Talk:America's Army/Archive 9

Question Regarding the Depictions of US and Enemy Soldiers
In the example shown on the main page, the US soldier appears to be Caucasian, whereas the enemy soldier appears to be non-Caucasian, perhaps Middle Eastern (the main differences between the two figures appear to be that the enemy figure has darker skin and facial hair). Is this true of all the figures in the game?

--Apeloverage 08:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


 * No, not at all. Friendly forces have various skin tones from light to dark and so do the enemy. --Igor at work 00:36, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Overhaul
So here it is: a mixture of all edits I found reasonable together with a lot more information. It took me several days and I had a look at all the other edits. If there are linguistic mistakes, please fix them. If you have problems with the content, don't revert anything, Ele, as you're always telling me because I've reconsidered ANY edit and will give you reasons for ANY change. Just talk and I will consider any statement with an open mind and reply. I will not include more information because to me, the article is brilliant now, and so I will try to prevent any drop of quality for the article in future. After all I can only say that working on it was worth it but since it completed in my opinion, I will not create a further total overhaul.

Before I forget: if you think information about weapons and maps should be included, I can only say "RTFM". Yes, installed with AA is an over 200 pages manual with all the trivialities a player could want to know. Likewise there are explanations for the other edits as well. Just ask me if anything else doesn't appear rational at first glance. My ICQ Number is 201-401-028 in case you want a quick replyNightBeAsT 22:49, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC

24.60.104.71 02:34, 9 September 2006 (UTC)its been anounced by the devs that 2.8 will be the last patch using UE2.5, then they will move on too aa 3.0, you are right though, I do know that there is a UE3.5 in the making, as well as a UE4.0 which is still only in its basic brainstorm stage.


 * User above (24.60.104.71) is mistaken. The development for America's Army 2.x is ongoing and has not stopped, although considerable effort has been shifted to development of 3.0 using the new Unreal 3.0 Engine. --Igor at work 00:39, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Constructive discussion
I see that you've had problems with edit wars and disagreements here. There's plenty of commitment to this article and I'm sure that if all of you could just act a bit more civil and refrain from making personal attacks, you'd probably be better off. Remember: there are no excuses for making personal attacks.

Instead of just reverting one another and complaining about things like grammar or poor judgement about including facts, fix the problems yourselves. No one likes to hear complaints about mistakes all the time. Try to be constructive in your criticism and try to reach consensus instead of bickering about who's 100% right.

Now don't take this as an excuse to start fighting over who did or said this or that. Start over instead and try to summarize your problems and see what can be done to fix them. If you just stick to the principles of civility and WikiLove, I'm sure you can reach an agreement on how to make this a better article. Peter Isotalo 23:51, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Reverting 30 March 2005
First off, NightBeAsT please note that no one owns an article, and in my opinion you have no support in saying "I won't justify why I reverted, justify why it should be changed!" Now, reasons why the version you revert to cannot stand:
 * POV: distributed free by the US Army as a global public relations stunt to present the current US Army in a glorifying way so as in part to help raise the US Army recruitment numbers
 * No opinion but fact and it answers the WHY question. Not answering the question would be biased. Say: AA has been alleged to be a first-person shooter if you like weasel speech
 * POV: America's Army is primarily playable and subliminal video game propaganda and a virtual recruiting tool
 * No opinion but fact and it answers the WHAT and WHY question. Excluding them would be as biased as above.
 * POV: America's Army falls into the subgenre of an online infantry wargame and serious game. Contrasted to reality, it is relatively authentic in terms of visual and acoustical representation, especially pertaining to weaponry, but not modern war. Unlike Special Force and Under Ash, the game does not belong to the category of realist games.
 * Please explain in what way and why it is POV.
 * POV: The game also extends the military entertainment complex
 * DOES IT NOT??? Read the external links.
 * POV: globally promotes a one-sided and self-glorifying message about this army with its interventions
 * The world's premier landforce fighting terrorism and for freedom. Isn't it self-glorifying? Isn't it one-sided?
 * POV: Although America's Army claims to represent the real Army and gives largely true information, it contains partisan bias and fails to paint a complete and balanced picture of the US Army along with its conflicts, mainly playing down or excluding negative facets of the Army.
 * Do you know sf_Abu_Ghraib, the new map? Doesn't exist. Nor do civilians on the maps (with ONE map exception). Nor does the readme's of the game or the game itself include traumas, crippled soldiers, cries of fear, hostages, ambushes, verbal abuses, hysterical soldiers, ugly soldiers etc. Where are such things in that "accurate portrayal of soldiers experiences"? My opinion?
 * POV: Research papers of four different universities that have analysed America's Army all confirm that the game is propaganda
 * You can remove that sentence.

