Talk:Frozen Synapse

Manual link
What version of the game manual should be linked to, if any? The one hosted on mode7games.com is pretty difficult to read, but it is truly official. The in-game manual has been mirrored (with formatting) on the unofficial wiki, as well as Wakapodus's own Frozen Synapse portal site.

I would like to get some sort of consensus on which of these links, if any, should be included. Wakopodus seems intent on keeping his site in the list of links, and rather than start an edit war, I'd like some more opinions. ~ Josh "Duff Man" (talk) 00:40, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The one on the unofficial wiki seems like the logical choice, as it is the easiest to browse/read. Menethh (talk) 03:19, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

--Wakapodus (talk) 19:32, 14 November 2011 (UTC) : What's your problem with my site being linked to on this article in the first place huh ? other than that you dislike me and my work. Well ? That's right, nothing.

1) The manual on my site IS the official one because it's a trusty copy of the one on mode7games.com, I never claimed my site was the official FS something, its homepage states it. Oh and the wiki is not more official.

2) It was the first, the wiki one only appeared after tehshrike found out about mine here and that means you stole my idea, cause we don't need 2 HTML versions of it.

3) It is more complete than the wiki's because I kept everything and added all links.

4) As everyone can see, there's nothing to oppose to the official manual linking to my site, that's why you meneth found no other argument than "easier to browse and read" and pretend it was "logical", (bouahahaha). Hey ! I too can argue that mine is easier to browse because the TOC is not one page long and is always visible.

You lose.

P.S. there's already a link to the wiki, yet you want another ? how far will you guys go.

P.S.2 meneth you don't have you say here, you didn't contribute to the article and you don't own any of the sites

P.S.3 don't try to make me think that 76.85.184.113 wasn't one of you

P.S.4 if the official manual has no place here then so does the wiki, cause both have the same purpose, so feel free to remove the wiki's link :-D

Reverted these changes to unofficial wiki per consensus and would like to direct Wakapodus to WP:ADV, WP:COI, WP:POINT, WP:OWN, WP:SPA, WP:WAR and WP:CIVIL. - Rushyo  Talk  15:51, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

--Wakapodus (talk) 16:37, 21 May 2012 (UTC) there is no consensus and nothing guarantees the "betterness" of one, there is only a bunch of people who have PERSONAL reproaches against me and find excuses to remove my content, as I have demonstrated on this talk page and nobody refuted my arguments, which shows that I am in my right, any honest person can see it. Also I didn't start the edit war and with your revision the link to the manual on the wiki is named "official manual" just like it was for mine, this clearly shows that that I am the VICTIM of PERSONAL ATTACKS. Added: Oh and for the sake of understanding the so called "advertising and conflict of interest", it should be mentioned that "Josh "Duff Man" and Meneth are the owner and admin of fs.error420.com/wiki/
 * It's true, the unofficial wiki is hosted on one of my domains. Personally, I'm not even sure the official manual text needs to be linked to from this wiki page.  In my post that started this section, I linked to the three versions that are online that I know of, and questioned if we even needed to link to any of them.  The only thing that I'm pretty confident about is that Wakapodus is being unnecessarily rude, but I have no interest in joining in on this edit war. ~ Josh "Duff Man" (talk) 17:27, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

--Wakapodus (talk) 18:04, 21 May 2012 (UTC) I was rude because at time of writing I was pissed of 'cause it was like the third time I restored my link which I felt had its place and because I know I have some haters. I've already explained why my page should be the one linked to. I don't care about the "official" part in the link's name, I don't try to make visitors think my site is the official one, "official" is useful because it's the only way to differentiate it from all other non official "manuals". I put it on wikipedia because I know people search for it, but I could have put several other links to useful non official documents on my site.


 * Consensus is not unanimous agreement or a vote and what you are trying to achieve here is known as a filibuster, a tactic designed to avoid consensus. There are two contributors here who may have a conflict of interest, but one has promoted consensus whilst the other is ignoring it. One is a single purpose account whilst the other is not. One is being civil whilst one is not. One is edit warring and one is not. Of those two parties, one has taken the approach of consensus and found it in everybody but you. If you want to argue the minority point that's quite welcome, the same policies about edit warring apply to us as they do to you, and prevent us from simply using numbers to force through a point (we'd eventually be subject to the same criticism you're experiencing now) - but since you have thus far shown nothing but contempt for a resolution that is not in your favour, you're hoisting yourself by one's metaphorical petard. Oh, we also assume good faith here until proven otherwise. - Rushyo  Talk  20:09, 21 May 2012 (UTC)


