Talk:List of Nintendo Switch games/Archive 6

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FYI: Games still missing for 0-9/A-F

Yesterday night I got to adding missing games starting with E and F, and I thought I'd completed. Earlier today I was working on G and H. However I found a bug in my code, where when checking the release status in NA and EU regions, I was actually checking the JP release status by mistake! This means that any games unreleased in Japan were incorrectly detected as unreleased in all regions and hence excluded from my data analysis.

This means I am not as well-progressed as I had previously thought. Over the last few days I have added games starting with a number or A-F, a total of 297 added games. However due to the aforementioned bug, I've now found a further 428 games starting with a number or A-F, which were not added. I will now be turning to add these "still missing" (0-9, A-F) games before continuing with G and H. It will take me quite some time to get through and add all of these "still missing" games. Obviously I can't go back and edit my revision comments for my prior revision, so they will still show e.g. "Add missing games for C", etc, but just to clarify these revisions only contained games which were released in Japan. I am planning to make a series of revisions to add the "still missing" games for each number/letter/numbers/letters individually.

By the way, another side-effect of this, as you may have realised, was that any games which were released in JP+NA but not EU, or JP+EU but not NA, were incorrectly listed as released in EU or NA respectively. I have already gone through the past added data and corrected the wrong ones, but only 7 items in total were affected by this issue, so not too serious. Kidburla (talk) 20:56, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

@Kidburla: I'm noticing a lot of these new entries are unsourced and do not link to an article. Here at this list, every entry needs a source, unless it links to a proper article that contains sourcing. -- ferret (talk) 22:54, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Ah okay. I didn't realise that, and I don't quite see the point of adding references for games which are clearly shown on the Nintendo eShop? Anyone with a Switch can go on the eShop and verify those. (For games not yet released I do understand why we need to cite sources.) Also, who has decided that this rule needs to be followed on this page (for games that are listed on the eShop) - and has it been decided that it's better to just exclude those entries from the list rather than have entries without references? Have you considered adding an edit notice, as I would have thought many editors like myself would not know about this rule. Kidburla (talk) 23:34, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

@Kidburla: WP:V always matters. This is a core Wikipedia policy... That many lists ignore it is beyond the scope of this talk page. When this list began, an effort was made to do things right for once. In theory, any entry on this list (or any of the others) that lacks a source (or at least a link to an article that does have source, though that's bending things just a bit), can be removed as unsourced. -- ferret (talk) 00:08, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: Okay, tomorrow I'll look at removing all the games I've added over the past few days, as all of them are unsourced. Then I'll have to find ways of getting sources for games. If the game is listed on nintendo.com, is it sufficient just to cite the appropriate URL on nintendo.com (within a proper "cite web" template)? For games not on nintendo.com, I may have to ask help from the community to find sources for those games. Kidburla (talk) 00:18, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Now that is a good question. Are primary sources fine? If a game has zero secondary sourcing, should they be omitted? Needs a few more voices I think. I know Masem has pondered whether we should included much of the eShop as it's far less curated by Nintendo than in the past. -- ferret (talk) 00:34, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: I think you are talking there about notability not verifiability. I was talking about verifiability. Prior discussions established that there is no consensus for restricting the scope of this page; that wasn't what I was referring to. I was just referring to the rule on this page about what sourcing I need to provide. I have looked through the existing references and there are many games with a single source from nintendo.com, so I think I will assume for now that this is okay. Consistency with the approach taken previously is important. By the way, nowhere does WP:V say that everything has to be sourced. What it does say is that everything must be verifiable and that "any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material". Personally I don't feel that games listed on the eShop come under the category of material whose verifiability is likely to be challenged, but you may disagree in which case I have to respect your view and the level of sourcing you would expect in order to satisfy you that the material is verifiable. Hope that makes sense. Kidburla (talk) 00:47, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not confusing V and N. Lists of this nature sometimes have to adopt criteria to cut out clutter and non-notable entries, see WP:LISTCRIT. This topic has come up before, and your comments prompted me to bring it up again. When we start pondering "is the primary source enough?" that's a segway to the prior discussions. To quote WP:V - "All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists and captions, must be verifiable." Depending on the content or organization of an article, not every single sentence requires a direct inline citation. However, in a case like this list, it's not a case where a whole paragraph might be sourced to one cite. Each row is a distinct entry point (though sometimes we have sources for multiple games and reuse the cite). When a list of this nature falls out of using citations as it should, it becomes much more difficult to maintain and monitor for incorrect information. Some of the older lists have masses of incorrect release dates, for an easy example. -- ferret (talk) 01:19, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something but it still seems like N to me. It's using the discussion on V as a segway into N, yes, but still N. I agree that policy says everything must be verifiable, as per what you quoted, but the presence or absence of cites is not down to content or organization of the article, it's down to whether the verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged. In other words, if this were a prosaic article, and there is a sentence whose verifiability is not likely to be challenged, then it doesn't matter whether the sentence forms part of a paragraph with a paragraph-level cite or not, the sentence still doesn't require a cite. The same is true for lists, if we have information whose verifiability is not likely to be challenged, it doesn't need to be sourced. Personally, my opinion is that any information which can be found on the eShop is verifiable, and such verifiability is not likely to be challenged, so why would we need a source? You are still challenging it though, so I come back to what I said earlier that I need to respect your view and understand the level of sourcing required for verifiability (not notability, unless/until community consensus determines otherwise). Regarding release dates, these aren't even captured directly on nintendo.com at region level. Nintendo only captures a release date at country level. Even if we were to follow the approach that we cite the country source for a region (e.g. NA = US, EU = GB), we would need to provide a separate source for each country page. I don't see that level of sourcing on any of the existing rows in the list, it seems unnecessary and probably fighting a losing battle. What I'm going to try to do is to be consistent with rows added earlier, when adding new rows. Kidburla (talk) 01:43, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

The issue is that with the "openness" of the eShop and other platforms (in contrast to the closed systems like the Gamecube and earlier N consoles), a full list of all possible games starts to head into WP:NOT#CATALOG, even if you can verify them all via primary sources. When these were more closed systems, that's more a "curated" list of games that Nintendo etc. allowed on the platform and so those are not the issue, but when anyone can publish a game on the eshop, that's far different. --Masem (t) 02:14, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

@Masem: Yes I understand the crux of the issue, and I have read the prior discussions on the topic... However, until the community (a) reaches consensus that the list should omit certain games, and (b) establishes a yardstick on what games should be omitted, I have no alternative but to add all games that I find missing. Prior discussions didn't reach any conclusion as there was no consensus on a change in approach, as I'm sure you're aware as you participated in (/initiated) those discussions. Kidburla (talk) 02:21, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure where we're having a communication break down, with much respect. I'm suggesting we hold that discussion now, here, on this talk page. It's not something that requires a broader community venue. This list, and the editor that maintain it, are empowered to enact as LISTCRIT as appropriate. The response to "We should consider whether this should be listed", the start of a discussion amidst ongoing changes, is not simply "Past discussions didn't have a conclusion." Along with the fact that the article is about to require ANOTHER page split, now is the time to discuss and potentially enact. -- ferret (talk) 02:28, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: lol, I'm also not sure where you are misunderstanding me. I'm not trying to oppose your right to hold another notability discussion. Of course you are welcome to have the discussion as many times as you want. I would suggest we open a new section on this talk page (for clarity); feel free to open it and make your proposal. Once we have heard back from the main editors who participate in this page (e.g. Serge, Dissident, etc) then a new consensus can be enacted if reached. I'm not opposing that. I'm just saying (a) until a new consensus is reached I'm operating on the basis of the existing approach, and (b) my questions earlier were purely about verifiability not notability. Hope that makes more sense? Kidburla (talk) 02:41, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Stating that you plan on continuing to add when this has been challenged (while waiting for consensus to develop) is a violation of key editing policies, particularly at the scale that is would be needed here (the "missing" entries). --Masem (t) 02:44, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

So you are saying that no new entries can be added until a consensus has been reached? Does that apply only to me or to others as well? Should we be reverting edits of anyone who tries to add new entries? How long should we wait to reach this new consensus, given that this has been going on for months and that the page will effectively be locked until this comes to a conclusion? I had no malicious intent by what I said. I just didn't think that if a discussion is held and doesn't seem to be able to reach a consensus, it just means we should leave the page as-is and not touch it. Please point me to which policy I have violated by saying that, if you disagree? Kidburla (talk) 02:54, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Try thinking of it it this way instead: Do you really wish to keep dumping a ton of time and effort into a project during a ongoing discussion that could easily close in a consensus that would end up undoing all your work right away? Sergecross73 msg me 03:49, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

No of course not, if a consensus is going to be reached in the near future. But the last discussion on this was in September 2020, no consensus was reached, so we are now 7 months later in exactly the same position and I'm wondering if there will ever be a consensus to reduce the scope of the list? And if no consensus can be reached to change the long-established practice of including every game in such articles, doesn't that mean we just keep the status quo by default? I don't think we can just sit around forever not working on the article while waiting for a consensus that might never come. I'm not sure what has changed between now and previous times we had this discussion. The crux of the matter is still, as you put it, where to draw the line. Kidburla (talk) 04:05, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Break - Should eShop titles lacking secondary coverage be listed?