Please read Neutral point of view for information on the "non-negotiable" requirement set down that articles not state opinions as fact. Furthermore, it's just poor writing to define something primarily by comparison to another thing ('AA is similar to Counter-Strike'). That won't explain anything to people unfamiliar to this topic, nor stand up to time. You've also overwritten a lot of formatting and general writing corrections. 119 18:30, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I know very well that I've no right at all for the articles and if I thought so, why would I delete so much of what I contributed, entire sections. Like I said, should I justify why I reverted before you justify why you change? Justifiying why something needs to be changed makes it crucial for the contributor to have GOOD reasons. "Good" in the sense of reasons that you could use as arguments in a debate. Change for the sake of changing certainly isn't a good reason and would be prevented by that rule. I've already read through that Wiki:NPOV twice. Sure, many people don't know CS but then again 15 times or so as many gamers. There's no other game that similar and it tells that it was the model and how the gameplay works at the same time. It's impossible to describe the gameplay in the summary understandably in other ways. Also please justify your claims instead of just saying 'this and that is POV, now disprove it.'NightBeAsT 19:18, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Nice references but that doesn't justify the rest. You changed the version, I changed it back, you changed that back.... what's your point?? Edit war??NightBeAsT 20:24, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Mediaright
A New Beginning

Let's begin. Hi. I'm a volunteer. First, I apologize for deleting everything, but it's for the best in the long run. I have played AA for a while now but am a reasonable human being and not a fanatic. This article has had many problems from the start to the present, including this new version. There has to be a new organized dabate about all of this. Ok. One that takes into account everything. Here's how it's going to work. Below there are sections for each issue involved. If a new one comes up, feel free to add it. I'll start by adding my comments. Please add another block for any other non content related issues. Sorry. Thanks.

More vs. Less Content -Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of information. Not a database of edited articles. Information is our goal and under no circumstances should information be compromised just because of space or feeling that it isn't useful to anyone. If you write it, they will come. It's a sure thing at one point or another.

Article Splitting: Gameplay and Game Development

Article Splitting: AA1 vs. AA SP

Once again, I'm sorry. This was drastic but needed.

"Justification"
Now here is the list of explanations for why most of the sentences I wrote spending 5days should be kept rather than "new" changes. Probably I spend more time on the explanation than you on the edits. I'll also restore "my" version, which includes recent changes of other contributors, again. Why justify that something should not be changed, when it is more reasonable to demand a justification that something of a version containing outcomes of discussion should be changed totally. Stableness of an article is an aspect of a great article according to wikipedia. I've always included reasonable changes of other contributors. You? You just reverted, alleged the other version of POV, failed to explain why it should be POV, reverted again, alleged again, failed to explain again. Really fair...

