Template talk:Infobox video game/Archive 12

Remove data from defunct fields
Does anyone have any objection to the removal of defunct template fields (Ratings, Requirements and Version) from the template code on individual articles? The edit can't be done on its own as a bot because it falls foul of WP:COSMETICBOT but it can be done as part of another important edit. I could add the code to AWB so that it runs at the same time as other substantial edits (I'm currently sorting out links to Xbox the console and Xbox the brand) and over time will tidy up the code of articles I pass through. I think removing the dead code from articles will be a benefit, especially for new users. - X201 (talk) 15:53, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
 * No objection. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 16:54, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, I'm going to start. - X201 (talk) 07:45, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Age Ratings
I have a suggestion to add an age certificate rating (PEGI, ESRB, etc) to the infobox. EverythingGeography (talk) 17:22, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
 * We used to have them but they were removed by the same logic that the Film project does not give the various ratings for movies, in that they are generally just points of data and we have to purposely limit which countries we cover. If the game's rating is of importance to the game (ala Left 4 Dead 2 and the Australian Classification Board) then that can be described in text. --M ASEM (t) 17:30, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Platforms= field usage for released games with upcoming ports
We currently have 3 case scenarios: For the first two, we list the X platform(s) and add respective categories. What about case three -- do we only list available X platform(s) or future/announced Y ones as well? Neither template doc not article guidelines is clear on this. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 17:40, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) A game is not released but is coming out for platform X
 * 2) A game is released for platform X
 * 3) A game is released for platform X and is coming out for platform Y
 * Sorry to hijack this, but also for consideration, something I believe needs some clarification, is 4. Game was released for platform X but was cancelled for platform Y.  Я ehevkor ✉  18:39, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm almost certain we don't list canceled platforms or any other canceled/changed property (genre, date, developer, etc.). — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 19:05, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Any confirmed (via announced) platforms that otherwise haven't been announced as cancelled should be listed in the box. Games known to be have cancelled for a given platform (but otherwise released elsewhere, as opposed to complete vaporware) should not list that platform in the infobox, though the fact it was planned for that should be mentioned in the article body. --M ASEM (t) 19:10, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Frankly I think later ports should be hidden using a collapsible list, the historically important is the first window, which doesn't men first platform, just first window. So a game released on 360 and ps3 which is released a month later on PC would list PC as well. Where as something like Doom (video game) for publishers is messy and obscene, they didn't create the game they ported it, their contribution is negligible, or ones where it lists an xboxlive/psn/steam release when its a downloadable version of an existing game. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 19:16, 21 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi. Given the nature of infoboxes, I think only platforms for which there are preview or release versions of the game must be listed. Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, so upcoming games without a preview or release should not have a platform parameter at all. Cancelled platforms also should not be listed. If the cancellation is important, it can have a section or sentence, but outside infobox. That said, all of these need source. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 05:15, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It doesn't make sense to exclude platforms which have been announced widely for upcoming games (eg, we know GTAV is 360 and PS3, despite it not being released yet). However, you do need sources for these, for example, we can't say that GTAV is coming to the PC despite lots of rumors to that point. --M ASEM  (t) 05:24, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
 * There is one thing that makes even less sense: Giving the impression that the game is released. Announcements are just talk and Wikipedia is not a newspaper to publish announcements which may or may not be realized. Remember Devil May Cry 4? There were announcement that it was a PlayStation 3 exclusive. It is not. Wikipedia writes facts and platform support does not become a fact before a release of some sort. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 06:16, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
 * First, we expect people to be intelligent enough to see if a date is in the future, to understand the game is not released; add to the fact that nearly every unreleased game starts off "X is an upcoming video game...", so this is not an issue. It is not WP's fault if, over the course of development from the announcement of release platforms to the actual release that the platform list will change, as long as we accurately reflect that from sources. So sure, DMC4 may have been a PS3 exclusive on its reveal but it ended up multi-platform. To us, when the other platforms were announced, we simply added them. Similarly with removing platforms that were once announced targets. Yes, CRYSTAL is good advice but it also gives cases of things that are in the future that aren't crytsal-balling, and in our case, when a publisher or developer says "This game will be out on X" in a formal manner, then there are no concerns in crystal-balling that information. --M ASEM (t) 13:12, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
 * When an infobox says such and such platforms and gives a release date, it means the game is partially or completely developed, it will be marketed on that date. So, I am afraid I find intelligence is not enough; they need to have a good deal of divine extrasensory perception to know whether it is just an announcement (=empty promises that may change without notice) or fact. Sure, they can read the prose too; but in my case, every time, the prose was also vague. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 18:41, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It is not WP's fault if a company goes out horns blazing that title X will be out on such and such a date, and then months later have to pull that date or even cancel that game. You'll notice more and more companies don't commit to hard dates, just "it'll be out by around this time" (usually at the resolution of some year quarter) to avoid disappointing fans and so-called "empty promises". But from an encyclopedic perspective, if a company goes and announces a date as if it were set in stone, we have no reason not to report that as the likely release date. Every other entertainment venue Wikiproject does the same, and re-edits data when it is changed. Mind you, if the delay is major, this will likely be part of the game's development section (eg I know this exists for Portal 2 and BioShock Infinite).  Note that I stating that future release dates have to be something given in an official capacity - a tease of a release on Twitter, for example, is not reliable for our purposes to include like this, but a press release or via interview with a major gaming site, yes. --M ASEM  (t) 19:05, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Use of Wikidata
Wikidata has become fairly complete for video games (see also the video games task force) due to mass import from Wikipedia. Would we like to start using that data here in this infobox in accordance with the Wikidata phase 2 RFC?

