Talk:A Modest Video Game Proposal

Articles for Deletion debate
This article survived an Articles for Deletion debate. The discussion can be found here. -Splash talk 19:19, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Why is there still an AfD tag?--Vercalos 00:34, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Verifable?
According to this discussion, GameSpot and GamePolitics.com were axed as verifable sources. Most of the information here and on the Jack Thompson and video game players articles are based off of sources on online websites. If you notice, the JT article now has no online sources at all. WP:V here. If the contributors to the JT article couldn't find a way to work it into that article, I cannot fathom how it oculd be done into this article, and thus, why I thought it should be listed on AFD. I mean, if I were to remove all "unverfiable info," I'd be blanking the entire page. Hbdragon88 05:16, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I argue on the current Jack Thompson talkpage why gamespot.com IS a verifiable source. Noone has given a single counterargument to my arguments (now a week ago), and thus i consider gamespot.com a valid source, until someone tells me why not. Short recap: - Gamespot belongs to a big coorp (CNET), own independent news staff, is consistently fact checking, has all it's news stories it ever published still online (as far as i know). There is nothing in the wikipedia source or verifiability rules that rules out specialist media (as a gaming news website would be) or online media. If i am somehow mistaken in that belief, please point me to where it says anything like that. Gamepolitics.com is a different story, it is technicly a blog which is autodisqualified by wiki source rules. The forums behind it, even more. SanderJK 12:43, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The JT article does use one online source, an article on wired.com. You changed your comment to include blanking the entire page. Please explain to me how gamespot.com is not a valid source. I've read the source and verifiability rules each again today, i can find nothing pointing me to anything remotely outlawwing it. SanderJK 20:25, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm only going by what the JT discussion determined. Is the lack of a GameSpot source because "A Modest Proposal" and JT's online exploits were omitted because it's covered in the two sub-articles?  My understanding of that discussion that I liked to above was that GameSpot was not a verifable source.  Even the current discussion (which I note that you're heavily involved in) is saying that Wired magazine is the only verifable source. If they say that GameSpot is a good source, I'll back off from this discussion. Hbdragon88 20:53, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
 * The decision to make gamespot.com not a verifiable source was made by 2 people, at most. Hardly wiki wide consensus. It was also decided in about 3 lines of text. I argued back with what i deem to be the rules of wiki, but noone is responding. I can only assume they either agree, or don't agree but can't come up with decent counterarguments, or are not interested enough in fighting it. When i wanted to bring in gamespot as a source, they said the burden was on me to proof them a valid source. I believe i did so. The fact that they don't refute it strengthens that stance. SanderJK 11:37, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Sander, there were more than two people pushing to get the article to use only the best sources as I recall. I could be wrong though. However given that the facts of the Gamespot piece are wrong, it doesn't exactly strengthen the argument that they're a good source. It fails to mention that Thompson's widely circulated brief was NOT met. The Penny Arcade people mistakenly thought it was, when it wasn't. From the original proposal 'I'll write a check for $10,000 to the favorite charity of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc's chairman, Paul Eibeler - a man Bernard Goldberg ranks as #43 in his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America - if any video game company will create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 like the following:' emphasis mine. A source with any fact checking credibility would have worked that out.--Ryan Acheson 17:27, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * The fact that the original clause of the proposal was not met by the letter does not change the events that ensued. You can hold a pretty long debate about what constitutes a company, if placing it online is distributing, if giving away for free is selling. However, that isn't the point. It's not what Thompson argued, at least in any media i have seen (and i was watching quite carefully at the time. To the best of my knowledge, Thompson claimed satire, not that it wasn't met. It also doesn't changed what happened due to the proposal, that this event spawned multiple videogames, a rather large flutter throughout gaming news media (including, but not limited to wired, gamespot, slashdot, spong, digg, joystiq, gamepolitics, penny-arcade) and that gamespot.com reported exactly what happened. They did contact Thompson, the Seattle Police and Penny-Arcade multiple times each, as reflected in their other articles. If the whole argument for them not being a verifiable media is that they didn't explain that the condition of the proposal was not met in an article not so much about the proposal, but about what ensued with penny arcade, you can apply the same rules to every news source in the country ever, since all of them leave out data SanderJK 18:46, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Hmm, ok so Thompson did claim that it didn't meet requirements at one point (found here http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=23829) i