Changes:
 * 1) Why delete "This article is about the computer game America's Army". It is what America's Army is in one word: a computer game. It also explains that the article is about this game instead of the real army. Is there a faster way of explaining it to the reader?
 * 2) Why deleting that the game was developed by the US Army and some NPS scholars? Should the reader be tricked into thinking the game was developed by some independent institute called "MOVES Institute"? "The MOVES institute" is just a name for a little part of the army, not a different organisation, and might therefore mislead.
 * 3) I count 4 links for "US Army" on one screen. Please Make only links relevant to the context. That's why I've not linked many things that used to be. The article was overlinked. Why revert that too?
 * 4) It makes no sense at all to write US, then U.S., then US etc. Keep consistency! No matter if you like U.S. or US (where's the difference except for two unnecessary dots?), they have the very same meaning and it's totally pointless to exchange these words if they don't need to be changed. Never change for the sake of changing. Should every reader who has read the article just exchange the words just because he loves dots? Then comes the next one who hates dots and changes them and so on. Same with the dates. July 4, 2002 or 4 July 2002 are changes that make no sense and are only preferences of one's own point of view. Stableness belongs to the characteristic features of a great article, not a train of thought. Some subpage of wikipedia says US should be spelt U.S. while USA should be spelt USA. That's why I changed them all to U.S.. Why revert a jumble of US-U.S.-US-US?
 * 5) Why write "Tactical shooter". Tactical shooter is not a subgenre of first-person shooter, but a vague definition of sth that only MAY include fps. It is more unknown than "FPS" and more vague. You might just as well then use "serious game", "computer game", "propaganda", "Advergame" or whatever for "genre". So which can be used to keep "genre" NPOV? If you click on the link to "genre", you see what only fits: "First-person shooter".


 * Why did Bond not recognize that? I almost forgot. How long should this child's play continue, Bond? You're just faking support of versions that I disapprove of not because sth is wrong with them... but because I disapprove of them. You did not revert "America's Army is the best simulation" because although it is POV and would be deleted in the German version of this article within ONE minute, you knew I wouldn't like the sentence. Indeed, you even reverted Ele's version twice. But apart from that, brilliant info box, Bond.

NightBeAsT 19:34, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) Why delete " (AA)"? It is the abbreviation for "America's Army". Even the cover proves that. Why delete that?
 * 2) Why delete propaganda and recruiting tool? They're the reasons for the game, the answer to WHY for the game. It is without one of the most important questions a reader could have, if not THE most important. Excluding the question would without any doubt make the article completely biased, I told you. If you feel it doesn't fit propaganda, read through the first two archives of the talk page and the definition of propaganda. I'm sure as hell not going to spend another 100kb of text for every new contributor one that issue. If you like the term "alleged case of", use it for every picture you find for propaganda and see if this POV term. Or how about this: "911 is an alleged case of a human being". You see how it sounds? But without any points accusing me of POV twice and using it as an excuse to restore real POV. Sorry but this hypocrisy inflames me.
 * 3) Why delete the fact that it is fully financed by taxes? It's nowhere else in the article.
 * 4) Why mention the Navy in the opening paragraph? Are they important AT ALL? I put them to history where they will still get more space than the lack of relevance should actually allow.
 * 5) Why delete the short description of realism in America's Army. The game is a statement - no matter if you regard AA as an accurate portrayal of reality or an intentional misrepresentation of reality. It is only intended as a statement in the guise of a game, not simply as a game, no one would spend million of dollars for a game without any intention, and the game's intention is delivering the statement. Now, a statement can only be between true and false. What is true, represents reality - it is realistic, it is truly. What is untrue, is unrealistic. What is in truth is in reality. I've tried to keep the description of reality/truth in America's Army fair. Is it not?
 * 6) Why only write "inspired by CS"? I've tried to describe the extremely close connection between the games months ago till the fact that the devs say they had the game actually taken as model convinced all. Why play that down by words such as "inspired".
 * 7) Why put the game's popularity away? It needs no section. What should that section all include???? In the otherwise idiotic and uninformative (IMO) CS article that was called a good example of video game article, popularity is also summarized in the first section. Also your depiction of popularity neglected the contrast between the devs' "number of players" and the real number of players.
 * 8) Why delete the picture of training? Compared to the only 2-3 hours a player would spend on training, the multiplayer part is totally dominating (this can be seen in the number of average "honor" (34). However, I think the proportion still deserves a picture. The picture taken depicts the first training level, the level that really everyone who has played the game must have seen. The article surely should not become a picture book, but pictures enliven the text. Just look at propaganda. Beautiful, isn't it? It's certainly one of the reasons why it became a feautured article (see its talk page).
 * 9) Picture description: Why did you revert "Difference in depiction of the same player, the left as the "US Army" and the left as "OPFOR"? What's right then? Such changes/reverts just prove that you're ignoring what I edit.
 * 10) Doesn't "round-start of the game's most often played map" explain more than "User interface during gameplay"?
 * 11) Why did you revert V.I.P.? Longer words, such as USA should be written without dots in Wikipedia according to the same source that said US should be written with dots.
 * 12) Why is the professor suddenly only "of the NY University"? Should the reader be tricked into thinking it is just a student of the university?
 * 13) Why did you delete the correct interpretation of what Galloway said? Leaving out negative aspects of the US Army would be one way of intentional lack of realism. What about the fidelty of content or the restricted code? You didn't read through the text, did you?
 * 14) Why did you include the sentence about Hitler? Was he crucial to understand the next sentence? Anyway. It further demonstrates the propaganda behind so I left it like it.
 * 15) Why did you change that about military entertainment complex? Three or four sources of academic articles included that aspect, and isn't it logical???

