Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Animation/Machinima work group/Archive 1

Signing up
Count me in, needless to say.--Drat (Talk) 06:42, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Machinima :) — TKD::Talk 07:15, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Logo
I threw together (rather haphazardly) a logo a day or two ago. I combined FilmRoll-small.png and Crystal Clear app package games.png into wpmachlogo.png. It's quite poor, really, but then again, I can't draw something new. I had to make it greyscale to cut down on the colourful controller clashing with the greyscale film roll, but the difference in detail between the two images still makes them clash. I think it would be much better if the film roll was replaced with a movie camera, something like this, but obviously drawn in a similar style to the controller, and in profile.--Drat (Talk) 06:42, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, my image skills don't even go as far as what you came up with. I'm no artist, either. — TKD::Talk 08:35, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * If I can't think of a better solution within a couple days, I'll tag the image for speedying as being unused and an uploader request, on top of the license issue.--Drat (Talk) 13:27, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

The next steps
So we've marked a bunch of articles as belonging to this project. I've combined the guidelines that Drat had written at Talk:List of machinima series (I modified and trimmed them a bit; hope that you don't mind). They're now consolidated at WikiProject Machinima/Guidelines; please feel free to discuss whether these are sensible.

I've also set up Category:Machinima articles by quality and assessed about half of the project's articles on the Wikipedia 1.0 FA-A-GA-B-Start-Stub assessment scale (see the Category page for a more thorough description of the criteria for each rating). In short, of the articles that I rated, I assessed most of them as B, with a few Start and a couple of stubs. Feel free to dispute those ratings or to assess the ones that I haven't gotten to yet. All you need to do to assess an article is to add a parameter to the MachinimaWikiProject template, which is on the talk page of the article. For example, Red vs Blue has. If I've followed the instructions correctly, Mathbot should come around within a day and populate Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Machinima articles by quality for us. That page should contain a nice table sorted by assessed article quality.

For Wikipedia 1.0, my thoughts are that machinima should probably be gotten up to at least GA status so as to be usable. I haven't examined the article in depth in some time, so I'm not sure how far away it is. Red vs Blue should probably also be included in 1.0; fortunately, that's already featured. — TKD::Talk 11:26, 28 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The table is up. I've added my comments and assessments of importance. Feel free to dispute or annotate further. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TKD (talk • contribs).
 * No problem with the modifications, they work better anyway. What should we do about the old guidelines? I replaced the old deletion discussion links with a link to the new archive, so maybe something similar could be done.--Drat (Talk) 13:27, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that they could be left as-is, with the current pointer to the new ones. — TKD::Talk 02:50, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

