Forum:Edit Zork: Official Vote to Euthanize The Game: Namespace

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EDIT ZORK!

Make more rooms of Zork

IT's funny THE GAME\ R  SR

FFJE

AAAAAAAAA! A GRUE! IT'S EATING ME! IT'S EATING MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Oh, is it time again to delete more of that, already? 1234 ~ 06:43, 12 December, 2010

Official Vote to Euthanize The Game: Namespace

Score: +2 and a squid

• Nom and For. I'd been planning to raise this issue for some time now but this IP-made-Dump just reminded me of it. I think we should delete everything in the Game: namespace except for Zork and any other notable games. The remaining pages will be mainspaced and then protected. If users want to make their own games they can make them in their userspaces. -- The Zombiebaron 07:28, December 12, 2010 (UTC)

  On IRC just now Lyrithya suggested that instead of protecting the games that remain after our mass deletion we should instead disable the edit button in the Game namespace. This is a very good idea too and I would support that if it happened. -- The Zombiebaron 07:53, December 12, 2010 (UTC)

• I like it There may be some other games worth keeping, but not too many, and disabling the edit button would save a hell of alot of reverting stupid shit. Lieutenant THEDUDEMAN Dude ... Totally UOTM KUN GotA F@H 08:12, December 12, 2010 (UTC)
• Mmm, that overall plan seems a bit harsh. The namespace does have some redeeming value; it's just an idiot-magnet.
  And you never did say how you intended to sort out the good and bad. It's a bit much to VFD, and games are often rather large, anyhow. 1234 ~ 08:21, 12 December, 2010

  We'll probably make a list of all the Games and then get people to vote. But first we need to see if the community is in support of taking such actions. -- The Zombiebaron 08:25, December 12, 2010 (UTC)

  I'd be in more support if I had more of an inkling as to how it would proceed. See, I'm horribly clueless and stuff, you know? Makes me paranoid. 1234 ~ 08:32, 12 December, 2010

  Not that I don't support it, mind. *adds a squid vote* 1234 ~ 08:33, 12 December, 2010

• fucking do it --Roman Dog Bird 08:24, December 12, 2010 (UTC)
•  Against. Per our general policy of not having votes for genocide. --Mn-z 23:00, December 13, 2010 (UTC)
•  For. Wikimedia is a horrible medium to code a real game. The pleasure of getting a Wikimedia game to work (like the pleasure of getting a program to echo Teletype characters in 2K of memory) does not mean you've done anything FUNNY, nor that it was the best use of your time, nor of your reader or the site.  I don't claim we should be voting on huffing an entire namespace--much less a subset of it that hasn't been precisely defined--but I view the place as a wasteland. Spıke ¬ 21:13 15-Dec-10
  • Back in old country, vote not count if vote no know software name. Mister Victim (talk) 23:44, December 20, 2010 (UTC)
• Against Didn't we already discuss this about 6 months ago and the final consensus was delete the crap and keep the better stuff, and to use vfd process to decide which is which. By all means protect the damned space - I am as sick of reverting stupid as anyone else, but if you want to kill a particular game, use VFD. After all, that's what it is there for. (Besides, if we kill it there where will the inevitable sequel to alone in the dark appear?) Nominally Humane! some time Friday, 07:09, Dec 17 2010 UTC
•  Against.--Poiz,Teh zork master!!!! 22:55, December 17, 2010 (UTC)
•  NO! Stop this massacre! I have a game in progress for crying out loud! --Scofield 14:18, December 18, 2010 (UTC)
• Burn them all -OptyC Sucks! CUN15:39, 19 Dec

I disagree

I like to play the retarded games so I can be amazed by their crappiness as well as laughed at their creator's stupidity and existence. Let them stay. Do it for Sophia at least!--If you're 555 then I'm Talk What's it like to be a heretic? 03:22, December 13, 2010 (UTC)