Advocate Request
A participant in this discussion requested an advocate, which may be of benefit to many users in this discussion. If it was you you didn't sign your request so please see it for more info. If you are interested in the service of an advocate please see the AMA page. --Wgfinley 19:28, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

POV-ectomy
This article is in need of a major POV-ectomy. I changed the opening sentence which was obvious POV pushing. Readers should make up their own mind whether a video game for recruiting is a good use of their tax dollars and whether or not that is a good thing. The replacement is factual and neutral and allows readers to do just that.

I'll look at it some more but this appears to be a pretty hot dispute. That said, the POV pushing in this article as it currently stands is blatant and obvious.

Positions regarding the game being a propaganda tool are adequately covered in the "Controversy" section although some polishing is needed in that section as well.

I also added the NPOV tag as quite clearly there is a raging NPOV dispute on this article and that needs to be noted for anyone visiting it or editing it. --Wgfinley 19:35, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Community.
Is it possible that an addition to the article be made that talks about the community that has sprung up around the game?


 * 100% agree with you. There is a vast, and dedicated community of gamers for this game. I added a few minor things about them to the article but the topic deserves its own section. It is also worth noting that this game has really dedicated Beta testers that contribute greatly to testing and development of the game. --Igor at work 00:45, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Word choices for realism
Realism is defined as, among other things, "fidelity in art and literature [and computer games] to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization". Realist in most cases is a noun which usually refers to a person who holds beliefs that are accurate without idealizing. When used as an adjective, it usually is applied to something associated with that type of person, as in "the realist movement" or "realist art". Realistic is an adjective that modifies a noun having the qualities described in the definition for realism. The essay on "Social Realism in Gaming" tries to draw a distinction between "realistic-ness" (not a real word) and social realism. To do so, the author has invented new uses for existing words. I do not wish to diminish Galloway's core thesis: that a game can be very realistic in terms of rendering visual and aural reality, while ignoring other important aspects of a virtual experience that give it verisimilitude. Applying existing terms in new ways is common in thesis papers, but using realist as an adjective alongside realistic is no more valid than business-speak turning solution into a verb and using it alongside solve as in "if we solution this dispute quickly we can work to solve other problems." –DeweyQ 16:53, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Feel free to change it. I'm not sure if you're completely right there but I have no time to check it today or tomorrow and your edits haven't been bad so far. I read the essay ca two months ago. If I come to a different conclusion after reading the analysis and the debate here again, we'll still be able to resume the discussion. But please not just now.NightBeAsT 19:51, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Reverted edits
Now that was strange. I reverted the edit that called the game "propaganda", but it showed me as reverting it so that it said propaganda... that's weird. Thanks, Wgfinley. Linuxbeak | Desk 04:33, May 22, 2005 (UTC)


 * NP, I'm hoping this version will be accepted, I can see the argument that it is propaganda but to just out and out call it as such is not NPOV IMHO so I tried to split up the developer claims from the critic claims, hopefully this will satisfy all concerned. --Wgfinley 05:22, 22 May 2005 (UTC)