 * --Wakapodus (talk) 21:55, 21 May 2012 (UTC) A consensus is the agreement of the majority, in other words it's those who are the most numerous who win, not those with the best arguments and this is why I condemn consensus.
 * My account is a single purpose one because I became a FS expert and so I was able to enhance its wiki page. You'll notice that I didn't just put my link, I did more. Replacing a link by another one without justification or notice is NOT being civil. If I am edit warring and they aren't, then who am I warring with ??? They found the consensus in everybody ? where ? joshduffman asked for it, meneth gave his opinion and I gave mine. It's 1 to 1, there's no consensus. Hell yes I want to argue the minority point but I seem to be the only one wanting to provide argument on the real issue. Where are your own arguments ? so far you've only criticized my behaviour, not my content. You say you can't use numbers to win but this is exactly what a consensus is, so you're in direct contradiction.
 * You've pretty much missed the boat regarding WP:consensus. We go to great lengths here at Wikipedia to not be a democracy because WP:Wikipedia is not a democracy and WP:Polling is not a substitute for discussion. Were this a democracy you would have already lost, but we don't even have a concept of WP:WIN. The idea of WP:consensus is the reason this debate continues to be alive.
 * The topic of discussion is subjective. I can't offer anything more than my opinion. There's no standard to which I can aspire in this topic, it's just opinion. We don't make decisions here based on unanimous votes because we don't have a concept of voting either, so I decided to be WP:BOLD and, as a result of your behaviour, openly propose a position of consensus which was based largely on you being an WP:SPA with an attitute problem and therefore not constructive to the discussion. It doesn't mean I was right and you are more than legitimately allowed to turn around and argue that's not the case. What I can say is that by making that WP:BOLD move I feel we appear to be slowly moving in a productive direction. - Rushyo  Talk  22:36, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Also regarding: "I became a FS expert and so I was able to enhance its wiki page". Please stop this line of reasoning. You don't own this page and you have no standing above anyone else. To quote WP:Expert editors:" Experts do not have any other privileges in resolving conflicts in their favor: in a content dispute between a (supposed) expert and a non-expert, it is not permissible for the expert to "pull rank" and declare victory. In short, "Because I say so" is never an acceptable justification for a claim in Wikipedia, regardless of expertise. Likewise, expert contributions are not protected from subsequent revisions from non-experts, nor is there any mechanism to do so. Ideally, if not always in practice, it is the quality of the edits that counts." - Rushyo  Talk  22:41, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Now then, since we're dealing with essentially a subjective choice (I'm unfamiliar with any Wikipedia-based arguments in favour of any of the three presented) we might want to consider a Request for comment, which is a nice informal way to help build consensus on such a matter. This means, Wakapodus, you'll be able to argue your point from a fresh position, on its merits (which you clearly believe are substantial). Does that sound amenable to everyone? - Rushyo  Talk  20:22, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
 * --Wakapodus (talk) 21:55, 21 May 2012 (UTC) Ok lets do this RFC thing, I don't know how it works but give me the link and once I find others' arguments there I'll post mine. In the meantime I request the article (in its current version) being protected.
 * An RfC lasts for 30 days, typically. I doubt your proposal to have the page protected would be accepted as a result, but you're welcome to try at Requests_for_page_protection. If the procedure looks a little arcane, it really is. Personally I'm lazy and use a built-in plugin called WP:Twinkle to do it for me. - Rushyo  Talk  22:36, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
 * An RfC lasts for 30 days, typically. I doubt your proposal to have the page protected would be accepted as a result, but you're welcome to try at Requests_for_page_protection. If the procedure looks a little arcane, it really is. Personally I'm lazy and use a built-in plugin called WP:Twinkle to do it for me. - Rushyo  Talk  22:36, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