IP's are going to keep putting games in whether there is a game namespace or not. The game namespace makes a good place to move these things to so that they can be VFD and huffed at a later time. Why later rather than sooner? The answer in one word: Procrastination. It always wins. -- Simsilikesims(♀UN) Talk here. 23:33, December 13, 2010 (UTC)

Which is why we should remove the edit button. Slow down them IPs. 1234 ~ 00:21, December 14, 2010 (UTC)

Protecting the namespace so that only registered users could add games would be useful. That way we know who to blame. That gives me an idea for a new game....-- Simsilikesims(♀UN) Talk here. 02:14, December 17, 2010 (UTC)

Problem is, is that actually doable, protecting a namespace? 1234 ~ 02:40, 17 December 2010

I don't know since I don't know advanced wiki coding, but we could start with protecting certain existing games that we don't want messed with. Simsilikesims 02:43, December 17, 2010 (UTC)

Socky says yes... it is. Not sure how, but he does seem to be quite familiar with these things... it certainly would be a nice solution. What about the noobs, though? 1234 ~ 02:44, 17 December 2010

I drive a van

This wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that I've been working on this for the last month or two would it??!! Well I cry foul! This is communism I say! Stifling my creativity and all that!!! --—John Lydon 15:15, December 13, 2010 (UTC)

I'm Scott Brown, and I drive a truck. pillow talk 23:32, December 25, 2010 (UTC)

What's wrong with the gamespace?

Problems

1. It encourages text only adventures, which have a very limited appeal
2. A single game takes up a huge amount of pages when you are looking at outcomes based on choices
3. Wikimedia limits what you can do in regards to active content which means that there are significant restrictions on what can and can't be done. 

Proposed solutions

1. All new additions to the game space must first be created in user space, and them pass through PEE review before being allowed to go into gamespace.
2. The namespace be restricted to registered users only. (I seem to recall this means at least 5 days from IP to editable status. 
3. Existing games become locked to editing with the exception of admin only. 
4. I finally get round to writing down the solution to multipage game issues, and create the templates to support the solution. 
5. Games can be created as flash and uploaded to site to avoid the Wikimedia based restrictions. 
6. We do that thing that was done before my time where all active users were encouraged to go through the plethora of games and get them to nominate for deletion using a process similar to VFD but much quicker. Say for instance something goes up on a page like VFD/Game special by a user and it gets seconded by another user. If after a period of a week there are no objections it gets deleted, and if there are two objections then it can either stay or go on to VFD. 

A few thoughts. Anyone have anything to add? Nominally Humane! some time Sunday, 07:16, Dec 19 2010 UTC

• For. Especially the part about doing a gamespace forest fire week. -- The Zombiebaron 07:30, December 19, 2010 (UTC)
• Yeah, but... eh. Whatever. 1234 ~ 08:01, 19 December 2010
•  Against. too complicated. See issues below. --Mn-z 18:46, December 19, 2010 (UTC)

Critique of Proposed solution

1. Require games to be created in userspace & pee review requirement Why single out gamespace for this? The actual number of games isn't that high, and they don't show up on page searches. Why can Mister Ip create a highly notable mainspace page, or a category, or a template on his own, yet Guidy, Socky, or Hype (or even Modus or Mordillo for that matter) would need to go through a long process to create a game. 

   Also currently, Pee Review is not used to decide if an article is good enough for mainspace or not. Although self-nominated articles need a pee review, there is no score requirement for VFH self nominations. One could get a review with a single digit score that basically says, "Your article's underlining concept is unworkable, you should try writing on something else. Likewise, your grammar, formatting, and infantile attempts at 'humor' are very poorly done, please read UN:HTBFANJS. Finally, your article appears to violating various state & federal obscenity and/or libel laws." and still nominate it.