 * There's a difference between "to be" and "to charge" (= to accuse of a crime). If "sth is sth" is true, and it is replaced by "sth is charged by critics to be sth", then I cannot see the neutrality of it. Why not go to the article propaganda and change all examples of propaganda to accusations of propaganda (eg "North Korean propaganda showing a soldier destroying the United States Capitol building" -> "North Korean poster showing a soldier destroying the United States Capitol building charged to be propaganda")? Let's see how they will react to it.NightBeAsT 10:51, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I would like to know how someone could classify the game as "propaganda". I personally play this game, but it's not like I have any intentions on joining the Army. Linuxbeak | Desk 12:37, May 22, 2005 (UTC)


 * Both archives contain information on that:
 * Archive1 - Propaganda


 * Archive2 - Various discussions


 * The definition might also help (Propaganda). I won't start over. I'm not a record always turned on for the benefit of newcomers.NightBeAsT 12:51, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounds like someone here isn't assuming good faith. It appears that you are a major part of the above conversations. I still don't agree with the term "propaganda", but I can assure you that someone else will revert it. I'm not going to start an edit war over something as silly and stupid as this. Linuxbeak | Desk 13:00, May 22, 2005 (UTC)
 * And who are you calling a newcomer? Seems like virtually all your edits are to this article alone, and you don't even break 500 edits. It seems like you're using this article as your personal soapbox. But here I go not assuming good faith; oh dear. Linuxbeak | Desk 13:05, May 22, 2005 (UTC)


 * Oh my, don't take it personally. I meant "newcomer to the article", which you certainly are. There have been a lot of people involved in the article and usually not newcomers to Wikipedia at all. I'm not a newcomer to Wikipedia either although my edits with the account didn't start till November last year or so. That's because I went without an account all the time, which has advantages (e.g. anonymity due to changes of IP), as well as disadvantages (one's authority is immediately undermined because IPs are often seen as vandals and you do not have a watchlist). I'm still not using an account in the German wikipedia by the way although I've edited for about half a year already (mainly improving the articles' language). I don't attribute the article to me at all. Just feel free to edit but make sure it doesn't conflict with discussions. Be bold, but not reckless.NightBeAsT 13:33, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Ah, okay; I understand now. Okay, sorry for jumping to conclusions. I don't agree with the propaganda term, personally, but I suppose in its literal meaning it's correct. Hi, by the way. :-) Linuxbeak | Desk 17:45, May 22, 2005 (UTC)
 * When you don't agree with "propaganda", you have a point because the term is nowadays usually said when disapproving of sth, but it remains true and has no real synonym because advertisement doesn't apply. The developers, of course, use euphemisms, especially "strategic communication".
 * This expression is not wrong, but expresses approval. Propaganda expresses disapproval, it is a pejorative. I think it would be fair/neutral if we write something like "America's Army is, like critics would call it, a primarily a playable propaganda and recruiting tool, or, like the army would put it, a strategic communication" or sth like that. That would merge a rather disapproving view with a rather approving one.NightBeAsT 18:28, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

When the previous consensus was reached there didn't appear to be much discussion about it (think you and one other person engaged in it) there is now. As you said yourself, propaganda is perjorative and unless obvious using it unattributed is not NPOV. The wording is simple, some people think it's propaganda, the developers claim it's a recruiting tool. Fair, attributed views and NPOV. As far as use of the word "charge" I think it's use is appropriate but I would be happy to change it to "allege". There are many different definitions of the word charge (i.e. I don't think the Charge of the Light Brigade was in a courtroom). --Wgfinley 04:27, 23 May 2005 (UTC)


 * How dishonest of you to play down the discussed truth to unproven claims ...


