Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Newsletter/20110106/Interview

WikiProject Video Games Newsletter

Volume 3, No. 3 — 4th Quarter, 2010

Changes to Featured and Good content | News items and announcements | Feature | Featured editor

Featured editor: JimmyBlackwing

This issue we continue our regular feature, profiling a "Featured editor", to learn more about the various editors who contribute to the Video games project and the roles they fill. This issue we interview JimmyBlackwing, who has been editing on Wikipedia for over 5 years. You may have seen him providing extra sources, copy editing articles, and offering his opinion at WT:VG.

What drew you to Wikipedia, and what prompted you to begin editing?
I first came here at some point during 2005. I'd heard about the site from a few people, but I'd never checked it out. I believe the first time I arrived was when I was linked, by a forum post, to Wikipedia's article on Xmas. One of my first "achievements" as an IP editor was to edit war over a paragraph in Megatokyo, of which I was a fan at the time. I made an account in October 2005; looking back through my edit history, I see that my first edit was to slightly expand a sentence in Characters of Final Fantasy VIII. As with most editors, I didn't understand Wikipedia's policies, and proceeded to make fairly OR/cruft-ridden edits to that article and G-Man (Half-Life), among others.
How did you become involved with the VG project?
I wasn't an active member of the VG community until relatively recently. I don't recall exactly what caused me to get involved in that. I've always edited video game articles, though; my first major work was the expansion of the Icewind Dale (series) article in February 2006, which I'd been working on in the WP sandbox. I began paying attention to the project's current events later that year, after a group of editors and I nominated Megatokyo for FAC. 1a concerns led to User:Ryu Kaze's and User:Deckiller's involvement as copyeditors, and I started to follow Ryu Kaze's edits, including his inspirational work on Final Fantasy VII (since de-featured). In a personal quest to top that article, or at least match it, I used it as a model for Halo: Combat Evolved. User:TKD assisted me with an amazing copyedit, and I brought the article to FA that year. As I said, I didn't become an active member of the project until maybe two or two-and-a-half years ago, but I would consider my work on Halo to be my first important involvement with WPVG at large.
You've spent a lot of time and energy into Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/Online print archive. What made you start the archive and how do you think it has fared in the year it has been up?
It all started when I was working on Thief: The Dark Project with User:Noj r last year. I was looking for a certain review, and asked about it on the WPVG talk page. I was provided with a link to the review—from an old archive in the Wayback Machine! While I had used the site before, I had no idea so many print sources had put their articles online. I dug up all kinds of material on the game, and bookmarked indexes for personal use. At some point, I realized how useful this stuff would be to other editors; soon after, I proposed and subsequently created the Online print archive. Finding material on games from the mid to late '90s, and the early '00s, had always been a huge problem; now—speaking solely from my own experience—I can say that the archive makes it much easier.

As to how the archive has fared, that's more complicated. In terms of content, it has undergone constant expansion over the last year, and its range of coverage is now pretty large. However, I have seen very few people actually using it; I'm sure they're out there, but they've avoided my notice. To promote awareness of the archive, and to provide general assistance, I've been offering notifications of reviews, previews and other material on the talk pages of random articles. I don't know if it's working yet, but it's a long-term plan; eventually, when someone goes to improve the articles in question, they will automatically have reference material. Eventually, I hope that using the archive as a research tool will become second-nature to VG editors.

One final note. I created the archive knowing that most users could not navigate many of its indexes—they contain countless broken links, workarounds, quirks and other problems. I established the review listings to counteract this. However, I neglected to provide adequate help for other users researching the raw indexes. I realized this after User:SharkD's recent, drastic improvement of the index listings' comprehensiveness and ease of use. I plan to do follow-up work in this regard in the coming months, and in return for his help, I'd like to give a shout-out to his archive: User:SharkD/Top video games lists. It's extremely useful and easy to navigate. I'll be using it in my future article work, and I recommend that everyone else does the same.
What article(s) are you most proud of writing or exemplifies your best work?
That would be Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, which I brought to FA in 2009. I had considered working on it for years before that, but it had been in such poor shape that I couldn't motivate myself; a Collaboration of the Week drive brought the article into working order, and I took it from there. TKD helped me out again with an incredible copyedit, and it was featured without much trouble. I'm currently doing further improvement on the article, and have expanded the Development section quite a bit past what it was when it was featured. I plan to do even more work in the coming months.
How much of a gamer are you and what type of games do you gravitate toward?
I used to play games more than I do now, but I would still describe myself as a very big gamer. As to the types, I tend towards non-standard, innovative games, irrespective of genre. For example, I've really enjoyed the PC indie scene in the last few years, such as Nicklas Nygren's work. On the retail end, I love games by Looking Glass Studios and Black Isle Studios, and stuff like Another World by Eric Chahi. I'm hardly an "old school" gamer, though—some of my all-time favorites were released in the last few years. Oh, and I love the Halo series, hence my work getting Combat Evolved featured.
What do you think is the most difficult part of editing on Wikipedia?
Finding high-quality sources for games released before 1997 is definitely up there. However, I think the FAC process is harder. It isn't that difficult to build an article up to FA-level quality, once you understand how it's done. Despite that, FAC has always been incredibly stressful for me. Part of the reason is that I never know, from one year to the next, who's checking for what. User:Tony1 is a given; his 1a check has tripped me up in the past. User:David Fuchs, himself a talented FA writer, at one point did regular article comprehensiveness checks with LexisNexis—I watched as these destroyed several nominations, which were thankfully not my own. And I don't know if she still does this, but User:Ealdgyth's excruciatingly in-depth source checks were common back when I took Underworld to FAC. In anticipation of that, I actually formulated an argument for the reliability of a certain source before nominating the article. Luckily, I was able to convince her. I hold no ill will toward these people; quite the opposite. They are dedicated, talented editors who ensure that FAs are as high quality as possible. The service that they provide to Wikipedia is beyond measure, and they should be commended for it.