Breaking this out to more formally get to the point. Kidburla discovered based on other sites that automatedly consume the eShop that we're missing thousands of entries in this list. He's started to add some of these, through "B", when I brought up that they are being added without secondary sources. Since this list was created, we have strived to follow WP:V to the letter, with every entry having either a secondary source, or being a blue link to an article on the game that does source it (The latter is bending the rules a little, but is to avoid template transclusion issues). This means this list is much more comprehensive in verifiable data than other such lists, but it's caused it to grow significantly from a visible prose and technical perspective, requiring numerous splits. With the latest batch of eShop games, no sourcing was added and the only sourcing really located has been Primary. Even so the latest batch (A-B) pushes the A-F list to the point of requiring a split very soon on technical grounds.

We're at a point where due to the nature of the eShop's openness compared to past platforms, we are butting against WP:NOTCATALOG to simply replicate a full listing. Additionally, WP:LSC also advises about Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a directory, and that only certain types of lists should be exhaustive. The example that LSC provides is that a "List of Norwegian musicians" shouldn't contain every little non-notable garage band ever mentioned by a newspaper. A similar thought here would be to exclude non-notable eShop games that lack even cursory secondary sourcing.

The list criteria can be as simple as "Release must have a secondary source." -- ferret (talk) 13:17, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: Thanks for summarising the situation, and very neatly I would say. I actually tried to do something similar via a proposal, not sure if you had seen that before creating this subsection. I'm happy to discuss either there or here.

For now I'll assume we're discussing it here... So thanks for sharing WP:LSC, I hadn't read that and after reading it I'm less inclined to think we would need to rename the article, which is something I'd proposed previously.

In general, I feel sad that we are pursuing this route, as Wikipedia has always maintained a full list of games released for a console, on the basis that the game is notable purely because it has been released for a major console. This type of data was useful to me and others, for all sorts of purposes. However, I'm inclined to agree with you, Masem and others that we are really at a stage where we are breaking WP:NOTCATALOG and/or WP:NOTDATABASE. So reluctantly I do feel that we need to pursue an approach similar to what you describe.

Having said that, I would suggest that a few more things be added to the proposal to make it sensible to adopt. Let me know what you think about these:

1. The secondary source must be a reliable source (obviously), but moreover, it must be from a site that is not itself a catalogue. Otherwise we achieve absolutely nothing by requiring this; we are creating a catalogue based on another catalogue. I say this because many of the "secondary sources" for existing rows are Nintendo Life entries - these are just entries from a similar "catalogue" and I don't think we gain any benefit from having these. I would expect the "secondary source" to be like IGN, Gematsu etc, if we are going to follow this kind of approach
2. After agreeing on the approach we should go through all existing games in the list and remove those for which we can't find an appropriate secondary source. To be frank, this means lots of games will be removed from the list. I feel this is a great shame (many games I personally know and love would be removed), but can't think of any other way to establish notability for games
3. We should re-word the opening text at the top of the list, to make it clear this only covers notable games

I would appreciate your thoughts and hope we can reach a consensus quickly. I want to continue to work on the article, and of course in a way that reflects community consensus. Kidburla (talk) 16:53, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm in rough agreeance with what you've said here, need some others to chime in. Regarding the need for sourcing to explicitly exclude database listing, I think that might actually be buried in a policy somewhere that such listings do not contribute to "Notability". But it's probably fine to spell it out. -- ferret (talk) 16:58, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I definitely agree we should limit entries to ones that are blue-linked standalone-article notable (eg Super Mario Odyssey), or where there is at least one secondary source about the game, though I would prefer these to be after the game's release rather than ahead of that release, so that we are not filling the list with planned releases that do not make it to publishing. Avoiding databases and social media coverage would be inappropriate. --Masem (t) 17:01, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I presume you meant to say "Avoiding databases and social media coverage would not be inappropriate?" Kidburla (talk) 17:07, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm fine with this too if everyone else is. Sergecross73 msg me 20:32, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I also agree. Just because a game released on a notable system does not make the game itself notable. Wikipedia lists also do not have to be all-encompassing. If you consider the two guidelines as a whole, then we shouldn't be adding these non-notable indie/shovelware games that often times don't get mentioned anywhere else on Wikipedia besides other game lists. Also somewhat related but I still think we should just include the game's initial release date and omit the three regions, as this would also assist towards maintenance and page-size concerns. For anybody who thinks this could be misleading, it's not anymore so than what we already do with the short descriptions that list a Japanese game (such as Persona 5) as 2016 when it didn't release outside of Japan until 2017. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 22:22, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I'd rather keep the discussion on release dates separate from this notability proposal if possible. My view on that is still that we should be consistent with other VG lists, and even more so now. By implementing the notability proposal above, we are going to be removing large numbers of games from the list as it stands, which will reduce the page size significantly. We will then have less games than some other VG lists which themselves continue to maintain release dates across all three regions. While there is an argument for inconsistency for Switch for notability, due to the large total number of games and ease of publication of straight Android ports etc, I don't personally feel there is any similar argument we can make for inconsistency for Switch of release date structure, especially when we are going to be vastly reducing the number of games total. So that is something that should be discussed at the wider WP:VG and agreed across all VG lists, and my personal view is that it's still beneficial to see at a glance which regions a game was released in. Kidburla (talk) 07:20, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Another question - should we require the secondary source to specifically mention the Nintendo Switch? In other words, is the secondary source requirement to establish notability of the game generally, or the Switch version of the game specifically. For example, if a game has a (proper, reliable) secondary source for the Xbox One version, and this game has also been released or announced for Switch, is that sufficient for it to be included in the list article? Kidburla (talk) 10:11, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Somewhat hair splitting I know, but the source needs to mention Switch. Otherwise it fails verification when some random passer by checks. -- ferret (talk) 11:53, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: Here I was talking about notability not verifiability. So what I'm saying is, if we have (a) a primary source such as Nintendo.com which states that the game is released/announced for Switch (i.e. verifiability), and (b) a secondary source such as IGN which establishes notability of the game itself, but is focussed on a different console (e.g. Xbox One) - in this case would it be able to be included?

If not, we may even end up with some games which are notable enough to have articles (blue link), but the Switch version is not considered notable enough to be on this list because of a lack of secondary sources for the Switch version specifically. This would seem quite strange to me. Kidburla (talk) 12:11, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

If the game is bluelinked due to being WP:N-passable and having an article, we do not currently require a source here. We're using secondary sourcing as a criteria for non-notable games. The article itself should be sourced of course for any Switch release dates, but if the game itself is actually notable we don't care so much as about primary/secondary. We're just trying to have a way to gauge/sort out the non-notable/redlinks. -- ferret (talk) 12:13, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: What you have said in your original message is subtly different, or being a blue link to an article on the game that does source it (The latter is bending the rules a little, but is to avoid template transclusion issues). In other words, we omit the sources for these games on the basis that they are sourced correctly, though via their standalone article rather than the list article. I took this to mean that, even if a game has an article, but that article does not have the correct level of secondary sourcing that we would require for inclusion in this list, it still doesn't qualify for inclusion (i.e. not notable for the purposes of this list).

Apologies, but I am still a bit confused what you are saying. If a game is not notable then it should not be in the list, according to the proposal. But of course there are different levels of notability, "notable enough to have its own article" and "notable enough to be on the list but not enough to have its own article". And there is also a dimension of notability at the game level and platform level, as I mentioned above (e.g. can a game be notable on one platform but not another, which is the crux of what I'm saying here).

Perhaps it is better if I try to summarise what I think you have said and then you let me know if I'm correct.