More guidelines
I just wrote up a couple more proposed guidelines at WP:WPMACH/G advising against long lists and trivia sections. Feedback is welcome. Of course, this applies to all articles in general, but it seems to be fairly prevalent in fiction-related topics, so I thought it deserved special mention. — TKD::Talk 03:24, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Old review sites
I've been watching machinima since right around January 2000, and I used to regularly read two review sites in particular: Psyk's Popcorn Jungle (Internet Archive copy) and Jagged's The Cineplex. Both of these closed down in the year or so afterwards due to the general decline of the Quake movie community; people were moving to newer games, that either did not have demo support, or had demo support that was not as maleable as Quake and Quake 2, though Psyk blamed it on the rise of Machinima.com. Psyk's reviews were much more in-depth compared to the Cineplex's; unfortunately, the site is long gone, and the Internet Archive copy doesn't work quite right. The content doesn't actually display, and you have to view the source code to actually see the review text. Unfortunately, it seems the website at which Psyk had an email address is now gone, replaced with the usual cybersquatting search page. So I have no idea how to contact him to see if he still has a copy of the site. The worst part is that his review of The Seal of Nehahra is unavailable, although it should be in the archive. Lastly, there is Tex-Murph's Quake Movie Library, though I've only read through a few of these yet, as I didn't know about the proper review section until a few hours ago. See the older reviews link for the proper reviews. The newer reviews are no longer available (you'll get a password request, for some reason), but those were peer reviews that anyone could write, anyway (not WP:RS).--Drat (Talk) 13:27, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * It seems the Internet Archive is down at the moment. As for the Quake Movie Library, it seems that browsing to the individual pages in the old reviews section via the site navigation has stopped working (I get Machinima.com's 404 page), while the direct links I provided still work. I know I'm not pulling up cached versions, as I cleared it.--Drat (Talk) 16:25, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * When I said Internet Archive, I actually meant the Wayback Machine.--Drat (Talk) 09:04, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm Psyk, I'm back and available now, and yes, I do have the PPJ archives stored away. Can't say the same about the Cineplex though, I'm afraid.--Psyklax 07:25, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The Cineplex still exists intact, despite the restructuring following GameSpy's buyout. A lot of the download links are dead though.--Drat (Talk) 12:53, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * If it helps, I have every QMovie I reviewed on my hard drive, so if I could put them online somewhere it would solve some problems. Machinima.com has films of their own but they're generally DivX .avis rather than the real deal, and there's not many of them. Suggestions on where to upload them to? --Psyklax 12:57, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure at the moment. I think a lot of the DEM format ones are still on M.com (but good luck finding them). I'm going offline shortly and won't be online until some time tomorrow.--Drat (Talk) 13:02, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Google Pages might be a bet, but its limited to 100Mb storage. At least Nehahra is still easily available from the official site.--Drat (Talk) 14:41, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I've found the PPJ! I was searching around my old CD-ROM backups of my old hard drives and found the PPJ files on one. The news on it goes up to 13/06/01 - the post about my Seal of Nehahra review - and I don't know if I ever made any posts after that. Anybody know? If not, I have the CD right now, with all the screenshots we could use. They're all for Quake1 Movies only, and all at 320x200, which was the norm back when the movies were made. They're all .gifs as well, except Nehahra which is a .jpg because it used that GL-based new software. I can upload pics for RGB1 and 2 now, but need to know what the 'fair use' business is etc. Also I'm going to upload the PPJ to my webspace on Saturday. EDIT: I just browsed Wayback Machine, found 'The End Is Nigh' post dated 27/01/02. I doubt I did any after that. Lookin at that site it seems Telefragged deleted the site not long after. I'll add the post to the site.--Psyklax 07:23, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The PPJ is back online. Go to my new site at http://www.tv13.co.uk/ppj. It's got a new blog etc but the old site is available via a link on the side. I also noticed that the menu on the old PPJ doesn't work on Firefox, which is a pain, but I'm not updating the old one anymore. I'm starting with a new one. Any questions, don't hesitate to go on my talk page. Or email me. --Psyklax 11:09, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Quake movie technology and techniques
If we are going to cover modern Machinima techniques, we should also cover old techniques, namely the recording and editing of demos which could be played back in-game. Machinima.com probably still has loads of old articles and tutorials on the techniques, and there is also this listing of programs that could be useful to look at.--Drat (Talk) 13:27, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Further to this: Keep in mind that a lot of the old Quake 1 movies don't look/work right in GLQuake. WinQuake should be fine for most movies. The only movie I know was made to take advantage of GLQuake is Blahbaliscious, though it doesn't require it to work. The only movie I know of that requires a modified engine to work is The Seal of Nehahra which was made with a modified version of DarkPlaces. I don't know how the source-ports work with the other Quake 1 films.--Drat (Talk) 14:29, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I just tried to watch the DivX version of Hardly Workin' and it causes Windows Explorer and Windows Media Player to crash, at least on my machine. How odd. Also, note that the DivX versions of The Seal of Nehahra have gradual synchronisation problems. The video lags further behind the audio, approximately 1 second every 2.5 minutes. It can get pretty bad in the longer scenes. Thankfully the video version is split into parts. All the same, if you have Quake, you are better off running the in-engine version. It's a smaller download anyway.--Drat (Talk) 17:08, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I completely agree that old-style techniques should be covered. Unfortunately, I currently don't have a copy of Quake. :( — TKD::Talk 02:50, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I can tell you plenty about Quake editing techniques - after all, I made Dantooine Five-O amongst other things. If you give me some time I could come up with a detailed article about it. Quake 2 as well. Also, I agree that it's tricky to get QMovies to look exactly how they should look without an old PC that can run WinQuake or DOS Quake. GLQuake can't do FOV commands (for zooming) amongst other things.--Psyklax 07:29, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The problem with this is that it would be viewed as Original Research. I'm sure there are loads of old tutorials around that could be cited.--Drat (Talk) 12:26, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Screenshots of old films
I'll see what I can do about taking screenshots of old films. I've been meaning to watch some of these films again anyway. Best part is that the screenshots can be taken at really high resolutions at perfect quality (being in-engine), which can then be scaled-down to make them more appropriate for use here.--Drat (Talk) 13:27, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * The PPJ archives has a screenshot for every movie I reviewed, so if you need them I can get them. They're at 320x200 res I think, because that was standard DOS Quake res. No GL involved either. So if you want your super-hires ones, they might not suit, but should be fine for Wikipedia thumbs. Important note: most films were made with 320x200 in mind, and resolution affects placement and size of text on screen.--Psyklax 07:32, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Assessment
So far, I've been doing all of the assessment work (the B/Start/Stub quality and High/Mid/Low importance ratings). My thoughts on this are as follows:

