User:NegativeMP1/First year reflections

WORK IN PROGRESS

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Prologue (Before May 2023 )
Technically, I made my account in January 2023 to post a question to the talk page of list of video games notable for negative reception. That question went nowhere and I proceeded to not use my account for a couple more months. In April 2023, I made a grand return by posting another question to the talk page for List of Roblox games, asking for the addition of a game called Frontlines. Around this time, I also made my first edit to a mainspace article, that being this revision to Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number. Spoiler alert, this article would become my first featured piece of content in July 2023, which is outside the scope of this retrospective but it's worth mentioning that the first article I edited ended up being my first FA.

Although this was a time where I actually learned more about the site that I think an average new editor would know by that point (Ferret introduced me to the reliable sources policy on the Roblox games list, skimming the talk page for list of video games considered the best for months before making an account introduced me to concepts like community consensus, LISTCRIT, among others), I don't consider this to be part of my "first year" of editing because I was more or less just spectating. I characterize my first "year" of editing as May 2023 to May 2024, since May was the first month I made several edits and my first articles.

May 2023
I'm going to be honest, I'm not quite sure why I started editing in the first place, nor do I remember most of my ideas from that time frame. I do, however, remember that I was slightly worried about making harmful edits since I was a new editor and viewed autoconfirmed as some grand achievement that I struggled to get. I think I got autoconfirmed with this revision, since my next edit was to a semi-protected article. Around this time, I guess you could say I "joined" Wikiproject Video Games, but I didn't do much besides try to make my first two articles, those being the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection and Frontlines (Roblox). Both were rejected in draftspace, but I moved them over to mainspace anyways at a later date. MGS:MC managed to survive, but Frontlines understandably got struck down. I find it funny now how that game was talked about by everyone at that time as "this is comparable to Modern Warfare II!," but then the developers for the game abandoned it and last I checked the game had like 700 players total, but I digress. I also had my 50th edit this month, being the creation of a broken redirect. If it weren't apparent, the majority of my editing at this point was for Roblox related topics.

I don't really think there's anything special about this month to really look back on, except that I joined the Wikimedia Discord Server on May 24th and have hung out there ever since. This led me to meet a lot of editors who will definitely be relevant later, but in May I sorta just "existed" and didn't do much. On a side note, heres what my userpage looked like back then, so detailed and clean. Best userpage in the history of Wikipedia, not sure why I ever got rid of it (/j).

June 2023
I did not do much this month either, and unlike with May I can't really say that this month had much context that becomes relevant later on. This is where I started editing the page for Hotline Miami, which is my favorite video game of all time and I was trying really hard to fix up the article, but as later sections will demonstrate I bit off more than I could chew when trying to rewrite it. I did attempt to get a peer review for it that month, but not many responses came in so I partially blame that too. Side opinion that's probably best worth bringing up here: peer review is generally flawed, and more attention needs to be drawn to it as well as reviewing in general. It feels like most people only review content to get someone to review their content, rather than doing it because they want to.

This month did see my only AfC submission that actually got accepted, that being the article for Detective Pikachu Returns. I don't know why I made that article, but I think it was because it was an opportunity to claim "first," which I think many people do when making articles instead of actually taking care of them. I'd rather have a low-quality start or stub class article than there not be an article at all, and I'm not saying people shouldn't make articles like that, but its still sometimes a flawed mentality. I unfortunately fall into that category because of me making that article, which was in retrospect extremely dumb because I am not a Pokémon fan and I had zero intentions of carrying it to a higher class. On the exact opposite side of the spectrum, this month was when I participated in my first deletion discussion! Sorry, Reimu Hakurei.

Yeah, not much happened this month...

July 2023
It's hard to pinpoint where exactly to begin with this month, since it had a lot of firsts for me, so I'll trying to keep it as a quick overview. This month was when I attempted to create several articles. These articles were Prelude of the Chambered, Inferno (Counter-Strike), Callie and Marie, Nuketown, and Super Shotgun. Out of all of these, Callie and Marie was proposed for merging into Splatoon (but failed), Super Shotgun and Prelude of the Chambered were eventually redirected (one with my permission, the other by me directly), while the other two went on to become good articles. While the mortality rate of these articles was high, they still gave me significant experience with writing articles and I'm still glad I made them. It also helped me figure out that my primary interest for writing articles was semi-obscure topics, which I continue to carry on to this day. But in all fairness, my writing wasn't very good back when I made these articles. The modern article for Nuketown I would say is one of my five best works on this site, but when I first made it it was terrible (see here). Sure, it was still readable and somewhat useful, but even the thought of making an article so barebones at present is one that I could never imagine.

It was also around this time that the video game characters task force for WP:VG was created, which aimed to create more video game character articles and delete the articles for ones that weren't notable. I attempted to jump in on this wave by making articles for Callie and Marie, as well as a failed article for Jetstream Sam. Kung Fu Man guided me through the ropes when experimenting with these types of articles, and his help and advice was invaluable in helping me learn the notability guidelines, and I did eventually begin creating character articles that were sufficiently notable, though not for a long time. I mostly stuck to other video game elements.

The rewrite of Hotline Miami continued this month. Why do I keep bringing it up? Because this leads into a bit that in August will end up as its own sub-section.

The failure of Hotline Miami 's rewrite
The failure of this articles GAN technically happened in September, but it started in August and its more fit here.

To provide necessary context, the first long term goal I set on this site (and still my main #1 goal) is for both games in the Hotline Miami to be featured status, as they are a series of games that I and thousands more admire, and seeing the games I love have such bad coverage on Wikipedia to be was unacceptable (HM1's original version, HM2's original version). So I set out to make both games GAs by the end of 2023, as demonstrated by my constant mentions of slowly rewriting the article for each game in the series. I nominated Hotline Miami for GA in August, and it was quickfailed for sourcing and prose issues. When I first saw the quickfail and took a look back at the article, I think it dawned on me immediately how badly I screwed up, and I didn't have the power to go through and rewrite it again at the time (hell, now that I am rewriting it, there was no way I could do what I did to it at present back then), so I instead focused on its sequel, where I basically did the exact opposite of what I did with the first game, taking advice from the GA review.

A main issue with the first Hotline Miami rewrite was the barebones reception section and un-encyclopedic writing; the article for Hotline Miami 2 at one point had five absolutely massive reception paragraphs (see here). While I did end up trimming some stuff back and copyedits were made, the good article nomination for Hotline Miami 2 actually succeeded without failing. The Hotline Miami rewrite story, however, basically ended there and won't get brought up again until March, since I was scared of trying to work on it again after realizing just how much stuff I missed.

For reference, when I actually did rewrite the article for a second time, I found enough material for four paragraphs about Hotline Miami 's video game industry impact, two paragraphs about the media franchise, a themes and analysis section, four to five academic sources, mentions in a book, and a lot of important content that was completely missed at first.