1. If a game does have its own article, and the article has reliable secondary sources for a platform other than Switch which establish the notability of the game as a whole, and we also have reliable sources (which could be either primary or secondary) that the game is released/announced for Switch, then it can be included in the list
2. If a game does not have its own article, and the game has reliable secondary sources for a platform other than Switch which establish the notability of the game as a whole, and we also have reliable sources (which could be either primary or secondary) that the game is released/announced for Switch, then it cannot be included in the list

Have I got it right? It seems like a double standard between games which do and don't have their own articles, whereas I thought the only purpose of deferring sourcing to the article was to avoid template transclusion issues. Kidburla (talk) 12:49, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Bullet 1 is correct. A blue link to an article presumes notability. If it has an article, it's notable (And if someone believes otherwise, they can AFD the article, which is beyond the scope of this discussion). Primary sources do not prove notability (WP:GNG), but can verify other details within the article. For #2: So when dealing with a "non-notable" redlink game, we need a secondary source to show that someone, somewhere, has actually taken note of the game. This could mean that enough secondary sourcing exists to create an article, but that's also beyond our scope. If the only sourcing for a game we can find is primary, it doesn't belong here. So the question then boils down to, what if we have reliable secondary sources about the game, but they do not mention Switch? I understand you're aiming for completeness and covering all the bases here, but I think this is going to be an exceeding rare scenario. Do you have a particular example we could consider? -- ferret (talk) 13:16, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: I don't have an example right now. The reason I am asking this is I'm trying to build some automation to verify sourcing for games in the list. It would be good to know whether I'm looking for sources for the game generally, or the Switch version specifically. The closest example I have so far is 10 Second Ninja X. This doesn't exactly match the scenario because there is a Nintendo Life source that's linked there, and it's a real article (not just a catalogue entry). However aside from that Nintendo Life source (and I know that Nintendo Life is RS), I couldn't find any other secondary sources which talk about the Switch version of the game (which has not yet been released, so that's probably why). Only other platforms are mentioned. Having said that, I have only considered like 10 games so far out of 3000+, so I think we may get to cases like this. Personally, I would favour the approach that the secondary source (establishing notability not verifiability) is covering the game as a whole, rather than just the Switch version - not least because this "inconsistency" between games with and without articles may lead to people creating game articles just to satisfy the criteria. However if others disagree, I'm still happy to accept the proposal with the source needing to be for the Switch game specifically, but it wouldn't be my preference. Kidburla (talk) 14:00, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Let's get some more voices on this line of thinking. -- ferret (talk) 14:21, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: Okay thanks. Sorry, I just checked WP:VG/RS again, and actually Nintendo Life is not considered RS for editorial content, except for specific authors. So I'm back to this is a game which would have not been eligible for inclusion if it didn't have its own article, but because it does have its own article, it gets "carte blanche" effectively. I'll start a new subsection to try to reframe the discussion for people who haven't followed all of the above discussion. Kidburla (talk) 14:25, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: Having discussed with Serge, Masem and Dissident (see "Spinoff" subsection below), I think we reached a compromise position which we can agree on, namely that if a game doesn't have its own article and also doesn't have a secondary source for the Switch version, it needs to have "multiple secondary sources that cover the game for other platforms outside of the Switch that reasonably a WP:GNG-meeting article could be made (ideally, at least 2-3 reviews and an MC aggregate score as a rough idea)" (quoted from Masem below). The idea being that if the game as a whole is considered notable enough that it could have its own article, even if it doesn't actually have its own article, then this suffices for notability in this list. Do you agree with this position? If you do, I'm also interested in when you think we can close this discussion (how long is sensible to leave to give space for others to contribute) given that (a) the most prevalent editors of this article have contributed, (b) there does not seem to be any significant dissent, and (c) this article is currently the third-largest article on the whole English Wikipedia so there is probably a drive to act sooner rather than later. Kidburla (talk) 23:28, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm good. In drafting a final set of criteria to formalize (We put inclusion rules at the top of the topic page), you may want to reference Wikipedia:Write the article first. In short, if there's no article but sourcing for GNG exists... Make the article first. Then add it to the list. A stub with sufficient sourcing is fine. -- ferret (talk) 00:10, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: I am a bit confused, are you in agreement with the revised proposal or not? As you said "I'm good" but then you talked about making the article first. As Serge pointed out below, sometimes it may not be feasible to write the article, especially for games which have not yet been released as per WP:TOOSOON. Also, I don't think that creating a stub article for the purpose of getting a game added to the list is a good reason for creating an article. If no one is going to be interested in investing time in the article, we may as well not have it. We may simply not have time to create the article, especially if there are a number of items in such a status. Finally, this may be in the context of removing a game from the list, and it seems wrong to remove it only until someone makes the effort to create the article. I prefer the revised approach as outlined by Masem and summarized above.

It wasn't explicitly stated but I think you are inviting me to draft a final set of criteria to "formalize", does this mean I should start a new talk page section and draft some example text to get agreement on before updating the article? I thought discussions such as this one, representing a major change in position, needed to be "closed" by administrators so that the agreed-upon consensus is recorded and stored/archived for future reference? Not least because others may start to join the discussion after we consider it to be closed and we start updating the page, creating ambiguity for future readers on what was actually agreed and at what point. Kidburla (talk) 01:13, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm honestly getting a bit frustrated with this discussion, as we keep arguing over what seems to be basic wording/phrasing. Maybe it's me, I just feel like I'm having to do a lot of re-stating. I'm good with the proposal. I simply suggested mentioning the essay in the criteria. If you've dug up the sources and are confident GNG is met, a stub is perfectly fine and takes 5 minutes or less. It's not a requirement though, simply a suggestion to mention it. Please draft a final set of criteria. I'm not interested in doing it myself and being caught in the wordsmithing. No, we don't need any sort of "formal close", least of all by an administrators (Admins being required to close a discussion is unusual for basic content discussions and even most full RFCs, which this is not). There's no stated opposition. Draft the final suggested bullet points so we can say "Support" and move on. The criteria will then be placed at the top of the page, and this discussion will always be in the archives. -- ferret (talk) 02:01, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: I'm sorry that I'm making you feel frustrated. I honestly bear you no ill will. I'm just trying to reach a clear consensus we can refer to going forward. I even noticed that we share the same WikiBirthday, so there is really no reason for any hostility :) Kidburla (talk) 10:06, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: PS: What about games which don't have their own standalone articles, but are part of a series and the series has its own article which mentions this game? Should we consider them under the rules of games which have their own articles, or the rules of games without their own articles? Kidburla (talk) 14:14, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

I'd say a notable series is enough to treat as a bluelink. A redirect should be used in such cases (I.e. linking the game name to the section of the series article that discusses it). Presumption as usual is that it will be properly sourced there. -- ferret (talk) 14:21, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Spinoff from above Break - When we are considering "secondary coverage" for the purpose of notability checks, should this be checking for the game as a whole, or only for the Switch version of the game?

When we say that a game should be "notable" for the purpose of this list, do we have to prove that the game itself is notable (regardless of platform) or that specifically the Switch version of the game is notable?

This is to try to reframe/restate a discussion between myself and ferret above. So with the current proposal, it would require a reliable secondary source for the Switch version of the game for notability (in addition to the primary source for verifiability). The problem is that this creates a possible double standard between games which have their own articles and those which do not. We have said that games with their own articles are automatically considered notable enough to be included in the list. However, for multi-platform games, the article may have been deemed notable on the basis of secondary sources which relate to other platforms than Switch. This means that games with their own articles and without a secondary source related to Switch may be included in the list.

Let me say that again in this way:

1. If a game does have its own article, and the article has reliable secondary sources for a platform other than Switch which establish the notability of the game as a whole, and we also have reliable primary sources that the game is released/announced for Switch, then it can be included in the list
2. If a game does not have its own article, and the game has reliable secondary sources for a platform other than Switch which establish the notability of the game as a whole, and we also have reliable primary sources that the game is released/announced for Switch, then it cannot be included in the list

This inconsistency between treating games which do and don't have their own articles, may have some undesirable side-effects, such as people creating articles for games just to establish their notability, so that they can be included in the list.

Personally, my preference would be that we are considering notability of the game as a whole, not specifically the Switch version, so that we wouldn't have this inconsistency.

An example is 10 Second Ninja X. It is currently included in the list on the basis of a Nintendo Life article, which is not considered reliable. I could not find any other reliable secondary sources about the Switch version of the game (which has not yet been released). However, as this game has its own article, it effectively gets "carte blanche" to stay on the list. On the other hand, if it didn't have its own article, then under the above proposal it would be removed as the Switch version is not notable enough to have been mentioned in reliable secondary sources (even though other versions such as Xbox One were mentioned). This seems like a double standard to me and I would like others thoughts (on the overall approach, not only this specific example). Kidburla (talk) 14:38, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

• I'm not sure if the situation on "not having an article" is right. Clearly, if there is no article, but there are reliable secondary sources that affirm a Switch title is on its way, that merits inclusion on the list. The question of if there are reliable sources about the game but not the switch version but we have no article, one should ask: are the reliable sources enough to create an article? Eg if it is a released game, does it have sufficient reviews via Metacritic? If there's a good chance an article could be made, and we just haven't made one, then I would argue that's a case of the game falling into the first category, and that it can be included as long as the sources include a RS that is significant coverage of the non-switch version of the game and the source supporting the Switch release.

