Talk:Sentinels of the Multiverse: The Video Game

Merging the board game article here
I can't help but feel the gun was jumped here. Looking at the board game article, it appears the request for deletion came out of nowhere, with no discussion on the talk page, and no clear rationale other than one person wondering if it was notable. I myself would have gotten involved, but between Wikipedia visits the request had been made, discussion had, and issue closed, all (I believe) in under a week; I simply wasn't even aware it was going on until it was done.

It's certainly arguable the board game article contain a large amount of filler information that could be cut out, but even with that, I think there's certainly enough there to keep it as it's own thing; indeed, surely such a merger should be undertaken in the other direction, with the VG information placed in the board game article, as with Settlers of Catan? The deletion discussion only mentioned Metacritic as being an example of notability for the videogame adaptation, as it linked to critic reviews of the title... but there are multiple critic reviews for the board game also cited in the board game article. What's the distinction here? Metacritic was accepted for linking to critic reviews, Board Game Geek was dismissed as a source for the same; why?

To be clear here, I'm not necessarily saying this decision is wrong, or that Wikipedia rules have been breached. However, I do think insufficient discussion was taken before the request for deletion was made (as there was none), that more effort should have been taken to alert to the ongoing discussion prior to a decision being made, and that I think this is something we should look at further before charging forwards any faster than has already been the case.Aawood (talk) 12:30, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I have to agree with the above. The only "debating" that happened resulted in the original commenter coming to the (rightful) conclusion that the video game should be merged with the board game.  To be frank, it sounds like none of the voters would be able to name 5 board/card games that aren't of the traditional Monopoly/Candy Land variety you'd find in Walmart, so their jurisdiction over noteworthiness is questionable from the start.  By those standards, should we expect the total deletion of pages such as 7 Wonders and Arkham Horror soon as well? 76.64.214.220 (talk) 20:30, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The video game is an adaptation of the original card game. I cannot, for the life of me, fathom why the card game is to be merged with this rather than the other way around.  The AFD doesn't make me any happier since many of the voters there do not seem to know about the game's history. &#8610; Remor A  &#8611; 21:44, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's been almost a month, and so far we seem to be against the merger (at least in terms of merging the board game article into this one rather than the other way around), but so far we've heard nothing from the people who made the decision. I've reached out on their talk pages to let them know we're discussing the merger and asking for input, so hopefully we'll hear something; I don't agree with the merger as you know, but we really need to reach a consensus before any action is taken (or undone). Aawood (talk) 12:44, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Personally, I have no real opinion about this matter, but as closer of the AfD discussion, let me give you some procedural guidance. To start with, there is not much use starting a merge discussion all over again. That discussion has been had (the AfD) and the results was exceedingly clear: merge. You now have two ways of action: 1/ You think that the close of the AfD was incorrect. In this case, take it to deletion review. However, given the voting pattern in the AfD, I estimate your chances as very slim, unless you have evidence that was not already presented during the AfD. 2/ perform the merge and use the talk page here for discussion on how best to execute this merge, not for useless discussion on whether or not to merge. Hope this helps. --Randykitty (talk) 13:03, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh, my long-term plan will be to move for deletion review if neccessary. Amongst other thing, note that several steps as per WP:BEFORE appear to have been skipped, notably B2 ("If there are verifiability, notability or other sourcing concerns, take reasonable steps to search for reliable sources."; I see no evidence any effort was made, even if we assume there were valid concerns), and most of C but particularly C3 ("3.If an article has issues try first raising your concerns on the article's talk page, with the main contributors, or an associated WikiProject, and/or adding a cleanup tag, such as notability, hoax, original research, or advert; this ensures readers are aware of the problem and may act to remedy it."; no concerns were raised. This is all before we get into the discussion itself.