It's an easy to solve problem: per our policy on external links, no manual link is appropriate. Period. Not even one that is officially from the company. We provide a link to the main site, and that's it. No forums, no chat rooms, no wikis, no manuals. There's no need for an RfC, because an local consensus can't overrule a site-wide policy. I've removed all of the links there except for the main site. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:32, 22 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Where? I'm looking at LINKSTOAVOID but there's nothing about manuals I can see. On the other hand, it seems to meet criteria 3 laid out in WP:ELYES. Also WP:EL is not policy, it's a content guideline, so I'm curious as to where such a precedent would originate in policy. If such criteria did exist, there ought to be a policy to back it up. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying I can't see your evidence from the information you've provided. - Rushyo  Talk  08:01, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Although I do note WP:ELOFFICIAL states "[Official] links are exempt from the links normally to be avoided" anyway. Scratch that, misunderstood the criteria for being considered an official link. - Rushyo  Talk  08:05, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Guidelines and policies aren't as different as they seem. In order to justify deviance from a Guideline, you have to present an extremely persuasive rationale for why this particular article is special. That is, why should the article for the game Frozen Synapse have a link to a manual even though the guideline indicates that generally they should not. A manual meets none of the criteria in WP:ELYES (it's not official, this isn't an article about the manual, and it's not information needed for encyclopedic coverage). Instead, if falls under WP:ELNO #1 and #13. However, if you think I'm wrong, the best thing to do is to ask at the external links noticeboard. Finally, though, Rushyo, "you should avoid linking to a site that you own, maintain, or represent—even if Wikipedia guidelines seem to imply that it may otherwise be linked." You can discuss the issue on the article talk page (as we are doing here), but you shouldn't insert it yourself. Qwyrxian (talk) 13:17, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Qwyrxian: Rushyo isn't connected to any sites linked to from this article, he just stepped in in an attempt to help arbitrate (which I appreciate - thanks, Rushyo).
 * I'd be willing to move forward with the rfc, but from the recent discussion it looks like policies may already speak to this situation. Is that correct? ~ Josh "Duff Man" (talk) 16:02, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Yup, I think that pretty much covers it. - Rushyo  Talk  16:07, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't have any conflict of interest on this article, I was mostly drawn to it to address the incivility issue. Cheers for the clarification, though. I'm pretty much certain you're right, it was just non-obvious to me where the actual policy line was being drawn. WP:EL strikes me as more confusing/vague than other policies and guidelines I've read, which probably means I need to brush up on it. Thanks for the assist. - Rushyo  Talk  16:07, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Just stepping in here, please don't edit war on the article without consensus being reached first. First reach consensus, then edit the article with the resulting changes. I've protected the article for 3 days to prevent editing to support this point.--Slon02 (talk) 16:52, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm confused. Are you accusing me of edit warring? I've made one change to the article, half a year after the last change regarding this, per BOLD, revert, discuss cycle rationale. I have no stake in this. I'm beginning to feel a little bit aggrieved at these accusations flying about. Where is the assumption of good faith? - Rushyo  Talk  17:21, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry if I wasn't clear- I wasn't accusing any particular person in particular of edit warring, but was addressing everyone involved in editing the article, as there was an edit war going on. I'm not interested in taking any action at any particular people, and I'm also not accusing anyone in particular of edit warring.--Slon02 (talk) 17:29, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Apologies, I think I'm too used to forum discussions /facepalm - Rushyo  Talk  17:39, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
 * (talk) 23:07, 22 May 2012 (UTC) Slon02 I don't get the sense of what you said. If consensus has been reached for an article it's logical that nobody wants to edit war ! So if there's an edit war it can only be before consensus !--Wakapodus
 * Slon02 was probably patrolling WP:RFPP (Slon02 is an also an admin), and saw the request for page protection there (the same as me). Xe fully protected the article to stop any edit warring, and was doing his due dilligence to let the talk page know about it. My guess is that the edit warring will now stop, since I think we can all see that the guidelines show that we shouldn't link to any of the manuals. Rushyo, the reason I said that you had a COI is because you said at the very beginning of this thread, "The manual on my site...." Apologies if I misunderstood, but I assumed that meant that you owned/operated/managed the website on which one of the manuals was hosted. Perhaps you just meant "on the site I prefer", and if so, I apologize. Also, I agree that WP:EL isn't obvious; my shorthand approach is always "cut out every link that isn't absolutely essential or extremely high quality". So, for example, linking to a NIH site for a disease is reasonable. For a video game though, that's going to leave only the official site it almost every circumstance. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:22, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

"because you said at the very beginning of this thread" Ah, I didn't write that. Wakapodus did. He signs his comments at the start, rather than the end. To be honest, the edit warring had already stopped/been resolved once everyone involved understood the revert policies adequately. - Rushyo  Talk  23:33, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