And FWIW, NL is a conditional source, one just has to be careful of the author. For 10 Second Ninja X, that NL's article is backed with a primary source (announcement video about the Switch) is good enough to be just fine to confirm. --Masem (t) 14:05, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

@Masem: It sounds like you are basically agreeing with me that it should suffice for the secondary source to show coverage of the game as a whole, not only the Switch version. The ordered list in my message above was my understanding of the current as-is proposal, not what I would prefer to happen.

Regarding NL, I noticed that its acceptance as RS depends on the author, and specifically Damien McFerran is mentioned as a reliable author. In this case, the article was authored by "Ryan Craddock", whom I don't know anything about. That's why I leaned towards not accepting coverage by this NL article as an indication of notability (though it could still be used for verifiability as you mentioned because a primary source is cited). However, if we do take the approach (my preferred approach) that we need to prove notability of the game as a whole, rather than just the Switch version, this becomes a moot point. Kidburla (talk) 14:19, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I think that

• if there is no current article on the game (or even a series article),
• if there are multiple secondary sources that cover the game for other platforms outside of the switch that reasonable a WP:GNG-meeting article could be made (ideally, at least 2-3 reviews and an MC aggregate score as a rough idea)
• if there is a reliable primary or secondary source that affirms a switch release is coming

Then that effectively means the game is like in the first category beyond the absence of the actual created page. Once you've shown the game notable that should be fine to include. --Masem (t) 14:49, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

@Masem: Okay, so it seems you are saying that to establish notability (assuming verifiability has already been established) for games without their own articles, we need either (a) multiple secondary sources (such as those you mentioned) for platforms other than Switch, or (b) single secondary source for Switch version.

I see why you are saying that and it does make sense, but it's going to make it so much harder to check notability for games, as we are going to have to check two different possible criteria. My preference was to have one or the other... But I can see why you would not accept just a single secondary source for another platform, as that would not allow the game to have its own article. So I think I can (reluctantly) accept this position. Kidburla (talk) 15:20, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

PS: And also if we took this position I think I would take the approach of removing a game on the basis of lack of coverage of the Switch version, with the WP:BURDEN being on someone who disagreed, to find the "multiple secondary sources" required for the non-Switch version in order to re-add. Otherwise checking the table is just going to take too long... Kidburla (talk) 15:24, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I realize that the most ideal and no-fuss cases are either 1) the game is blue-linked (and I would accept blue-linked to a series article) and a primary/secondary source affirms a Switch version, or 2) a reliable secondary source affirms a Switch release regardless if we have an article on it. These are super clear and objective with no wiggle room. I'm trying to account for where case 1 is a possibility but that an editor simply hasn't done the legwork to make an article. And maybe its for the best that we don't consider that an allowed case for now but strongly nudge editors "but if your game fits this situation, you can remedy it by making the article..." as to make it qualify in the first case. --Masem (t) 15:37, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

@Masem: Yes, I think we are in agreement. We may choose to keep such games on the list if we happen to find the relevant sources (or someone else with more interest can supply them), but it wouldn't be something we'd actively check for every game as that would take forever. Kidburla (talk) 17:13, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Okay, so I've been a bit busy, and these discussions have really gotten lengthy and covered a lot of ground, so I apologize if I'm not up to speed, but my thoughts on everything:

• Any game with its own article should be fair game for the list.
• I don't think "not having an article" should mean a game should be excluded. I think that would cause a lot of issues with notable but WP:TOOSOON type games. Like Breath of the Wild 2, or if something like a Persona 6 gets announced for release with nothing but a name and release year of 2025. There are major titles like that, that should be on the list even if it's too soon to have an article.
• Having a third party source verify existence is a good inclusion criteria item for a list of this size.
• I have a hard time rationalizing anything beyond requiring that the source must verify that a Switch version exists.
• I generally don't have a hard time finding third party sources that verify platforms for games. But then again, most of my source hunting occurs when I'm creating an article I believe to already be notable. And the whole reason I'm creating a game article is usually because a website I follow is covering it. So my experience may be different than what we're doing here.

Hopefully that input is helpful. I know you're all working hard on this and I'm not trying to set things back at all. Sergecross73 msg me 16:48, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

@Sergecross73: Thanks a lot for your input. Here are my responses to your points in turn:

• Yes, I think we are all agreed that any game with its own article is notable enough to be on the list
• I was not trying to say that games without an article should be excluded. I was describing a specific case where (a) the game does not have its own article, (b) the game has enough secondary sources for non-Switch platforms that it would be able to have its own article, (c) the game does not have secondary sources for the Switch version. With the slightly-revised approach described by Masem above, such games would still be able to be included (still would appreciate others' views on this).
• Yes, third-party (secondary) sources have to verify existence of the Switch version, unless the game has its own article (or has the appropriate sources for other platforms so as to create its own article)
• I was not totally sure what you meant by "beyond requiring that the source must verify that a Switch version exists" (not sure if you were concerned about a specific thing said above). I think the only deviation from this was the criteria for covering games which don't have a secondary source confirming the Switch version exists, but do have the appropriate secondary sources to make them notable on other platforms (regardless of whether an article exists). In those cases, there is a higher standard of sourcing required as mentioned by Masem above, because the sourcing would need to be sufficient for the game to be notable enough for an article to be created. But for games which do have their own article, or games which have a secondary source confirming the Switch version, this case doesn't apply. And I think those two cases will cover the vast majority of games we are exploring anyway.
• It's easy to find third-party sources, what's probably harder is finding sources that are (a) reliable by Wikipedia standards, and (b) not themselves from a catalogue/database (see discussion above - it was confirmed that the secondary source cannot itself be a catalogue/database). For example, take the first game on the list "'n Verlore Verstand". I had actually heard of this game, quite apart from this list. (It's also not one of the games I added over the last couple of weeks; it was there already.) While searching for secondary sources for this game, I did find some reviews on websites such as "Bonus Stage" and "Hey Poor Player". I posted both websites on WT:VGRS and they were rejected (and for good reason, I think). I was not able to find any "reliable" secondary sources for this game. So this would be one of the games we would need to remove as a result of this notability restriction.

Hope that makes sense, I appreciate your input as always, I am trying to respond quickly to all points and reach consensus, especially as the article is currently the third-longest article on the whole English Wikipedia so we need to take action soon to reduce the article size, and it looks like this is what we'll be doing. Kidburla (talk) 17:13, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree with pretty much everything Serge brought up. If a Switch version of a game isn't mentioned by any source outside of primary/promotional ones, then we can simply see that as it not being notable enough. But how often would this even be a problem? Even a single, passing mention on a Eurogamer or IGN article would be enough here. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 20:07, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

@Dissident93: Thanks for responding. I think it won't be a frequent case, but still present, especially for unreleased games such as the example I gave above. The caveat which Masem outlined, was if there are enough secondary sources for other versions of the game to warrant creating its own article (even if one has not actually been created) then we can still treat it as notable for the purpose of this list. That's more what I was getting at, to avoid the potential double standard for games with and without their own articles. I assume you would also be in agreement with that slight caveat? Kidburla (talk) 23:13, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm fine with that since it would still be a big improvement over just adding every single (non-notable) eShop game. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 23:15, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Proposal: Restricting the scope of the list to only "notable" games

Okay, I am starting this section to try to establish consensus, as no one else has started the discussion.

Here is my view of what has been proposed, and logical corollaries (for clarity, this is intended to be all one proposal, not a list of options):

1. Future games to be added to the list will require either:
   • An article about the game specifically (blue link), or
   • An article about the series which the game is a part of, or
   • At least two sources, of which one is a primary source (e.g. Nintendo.com), and the second source cannot be:
     • A catalogue source (e.g. Nintendo Life, Metacritic, Moby Games, WhaToPlay etc)
     • A primary source (e.g. publisher's website, developer's website)
     • Any other source that would not be considered a reliable source (e.g. social media, personal blogs, listed as unreliable on WP:VG/RS)
2. Existing games in the list would be checked against (1) above, and if they are not in line with this standard, the games removed
3. We rename the list article(s) from "List of Nintendo Switch games" to "List of notable Nintendo Switch games" or similar
4. We reword the preamble text of the list article to make it clear that this is not attempting to be a list of ALL Nintendo Switch games, but only notable ones
5. We update pages/templates that link to this list article, to make it clear that this is not attempting to be a list of ALL Nintendo Switch games, but only notable ones

For reference/context, proposals to restrict the scope of the article have been made multiple times before (July-September 2018, February-March 2019, September-November 2019, September 2020). (Please don't misunderstand me; I am not trying to say that because prior discussions ended without consensus, then we shouldn't discuss again.)