For article quality, I think the separation between Stub, Start, and B is probably not worth too much attention. So I propose that anyone can move an article among these three classes without prior discussion; some justification would be nice, though. Obviously, revert-warring is strongly discouraged, and 3RR applies to talk pages as well, so it's beter to discuss if a disagreement arises. GA and FA obviously require validation by outside processes. A rule of thumb for A-Class is that it's almost ready for FA. So upgrading to A shouldn't be done casually. As an example, Red vs Blue after the peer review in February would have probably been A-Class material. B-Class articles are generally more than about half-done. Start is somewhere larger than a stub but not nearly close to finished. In my mind, B-Class is the widest range in terms of quality. An article can be about "half done" and still contain original research, copyediting problems, etc. Quite a bit work may be necessary, however, to fill in the gaps and perform requisite cleanup.

In terms of importance, I rated the majority of our articles, but I might have been a bit too harsh, especially with the Mid and Low grades. Therefore, I'm proposing the following heuristics:


 * Top-Class : Among the absolutely most important machinima articles. Has likely been mentioned in the mainstream media multiple times (though, if machinima becomes more popular, this may no longer be relevant) or otherwise broke new ground in machinima. Use this judiciously; reserve it for articles that you would recommend for inclusion in a general encyclopedia (though this may change if machinima becomes significantly more popular). Using it too much will dilute its effect.
 * High-Class : Any reasonably thorough treatment of machinima should cover this topic in some detail. Winning awards, mainstream coverage, and groundbreaking are factors to consider here, though not as strictly applied as for Top-Class.
 * Mid-Class : This topic fills some details worth mentioning, but not completely essential for a broad working knowledge of achinima.
 * Low-Class : Possibly only worth mentioning in passing in a broad overview, if that.

Thoughts? — TKD::Talk 05:24, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
 * All sounds good.--Drat (Talk) 17:06, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Removing all spoiler tags?
There is a dispute on whether or not spoiler tags are appropriate for Wikipedia. Some editors wish to remove spoiler tags while other editors wish to keep them and/or update their guidelines and appearance. A request for comment has been started at Spoiler warning/RfC with a structured discussion page on Wikipedia talk:Spoiler warning/RfC. All editors are invited to share their input on any or all of the issues being discussed. There is also a straw poll.--GunnarRene 03:24, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Long-term plan
I've been a bit busy getting ready to move at the end of this week, but I've thought about the long-term ideals for this project. Recognizing that the proverbial laborers are relatively few, I don't expect this to happen overnight, but it's something to keep in mind.
 * 1) I'd like to see well-referenced "year in machinima" articles, at least for the more recent years where there's a good amount to write. I have an offline start to 2006 in machinima; this should be up soon.
 * 2) The backlog of new article requests should be chipped away at. Coverage of older films is going to be important for the next step.
 * 3) Once we have a decent mix of articles, we should consider setting up Portal:Machinima. This may not be for some time, as there's no reason to have a portal without a sustainable number of articles to cucle through.