 * That said, I'm hoping for a simple resolution without needing that. As per WP:CLOSEAFD, another route available is discussion with the one who closed the discussion, in this case, yourself. Simply put, if with hindsight and the extra discussion here you feel the decision may have been premature, ill-informed, or otherwise not in the best interests of the articles and Wikipedia as a whole, as I understand it you yourself can undo this. If not, well, this extra merge discussion has a lot of use, as information I get here will be useful in a deletion review.Aawood (talk) 13:57, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think my post above makes it clear that I stand by the close. No additional information has become available, so while you are welcome to take this to DRV, it is my considered opinion that you will be wasting your (and other's) time there. --Randykitty (talk) 14:02, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I can assure you, I will treat your opinion with at least as much respect as you have shown mine. Aawood (talk) 14:13, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * PS: I just had another look at both articles and I don't think that a merger really would be very problematic. This article is very short The article on the board game seems longer, but that is deceptive because it contains a lot of cruft and trivial details. Once pared down, it should be easy enough to incorporate here. As for the name of the current article, if needed that can be changed after the merger has been executed after a separate discussion here. --Randykitty (talk) 13:08, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * PPS: If it makes more sense, the merger can also be executed in reverse, that is, merging this article into the one on the board game. --Randykitty (talk) 13:09, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think this is the issue that most of us has with the AfD decision (or at least the issue I had with it). It's not that merging the two articles is problematic as much as the fact that the proposed merge is in the wrong direction.  It makes no sense to merge the original game into an article about a spinoff; it would be like merging Penny Arcade into Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness.
 * If you can perform the merger in reverse (the video game into the board game), I would have no complaints.
 * &#8610; Remor A &#8611; 14:32, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The purpose of a merger is to come to one, consolidated article. The title is of secondary importance. I have no problem with doing the merge in reverse. --Randykitty (talk) 15:45, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Awesomesauce. This eliminates all the concerns I have about the merge. &#8610; Remor A  &#8611; 18:18, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Weighing in here. The thing about the AfD is that notability has to be proven by independent and reliable sources, which nobody could really find. You don't have to be an expert on something in order to try to find reliable sources for whatever is up for AfD, you just have to find reliable sources. Does it help? Sometimes, since occasionally being savvy in a topic can mean that you know better places to look for reliable sources, but in most cases being experienced doesn't really do much as far as proving notability goes because notability hinges on whether or not reliable sources exist. (By reliable sources I mean coverage in sources that are independent of the game, its creators, or anyone that had anything to do with the making of the game, and aren't in places that would be considered otherwise unusable or a self-published source.) If I can bring up an example, I'd like to hold up the article for Stanley Salmons, which was up for deletion. I was completely unfamiliar with Salmons and his work, yet I was one of several editors that helped show notability in a case where initially the delete arguments outweighed the keeps. Basically my point here is that knowing the history of a game is slightly irrelevant at AfD because we don't judge whether or not to keep an article based on the history of its subject. Having a particularly interesting or long history can make it more likely that there will be sources, but it's not a guarantee and just because someone is not experienced in a subject does not mean that their arguments for deletion or merging are invalid. If anything, it ensures that someone can potentially be more neutral on the subject than a card game player might otherwise be because as a fan there is the risk of you wanting to absolutely keep the article regardless of whether or not the subject meets the overall notability guidelines.
 * I have no issue with the video game article getting merged into the card game's article, but I agree with Randykitty in that you won't be able to overturn the AfD result here. If you truly want to argue the point, go to deletion review, but you'll have to prove your case by showing more sources. The biggest issue with the sources on the article was as follows: The Opinionated Gamer is considered to be a self-published blog source per Wikipedia and does not seem to have any verifiable editorial oversight. The problem with RPG.net is somewhat similar in that their FAQ openly states that they'll accept reviews from pretty much anyone as long as they fit within their guidelines, which unfortunately makes it a self-published source as far as Wikipedia is considered. There's zero editorial oversight. Now when it comes to the article from Vasel... that's not really a source because it's just a list without any actual coverage in it anywhere. The actual review by Vasel could be considered usable for the most part, but the list would be considered trivial by most people at WP:RS/N. Now the problem with Giant Fire Breathing Robot is that it's ultimately considered to be a blog and you'd have to be able to prove that the editorial oversight is strict enough to be counted as a reliable source and one of the few exceptions to the blog rule. It's pretty tough to prove and in most cases we can't prove a blog's reliability unless a larger site (ie, Metacritic) uses the reviews and can vouch for it. I'd consider it to be usable, partially because I am familiar with the site and personally like it, but we'd still have to prove that enough to satisfy guidelines. However the issue is that beyond that point the sources are entirely WP:PRIMARY in one form or another and cannot show notability in the slightest, which means even if we consider GFBR to be usable, that's just two sources (including the Vasel review) and not really enough to argue for notability. It's actually pretty common for most card games (heck, non-mainstream games in general) to have this issue because most of them gain their fanbase through word of mouth in non-usable sources and in most instances this doesn't translate into coverage in reliable sources. For every Cards Against Humanity and Munchkin there are hundreds of games that are popular but fly solidly under the radar and wouldn't pass the very, very strict guidelines here on Wikipedia. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   13:54, 4 December 2014 (UTC).
