Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Newsletter/20150107/Feature

Feature: Refmining – Another side of WikiGnoming
 Submitted by Thibbs 

As editors we've all seen it before. The Wikipedia routine begins with the usual rush of excited anticipation, the optional cup of coffee, and a quick check of the Wikipedia watchlist. But this time something's different. Instead of the normal handful of articles, you see that your watchlist is lit up with edited articles. Someone has been making mass edits. The reasons vary: sometimes it's a bot fixing double redirect, sometimes it's a WikiGnome using AWB or Twinkle to remove deprecated parameters, and sometimes (rarely) it's an editor who has identified a problem that must be fixed manually. Such is the case with the refminer. Swooping through articles at a fast pace, sprinkling smallish references and citations nearly as fast as a magazine can be read through, the refminer is an unusual breed of WikiGnome and one that has escaped attention for too long. In this quarter's feature we will be discussing this brand of editing, we will be looking at what motivates those who engage in it, and we will be analyzing the benefits it creates and the pitfalls that it is subject to. Although there are doubtless other model editors who have assisted the project in this way, we will also be spotlighting the efforts of User:BOZ and User:Ylee who have made extraordinary efforts in this editing style. Finally we will address how you can help.

Refmining vs Refspamming
So what really is refmining? Briefly it is the act of rooting through entire magazines, reading every article, and summarizing the reception for every game contained therein - later to be inserted into their respective Wikipedia articles. Some refminers prefer to add these reception blurbs as they read, others may prefer to write them up in digest form and then insert them en masse. The end result is the same: expanded reception sections on a wide range of articles from a single source and from a specific time-frame. But isn't this just "the repeated insertion of a particular citation or reference in multiple articles by a single contributor"? Couldn't this be viewed as a form of promotion via REFSPAM? The answer is no. Refspam is the " illegitimate or improper use of citations, footnotes or references" and in practice it is clear that Refmining is anything but promotional. As we will see in discussions with the editors who had independently adopted this sourcing strategy, the overwhelming bulk of the source material they used came from currently defunct video game magazines. Well then is this refmining carried out for the purpose of "verify[ing] article content and help[ing] [to] build the encyclopedia"? Yes and no. While it can certainly be used to verify pre-existing content, in practice this is actually rather rare. A much more common effect of refmining is the establishment of Notability for an article which may have previously only had non-RS sources or which may have been completely devoid of a reference section and/or sources. while not spelled out explicitly in WP:REFSPAM, the establishment of notability in this way does help "to build the encyclopedia", and along the way it provides a number of additional side effects which we will discuss next.

Why refmine?
As mentioned just above, the primary benefit of refmining is the establishment of notability in articles that are lacking proper sourcing. Does the addition of a single reception summary alone confer sufficient evidence of notability to save an undersourced article from AfD? Not necessarily. The minimum threshold for the establishment of notability is coverage in "multiple sources", so a single source on its own will not be sufficient. Furthermore the other elements of WP:VG's essential content may need to be rewritten or written in the first place in order for the article to survive a proposed merge. But if the newly added reference is the second or third reliable source used in an article then it does establish that the topic of the article meets the notability threshold for inclusion. When no reception section had previously existed, it provides the start of one of WP:VG's elements of essential content. In many ways refmining can be seen to "save" articles from removal by deletion or merger. Even in a very summary form, the citation can also act as a guide for later editors wishing to expand the article. For topics where little information is available, simply having a ready citation to track down for a full article on the topic can be immensely helpful. And there are yet more benefits. Depending on which magazines are used, a refminer can be essential in the promotion of broad coverage and the reduction of POV. Looking to the example of Users BOZ and Ylee, we see great examples of the expansion from modern to contemporary coverage, and from modern platforms to older platforms. The reality of sourcing within the article of WP:VG is that the majority of references are to born-digital materials like websites, with only occasional reference to digitized materials with URLs like the scanned books from Google Books. The result for older topics is systemic bias in the form of recentism. Refmining from older materials as has been practiced by BOZ and Ylee helps promote Wikipedia's Neutrality pillar. Likewise, refmining from non-English magazine sources (as the author of this article endeavored to do in May 2012 with Famitsu magazine) can work to reduce systemic Anglocentrism. With the benefits now spelled out, we turn to BOZ and Ylee to get their perspective on the practice.

A chat with some resident refminers
Trends emerge when one looks through any serious number of video game articles. While the use of the elements of essential content (plot, gameplay, development, reception, etc.) are common throughout the articles due to their inclusion in the MOS, the fingerprints of specific contributors will also be recognized if one knows how to look. It is no coincidence that reviews from magazines like Dragon and Computer & Video Games can be found in large numbers of articles (often as the only reception references). These citations are quite often the work of editors like our own BOZ and Ylee. Let's see what they have to say for themselves.