Practically, this changes nothing in existing articles without manual editing. For now, it simply requires an infobox change. However, we can start stripping that information out by hand as desired in particular articles.

The one field if any which is not well supported by Wikidata currently is the release date field. --Izno (talk) 03:45, 8 August 2013 (UTC)


 * In the disallowed uses on WP:SUB, it says that "Using subpages for permanent content that is meant to be part of the encyclopaedia." is not allowed. Surely using data from an external project is an even bigger ignoring of that guideline than just doing it on Wikipedia itself? As I understand it, initially the data won't be editable by Wikipedia users and will need to be edited at Wikidata instead. Am I correct? - X201 (talk) 08:01, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I think I've got to agree with X201. Also, I don't see how this can be benificial to any but a very small part of things. It seems to be working fine now, without any Wikidata help. --ProtoDrake (talk) 08:15, 8 August 2013 (UTC)


 * My main concern is being unable to edit it directly in Wikipedia and having to go to Wikidata. As for it being external, that's not a problem, interwikis are already like that and it's certainly beneficial to all projects, not just English wiki. The problem is that for other projects to use this, English wiki editors will have to go through hoops to edit and even get it working, which should really be handled seemlessly by the software. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:09, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreeing with all the points above. It's an added hassle. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ( talk ) 12:49, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