 * Thank you for the valuable feedback on the individual sources used, that's very useful. Part of the issue with myself ( and I believe others here) was a lack of any clear reason why the sources on the board game page were dismissed, while the ones on the videogame page were allowed, so this helps clear some of the confusion over the decision. Aawood (talk) 14:02, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If anyone of you can find sources that would pass muster through RS/N and help assert notability, I'd actually not mind backing you guys up at deletion review. It's just that finding sources for card games can be incredibly difficult, but then that's the case for anything that isn't uber mainstream. Now that said, if anyone could persuade any reliable sources to review the card game or to write articles about its history, then we can absolutely use those. We've had people do stuff similar to that before (although they'd have to pass muster of course) and few of us really have any issues with it. I can recommend a few sites offhand that would be likely to review it and I recommend checking into any site that even remotely covers similar material. (AV Club, SF Signal, Tor.com, and so on.) This would likely take some time, but merges can always be undone once notability is shown. It's not really a closed door that can't be re-opened, after all. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   14:09, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Any recommendations would be gratefully received, I'm happy to do the searching and chasing :) Aawood (talk) 14:17, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'll try to think of a few more sites. Some that might be helpful are some of the videogame websites, especially if they reviewed the app game. Maybe ask them if they've played the original and ask them if they could write an article on the physical card game? More than a few of them sounded like they'd played it, so that's an option. I'd start with the ones that had their reviews on Metacritic since that would help show that anything by them could be viewed as a reliable source. Other than that, IGN comes to mind, as does Bleeding Cool, ComicBookMovie.com, and CBR (Comic Book Resources). I hope that this can happen- I'm always super frustrated when you have stuff that has the fanbase but you can't really find the coverage in RS. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   15:51, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I was wondering if we should start accepting some "less known" reviewers that are well-known enough within their sub-communities (e.g. Dice Tower Games for board games) as notable sources. The main issue is that niches (like board gaming) are very poorly represented in mainstream media, to the point that even games like 7 Wonders are only barely hanging on by virtue of the awards it has won (quite literally, all of the sources for the 7 Wonders article are from "non-notable" sources).  I remember us having the same issue in the Tabletop RPG Wiki-project in the past, where Exalted - a major RPG published by White Wolf, which is one of the biggest names in Tabletop - was in danger of being deleted.
 * The issue with IGN and such is that they are pretty much specifically focused on video gaming, and has little room for other geek activities. I'm not sure how successful we would be to ask them to review something completely different from their normal field.
 * Just a little thought. With Wiki's rules as written, we'd end up having to axe a ton of excellent and informative articles about hobbies with substantial following, but less mainstream coverage than something like Video Gaming.  Not sure if that would end up actually being beneficial to Wikipedia. &#8610; Remor A  &#8611; 18:18, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I figure that it wouldn't hurt to ask. The worst that they would do is say no or ignore the request, but if they did review the game then we would have a source from a place that is pretty universally seen as a reliable source. I know that they've covered some things that are tangentially related to video games before, so it's worth a try. Not asking would result in absolutely no review or coverage and that's what we need right now. As far as the Wikipedia rules, that falls under WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS for the most part. There are a lot of articles out there that would likely be deleted if they were given in-depth scrutiny, but that's sort of the nature of the beast. We do try to cover as much as we can, but Wikipedia isn't really meant to be all inclusive and at some point there does have to be a cutoff. I don't mean to sound harsh or cruel by that, but as much as I'd like it to be otherwise, we can't have articles on everything out there. You can probably blame this on the sheer amount of people that came on here to promote themselves and to add articles about stuff they came up with one day, because rules used to be a lot more lax about this sort of thing until the spammers came enmasse. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   04:56, 5 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi, I am the original editor who nominated Sentinels of the Multiverse up for deletion. Sorry for not creating a discussion on the talk page or not putting up notability tags. I have actually played this game, but was not sure about how it fit Wikipedia standards. I did a quick Google search before doing the nom, but was not able to find much reliable sources, so I was hoping to have a clear discussion on the notability of this game on the AfD page, which may or may not have created as clear a consensus as Aawood would have liked. The reverse merge (the video game article into the board game page) seems like a good idea to me. Natg 19 (talk) 18:05, 4 December 2014 (UTC)