I am trying to quickly establish consensus or the viability of consensus, because I've been warned not to add further games to the article while this discussion is still "ongoing", but from my perspective the discussion has been ongoing for almost 3 years and we cannot wait forever to keep working on the article. Kidburla (talk) 10:23, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I totally missed this section being opened before creating my own at #Break - Should eShop titles lacking secondary coverage be listed?. It looks like Kidburla is agreeable to continue the discussion there, for sake of not running two concurrent discussions. Please link up for replying. -- ferret (talk) 16:56, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Kidburla, I agree with this inclusion criteria. Onetwothreeip (talk) 23:17, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

@Onetwothreeip: Thanks for responding. The conversation has moved on somewhat since then, as ferret created his own proposal section (see his comment above) and the discussion proceeded from there. We then drafted text on the consensus which you can see below. Kidburla (talk) 23:19, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Draft text: Restricting the scope of the list to only "notable" games

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There's a clear consensus here, so I have made the necessary talk page updates in Special:Diff/1022808934 -- ferret (talk) 16:23, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

---

After reaching a WP:CONSENSUS above, ferret suggested we need to draft text for the top of the talk page, so here goes:

Notice - Inclusion Criteria

Due to the relative ease of publishing games to the Nintendo Switch as compared to previous Nintendo consoles, and the necessity of avoiding Wikipedia becoming a catalogue or database, a consensus was reached that this list should only contain notable games. As the term "notable" can be ambiguous, a number of discussions were held leading to a consensus that games must meet one of the following criteria to be included:

• Have had their Switch versions mentioned in a reliable secondary source that is not a catalogue/database, or
• Have an article on the English Wikipedia (or the sources sufficient to create one), or
• Are part of a series which has its own article on the English Wikipedia (or the sources sufficient to create one)

The points on games with their own article are mainly to allow for multiplatform games for which notability has already been established on other platforms. It is possible that games in this situation may not yet have their own articles for a variety of reasons, however in most cases editors are advised to write the article first, unless there is a good reason not to (e.g. it is too soon to create such an article).

These notability criteria are in addition to the standard verifiability criteria - in the context of this article, a reliable source must be cited for the game and its release date(s). In addition, for information about games which have not yet been released (or release dates for regions into which games have not yet been localized) the sources must be from the last 2 years, as there are a number of known cases where Switch games have been announced and then have apparently been quietly cancelled without any further mention of them.

We would also edit the article itself to replace "This is a list of games for the Nintendo Switch" with "This is a list of notable games for the Nintendo Switch".

Let me know if you support this version or any changes required. Then we can action and move on. Kidburla (talk) 13:34, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

• Support We can tweak later if we find this problematic, but the core guts that everyone seems to agree on is here. -- ferret (talk) 18:55, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
• Support, but will this go verbatim in the article's lead? ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 00:39, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
  • @Dissident93: Yes, that's the idea. As per ferret's comments above, "We put inclusion rules at the top of the topic page". That's why ferret suggested I draft this text and that we agree on it before moving forward ("Draft the final suggested bullet points so we can say "Support" and move on. The criteria will then be placed at the top of the page"). This is just about the text, as we had already reached a consensus on the approach itself. Kidburla (talk) 11:16, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
    • It doesn't have to go in the article itself. It goes at the top of the talk page, and if warranted, into an edit notice. -- ferret (talk) 12:01, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
      • @Ferret: I would be happy with that too. As you said "at the top of the topic page", I took that to mean at the top of the article itself. We could put it within the talk page in a FAQ template, and then the article could just be changed from "This is a list of games for the Nintendo Switch" to "This is a list of notable games for the Nintendo Switch". Can/Should I edit my above top comment to reflect this? Kidburla (talk) 12:59, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
        • It's just a typo. There's not really a such thing as "topic page", I meant talk page. See Talk:List of video games notable for negative reception for example. -- ferret (talk) 13:02, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
• Support (as well as with a minds eye that this could be used for the Xbox/PS storefronts too if those lists get unweildly though those stores haven't drawn as many indie games yet). --Masem (t) 13:14, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

  Masem, why should we have to wait until it becomes an issue? These new guidelines should apply to all other game lists. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 20:49, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

  We absolutely could, but if we did, I would engage a larger RFC for that purpose (at least one that includes WT:VG and advertized on those pages). Just that unlike the Switch, those systems are a tad bit more "closed" to indie dev and despite having a longer period of existence, haven't gained the massive body of indie games for them. But this is still solid advice for any storefront that has open publishing allowances. --Masem (t) 22:12, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, that's true. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 03:53, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: I have re-written the above top comment to reflect the fact that (as per discussion) this text will now be (mostly) on the talk page rather than the article page. In doing so, I have included suggestions/explanations/links which would not have been appropriate for main space. Please re-review (@Ferret, @Dissident93, @Masem). Hopefully this also addresses concerns expressed above about such detail being put in main space. Kidburla (talk) 13:34, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Works for me. -- ferret (talk) 13:37, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
• Support from me as well. Sergecross73 msg me 14:00, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

• Support inclusion criteria. Wording can be changed without consensus. Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:34, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

• When you're talking about changing the inclusion criteria of a high traffic article, it really is best practice to discuss and get a consensus first. Sergecross73 msg me 14:37, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Splitting this article

This article is 486,000+ bytes which is far too long. I suggest splitting this article into List of Nintendo Switch games (A–C) and List of Nintendo Switch games (D–F), that way it would be a split in half by letter. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 18:58, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Also, this list has exceeded WP:PEIS, which is even further reason to split. Blubabluba9990 (talk) (contribs) 19:02, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I fully support splitting. But every time these talks come up, there's some people who are weirdly against it... Sergecross73 msg me 19:32, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I'll handle shortly. -- ferret (talk) 20:54, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

 Done Except for some CS1 errors on new D-F list. AnomieBot will hopefully get them in a bit, if not I will. -- ferret (talk) 20:54, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Not that this affects the splitting but an idea that is inspired by longrunning TV shows, such as with List of The Simpsons episodes, is as follows:

• This specific article moves to "List of Nintendo Switch games" (no A-C, or whatever)
• H2 headers are added to match the other splits, so there would be 4 headers presently ("A-C", "D-F", "G-J", and the rest.
• On this page (A-C) we have the list, but the other headers would use {{List has been split}} with the links.
• Each other split page should be structured the same, just that its list falls into the right section.

This way:

1. First, there will remain a permanent landing page for a list of Nintendo Switch games.
2. When new splits occur, this just requires modifying and adding new headers
3. This helps provide better navigation for a reader if they happen to land on ANY version of these pages. While there are navigation aids at the top, this would be TOC related that helps further. --Masem (t) 21:34, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Pitching in to say that the G–P and Q–Z lists should also be split since they're too long still. Cat's Tuxedo (talk) 18:29, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

G-P is riding the PEIS limit, but Q-Z has a bit of head room yet. It'll certainly happen in near future though. -- ferret (talk) 18:37, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

G-Mode Archives

Hi, I noticed that a couple of games I added from G-Mode Archives were removed, with the explanation that we don't add archive games in this list (see Special:Diff/1029469404 and Special:Diff/1029469711). I had a look back through the talk page history and I believe this is referring to the exclusion of Arcade Archives, which there has been quite a lot of discussion on in the past and the consensus was to exclude them, and put them in their own list. However G-Mode Archives and Arcade Archives are not the same thing, despite the similar names. Having said that, the concept is quite similar, and when Sega Ages came up it was decided to follow the same pattern as Arcade Archives, so I thought it's still worthwhile to open this topic for discussion.

