User talk:Kashum

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Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a mere directory of links nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Inappropriate links include (but are not limited to) links to personal web sites, links to web sites with which you are affiliated, and links that exist to attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam policies for further explanations of links that are considered appropriate. If you feel the link should be added to the article, then please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. See the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. --Drat (Talk) 11:11, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Machinima

Richard,

As one of the other editors who removed yor links, I saw your query to Drat and thought that it'd be fair to explain to you the thought process behind this. The word notability is thrown around a lot on Wikipedia, and the word in and of itself has admittedly subjective connotations. However, simply put, the most general way to determine whether an article can be sustained about a tpoic is whether the work is nontrivially covered in multiple independent reliable sources. Machinima.com helps in determining notability, but the issue is that a mere listing there doesn't really provide all that much substance for a good article (an interview or full-fledged article, on the other hand, does).

As for the why other sites exist, I've taken the liberty of pruning down that section in the article on machinima; talk page discussion has established that a fairly extensive rewrite will be needed for best and most logical coverage, though. The problem is that, because there is so much on Wikipedia, infractions are often just oversights rather than deliberate errors of ommission. As a fan of machinima, I'd love to see your series (and others) covered in independent media; that would validate an article on it. Unfortunately, for a lot of machinima, it can take some time for those sources to appear, if they appear at all.

The list of machinima productions is really meant to organize articles on productions for which we already have articles, and those for which editors feel rasonably confident that an article could be written under policy. Nothing more.

As for Red vs. Blue, I'm well aware of our heavy coverage of Halo-based productions. The thing is, though, that its success has been well-documented, which makes it easier to write about it, at least from a Wikipedian standpoint (admittedly, however, not all articles cite enough sources). Also, Red vs. Blue didn't even have an article until some time in the middle of 2004, well into season 2. I myself have tried to balance our existing coverage by working on other things as time permits (e.g., the article on Diary of a Camper). It may seem like favoritism, but the reality is this: A lot of people contribute to Red vs. Blue. Meanwhile, we have tried to be somewhat vigilant in ensuring that notability/verifiability/WP:EL is upheld, but the work in actually churning out new content for which we do have adequate sourcing is not easy (and is ill-suited to my busy schedule). The level of interest in, say, Operation Bayshield is just not at the same level.

I apologize if my removal was offensive to you. I hope that the rationale is at least a bit clearer. There's actually an informal project, WikiProject Machinima that we've formed to help us ogranize our efforts a bit better and to track progress. You're welcome to help us out by expanding our coverage in areas where sources do exist. Even within these bounds, there's absolutely no shortage of work to be done, and far too few editors interested in machinima to actually write about all of it. We've barely scraatched the surface of the ILL Clan's work, for example. — TKD::Talk 04:11, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, WikiProject Machinima has no true "authority" whatsoever. We don't try to assert ownership over articles; we declare that they're within our scope and give them a non-binding assessment of quality and priority, but that's it. The fact that a WikiProject, as it's called, says that something is within its scope basically means that they're aware of the article's existence and might try to track and assist with its progress; note that this is different from exercising any sort of control over that progress. :)

I don't see any post by Drat on Wikipedia that you're referring to, so perhaps I'm missing something. From experience woring with Drat, though, I can say that his removals are well-intentioned. The giudeline for adding external lkinks, Wikipedia:External links, imposes several restrictions, which are often not followed.

As for Company of Heroes, Wikipedia:External links allows for only one fan site, if that site is particularly notable. But since I don't know which one of the several was worth keeping, I removed all of them and invited more knowledgeable editors for that particular game to add one back in.

I apologize for my long-winded style of writing, but perhaps the gist of my comment to you was lost in the sheer length of what I wrote. The idea of notability isn't subjective; it's unfortunate that a term with connotations of subjectivity was chosen for the concept. For web-based content, notability is covered by the WP:WEB guideline. But the simplest and most universal criterion is nontrivial coverage in multiple independent reliable sources. Google hits are not the end-all, but are often used a proxy for determining how much coverage there is, especially for web-based topics, so as to determine the likelihood that those multiple independent sources exist. As for quality, who judges that? Wikipedia editors can't, as that would be original research. So it comes back to the independent reliable source issue.

I try to not let Red vs. Blue dominate my time. But a couple of factors are people like to add poorly worded or flimsily based stuff, and that the series is ongoing, which kind of forces a nontrivial amount of "upkeep" just to tread water, so to speak. I can't do anything about the fact that Red vs. Blue was, last time I checked, in the top 0.1% of most-edited articles on Wikipedia (and not nearly all edits are constructive). Just the nature of things. Sorry that it leaves the impression that all machinima articles have to be up to that level of groundbreaking stature. It's certainly not meant to. I think the issue is that people read too much into the presence of Red vs. Blue on Wikipedia, when, in reality, each article stands or falls on its own merits with respect to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Unfortunately, most machinima productions as of now don't meet WP:WEB.

One other thing is that the phrase double standard tends to rub people the wrong way, since the way things are is a product of outright lack of attention to that oparticular issue rather than true deliberate ommissions. To many people, the phrase double standard lacks an assumption of good faith, which is a core policy. That said, I don't know whether the machinima article would be okay to you now; if it isn't, I'd think the next step would be just to eliminate the whole "Notable examples" section altogether, since it doesn't really fit in a with a good, flowing article structure that has been discussed on the talk page.

One other guideline that you should aware of, though, is WP:AUTO. Wikipedia culture heavily frowns upon writing about oneself or projects to which one is closely connected. — TKD::Talk 08:06, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I should have explained myself properly. I've relied too much on substed template messages, and I get a bit overzealous at times. The post you are referring to in Talk:Machinima was made only a few weeks after I removed the ridiculous amount of external links to various productions from the Machinima article. For a while, articles on severely non-notable productions (some of which were still months from release!) were being created on a regular basis. Now it's down to one or two every few weeks. Take a look at a few entries in the WikiProject Machinima deletion archive to see examples of productions that have been deleted.--Drat (Talk) 11:30, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

If I might persist, I'd like to clarify a few things. I didn't use the term vanity; regardless of intent, it is considered improper to write about autobiographical topics, regardless of a separate article or not. This is really what the spirit of WP:AUTO is. This isn't a problem confined to machinima; it really isn't recommended for any creative authors to be the first to write about their work here on Wikipedia. That's a by-product of Wikipedia's quest for a neutral point of view. It's not impossible for authors to adhere to these policies, but it is the inherently vested interest that forms the basis of Wikipedia's recommendation not to write about oneself. The truth of the matter is that many articles about productions, whether autobiographically written or not, have been deleted because they failed to cite any reliable secondary sources.

Second, there is no "machinima administration"; everyone here has been doing anything that any normal editor can do. I am a Wikipedia administrator, but the situations that call for administrative assistance are actually relatively few compared to the number of total edits. Any editor can apply most editorial Wikipedia policies and guidelines. — TKD::Talk 12:03, 16 November 2006 (UTC)