 * 'to allege': to state sth as a fact but without giving proof


 * 'to charge': to accuse sb puclicly of doing sth wrong or bad; (formal) to accuse sb formally of a crime so that there can be a trial in a court of law


 * What is "proof" in your opinion then? Right, I couldn't give a reference to the Bible and God remained quiet too. Something that fits the definition can be stated as a fact rather than an accusation. "Propaganda" is not defined subjectively, which is why it can be stated as a fact. True! Consensus is not affected by bias at all! After all, "propaganda" will always be tried to exclude while expressions such as "best simulator" were kept. If you like, you can write the game has been accused of destroying the entire planet Earth, which would be right once sb has accused it of doing so. "The game is destroying our planet completely"!!! Oops, now I have said it making the accusation valid. But does it destroy the planet?! Don't you tell me you didn't know that an accusation may be the truth just like it may be false. If you're interested in deceiving with language, do that at propaganda telling them to replace "be" with charge/allege/claim/whatever to be. But I guess it's about entering an opinion into the article. Interestingly you didn't write "has been alleged of being a serious game/first-person shooter/authentic in terms of visual and acoustical representation" or anything.NightBeAsT 11:24, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Dishonest? I'm not being dishonest at all, half of your rant doesn't even make much sense. The legal definition of charge means to accuse of a crime but, as I said, there are many other definitions of the word in common usage. Wordnet has the following when used as a verb:


 * 2: blame for, make a claim of wrongdoing or misbehavior against; "he charged me director with indifference" (syn: accuse)
 * 5: assign a duty, responsibility or obligation to; "He was appointed deputy manager"; "She was charged with supervising the creation of a concordance" (syn: appoint)
 * 7: make an accusatory claim; "The defense attorney charged that the jurors were biased"
 * 21: attribute responsibility to; "We blamed the accident on her"; "The tragedy was charged to her inexperience" (syn: blame))

Almost all of the above work for this sentence. the difference between calling somthing "propaganda" and calling something a "serious game" is that one term is clearly perjorative as you yourself have stated and one is not. You are introducing opinion into the article when you continue to put propaganda in there with no attribution as to its source or proof it qualifies as such. It's POV pushing and doesn't belong without proper attribution and presetation of the dispute as is done later in the article. --Wgfinley 21:44, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Well done
To those of you who have managed to prevent any revert wars regarding the term propaganda for so long, I salute you. Andre ( talk ) 05:20, July 22, 2005 (UTC)

Teen rating
How come a game like this gets a Teen rating, as it is a instrument for recruiting - therefore manipulating the opinion of a young person who still has to develop his own opinion about Army? --Abdull 21:57, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
 * ESRB ratings have nothing to do with the moral content or "message" of a game. Civilization III, for example, is rated E for Everyone, even though the targeting of civilians and the annihilation of opposing cultures is a perfectly viable way to win the game. Compare to things like Doom, where you only kill the forces of evil. Civ 3 doesn't show graphic violence, Doom does. Doom, therefore, is rated M. The fact that America's Army has POV has absolutely nothing to do with it's ESRB rating. Furthermore, other Teen-rated war games, such as Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, also influence people's opinions. For that matter, lot's of other media has messages in it. America's Army doesn't "manipulate" the opinions of teenagers any more than political music, books, TV shows, or movies. It shows the army's message in the form of an entertaining game, and teenagers make up their own minds as to the truth behind it.-LtNOWIS 18:45, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

86.132.35.147
People like self-proclaimed 'NightBeAsT' seem to want to force their own polticial views on people all the time. They are so hypocritical it's amazing. See Talk:Kuma\War for an example of his exploits..--86.132.35.147 00:40, 9 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Funny, an IP claiming to be from the UK alleges anti-Americanism. Normally only people who feel a country is misrepresented come from that country. How many times have I touched an article mainly dealing with America? Almost only this and other games? Maybe that's because I've actually played that game for (two?) years and that was also the first article I edited in the English wikipedia. I've never been to America, I don't really know or care about them either. I'm not hostile towards ANY nation, I hate generalisations about people. Anyway, Brite, what a coincidence that soon after you came here, 86..., an American IP deleted everything related to the message of the game, in other words what you've been complaining about, so that makes who a hypocrite? I'm telling you 86...etc, look at the version history of the game, look at the version history of the talk page, do you really think I would not stand up to your recent imPOVment after eleven months of work on it? I've even planned to rework it in a few months so that it has a chance to become a featured article. Before you think you could just terrorise it and me, you'd best have an exit strategy because when I chose to keep up work on the article months ago, I knew I'd have to keep up for years to keep what was achieved, and next year I'll have a lot more time to spend on any case due to my community service, that is, if you can stay the course until then.NightBeAsT 16:30, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Nightbeast
I'm having a good bit of difficulty trying to edit the "America's Army" article, which is wordy, ungrammatical, and riddled with POV. Every time I try to make an edit the user Nightbeast re-posts the entire original article!