But I worry about these checks, and new ones that might appear out-of-the-blue, every time I consider nominating an article for FAC. They could unexpectedly throw everything I've written into question. While I know enough about Wikipedia to differentiate between high- and low-quality sources, the bar for entry at FAC is ever-changing. For example, the defense that "the source is reliable because it comes from a developer" flew in years past, but I don't know if it would today. Some people, such as User:Gary King and the aforementioned David Fuchs, have breezed right through countless FACs, and have the FAs and FTs to prove it. I just don't fall into that category, unfortunately.
Are there any projects you want to work on right now?
Actually, the project I want to work on is the project that I'm currently working on, which is to create the most detailed, factually accurate and historically interconnected coverage of Looking Glass Studios that exists anywhere. Ideally, each article will fit perfectly into a "timeline", and the company's article will, eventually, connect them all together. Even before I work on the LGS article, though, the game articles on their own should paint a clear picture. With this goal in mind, I'm shooting for a "Looking Glass Studios games" Good Topic. I don't plan to work on the BLPs of the people involved, though, as that's really not my forté. Also, finding sources would be an absolute nightmare.

A little history: I brought System Shock to FA in 2007, and Underworld in 2009, without seriously considering any of these concepts. Noj r brought System Shock 2 to GA a few years ago, and we worked together to bring Thief: The Dark Project to GA—again, without a real plan on my part. Recently, however, I began rewriting, expanding and heavily improving System Shock and Underworld, with the above goal in mind. I'm not nearly done with either of them—in the coming months, I expect Shock's Development section, for example, to grow up to 2x larger than its current size. Beyond reworking my past projects, I've also started to improve other LGS articles, and to catalogue sources on all of their talk pages in anticipation of future work. As of this writing, Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri is up at GAN, as I continue to make final adjustments. My next project will be to further improve System Shock; after that, I'll move on to either Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds or Flight Unlimited.

I realize that this is an extremely long-term goal, and that the workload will be ridiculously large for a solo editor. However, I believe that the history of LGS needs to be catalogued and made known, and I've decided to do it. Plus, I have an infinite fascination with the company, and this allows me to learn more about them on an almost daily basis.
Anything else you would like our readers to know?
I believe that WikiProject Video games is one of the most important research projects in recent history. Before Wikipedia, the history of video games was entirely diffuse. It still is, to some extent, but the changes already have been dramatic. Anyone who wants to know about the Myst series, for example, can peruse David Fuch's Featured Topic on the subject without hassle. Anyone interested in Planescape: Torment can read its Featured Article.

Unfortunately, linkrot is starting to eat away at the foundations of WPVG. I am trying to fight this off in Looking Glass Studios articles by archiving every link via WebCite, or pre-emptively replacing them with Internet Archive links. (David Fuchs had the idea first, in relation to the Halo articles.) In my opinion, everyone should try to do the same. Instead of letting linkrot forever destroy critical sources, WPVG should become a "time capsule" of video game information that is sustainable into the distant future. Otherwise, the work we do today may be gone tomorrow.

I'd like to finish on a more positive note, though. As a freelance writer, Wikipedia's high bar for writing quality—combined with the ability to watch its many professional-level copyeditors in action—has helped me more than I can describe. Seriously; I've worked with paid editors less thorough than some of you guys. The knowledge and ability I've gained from that will definitely not be gone tomorrow.

Also read about our previous Featured editor: Deckiller