomacy[2].
I'm happy with the above two paragraphs; references are given, it lists distinguishing features, value isn't assigned to any features, an image is added without copyright concerns.
I might accept that "an attempt to make Diplomacy more accessible to people who haven't played Diplomacy before as a board game" is biased now, but I think it needs to be taken in the context of the historical order of the sites: Before phpDiplomacy text-orders used in the board-game were used to enter orders, so focus on players who aren't assumed to know order syntax is something relevant in the historical context. If this seems biased I'm open to a 3rd party's opinion.
Kestasjk (talk) 14:29, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with it, hopefully we will get more feedback
Perhaps it might be a good idea to add license information and such as in the case of Internet Diplomacy? I am not sure whether these stuff belong here though.
Babutsa123 (talk) 14:39, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
I think unless there were several open source web-diplo platforms, each with different licenses, it's not worth going into which license specifically. If Internet Diplomacy sticks around I'll add license info, but see below for my comments on whether Internet Diplomacy is currently worth a section.
Kestasjk (talk) 18:53, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] PlayDiplomacy.com
As the administrator of Playdiplomacy.com I'm glad to see 3rd party involvement. Thank you, Babutsa123, what you've been suggesting certainly sounds very reasonable. Myself, I will write a more detailed description of my own website and post it here for verification.
I don't want to be a nitpicker, but I do believe describing phpDiplomacy as "an attempt to make Diplomacy more accessible to people who haven't played Diplomacy before as a board game" is not acceptable, because it's something that all Diplomacy websites are attempting.
A listing of all Diplomacy websites based on phpDiplomacy can be listed under the "phpDiplomacy" paragraph, no need to relist it under the Playdiplomacy.com paragraph.
Volo Media (talk) 15:00, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
Re: Volo Media
Thanks for contributing. I agree that there is no need for relisting under the playdiplomacy paragraph.
Your point about 'the attempt to make diplomacy more accessible...' is understandable, however I think we should hear Kestas' response before editing. Maybe his site has a special case that we are not aware of, or perhaps you two could work something out. Babutsa123 (talk) 15:13, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
I suggest we wait until you post the playdiplomacy paragraph, see if there are any other site owners that want to help and revise all the website descriptions under the discussion section to see if there's any expansion / corrections possible.
Currently two issues we should talk about during the revisions seem to be:
1- The line you mentioned in phpdiplomacy's paragraph
2- Whether 'Internet Diplomacy' has any excess information, eg, its license status, etc.
I think we won't have any problems as long as we keep discussing here and refrain from editing without discussion
Babutsa123 (talk) 15:14, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
I see that the paragraph describing phpDiplomacy has been removed by an anonymous user, please not that this was not me. I will not edit the page without your approval.
Here is what I would like to see added to the Playdiplomacy.com paragraph:
--- Started in December 2007, PLAYdiplomacy.com is the first to offer a full point-and-click interface. When a unit is clicked, the available options for that unit are displayed on the screen, eliminating the need to enter a correct order syntax.
PLAYdiplomacy attempts to adhere to the original rules of the boardgame as closely as possible. That means only solo victories are allowed unless all other surviving players agree to a draw.
Unique features of this site are the option of playing speed games (with turns every 5 minutes) and a wide range of rule variants (gunboat, fleet rome, winter 1900, industrial revolution). ---
Please comment.
Volo Media (talk) 15:53, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
Comments:
My objections are mostly with the structure and grammar. These are my proposed changes and comments:
Started in December 2007, PLAYdiplomacy.com is the first to offer a fully developed point-and-click interface. Upon clicking on a unit the available options are displayed on the screen eliminating the need to enter the correct order syntax.
PLAYdiplomacy attempts to adhere to the original rules of the boardgame as closely as possible. That means only solo victories are allowed unless all other surviving players agree to a draw. (I am not sure if this is needed - How do the other sites behave regarding this? Is it a unique/rare feature?)
Other features of PLAYdiplomacy include the option to play speed games (with turns every 5 minutes) and a range of rule variants.
(I think we should not use the word 'unique' since it is possible that another site might adopt the same procedure, and as it seems too blunt. I also think we should not list the variants as this page is not meant to be too technical.. though I have no major problems with listing them)
Are these fine? Also waiting to hear from Kestas regarding this description and the objection to the line in his description. We should also start talking about the paragraph regarding 'Internet Diplomacy'
Babutsa123 (talk) 16:59, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't want to be a nitpicker, but I do believe describing phpDiplomacy as "an attempt to make Diplomacy more accessible to people who haven't played Diplomacy before as a board game" is not acceptable, because it's something that all Diplomacy websites are attempting.
I can understand that, but it's a question of whether the page is following a historical perspective or not. phpDip was the first web-diplo site to not require text-based orders to be entered, and that was one of the main goals phpDip had at the time; it's not a unique feature any more, so it doesn't work as an advertisement, but it does represent a departure from what came above it chronologically. The article tracks the progression of internet diplomacy from start to current incarnations, and the accessibility comment is a part of that.
e.g. These software Judges were eventually extended to include adjudicators; no-one mistakes this as claiming that nothing else has automated adjudicators, instead it's assumed that everything since does have automated adjudicators unless explicitly stated otherwise.
This is why I think "playdiplomacy was the first to have point and click" is redundant; because it's in chronological order as long as it's noted that playdiplomacy has point and click I think any reader would rightly assume that means it was the first to have it. There's no point in writing about things that other sites already had, unless we're ditching the historical format (which I think would be less informative and read more like a series of ads).
This is also why I'm not sure about ...displayed on the screen eliminating the need to enter the correct order syntax., because needing to enter the correct order syntax hasn't been a requirement since before phpDip.
Perhaps phpDiplomacy was started in December 2004[1] as an attempt to make internet-Diplomacy more accessible to people who haven't played Diplomacy before as a board game. Orders are entered by choosing valid options from drop-down lists, instead of being entered in with text, and a points system is used to let players find people of their own skill level to play with.
I also think, for the same reasons, PLAYdiplomacy.com was the first to offer would fit into the article better, and helps users understand the progression more easily.
The "solo victories" thing is an allusion to the altered points system, where in playdiplomacy you only get points as the winner unless there's a draw. This might not be a good distinguishing feature to add since phpDip has had winner-take-all games which go by the same rules since 0.8 came out in January. If, despite this, it's still considered a distinguishing feature it should probably be more specific in that it's about the points system.
The speed games and rule variants are unique to playdip as a stand-alone web-diplo platform, perhaps these (and point-and-click) could be made more central to the playdiplomacy.com section as distinguishing features which it brought in? This way it's more easily implied that it's building on the feature set from previous ones, but brings these extras, which is what I tried to do with each section in the article.
Okay, now onto something we will probably both agree on: "Internet Diplomacy", aside from having an annoying name in the context of this article, doesn't actually have any content to back it up. There's no code available, no further information; its section in this article may be the only reference to it anywhere.
Perhaps it shouldn't be there until it has at least a notable site going? Facebook Diplomacy has hundreds of active games and Strategery was released only a couple of weeks ago, yet neither of these have a section despite being more active/newer than the Internet Diplomacy section.
Editing things this way is tedious but I think it'll be worthwhile once there's something we can all agree on up there