Thoughts? — TKD::Talk 10:20, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Yeah, I need to get off my lazy arse and start writing up stuff (offline) on the old movies.--Drat (Talk) 11:53, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I can go through my archives and give you the full low-down on 1996-1999, having lived through it all. Bear with me on that one, but I should be able to come up with something in the next month or two.--Psyklax 07:49, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation guideline change
I just changed a couple of things in the guidelines to make them fall more in line with Wikipedia conventions.
 * 1) Instead of using (machinima) as a disambiguation suffix, it's probably better to use (film) or (series), since most people don't know what machinima is.
 * 2) Instead of disambiguating by production group when two productions have the same name, I changed it to have disambiguation by year; this uis more consistent with existing film articles. — TKD::Talk 19:59, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

"Importance" rating of URF videos
I just bumped Torn Apart (film) and Ranger Gone Bad down to "Low" importance, after some thought (and after having gotten a working copy of Quake, finally, and viewing them myself. I just got The Art of Machinima (by Paul Marino) and Machinima by Kelland, Morris, and Llyod through Amazon.com this week; neither mention TA or RGB at all.My thought is that they probably should have their own articles snce we do have reviews of them and such, but they're there more for completeness. On the other hand, I feel comfortable leaving RGB2 and TA2 at Mid importance due to the former's popularity and the latter's being the first piece to include actual spoken dialogue.

Comments or objections? — TKD::Talk 09:13, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds fine to me: I wrote the article on RGB2 and got kind of carried away and decided to do all the Ranger films since they didn't take too long to write. I agree that I only wrote them to be complete - since we were doing an article on URF and listing their films, I thought it'd only make sense to do all of their films. I did Operation Bayshield and Blahbalicious, and when I get time after my holiday I'll do Devil's Covenant and Eschaton: Darkening Twilight. I'll only do the more obvious ones. Apartment Huntin' is on the request list, so maybe I'll look at that next. --Psyklax 11:19, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Diary of a Camper
I've just finished another major expansion of Diary of a Camper, and I think that it's about as long as it's going to get. For what was, after all, a short film, I think that the nine paragraphs that we have are pretty substantial. Does anyone think that it might stand a chance at WP:FAC? We have precedent for the promotion of short articles (Hurricane Irene (2005) is about the same length, both with and without references), and certainly I've laid out a case for its notability. The citations are as high of a quality as I could find: two journal articles, the two machinima books, and the three major contemporary Quake movie sites (Paul Marino even lists them as such in his book).

If anyone wants to do a copyedit, be my guest. Also, I personally think that this is an A-Class article for its scope, but I won't unilaterally raise it myself. If you think that it stands a chance at FAC, feel free to upgrade its rating. As far as I know, GA is not a prerequisite for A-Class. — TKD::Talk 08:36, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

New outline for the machinima article
I've proposed a new outline for the article on machinima, on its talk page: Talk:Machinima. Comments and suggestions are welcome. — TKD::Talk 08:48, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