had honestly missed that. (The article is dated a week after the letters to McKay, i never did see it before) He claims the mod false on the fact that it's "not industry" and that it's set it 2005 instead of 2006. Very well. Still doesn't change much though, and i still don't know why gamespot.com is somehow an unverifiable source. SanderJK 18:55, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Sander, I'm not saying every article should meet the tight requirements we've put on the main JT article, just that it's probably best to try and get the facts of the story right. There were a number of misunderstandings in the whole modest video game proposal/penny arcade spat. Penny Arcade thought the game just had to be made as he stipulated, and asked him if he was going to donate to charity now that it had been. He said something like 'You don't understand satire', and they took that to mean that the offer to charity itself was satire. Angered, they paid a donation in his name to charity which he deemed harrassment and threatened to sue them over it. Then the penny arcade forum goers got together to contact the FLA bar because nothing PA had done counted as harrassment in their eyes, and they wanted the FLA bar to realise that JT was threatening ungrounded lawsuits. I know I'm not providing you with any good sources here, but I know what I'm talking about, as I helped proof read the letter that was sent to the FLA bar. Again, I don't think we need to make Thompson look worse than he makes himself look, and the more inaccurate the article is, the easier it is for JT to get people to just dismiss it.--Ryan Acheson 13:05, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I proofread the letter as well, in the same thread as you probably. My only point here is that as far as i know gamespot.com is by any definition given in the wikipedia rules an acceptable source for an article. And thus i want to use it. The reason i do want to use it, is because of the AfD and the claim that this whole article should be blanked because gamespot isn't an acceptable source. I strongly disagree with that. SanderJK 14:21, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Joystiq
I have a problem concerning the "Joystiq" reference. I deleted much Joystiq information from the Flowers For Jack article, as the information was taken directly from Joystiq's discussion forum involving a poster who claimed to be Jack Thompson. Joystiq cannot verify that the poster was actually Thompson - the most they can verify by the email and IP addreses are that the same user has claimed to be Thompson. Unless we can verify without a doubt that the user was Thompson, I believe the section regarding Joystiq should be removed. As with the changes on the Flowers For Jack article, I will give a decent period of time for discussion before making any changes myself. anonymous 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Bad reference link
There is a sentence (with citation) in the article which says:
 * Thompson has not clarified how he is being "extorted," but accuses Penny Arcade's Mike Krahulik of soliciting Florida Bar complaints against him through Mike posting the Florida Bar's link on Penny Arcade's website.[13]

The reference is titled "Penny Arcade! - We Are Only Trying To Help", but it just links to http://www.penny-arcade.com/. That page is replaced by a new newspost/comic every couple of days, so I'm unable to find the original content. There was a news post on that site with that title back in February, http://www.penny-arcade.com/2008/02/06, but I don't see anything there about Jack Thompson, the Florida Bar, or any of that stuff. So, is there any chance the original linker could clarify the link please? Thanks! Infinoid (talk) 18:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 6 one external links on A Modest Video Game Proposal. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110119145322/http://www.theesa.com:80/foundation/index.asp to http://www.theesa.com/foundation/index.asp
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20061115182238/http://www.gamespot.com:80/xbox/action/gta4/news.html?sid=6135979 to http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/gta4/news.html?sid=6135979
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060625020247/https://www.gamespot.com:80/news/6136318.html to http://www.gamespot.com/news/6136318.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060625020247/https://www.gamespot.com:80/news/6136318.html to http://www.gamespot.com/news/6136318.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060216183639/https://www.gamespot.com:80/news/6136737.html to http://www.gamespot.com/news/6136737.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060328112653/http://www.theesa.com/foundation/ to http://www.theesa.com/foundation/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 18:04, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on A Modest Video Game Proposal. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060208023709/http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/110152.html to http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/110152.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060328075442/http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/112527.html to http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/112527.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060328112653/http://www.theesa.com/foundation/ to http://www.theesa.com/foundation/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 21:15, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on A Modest Video Game Proposal. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060328112653/http://www.theesa.com/foundation/ to http://www.theesa.com/foundation/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 12:22, 24 June 2017 (UTC)