2. Limiting gamespace to registered users Again, why single out gamespace for this. If we were going to do such a thing, it would make more sense to semi-protect categoryspace and templatespace before gamespace. In fact, I would probably say gamespace is a lower priority than mainspace. 
3. Locking existing games This is a wiki, what if Socky or Sycamore see a typo or need to add a category? Also, I think at least some games are supposed to be co-operatively written. (Since this place is like a wiki or something.)
4. template solution for multipage games I don't know what your proposed template solution is, so I'm not going to comment on it.
5. games can be created in flash I would agree if you mean encourage the use of flash as opposed to text-based multi-paged games.
6. Special deletion procedure for games I don't think we need a special procedure to do that. 

Hyperbole once suggesting doing that with the templates. Later, I took many of the templates in question to VFD. It turns out that the community wanted to keep some. Basically, what I call "perverse instruction" templates were for the most part deleted, while what I call "comment" templates mostly survived, unless they were particularly ugly. While most of the templates that I disliked were kept (or I never got around to deleting them), the ones that I really hated were mostly deleted. 

The same thing is happening with the game space. The awful ones have mostly been deleted in earlier "crusades", the community is separating the "good enough" from the crap, its becoming apparent what the community thinks is delete worthy. and if any new awful page comes into existence, it can be dealt with by our existing deletion processes. --Mn-z 18:46, December 19, 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the game namespace unlike any other has a knack for attracting the worst sort of general cruft, and unlike other namespaces, users that tend to patrol edits also tend to avoid it, simply because it is already a pile of cruft, and much too hard to sort through, or something. I know I don't even bother reverting IP stupidity on bad articles; what's the point? It tends to be no worse than what is there, and I have avoided the games for that reason as well in the past. 

And as the place is so full of crap, deletion of games has actually encountered resistance on VFD, as you might have seen, because many of the bad ones are no worse than the horrifically low standard that is currently the case... perhaps some proper organisation would be in order. 1234 ~ 19:02, 19 December 2010

Also, this is a wiki, a text-based medium for conveying information in text, not a repository for flash. If people want to make those, they should put them somewhere for those, as there are plenty of websites devoted entirely to the things, not here... 1234 ~ 19:03, 19 December 2010

The resistance to deleting some games should be interpreted as the community deciding to keep them. That, in turn, must mean that the community in general wants to keep more than a few games that would be on your deletion list.

Also, to quote myself from any earlier discussion on the matter, I don't like these complex rules for the simple reason that anyone who would know how to follow the rules probably also knows enough not to write crap. So basically the ips will still be creating games in gamespace (or mainspace), then somebody would need to explain the long and convoluted process for creating a game. 

Finally, why does everyone want to single out gamespace for special quality control, instead of categoryspace or templatespace? --Mn-z 19:43, December 19, 2010 (UTC)

I'm not objecting to the resistance, I'm objecting to the reasoning behind it. Saying, 'yeah, there's worse, may as well keep it' is ultimately pointless, since it just perpetuates the cycle of crap.

Eh, that does seem rather silly. But keeping the IPs out might be a good idea, at least for awhile. See if it even helps. 

Because people in general seem less inclined to avoid those? People put categories and templates up for deletion fairly regularly, and as they are both smaller and less complicated, as well as more used, those namespaces are a lot easier to patrol and whatnot. Games tend to be large and avoided and... well, large, which does not help matters. 1234 ~ 20:02, 19 December 2010

Stoopid keep votes on VFD aren't limited to gamespace. Perhaps you make a game parodying bad reasons for voting keep on VFD. Then fly off the handle and leave for a few months when the parody itself is VFD'd in an unfair vote. --Mn-z 21:36, December 19, 2010 (UTC)

Or I could throw a pie at you. 1234 ~ 21:50, 19 December 2010

Main issue with VFD and gamespace is that VFD moves slowly, and for a massive jumble of garbage that gamespace has become, is trying to kill major parts of it through VFD is time consuming. And wading through a game to determine if there is a kernel of keepability is a nightmare, so most users, confronted by a potential VFD on  a game, ignore it rather than go through the effort. FF (limited to a week and a specific gamespace) means a quick, concentrated but intelligent perusal of deadwood to clean it up, so as far as I'm concerned it's still a viability. 