The G-Mode Archives have been fairly widely covered in RS (see e.g. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]) so I think are notable enough to be mentioned somewhere. To my mind, it's just a question of whether to directly include them in the main list, or have a separate list like the ones for Arcade Archives and Sega Ages. Kidburla (talk) 22:24, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

No one has responded to this; can I assume everyone is okay for me to re-add G-Mode Archives games to the list (of course only if they are notable and verifiable), as they don't have their own separate list like Arcade Archives does? Kidburla (talk) 13:41, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn’t mind adding something along the lines of G-Mode Archives games list separately from the main article, much like Sega Ages and Arcade Archives, I mean, the main list technically states “See Arcade Archives and Sega Ages for a list of emulated games under those brands that have been released on the Switch, and Nintendo Switch Online for a list of Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo Entertainment System subscription games on the Switch Online service.” So would we do the same with the G-Mode games? Zacharyalejandro (talk) 17:37, 18 September 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

Considering the size of the Switch list, and the fact that the GMode stuff is covered by RS's, I think it should be split out to its own list. Sergecross73 msg me 18:28, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

 Done although if the page gets deleted due to some AFD process or whatever, then I'll be coming back here again to put the case forward for adding those games to this list. Kidburla (talk) 22:18, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Do unedited press releases count for notability?

Some games have an "unedited press release" from Gamasutra as their "secondary source", e.g. Atomine ([6]) or Barricadez Revisited ([7]). Should we accept such "unedited press releases" as proof of secondary coverage for the purpose of establishing notability? Personally I think such unedited press releases prove nothing in terms of notability Kidburla (talk) 19:33, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

They generally wouldn't in notability discussions like WP:AFD. Sergecross73 msg me 20:30, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Press releases are not independent so do not aid Notability. -- ferret (talk) 20:39, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks to both for your opinions. That's what I assumed also but just wanted to check before reverting. Kidburla (talk) 22:12, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Basically, they pass the general concept of WP:V but not WP:N since anybody can write up and self-publish a press release. It only becomes notable in the event of it being covered by secondary sources. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 09:44, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Notable games?

So can anyone bring me up to speed on why we removed a huge chunk of games from lists and keep doing so? If I find sources for those, what’s the point in removing those? Zacharyalejandro (talk) 19:54, 9 September 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

Please read the "Notice - Inclusion Criteria" at the top of the talk page, a condition you were required to do for your unblock appeal. Games without appropriate reliable secondary coverage can be removed outright. If the only information is a Nintendo site or Direct, then it doesn't meet the criteria. If you can find reliable secondary coverage, they can be kept. -- ferret (talk) 20:13, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

@Zacharyalejandro: Thanks for opening this topic. As ferret mentioned above, the gist of the matter is that games need to have appropriate secondary coverage. The notice at the top of the article goes into more detail on this though and I recommend you to read it in full. In particular, sources that are themselves a catalogue/database are not sufficient to establish notability. In particular this includes things like the "Nintendo Download" pages which are just indiscriminate lists of upcoming Switch games. Those pages were used in many cases as a source for Switch games.

You have been very good at adding sources to demonstrate verifiability and I hope you continue to do so. However we now have a requirement to demonstrate both notability and verifiability. I notice that you removed some sources that I had added specifically to demonstrate notability of certain games. I'm sure you did this in good faith, but hopefully after discussion we can avoid any future misunderstandings. Thanks again. Kidburla (talk) 20:42, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

@Zacharyalejandro: PS: I've tried to ensure games don't have proper sourcing before removing them, but if you disagree with non-notability of any particular games then feel free to open a topic. Always happy to discuss. And I'm only human, so I might well have missed something. Kidburla (talk) 20:48, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

To only add, I've seen a few articles of late from RS that talk about the amount of shovelware/asset flips on the eshop that for us it is reasonable to require more than mere evidence of availability for inclusion. --Masem (t) 21:06, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Following on with this, it makes no sense why we don’t just split the page again with A, B, C, D, etc. And I don’t know why this discussion ONLY pertains to this and not any of the other lists as well. I’m guessing if we’re going this route, we’d stop adding games altogether except for the ones from major companies. And that brings me up to another topic, about the page protection, you guys refuse to add semi-protection to prevent anonymous users from adding a number of games, most of them will contain unreliable sources, which they seemingly ignore. The other game lists don’t even remotely come close to the scope of the large number of games or “shovelware” as you guys call it. And those pages aren’t even protected from users anonymously adding games. Anybody’s take on this? Zacharyalejandro (talk) 15:52, 11 September 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

There's essentially zero disruptive IP editing at this list, so the page protection policy forbids us from simply protecting it. You might also want to read Wikipedia:IP editors are human too. Anonymous editors are not second class citizens or "lesser" than registered editors. -- ferret (talk) 16:25, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

@Zacharyalejandro: Regarding your point that "I don’t know why this discussion ONLY pertains to this and not any of the other lists as well" - arguably, it should apply to the lists for other modern consoles as well. The reason this discussion only pertains to this is quite simply because it's on the talk page for this article and not other articles. There have been previous attempts to agree something similar at WikiProject-level, but the discussion petered out without reaching any consensus. I think that's basically why we avoided raising this up to the WikiProject level, and agreeing it just for this page, because we could get to an actual outcome (consensus) quickly, which was necessary to be able to keep working on the page. Personally, I don't have the time to get involved in pushing for this policy to be adopted at WikiProject level (especially as I have no interest in editing other game lists than the Switch one), but if someone else wants to champion this, I'm happy to add my view to any consensus discussion. Kidburla (talk) 18:26, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

@Zacharyalejandro: Also, regarding your point "it makes no sense why we don’t just split the page again with A, B, C, D, etc" - we can still split the page whenever we need to, in order to address technical limitations. The removal of non-notable games is to implement the consensus on inclusion criteria, which relates to Wikipedia policies, and has nothing to do with the technical limitations. It's not related to whether we split the page or don't split the page. Kidburla (talk) 18:33, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

This ordeal is starting to even be more of a problem for me. Why am I even on here anymore? Zacharyalejandro (talk) 00:35, 14 September 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

If it's too much for you, then don't do it. You have no obligation to edit or maintain the article. It is not your job; it's not like you have to do it to pay your bills or something. If you don't enjoy it, just step away. Sergecross73 msg me 00:58, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

This is a volunteer collaborative effort. If having to abide by the consensus on how a given article is edited is too much of a strain, you should find another article to work on. I'm also, if you like, willing to provide a self-block so you can spend time away until you're ready to edit again. -- ferret (talk) 01:53, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

May I also ask why we have a huge chunk of references from different websites, when technically 1-3 is enough for each date? Zacharyalejandro (talk)Zacharyalejandro

@Zacharyalejandro: Thanks for asking. So first of all, sources need to demonstrate both notability and verifiability. For some games, they already had 3 sources just to demonstrate verifiability (usually one each for NA, EU and JP), so obviously would be adding to this (having at least 4 in total) for notability. I've kept to a maximum of three sources for notability. I tried to put just one source for each game for notability, however sometimes I wasn't sure which source to keep. For example, I might have a long article from IGN but written in a foreign language, a much shorter article in English from a smaller website (which is nevertheless certified as RS), and a reference to a game having been reviewed in Famitsu. In general where I was not sure what source(s) to keep, I tried to err on the side of caution and keep multiple sources. However I'm interested to hear others' views on source selection so we can avoid the article size becoming unnecessarily large. Kidburla (talk) 07:46, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

As long as the basic details are verified, with reliable secondary sources, we don't necessarily need to "prove notability". That should, in general, require no more than 3 sources at worst (for each region). I'd say if you're gathering enough sourcing to prove notability, you should consider starting a stub article for the game instead and then moving all the sourcing there. -- ferret (talk) 11:58, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: I think you may have misunderstood me. When I said "prove notability" I didn't mean anything other than adding reliable secondary sources. In many cases, sources ineligible for notability proof (e.g. primary sources, catalogue/database sources, or sources with constraints on use) have been used to demonstrate verifiability. In those cases I have needed to add additional sources to prove notability and those will obviously be secondary sources and could push past the number of three in total. Kidburla (talk) 12:18, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Every admin here just likes to ruin Wikipedia. This is why I don’t take part in discussions on change. Just adding 10, 20 references doesn’t change the fact that I don’t like that. If three references is enough than three references is enough for each game. Or, or, just get rid of all entries and only keep big titles from major companies like Sega, Nintendo, Monolith Soft, Ubisoft. That would get rid of thousands others that shouldn’t belong on the list. If we don’t do that, I’d rather spend time elsewhere now. I’m done. Zacharyalejandro (talk) 17:57, 20 September 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

1. You need to assume good faith.
2. Discussions are not optional - you need to be able to work and communicate with others if you're going to edit Wikipedia.
3. Your ideas often don't get a consensus because they're often based on your own personal whims rather than any concrete enforceable idea. Ideas like "just keep games from major companies" would cause all sorts of disagreements and disputes over what makes a major company or game. They're not workable solutions.
4. As you've already been told, you have no obligation to work on the list. Or to give us updates on whether or not you're working on the list. Simply stop editing the list and go edit something else. No need to keep announcing it. Sergecross73 msg me 18:54, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

