Talk:Civil War (1968 video game)

deletion of individual article?
Hi PresN,

you have deleted the individual article on Civil War (1968) for the following reasons:
 * "the only line it's missing is about the original authors... which is unsourced here"
 * "Redirecting to Early mainframe game, which already covers this game"

ad 1: The source for the individual authors is the section of Civil War in Ahl's book "101 BASIC Computer Games". I find it somewhat unsuitable to prove each and every statement with the same repetitive quote. However, the source for the given statements is that one section. So, I had put the quote at the end of the (original) article stub.

ad 2: I disagree that the article on early mainframe games gives the same information. In addition to the mentioned names of the authors, an individual article specifies categories that allow for systematic indexing and searches, displays a summary, and links to other language wikipedias. Further, there are a few specific mention of the game in other articles, mostly unlinked at the moment, but definitely unsuitably linked to the article of early mainframe games.

Last but not least, Civil War is the earliest documented video strategy game (disregarding military internal simulations). This alone warrants notability for an individual article in my opinion.

How should we proceed? Karawane 71 (talk) 13:36, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay, I was waiting for my copy of They Create Worlds to arrive, which is a big book that expands on the "They Create Worlds" web source used here/in the Early mainframe games article- it unfortunately only mentions Civil War in passing as a game in Ahl's book. (Oddly enough, the web source doesn't mention it at all, so I don't know why it's referenced.) I'd like Civil War to be a stand-alone article, certainly; especially as a potential "first strategy video game". That said, without more sources it's just a paragraph of text expanded out. Right now, we have Basic Computer Games (a short gameplay description + code), Dragon (a short gameplay description + code), and High Score, which says that "Civil War" was on BBSs in the 80s- it doesn't actually even say that it's the same game. That's not enough to build an article on. I see that the German wikipedia article has more content, but it's all unsourced. Without an actual source for the game's development, reception, spread, or anything other than what you could determine from reading the source code (especially for the claim that it was the first strategy video game), there's nothing to base a stand-alone article on. -- Pres N  03:07, 15 January 2020 (UTC)