What's it about
The lede could use some work in talking what this game is about (theme wise as well as gameplay wise). Is it a tower defense game? Is it a sports game? Is it about green meadows or a dystopian future (that is answered later, but this belongs in the lede). Right now we only get that it's turn based. If someone who knows about this game could expand on this, it would be very welcome, as it is, it is only of limited value to those who do not know the game. --Ulkomaalainen (talk) 00:59, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * As it says, it's a turn-based tactics game. That's a genre, equivalent to tower defense or sports. Although it's not in household usage neither are most video game, music or film genres but they are appropriate for the lead. Anyway, I'll have a deep read of Manual of Style/Lead section and see what I can do. - Rushyo  Talk  09:18, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, yes, but you can play a lot of games turn based - you can have a turn based 4X game, a war game, an economics game. So it is more of a "user interface" or general setup than an actual all explaining genre. I just think, this part is too quickly skipped and could just need some extra info about story (if any). --Ulkomaalainen (talk) 11:58, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * That's why it's turn-based tactics, not simply turn-based. Like the distinction between real time strategy and real time. I've taken a cue from RTS articles and moved the explanation of the fictional background to the lead. - Rushyo  Talk  15:18, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I edited the first paragraph a bit, trying to clarify the squad-based combat aspect. That first paragraph could probably be improved to flow better, any help there would be appreciated. ~ Josh "Duff Man" (talk) 13:56, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm still not really convinced. We don't lead into real time strategy articles (eg. Command & Conquer (video game)) by adding a paragraph explaining what an RTS is. The addition: "in which players plan their moves at their leisure and turns are resolved simultaneously. Players attempt to win by giving orders to a small squad of armed combatants, most commonly with the goal of eliminating all enemy units." is essentially just a summary of what people would see if they clicked on turn-based tactics. It's not game-specific. I should probably just be less pedantic :) - Rushyo  Talk  15:09, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The reason for the extra explanation is that it's not a typical turn-based strategy game. Typically, turn-based strategy involves each person taking a turn, in order.  Player one goes first, the next player goes second, and so on.  In Frozen Synapse, nobody "goes first" - both players prepare their turn, and then both their turns resolve at once.
 * This type of turn-based strategy is seen much less frequently than the traditional varieties, and doesn't have a name of its own - thus the "resolved simultaneously" link in the first paragraph. ~ Josh "Duff Man" (talk) 17:26, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Turn-based tactics is not turn based strategy. Simultaneous playback is (surprisingly) common in TBTs and as such they used to be very popular as play by email games (take, for example, Laser Squad Nemesis or Combat Mission). The only bit of the proposal above that is not explicitly covered by turn-based tactics is the "turns are resolved simultaneously". The fact that turns play out simultaneously doesn't make sense in the lead as it's just a typical TBT gameplay mechanic. The fact that people keep talking about TBSes and RTSes implies to me any confusion is unfamiliarity with the very concept of TBTs, not the time mechanism itself. - Rushyo  Talk  19:52, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Frozen Synapse: Red
2012-05-29: A new extension/DLC, Frozen Synapse: Red, was released on the official site and Steam, including a new unit, a new single player campaign, advanced multiplayer setup "mutators", and 2vsAI coop mode for all campaigns. --84.63.184.61 (talk) 18:14, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Holy blue red hell, that's alot of new content. Let's see how we can work it in... - Rushyo  Talk  19:56, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Added, sourced from PC Gamer - Rushyo  Talk  22:44, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

C-Class Assessment.
Alright, first of all, I'm keeping the article as a high Start-class, although it isn't far at all from C.

Some things that would be nice:


 * Reception. This is my main concern here, with only a couple of sentences forming the entire section. What exactly makes the game good or bad? What did other reviewers say about it? It'd be a swell idea to source the Edge or Eurogamer reviews and add specific praises/criticisms. Fix this, and you can have C-Class.
 * Development information. This is something that's usually handy for B- or GA- class, whenever an article's striving for them, but it's a great thing to have at any level. The article layout was rather... unorthodox, moments ago, so I've swapped it to something slightly more reader-friendly that combines the DLC with a rudimentary 'development' section consisting of the previous 'alternate ending' and 'future development' sections. If more development information could be found, that would be peachy.
 * Otherwise: minor sourcing quirks. Don't use bare URLs as citations, and ensure all sources are reliable. Forums, for instance, are not usually considered reliable on Wikipedia, even if they're official.

The article isn't a great distance from C-Class, and could reach B-Class with a bit of elbow grease, but it still needs a little bit of work. Cheers. Emmy  Altava  22:24, 9 July 2012 (UTC)