And why gamespace? Because it's a pain to monitor. A template may clock in at 200 characters - a game could be as much as 200 pages.

And why lock sections or the whole of the space? Does Zork need additions? If the total edit count to quality edits ratio is 1:20, then wouldn't the inconvenience of asking an admin to make a minor edit on the odd occasion outweigh the other 95% of the edits that are constantly being undone/reverted? I would prefer to have it registered users only edit then a complete lockdown, or even just pages closed for edits in a similar fashion to forums being closed for additions - easily workaroundable for those with a little wiki-know how, but a stumbling block for random ips. 

And lastly to flash - never felt the need to learn it myself, especially as wiki is the perfect platform for point and click - except for the stupid interface on iPhone. It's an idea for those who want to go outside of the restrictions here though.  Nominally Humane! some time Monday, 07:44, Dec 20 2010 UTC

I doubt that there are that many games, relative to the total number of articles on the wiki. Although there is an issue with games being hard to look at, I don't think that is a valid reason to try to bypass VFD. If the games were simply overwhelming VFD, I could understand suggesting a FF week, vote for genocide, or the like. However, many games that have been brought to VFD have survived, which is telling me that the community wants to keep them. Granted, the community wants to keep a lot of stoopid crap, but there isn't much that can be done about that. While I dislike keep votes made for stupid reasons, I dislike unfair articles deletions more.

I don't think gamespace is a big deal. Although it does take up a large number of pages, they don't show up in searches or when hitting the "random page" button, i.e. they are hidden away like old unNews, forum posts, talk page archives, and the like. Also, the pages aren't much of a drain on system resources. For one, deleting a page does not remove it from the servers. And, in Wikia's perspective, all web traffic is good traffic. Besides, pages are relatively small and this is 2010. This image is about twice the size of User:Hyperbole/ICarly to put it in perspective.

Also, I'm afraid if we were to implement game creation restrictions, we'd have a de facto double standard biased in favor of old articles. (We sort of have that now, but I'm not going to get into it here.) Basically, we'd have high standards for new articles that wouldn't be applied to old articles in practice. Kind of like how VFD is sometimes more forgiving than ICU, but much more so. --Mn-z 23:00, December 20, 2010 (UTC)

Critique of Critique of Critique of Proposed solution

Yeah - fair calls. I am in favour of defacto double standards, as they eventually turn things around so that the quality of newer additions becomes progressively better than previous stuff, but happy to let you make that call.

Having said that, what would you feelings be on a <div id="old-forum-warning" style="display: none; visibility: hidden;">__noeditsection__</div> addition to existing games that are vandalism magnets, such as Zork? Nominally Humane! some time Tuesday, 03:27, Dec 21 2010 UTC

The problem is, I could find easily hundreds (thousands if I looked hard enough) of pages that would probably need such protection more. (For example, policy pages, featured articles, quasi-featured articles, templatespace, categoryspace, et cetera.) Applying the slippery slope argument, what's to keep this place form turning into "the content-free encyclopedia that only people who know howto get arround a hidden edit button can edit" --Mn-z 03:07, December 22, 2010 (UTC)

How about we just delete the bad ones and actually check and try to maintain the good ones? A little caring will go a long way. Incidentally, I think I'm done caring. 1234 ~ 03:23, 22 December 2010

So in short, why don't we just do what we've already been doing, and make no major changes... Nominally Humane! some time Wednesday, 04:21, Dec 22 2010 UTC

I've been sitting on my arse eating popcorn, myself. Want some? 1234 ~ 04:36, 22 December 2010

Is it candied popcorn? Nominally Humane! some time Wednesday, 05:45, Dec 22 2010 UTC

Sorry, mon. Just ordinary heart-attack popcorn. 1234 ~ 05:50, 22 December 2010

Oh well, I guess I'll just have to sit here at work and pretend to be doing something important while turning my userpage into a game. Nominally Humane! some time Wednesday, 05:51, Dec 22 2010 UTC

Or you could have a heart attack. 1234 ~ 13:33, 22 December 2010

Some suggestion from the other side of the Earth

Hey! Guys! I'm from Traditional Chinese Uncyclopedia. I like the Game idea . Therefore I created the UnGame project (which changes to UnACG) in zh-tw ,and it seems it grows healthily.