 WP:VG Newsletter - Approximately when did you first start refmining? Any idea how many articles you've reffed this way?
 *  BOZ - First of all, I want to say thank you for giving me a name for this activity! I'm thinking I must have started refmining sometime in 2009, and I have to say I have gang-sourced hundreds, if not more than a thousand articles on various types of games as a result. I don't mind mining deep, either!.
 *  Ylee - I've randomly added discussion of reviews to various articles over the years, but began doing so more systematically in 2013 after I discovered the amazing Internet Archive computer-magazine archive. My initial burst lasted a month or two, then I recently resumed the process. I have no idea how many articles I've edited through the process, but the figure is in the hundreds by now..

 WP:VG Newsletter - Which sources(s) have you gone through in this manner? Any future plans?
 *  BOZ - In terms of what would interest the WP:VG crowd most, that would be Dragon – largely a tabletop RPG magazine which has had an on-again-off-again flirtation with computer RPGs for a huge chunk of its almost 40-year run. You can see a big list of everything I've done at User:BOZ/Dragon video game reviews; something tells me I am missing some, somewhere along the way. ;)


 * My primary focus is actually tabletop RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons in particular, so that's where most of my energy goes. I maintain another list of tabletop RPG magazines that I have used to source D&D-related articles (including where I have been very successful, and where I have yet to be) - just imagine how many more reviews those magazines (and Dragon) must have for other games besides D&D that I have yet to get to? Aside from magazines, I have also mined some pretty useful books, such as Heroic Worlds by Lawrence Schick and Designers & Dragons by Shannon Appelcline - and as much as I have done with each of those, it is only a fraction of the material covered by those books!


 * So, sorry VG fans, but I have probably done all the refmining I'm going to be doing for VG articles for the time being, although I am always happy to provide more information from Dragon reviews on anything I've previously looked at. :).
 *  Ylee - I've read every issue of BYTE (through about 1987), PC (through 1989, I think), Compute! (same), Computer Gaming World (through late 1993), and Softline. I've also done smaller chunks of Ahoy!, Kilobaud, and Compute!'s Gazette, among others. One day I hope to finish up all of the publications, but will wait (as in BYTE's case, for example) until a particular year is complete; I don't want to have to track which issues I've read and which I haven't..

 WP:VG Newsletter - How do you select the magazine you are going to refmine?
 *  BOZ - As I was already searching through RPG magazines for reviews on tabletop products, I noticed that Dragon also covered D&D-related computer games, and that got me to thinking I could be doing more for retro VG articles with the sources I have. There are a few computer game reviews in some of those other tabletop RPG magazines, so one day I need to go back over them..
 *  Ylee - Pure personal interest. I'm less interested in British computers, for example, so haven't really looked at the (gigantic) collection of Spectrum and Amstrad magazines..

 WP:VG Newsletter - What inspired you to begin this mission?
 *  BOZ - Good question. Actually, it was a deletionist.  Back when I started editing D&D-related articles around 2007, we had too few decent sources available on our articles (and I did not yet realize the importance of independent sources), so this attracted the attention of a particularly persistent deletionist with a very unique interpretation of policies (his actions based on this interpretation eventually led to a community ban, but that's another story).  Although I did not appreciate much of what he had to say, I did learn one important thing from him.  Good independent reliable sources really are necessary to improve an article.  So, I looked around at what few sources we had on the articles that were actually in good shape, and I realized that there were a lot of reviews and other sources out there with lots of good information, and no one was adding them to articles!  So, I got on top of it, and mined whatever magazines and books I could find, and that contributed to the D&D WikiProject now having more than 25 FA/GA, whereas before we had fewer than 5..
 *  Ylee - No particular inspiration, although I certainly noticed BOZ's remarkable efforts with Dragon. I did not begin reading the magazines with the intention of pulling reviews from them, but could not resist doing so..

 WP:VG Newsletter - Where do you go to get access to these magazines? Are they personally owned?
 *  BOZ - I am fortunate enough to have purchased the Dragon Magazine Archive on CD-ROM many years ago, and that it is still in excellent shape. :).
 *  Ylee - The aforementioned Internet Archive is an astounding resource; one person would require years to go through it all by himself. CGW and Softline have the (I believe) 100% complete cgwmuseum.org, a true labor of love to the greatest computer-game magazine of all time. PC is more or less completely available on Google Books.


 * Another example of how massive the IA is: I recently discovered a 1984 compendium, published by Addison-Wesley, of almost all commercial Atari 8-bit software available as of 1984. At first I thought it was a simple catalog, but it turns out to have full-fledged reviews, including grades! Some intrepid editor needs to script up a scraper that can automatically pull the tons of machine-parseable data from it..

 WP:VG Newsletter - Do you cover all articles in each magazine or only those that interest you?
 * <font color="#990000"> BOZ - I am not stingy; for Dragon I shared equally for all games reviewed. :)  There were so many reviews to add, and this was a side project for me, so for the most part I just added a brief note that the game was reviewed in the magazine, and how many stars it got, and even just doing that took a few months to complete!  In more than a few cases, even with some pretty popular games, I was surprised to find that there was no reception section before I got there!.
 * <font color="#009900"> Ylee - I read everything, and don't stick to just games (as with BYTE). I am not very interested in wargames, but if CGW reviews a wargame (and that's seemingly all it reviewed for the first few years), I'll create an edit for it..