New page for non-free resources
Based on an idea from WikiProject Computer and video games, I've started, at WikiProject Machinima/Resources, an index of non-free resources that could contribute encyclopedic content to articles on machinima. Please feel free to add any non-free resources to which you have access and identify yourself as such. — TKD::Talk 05:58, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Integration with cvgproj
A request has been made at WikiProject Computer and video games talk to integrate the MachinimaWikiProject template into the CVG header itself. While obviously many of your pages do not have a cvgproj template on them, and would be left alone, pages with both would be integrated. The newly integrated template can be seen here: User:Hbdragon88/Temp. Thoughts? Objections? --PresN 16:17, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I've replied at the CVG talk page. — TKD::Talk 23:31, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
 * A question was raised there whether CVG is really a meaningful parent project for us, given the small area of overlap. Perhaps WikiProject Filmmaking might be better? Objections to such a change? — TKD::Talk 10:27, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Barring any disagreement, I've removed CVG as a parent. I decided to forego adding a second parent for now; perhaps Filmmaking would make sense later on, but we don't actually have much in the way of the actual general process of making machinima yet. — TKD::Talk 09:18, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

As far as WikiProject Filmmaking goes, I'd consider the articles about the technical aspects of creating machinima to have overlapping scope with the Filmmaking project, and be tagged accordingly. However, the articles on the individual titles would probably fall under the parent scope of WikiProject Films. It's fine for the project to have overlapping scope with another one; whether or not you actually want to classify one or the other as a parent is simply a matter of subject organization, but shouldn't make too much difference to the project itself. Girolamo Savonarola 11:49, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

This Spartan Life
Just to let you people know that a few of the This Spartan Life members are doing work on the This Spartan Life Article, also in addition there is now a article on Fyb3roptik which is being work on by mainly by ChromiumCurium and hopefully soon by me, in the mean time we're also overhauling several areas mainly the characters section, and don't worry chris has confirmed all the character section as nowing being correct —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Downskated (talk • contribs).
 * Please read Autobiography, Verifiability, and Reliable sources. I redirected Fyb3roptik's article for now; it'd be better to focus on the main This Spartan Life until it gets to be of a reasonable size. I also highly doubt that there are any reasonable verifiable sources to support articles on individual characters on TSL. We can't take your word that Chris has confirmed it because no one would be able to verify anything not directly observable from the show. — TKD::Talk 11:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

update-TKD if you want the characters section pushed together let either me or Chromium do it, and though i would much rather prefer mergining only a few of the lesser characters, the gamers section could be removed but i would like to replace with a new heading talking about how people in the background are actually on live, (though i have to laugh about the fact we're un-aware of the film which is totally wrong) i could go into recuirment process once we even have a process, but to be honest i would perfer to leave the character section mostly alone. --Downskated 08:49, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The best bet is to group the characters into 2 or 3 paragraphs under one heading. You don't have to have a heading every paragraph. Think of it this way: Paragraphs are groupings, and sections are groupings of paragraphs, or meta-groupings. If you could reasonably write two or three paragraphs about a character, then it'd make sense to give each one its own section. But in most cases characters get 2 to 3 sentences. — TKD::Talk 01:11, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

CSD A7 has been expanded to include web content
Just as a note, consensus developed on WT:CSD to expand the A7 criterion for speedy deletion. Articles about web content that make no assertion of notability or of historical importance may be speedily deleted. Most machinima productions are webcontent, so be aware of this policy change. Articles that fall under this new expansion can be tagged with db-web — TKD::Talk 23:04, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:
 * User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
 * User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
 * User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:02, 23 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now put the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 23:47, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Splitting up the RoosterTeeth template
I've made a proposal to redesign the growing RoosterTeeth template, splitting it into four small templates; see Template talk:RoosterTeeth. Feedback is welcome. — TKD::Talk 06:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia
Beginning cross-post.
 * See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★ MESSED  ROCKER ★  23:30, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

''End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.''

Section: Article assessment
This section is a complete list of all articles within the scope of this project. However, it is of such length that I think it would be a good idea to make this its own page. Something like WikiProject Machinima/Article Assessment is what I had in mind. This would reduce the size of the main page considerably, as well as giving article assessment for this project its own home (speaking of a page). What does everyone think? —Cliff smith 05:56, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
 * It is its own page, Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Machinima articles by quality, which is automatically maintained by a bot. It's just transcluded into the main project page for ease of viewing, but, if you want to change it to a simple link, I have no strong objection to that. — TKD::Talk 10:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afriad) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 15:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)