@Zacharyalejandro: I'm not totally sure I understand what your concern is. If you feel any particular game has too many sources, and notice that you can remove some of the sources whilst still demonstrating both notability and verifiability, then just remove them. Kidburla (talk) 20:40, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Well why can’t just create articles for a lot of games if we aren’t going to delete every shovelware game on these lists? That is what I don’t understand. It kinda much simpler in template size if we do so. I believe a lot of this has to do with how much references we put in these lists. Zacharyalejandro (talk) 22:21, 22 September 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

@Zacharyalejandro: If you want to create articles for a lot of games, you can feel free to do that. As long as the game is notable enough to have its own article as per WP:GNG, you can create an article. Obviously, as you say, creating articles reduces the page size of this list, as then the references can be held on the article page rather than on the list itself. Kidburla (talk) 22:36, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Kidburla:. @Ferret:, @Sergecross73:, what is your take on this? Any further details I need to know about before I take note on creating articles? Zacharyalejandro (talk) 23:09, 22 September 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

I think it's a great way to direct your editing energy. Just make sure that WP:GNG is met. Generally you're going to want to see at least 5 strongly reliable sources for a basic stub. If you really want to slam dunk it, 10 is a great number to shoot for. This doesn't mean you have to use every detail from every source and fully flush out the article, it just helps avoid any issues with GNG, lack of notability, and ending up with an AFD on your hands. Remember to check the custom search engine at WP:VG/S. -- ferret (talk) 23:43, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that about covers it. If a game has reliable sources like Ferret describes, but no article exists yet, it's probably just that no one has had the time or interest to make it yet. I get it - sometimes when you see a Zelda or Mario game article get created within 10 minutes of its announcement, it's easy to think that's how it always goes. But there's many that aren't made until months or years laters later. I created multiple Switch game articles this year that came out 2-3 years ago. Sergecross73 msg me 12:58, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

If I would need help when possible, would you two or anyone who would be willing, help me? As far as I know, I know the infobox template to insert when creating an article for a game. It’s just like screenshot grabs of the icons for games (like Surviving the Aftermath, Hexceed, Atomicrops, to name a few) that I don’t know how to insert one for the article. And I have trouble actually summarizing a game to a minimum of like 10 sentences (excessively detailed, as you guys put it) and was wondering if you guys could be able to help with that as well? Zacharyalejandro (talk) 02:12, 22 October 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

I myself almost never upload images as I don't like dealing with the rules around it, so I just avoid it. Cover images aren't required though, and you can put "cover-requested" in the project banner to put it in the queue for someone to handle. -- ferret (talk) 02:32, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Not sure where the "minimum of ten sentences" rule is - I'm not aware of that; especially for stub articles I thought they can be really short. However remember you should only create articles where you can pass WP:GNG - in which case you'll already have a few sources which are significantly different in content. You should fairly easily be able to copy information from those (of course paraphrasing it into your own words), to make up whatever length of text you think is appropriate. Kidburla (talk) 08:04, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Unsourced/unreliable material added; possibly vandalism?

Can someone please tell whoever is making these assumptions that these are being released on Switch to stop? I keep seeing the same website from last time I removed these and the site does not mention a Switch release as far as I know. I did a little digging last time for these, but didn’t find a single reference pertaining to these releasing on the platform. Thank you. Zacharyalejandro (talk) 08:00, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

@Zacharyalejandro: I agree that the edit you refer to was incorrect and you were right to revert it. It's also not a reliable source. However, I have looked back through the history using WikiBlame and also through that IP user's contributions, and I can't find any other uses of this website "cover project". Can you provide other examples of where this website was used incorrectly as a source? If not, I think maybe let's just leave it for now (maybe just a genuine mistake), if it continues to happen again and again then we can take action. Kidburla (talk) 12:40, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree, I can't say I've seen that source used all that much. Zachary, you're right to remove poorly sourced entries, but there's really nothing else to be done here. An anonymous editor added a bad source once. You reverted it. Problem solved. Popular pages like this are always going to require maintenance like this. Sergecross73 msg me 13:19, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

I've definitely removed some cases of "coverproject" being used as a source in recent-ish memory, but it may have been other lists, can't remember if it was here or not. -- ferret (talk) 14:48, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

No problem. If I see that game added again in the future because I remember it being used once before actually a few months into early 2021 having a mistaken dts template of 2021, with that source not even mentioning any trace of a Switch release being made. But as far as Serge and Ferret said, problem solved. I’ll keep a close eye if I spot more of these references being used. I’ve never actually heard of that website before as it’s not located anywhere on the reliable sources WikiProject page. But happy to revert again if it happens in the future. Zacharyalejandro (talk) 16:56, 23 October 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

Sounds good, thank you. Sergecross73 msg me 18:52, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Following up with this guys, I did some digging and it also wasn’t made by the same IP but a different IP or at least I think. Ferret did remove that though back in June. As far as I know, I haven’t seen other IP’s making this game reappear constantly. I don’t know if it happened on other lists as well but I’ve just been seeing these appear on this list. Zacharyalejandro (talk) 17:15, 23 October 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

@Zacharyalejandro: Thanks for your research. I'm sorry, I missed that when doing WikiBlame earlier. I think it's likely to be the same person, but as they are using different IPs, not even in the same IP range, I think there's very little we can do. Kidburla (talk) 23:04, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

TouchArcade sources

Until very recently I was under the impression that TouchArcade sources could not be used for the Switch, as the WikiProject page lists it for use with "mobile games". I can understand that loosely speaking, Switch games are mobile games. I asked about this on the WikiProject page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Sources#Use of Pocket Gamer and TouchArcade for Nintendo Switch games and it seems that it's fine to use TouchArcade sources for the Switch. TouchArcade cover a lot of Switch games via their "SwitchArcade round-up" articles. These cover mini-reviews of multiple games in one article. The coverage of each game is fairly substantial, critically assessing the game and whether it's worth buying (as opposed to just listing basic details). In other words, it's more than just a passing mention. I can't see anything in the inclusion criteria that precludes its use.

Including TouchArcade sources will significantly increase the scope of games which are considered "notable". As an example, I took 100 of the games I have removed recently, and I was able to find TouchArcade ("SwitchArcade round-up") sources for 83 of those games. I am posting this here, prior to embarking on the (significant) effort of re-adding many of the previously-removed games, to avoid wasting time in case I've missed something or people prefer to modify the current policy. Kidburla (talk) 22:03, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Reliable source is reliable source, generally. TouchArcade is just primarily mobile. -- ferret (talk) 22:09, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, exactly this. It wasn't commentary on the scope of their reliability, it was merely pointing out what they primarily cover mobile. They can be used for any video game type stuff. Sergecross73 msg me 23:01, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I understood all that from the response on the wikiproject talk page. My post here was more to make sure that no one had any objections to me using their "SwitchArcade round-up" posts as sources, due to the significant number of games that will be re-added. I didn't want to put all that effort in and then someone turn around and say "okay this is ridiculous let's just change the inclusion criteria to exclude SwitchArcade round-up" or otherwise disagree that SwitchArcade round-up posts fit the criteria for some reason. Kidburla (talk) 07:39, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

As I've left this notice here for more than 1 week and no one objected, I'll assume everyone is fine with this. I'll start to work on adding all of those games to the list. I'm not sure when this will be completed - it might take me a few days due to the quantity of games being added. Kidburla (talk) 22:08, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Source removal

Hi, as discussed with ferret on Discord last night, I have gone through the sources and removed some of the superfluous sources - specifically where there was a secondary source from a website which is known to have release dates in articles, and that secondary source confirmed the release date for one or more regions, I removed the release date verifiability source for that region. The impact is not really that large:

• Removed 5 sources where there was also an IGN source which confirmed the release date
  • Reviewed an additional 92 IGN sources which did not result in removals. This was because either there was no other verifiability source for that game, the IGN source didn't confirm the release date, the IGN source was from a region other than NA/EU/JP, or the release date given in IGN did not match the one on the eShop (this is usually because IGN gives the release date for the game as a whole across all platforms, which may differ from the release date for the Switch specifically)
• Removed 5 sources where there was also a Famitsu source which confirmed the release date
• Removed 22 sources where there was also a Nintendo World Report source which confirmed the release date
  • Reviewed an additional ~60 NWR sources which did not result in removals. This was because either there was no other verifiability source for that game, or the NWR source did not confirm the release dates for all regions (often the NWR source only confirms the US release date and this means we can't remove the verifiability source if it confirms both US and EU dates)

In addition, I went through and changed a number of Nintendo Life editorial verifiability sources for catalogue sources, which take up less space due to the shorter URLs and titles (in all these cases the NLife source was superfluous for notability and probably not legitimate anyway given the RS restriction on this site).