What is the benefit of this over the current method? As far as I can see, it's the same result but with a bit more effort. Am I missing something? Cabe 6403  (Talk•Sign) 15:25, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The benefit for English wiki is not a whole lot, since we already are one of the more complete wikis. But if other wikis have data we don't, it would get added to English automatically. For example, lots of Japanese games. The benefit is really for smaller wikis that can get all the sharable (and verified) data into their game articles really quickly. In theory, you would only ever need to add data once, and all wikis would get the value. It's a very good concept, but it currently lacks any user-friendly way of inputing data (unless I am seriously missing something). — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 16:15, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Oof, that's a lot of "not really" response there. In general, a number of these comments could be answered by reading the RFC... Let me see if I can answer in sequence: Further questions? --Izno (talk) 01:15, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * X201: I would imagine a rather large and well-advertised community RFC would overrule that particular page in the event of a difference (it may simply be the case that no-one has considered that fact). Either way, I'm also of the belief that it's irrelevant; Wikidata items are not subpages, and WP:SUB exists (in this case only) to prohibit the use of subpages in the mainspace. It is a real stretch to suggest that that particular rule would prohibit our use of Wikidata. You would be correct to say that the data must be edited at Wikidata. However, for most/all games, I don't see that as an issue, because the information in the infobox is static (or should be nearly static).
 * Protodrake, Cabe: "Useful to a small part of things" -> Well, no, not directly. This is primarily to help the smaller and less developed wikis. But either way, I would suspect that we will find it valuable too, not only for what Hellknowz says but also to avoid issues like genre edit warring. An additional benefit would be reducing the monstrous amount of text present in the "edit this page" space. (Mind you, that's less of a benefit than it sounds due to VisualEditor, but the response to that has not been particularly profound from what I understand.)
 * Hellknowz: "English wiki editors will have to go through hoops to edit and even get it working" What do you mean? Besides making the necessary changes to the infobox, there is no additional hassle to the vast majority of editors who care little or even not-at-all for Wikidata. In accordance with option 4, those who don't care to use Wikidata can set up the infobox on a new page (for example) using the "old" style, while someone who is interested can either migrate that data, or possibly make new pages themselves using Wikidata directly. There is also a bot that runs on occasion, at least for video games, which adds the data to Wikidata As for "can't edit it here", that's probably a concern taken care of by the above replies. A solution in the interim might be to add an "edit this data" link to the infobox, until such time we can manipulate the data directly from here. That said, I'm not sure how much more user-friendly one could make the actual editing of data on Wikidata, so I'm not sure if you have a concern there (you should probably submit a bug if there's something significant to you).
 * I admit I haven't thoroughly read the technical part of phase 2 RfC and I think I got the wrong impression from your short proposal (as probably everyone else). So, essentially, with this addition none of our existing data changes, but in places where we don't have any values in the infobox, they will be populated from Wikidata if possible. If we don't like the value, we can specify our own. Of course, if we want the value to go to Wikidata, we have to edit that ourselves or wait for the bot (and I didn't realize bots were allowed to do this, with context sensitive data and all), but we are not required to do so. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 07:43, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * That's okay. Population of data: That's the order, give-or-take. As for bots, bots are so-far allowed only to import the data (that's Wikidata-side botting). A bot to remove the information from Wikipedia would of course be consensus-dependent here. My feeling is that a large number of fields here could be trivially removed. And yes, we're not required to do anything. (I of course believe the benefits are greater than the detriments.) --Izno (talk) 13:35, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I've been on Wikidata for a look around. I corrected the data for Grand Theft Auto V, I removed what looked like spam/vandalism from and IP user and I added the platforms to the data. This raised a couple of further questions. 1) Isn't this just going to be a greifers dream? Instead of just vandalising an article on a single wiki, they can do every wiki around the world with a single edit. I'm worried about the workload this will create and the room for confusion of editors who are unaware that the vandalism actually exists on a separate site. 2) Can you explain where Wikidata stores references to things such as release dates or platforms? I can see a sources field but the only time I've found it populated it was pointing to en.Wikipeadia rather that a link to an external reliable source. 3) Just a usability gripe - If users are going to have to check the data and correct it, it would make it easier if things like platforms were sorted in alphabetical order rather than an apparent random order (e.g. Sonic The Hedgehog on Wikidata) Don't get me wrong izno, I'm not being a luddite about this, I can see the benefits, its just that there are things that I'm unsure of. A working example would also be a good idea if possible. You've already been more responsive than the people behind adding the microformat tag, we couldn't get a peep out of them regarding its benefits and the reason it should be added to the template. They added it all the same though. - X201 (talk) 09:01, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Sure.
 * Yes and no. On the one hand, an edit to Wikidata can change the fields in hundreds of pages across the entirety of the Wikimedia projects, possibly causing vandalization. On the other hand, there are a few technical measures in place to prevent that being a large issue:
 * Edits to Wikidata are supposed to appear on the watchlist here. I haven't personally experienced the phenomenon, but that doesn't mean that's not the case. Multiplied across hundreds of wikis, that's probably an order of magnitude increase in watchers per page.
 * A second path we could choose would be to make editing the data non-obvious, by not providing a convenient link to Wikidata in the infobox. This kind of hurts us (as in Wikipedia) in the sense that we then have to scroll to the bottom left for the interwikis, so good faith (new) editors who don't understand how it all works might be very confused and hence not actually start editing here. New editor retention is of course a bad thing. On the other hand, if it really is that large of a concern, I suspect we could talk about it further...
 * We can probably better target certain parameters for changes within edit filters at Wikidata. I haven't looked into it, but I would imagine we could probably do something like tag all edits applied to claims with the "genre" property. I'm sure you can imagine the use of that... On the flip side, take that property for example. A particular source may classify a game (or music) in a particular fashion. Wikidata is (or will be, not all technical work on it is done) able to handle multiple different claims and associated sources. In the future, I would imagine that it would be possible to take only the claims with the most number of sources, or two-greatest number of sources, for example, so someone such as a genre edit warrior would not find much fruit.
 * Referencing is absolutely still a problem, yes. Not all datatypes are available (notably, URIDataType). I can't explain this one away, but I don't see it as a particular issue except in the cases of genre edit-warriors (see points above; we revert them on sight anyway) and release dates, which I noted in the original post as likely to be a field which we don't want to use data for here at this time. Alternatively, a change we could make would be to transclude the release date template here and then provide parameters for referencing in the template, while getting the appropriate non-sourced information from Wikidata.
 * That's probably a legitimate UI concern, and to be honest the UI work has been lacking on the Wikidata development team's part. To perhaps excuse that, I understand that the team has a very aggressive schedule for implementation of each of the phases, which is definitely part of the reason sourcing isn't ready for primetime.
 * As for an example, that's probably a good idea. Assassin's Creed III (Assassin's Creed III) might be a good one for a test infobox since most of the information is currently on Wikidata; I'll look into doing something simply for show. I know that WP:ROADS has implemented Wikidata for their infoboxes for some fields, though I haven't looked into how it works myself (see e.g. this discussion). --Izno (talk) 13:35, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * A sandbox 2 could be made for the test template, we already have the test cases page set up. Using Grand Theft Auto: Vice City as the test case would be a good idea, as it is the game used as an infobox test. - X201 (talk) 13:11, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I've started Template:Infobox video game/test/Wikidata (just a substitution, currently). I'll be doing some work on it this weekend while I try to figure out how to do things with it. :) --Izno (talk) 01:05, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Add the category 'Infoboxes Templates' to this templates
Any objections on adding the category 'Infobox templates' to this template? I know it's already in other categories, but this one is really useful when searching for infoboxes templates.Brk0 0 (talk) 04:08, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It is already in the sub-category Category:Video game infobox templates. An unnecessary addition. --Izno (talk) 04:24, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Field usage statistics
From ~19725 pages. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 09:22, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Modes
16799 usages.

Engine
2720 usages

Media
11129 usages