I have the impression this is because he feels he "owns" the article, which he hopes to use for some future publication. This doesn't seem to me to be appropriate to the goals of Wikipedia. I have tried contacting this individual but without success. This seems to me to be an attempt to prevent the on-line community from participating in what I thought Wikipedia was supposed to be all about!

If possible it would be nice if an unbiased third party could compare my version to Nightbeast's. I would appreciate a reply to this posting. A 199.21.28.14 20:10, 9 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually it only becomes wordy and partisan when an anon who has no idea about the article or its discussion and deletes everything connected to the message of the game. I don't "own" the article, I protect its progressive status from persons like you, who think wikipedia is about giving his own opinion about the game and then comes the next and another and so on. Where would the article end up? As a comment? I've investigated and will investigate a lot of work into the article and if you think the article needs to be changed in any way, let's discuss it BEFORE changing the article. I don't ignore discussions. The article is good, you know that. If you want to question whether the message or it being propaganda should be mentioned, you'd better read the talk page rather than going on a deleting spree. And no, I will not give it up and have it become just another poorly written gamer article, that would be a little late and stupid after so a year of work, you'd do the same.NightBeAsT 18:00, 9 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I was hoping to hear from a neutral third party, but whatever. I am going to avoid responding to Nightbeast's inaccurate and insulting remarks and content myself by alluding to the article's many falsehoods and inaccuracies.


 * I’m not going to do any more work on the article; the updates I have done were simply revisions of my previous revisions. However the DISPUTED banner should be added to the article as it stands now.  This is the last thing I’m going to say on this topic:


 * I’m pleased to see that professor Galloway’s theory is now correctly identified as “social realism”. However Gallagher’s ideas, however interesting, are only his own POV!


 * Stating that HONOR is “an indicator of the time a player has played the game rather than the skills they have” is false, and claiming that “players with a high ‘HONOR’ level are sometimes insulted as addicts” is at best gossipmongering.


 * These assertions belong in the Controversy section if they belong anywhere in the article – but the Controversy section is longer than most entire Encyclopedia articles!  Those huge paragraphs of quotations are not necessary and create an impression of bias.  Statements like “it contains partisan bias” and “A Navy-produced booklet found by the investigative journalist Gary Webb explained this shift” are pure POV.  Links to the full-text articles in the lengthy list of links is more than sufficient.


 * Nightbeast's English is better than my German. Unfortunately that’s not saying much! Statements like “America's Army is a figurative and written type of message presentation intended to globally give an approving impression of the present U.S. Army” is both wordy, biased, and ungrammatical.  “America's Army is criticized as promoting the contemporary U.S. Army” would be correct.  There’s a lot of that stuff in there.


 * The article as it stands now is peddling a highly critical POV. This isn’t inappropriate for a personal essay, but it IS inappropriate for an encyclopedia article!  Please (re)read Wikipedia’s NPOV statement!  It should be obvious even to Nightbeast that his article as it stands simply convinces unbiased readers of his prejudices.


 * Ironically I discovered “America’s Army” through the Calgary Herald article, which I read while up there for the Stampede. Undoubtedly this article is useful, and the controversy is an important part of the charm of “America’s Army”.  However this controversy needs to be related in a non-controversial way!  199.21.28.14 18:03, 16 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree to all of those who are against Nightbeast. Someone send Ngihtbeast a warning or let wiki do it.  I do play this game, and i want to make this page as accurate as possible.  Whats even more strange, look at his talk page.  He has done a huge job of getting rid of vandalism on other pages, but why hes "adding" stuff here??  A message to Nightbeast: Stop trying to "hog" the article/articles.  You are only making the page worse when you add in/re-add in your articles/"text" that are not true or in-accurate.  Please ASK first before posting.  XU-engineer 00:31, 24 August 2007 (UTC)