Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2016-06-05/WikiProject report



Hello! This week I interviewed, , and  of WikiProject Video Games (WPVG). The members of WikiProject Video Games revealed to the Signpost some interesting facts and information about the members of WPVG and the project itself.

Many of the members are passionate about gaming. For example, has been gaming for 22 years. He sought out a project that fits his interests: “Joining WPVG is practically the first thing I did when I started editing Wikipedia!” began by writing articles on upcoming video games and learned from his mistakes, “by creating a dozen articles on upcoming video games.”  was drawn to Wikipedia’s “academic treatment of video games”. became involved by watching the talk page of WPVG. received feedback from members of the project for their video game-related articles and continued working on WPVG.

I asked if these editors preferred working on articles about the video games they liked playing themselves. works on anything that needs help, and has even written several "good articles" on games they haven’t played, or articles about people they don’t know. and, however, enjoy writing about video games from the video game golden era of the 1990s. Masem prefers indie games over commercial titles, and enjoys writing about “obscure video games”.

Curious about their contributions to other WMF sites, I asked these members about whether they were able to add content to Wikimedia Commons. has been able to “negotiate the free-licensing for a game ... on the official subreddit for the game with the dev himself.” has also sought permission from developers, but has often found free licensing difficult to obtain, aside from screenshots. adds that indie developers are more likely to contribute media to Wikimedia than other video game creators. has managed to upload hundreds of free-use files to Wikimedia, especially from smaller developers. Czar adds that becoming an admin on Commons has been useful to WPVG.

Like all projects, WPVG has significant gaps in certain areas, especially games that are not published in English. Czar points out that many of the older Japanese games have not been covered properly based on paper sources, which still haven’t been digitized. However, it is even more difficult to find reliable sources on games from the early 2000s – both web and print coverage is missing, according to Czar. Masem echoes some of these concerns: stating that “we sometimes miss out on other areas of the world that produce non-English titles.” Salvidrim adds: “some German MMO might be hugely notable, but because of systemic bias, we are a lot more likely to have articles about less notable English-language games.” Jaguar points out an impressive fact: more than 13,000 articles under the WPVG umbrella are stub class.

Overall, WPVG is seen as a place with a good sense of community support and the ability to discuss differences in a constructive way. Salvidrim says that “while sometimes more disruptive editors do crop up, they’re often discouraged quickly.” Nevertheless, many of the articles are created by single editors with far less collaboration than projects like MILHIST, according to Salvidrim. Jaguar enjoys the sense of “common interest” that the project fosters, though they also tend to work alone. Masem says “We fall somewhere between collaborative and individual workers. We’ll help each other out and there are several articles that once a GA or FA nomination starts, many editors will come to help.” Czar points out that WPVG is a good place for editors to ask for help “without dismissing their concerns”. Czar is critical of how the AfD process for video games can become “inaccessible” through the use of excessive jargon or by focusing on niche topics. Discussing rules and best practices for the project is another area of collaboration for WPVG, according to Salvidrim.

The most important question concerns the most urgent needs facing WPVG. Czar points out that many wikignoming activities are needed, whether it be speaking up at AfD or reviewing articles. For Masem, it's that many articles, even those at the “top" level, still need improvement. Jaguar’s advice is to “do whatever [a new editor feels] like they would enjoy doing: writing quality content.” Salvidrim pointed us to the very long page of requested articles. It’s not important that an article is long, he said, just as long as it gets started at all.

The English Wikipedia's articles on video games are huge in number and cumulatively receive extraordinary numbers of visits by readers. This wikiproject has a lot on its hands!