In my view, the games in zh-tw are more diversified than en. Check this link (page of game project with Google translator) and you can feel it. I don't know why but it seems that you limited youself to make text adventure game. Using same technique, we make difference games with/without graphic.

I think one of the problem is the main pages.

The categorys limits people to think on text game. And I don't know why there is a category of Time Wasters. It sends out a message that Uncyclopedia doesn't care the quality of game.

Also, You don't have enough tutorials. The advice in User:YesTimeToEdit/gameportal/advice is too simple. In zh-tw, we have many pages to teach users how to deal with random number, graphics and Template:CGI. If you want people to create more than text adventure game, you at least should tell them how.

There are many confusing detail in your main pages... I don't know how to explain well in English.

Additionally, I support Flash. I create Flash Games in zh-tw. And if Uncyclopedia can revise crossdomain.xml for Flash, that will be amazing (but not safe). My swf can read the code in pages and run it. --Sunny周 18:22, December 20, 2010 (UTC)

•  For. makes sense to me to change main page. Nominally Humane! some time Monday, 19:43, Dec 20 2010 UTC

Game namespace issues: The Solution: The Idea: The Colon Cancer, or: GAME: Legacy

The best idea I had so far is that Chinese guy's idea of having Flash games on Uncyclopedia, and have tutorials on how to make them. We could be the next Newgrounds in a flash! Imagine Flash Zork! |Si Plebius Dato' Joe ang Kemador CUN|IC Kill | 14:30, December 24, 2010 (UTC)

I'm starting to think Zombiebaron's plan to just delete the entire namespace isn't such a bad idea, after all... fostering notions like that... 1234 ~ 15:30, 24 December 2010

Read this and check out the game. Also worthwhile looking at a satirical but accurate article on the evolution of computer graphics in monitor. Zork is a text based game and works because it is a text based game HG2G was a fantastic text based game that was converted to flash, but wasn't improved by it. In a nostalgic way I prefer the text version. I am putting together a few tutes on games in wikimedia at the moment, and that will be more along the limes of what can be done and what can't be done and what shouldn't be done. In the meantime, check out the bubble wrap on my user page as an idea of one of the other things that wikimedia can let you do, along with Alone in the Dark - which does need a bit of recoding but shows a bit more of the potential of the site. Nominally Humane! some time Saturday, 01:31, Dec 25 2010 UTC

In zh-tw, we have a game for bubble pop too (this). But the quality of graphic is not as good as yours.--Sunny周 06:09, December 26, 2010 (UTC)

Despite Taiwan being part of the PRC, I still wsay that we should go ahead with the Taiwanese guy's plan of making Flash games and putting them on Uncyclopedia. Want some teh? |Si Plebius Dato' Joe ang Kemador CUN|IC Kill | 04:13, December 27, 2010 (UTC)

I would happily create flash games - as soon as I work out how. Nominally Humane! some time Monday, 04:59, Dec 27 2010 UTC

Here you go, a background for it. |Si Plebius Dato' Joe ang Kemador CUN|IC Kill | 10:19, December 28, 2010 (UTC)

A prototype of new main pages

User:SunnyChow/sandbox

It's only a prototype which I copy form zh-tw. It's totally not finished but show the direction. If you like it. I will use it to replace the original main pages.

(correction: I'm a Hongkonger and I don't think Taiwan is a part of the PRC.)

--Sunny周 13:36, December 28, 2010 (UTC)

Chow, You saved The gamespace! --Poiz,Teh zork master!!!! 17:18, December 28, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to Hong Kongers like you, you saved the gamespace! Now I can get Indians to develop games for this! |Si Plebius Dato' Joe ang Kemador CUN|IC Kill | 07:37, January 1, 2011 (UTC)