<font color="#000099"> WP:VG Newsletter - Do you cover entire runs of these magazines or only limited runs?
 * <font color="#990000"> BOZ - In the case of Dragon, since it was a limited run, I did not mind doing the whole thing. When I say "limited", keep in mind that "The Role of Computers" ran from issue #110-196, followed by "Eye of the Monitor" from 197-223, so over 100 issues is pretty decent.  :).
 * <font color="#009900"> Ylee - As mentioned, I tend to stop when a magazine's archive is incomplete. I hope to resume BYTE when at least the 1980s are fully available, for example. This is also why I haven't yet tackled Creative Computing despite its status as perhaps the second most-important computer magazine during the first decade of microcomputers; its pre-1980 archive is too incomplete. Another reason to stop is when the era becomes less interesting; I stopped with Compute!, for example, after it became more or less devoted to DOS..

<font color="#000099"> WP:VG Newsletter - What do you do when you encounter a topic for which there is no Wikipedia article yet?
 * <font color="#990000"> BOZ - I WP:BOLDly start an article. :)   Oh, yes!  If I find other sources to add to the article, or someone else eventually does, then great.  If someone challenges the notability of the topic, I am usually able to track down sources, or other users who can help.  Much more often than not, I have found that if you can find one solid source on a topic, there is probably enough material out there in other sources to meet the WP:GNG, so I am not too worried about starting an article with only one source..
 * <font color="#009900"> Ylee - There are surprisingly many games that don't have articles at all. It's not shocking when a game sold for three months in a sandwich bag in 1979 and is only remembered today in one brief mention in Softline doesn't have an article, but Epyx's Pitstop?!? Star League Baseball? Half of SSI's product line? Unlike BOZ I haven't been creating new articles in such cases, unfortunately. I really need to have a brief prewritten stub article I can just paste in, but then I'd have to figure out the appropriate tags for each article and that's a pain..

<font color="#000099"> WP:VG Newsletter - Have you encountered any problems while doing this? Difficult editors? Other misunderstandings?
 * <font color="#990000"> BOZ - Well, for Dragon, since I did not add much in terms of actual content to most of the articles, I have gone back to look at the articles months or years later and I find that in a small minority of cases someone has removed my note; when this happens, I make sure to restore the note and add more information from the review to make it more substantial and make sure it will stick..
 * <font color="#009900"> Ylee - No trouble from other editors; on the contrary, I have been embarrassed at the number of thanks (and, when necessary, corrections from) from editors I've received notifications of. I presume that in some cases I am the first to ever edit their article, and they are grateful for the attention..

<font color="#000099"> WP:VG Newsletter - Anything else you want to say about the subject?
 * <font color="#990000"> BOZ - Other than that I would love to see other volunteers doing more of this (and I understand how hard it can be to devote this much time), I will reiterate that I am always willing to help add more information from any source that I have access to. Happy editing!.
 * <font color="#009900"> Ylee - I do not view what I do as "refmining" because that implies a greater formality or distinction to what I do than I think exists. I do what I do because I find it interesting, period. (That's why I take lengthy breaks between sessions when interest flags.) The nostalgia factor you mention elsewhere in this issue is a factor, but really it is all part and parcel of the edits I've done in the decade I have been on Wikipedia. I have never sought recognition, and was surprised to be asked to contribute to this article; I am merely grateful, as always, when others find my edits interesting and informative. Hopefully they will continue to do so..

How you can help
Well the first and most obvious answer to the question is that you can become a refminer yourself. As noted above, refmining is intended to be non-promotional in nature. The sources are often out of print and the inclusion of these sources in an article in no way prevents the inclusion of additional and even contrary sources. However intentions alone can't provide full NPOV coverage. When an article's reception section only contains one review from a single source then (until further sources are added) this source represents 100% of the reception. In this sense additional refminers adding reception to articles can dramatically improve the neutrality of an article. Quick and easy examples of this can be seen at the reception sections for Dark Seed and A-Train where all or the majority of the sources were added via the refmining work of BOZ, Ylee, and this article's author.

So where can an editor gain access to unmined magazines? Short of purchasing magazines to mine, how can someone with time on their hands help in this way? There are a variety of free resources available on the internet as well as linked through Wikipedia. Perhaps the best source for defunct magazines is the Internet Archive (at archive.org). Reliable video game sources can be obtained here quite simply in both print (e.g. here, here, and here) and audio-visual (e.g. here) formats. Another valuable resource is WP:VG's own Online Print Archive and sections of WP:VG's Reference Library (e.g. WP:VG/RL). From most of these locations a dedicated refminer can obtain open source or freely hosted copies of reliable source material covering a range of video games and ripe for mining. Locating magazines on the internet is relatively simple and much like looking through a high school yearbook it can be a real pleasure for a nostalgic retrogamer to wade through review after review of old friends. (NB: OK maybe the nostalgia for high school is a bit revisionist, but hopefully you see my point). The practice of refmining is a sound one and the more that participate in it the more articles will be saved and the more neutral and well-rounded Wikipedia's coverage will become in a short period of time. The WikiProject Video Games Newsletter salutes the refminer, and we wish to thank BOZ and Ylee for their generous contributions.