In total the page size was reduced by about 9KB, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I can't really think of anything else to do here. I think we can return to working on the page as normal, but in my opinion a future split at least into A-B and C-? is inevitable as there is a limit to what we can do to reduce the page size. Kidburla (talk) 16:13, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Renaming of part 1

The first part was renamed today by Georgia guy, adding "0-9" to the page title (List of Nintendo Switch games (A–C) -> List of Nintendo Switch games (0-9 and A–C)). Unfortunately this has broken the row counters on List of Nintendo Switch games itself, as well as parts 2-4. Before fixing it I just wanted to check:

• Is there a consensus for this move? (Personally I think it's probably the right thing to do, although does mean we are not consistent with other video game lists such as List of PlayStation 3 games (A–C) and List of Xbox One games (A–L).)
• If yes, is there any reason we are using a hyphen (-) rather than dash (–) for "0-9"? I think we should use a dash for consistency.

Thanks. Kidburla (talk) 20:44, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Kidburla, I just find it convenient to use a hyphen because it's one of the standard keys on a computer keyboard; the dash is not. Georgia guy (talk) 20:54, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Simple redirects can solve stuff like that, so that doesn't really need to be factored in. Sergecross73 msg me 20:58, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

I've no comment on the name. The row counter just needs the page name updated on each page though. -- ferret (talk) 21:13, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: Okay thanks, as this doesn't seem too controversial, I'll fix it all up (and probably at some point we should do the same for the other platforms). Kidburla (talk) 21:16, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

 Done (for the Switch list) - we can always revert if people object, but at least the row counts are correct again now. Kidburla (talk) 21:37, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Revisit: Should we require secondary sources to specifically refer to the Switch version of the game?

This was previously discussed here. However, at the time, some people felt that this would be an exceedingly rare scenario and had asked for example(s). In fact, while going through the games to determine notability, I am consistently finding a few games which have references on other platforms but not on Switch. In many cases, this is because they were previously released on some other platform, and reviewed at the time of release on that platform, and then later ported to the Switch - in my opinion, it's quite understandable that a website wouldn't do a full article on the Switch port if they had already reviewed it on another platform.

Here are a few examples to illustrate the point.

Games with coverage in reliable sources on other platforms but not the Switch

Game	Coverage in reliable sources on other platforms	Platform(s) covered
Bad Dream: Fever	[8]	Mac, PC
Battle Supremacy: Evolution	[9]	iOS
Black Rainbow	[10]	Android, iOS, Mac, PC
Blood Will Be Spilled	[11]	Steam
Bot Vice	[12][13]	PC

Now with these specific/concrete examples in mind, I wondered if others may be willing to re-consider the position. I still strongly feel that we need to establish notability of the game as a whole, and not only the Switch version of it. This is because the intent of the list selection criteria is to weed out "shovelware", and such games which are notable on other platforms are surely not "shovelware". The current policy/consensus has resulted in all of the above games being removed from the list because I could not find secondary sources talking about the Switch version specifically. And this is just what I was able to find when doing searches that specifically look for Switch coverage - I'm sure there are other examples that I have not come across. Kidburla (talk) 10:53, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Why can’t I make my own list of games? This is the main reason why I hate Wikipedia even more that you flat-out remove games and are refusing to just improve upon it. I know very well Wikipedia is a collaborative site to others, but this is ridiculous and this is also why I simply refuse to take part in discussions that don’t require other users needs/input. Zacharyalejandro (talk) 17:59, 14 October 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

Final warning - stop with the off-topic complaining. If you want to do whatever you want, go make your own Wordpress blog. Wikipedia is a collaborative project by definition, there is no storming off and doing whatever you want. Sergecross73 msg me 18:11, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Try Fandom. You could always make your own project there, if nothing else. -- ferret (talk) 18:21, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Zacharyalejandro:

1. As ferret suggested, try Fandom if you want to make your own list of games. They actually have a List of Nintendo Switch games already, which it seems no one else is really working on. The problem is that probably no one will ever see the results because if you search for "list of switch games" or "how many switch games are there" on Google, it only returns the wikipedia results.
2. "you flat-out remove games and are refusing to just improve upon it" - I presume this is directed at me specifically, but I'm not sure what you think I'm refusing to do. If you have suggestions for improvements then we can discuss them. I'm not refusing to do anything. Wikipedia works by consensus and I'm following the consensus. We discuss to reach a consensus, but if you decide not to participate in the discussion, there is no way for your voice to be heard. Kidburla (talk) 13:01, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

To me, if the game is notable, and there's any reliable source verifying a Switch version, then I would think it's okay. I don't have strong feelings either way though, and still think it's a comparatively rare scenario. Sergecross73 msg me 18:15, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Not terrible invested in this. If the game is notable, and there's sourcing for a Switch release, should be good enough. -- ferret (talk) 18:21, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your responses, for some reason wikipedia didn't notify me even though this page is on my watchlist, so only just saw these. Really glad to hear that there is some willingness to change. Later I will draft some text for the inclusion criteria with minor modifications to what's there currently, and propose. Kidburla (talk) 13:01, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

I've done a revision with this modification, see Special:Diff/1050067592. Can you let me know if you are happy with this? (cc: @Ferret, @Sergecross73, @Masem, @Dissident93) Kidburla (talk) 15:42, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Seems perfectly fine to me. The simpler guidelines can be explained, the better. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 18:43, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. Sergecross73 msg me 19:26, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

 Done As no one objected and this has been up for a while, I've applied the change to the inclusion criteria. Kidburla (talk) 23:13, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

C list

Any thoughts about putting the C list into its own article called List of Nintendo Switch games (C)?? Georgia guy (talk) 22:11, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Georgia guy: Not nearly large enough on it's own to warrant it. It was only 22% of the combined A-C list. I do not support any further page splits at this time. The lists are more or less balanced for the moment. -- ferret (talk) 22:14, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Depreciation of DTS template for PEIS reasons

To avoid having to split A-C list yet again following a large addition of titles, I've talked with Kudburla and Izno in Discord to brainstorm ideas to help keep the lists under control. One of those things is the removal of the DTS template, which uses a substantial amount of the PEIS limit. This means the dates have been converted to plain ol' ISO dates, which sort automatically without any special help.

They could be converted back to MDY as well, which tables know how to sort those natively these days, however the usual script for doing date conversions wants to reintroduce the Dts template, so should NOT be used here.

Please do not reintroduce the Dts template. -- ferret (talk) 23:15, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

No worries, I'll try to work on a script to replace the YMD by MDY without using dts (being conscious we still have the MDY template at the top of the article even though it's now mostly YMD). Will try to update on that later or tomorrow. Kidburla (talk) 16:15, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

 Done however unfortunately it has resulted in an ~10kb size increase to each page :( Kidburla (talk) 18:53, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

That's fine. It's still roughly half what {{Dts}} was using, and with no PEIS overhead. I have fixed the column sorting. -- ferret (talk) 18:55, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Remedy 2: Depreciation of hlist

This hasn't occurred yet, but I recommend the depreciation of hlist in favor of a simple comma delimited format. There are 406 hlists on A-C alone. -- ferret (talk) 00:10, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: I agree, it makes sense. Can I proceed with the replacement of hlist or do we want to get some more opinions on this? Kidburla (talk) 16:15, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Why don't you sandbox it to start and let's see what the savings are. -- ferret (talk) 16:39, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: See User:Kidburla/sandbox1. This was based on Special:Permalink/1052163362, the latest revision of 0-9,A-C at this time. Ordinary page size: 478kb (hlist) vs 475kb (csv). PEIS: 2044kb (hlist) vs 1856kb (csv). I think it's a fairly significant reduction but I still think we are eventually going to have to split the page, even if we do this. Kidburla (talk) 20:09, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

A page split may be inevitable but I think a 10% reduction is worthwhile at no real loss to data presentation. Keeping in mind it'll also push the need for splitting the other three pages even further out as well. -- ferret (talk) 20:11, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

 Done across all 4 pages. Kidburla (talk) 20:29, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Remedy 3: Move C into D-G

At the current list sizes, moving C into the D-G list will result in all four pages having approximately equal 350-370kb. However, my concern is that Kidburla's efforts to expansion and enhance sourcing in regards to the inclusion criteria have primarily centered on A-C, so the other three pages may be lacking expansion at this time. I think we can wait a bit before shuffling anything further, but C into D-G would otherwise seem to proper move unless entries swing wildly. -- ferret (talk) 20:30, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: I agree we can wait a bit. I note that Index of Windows games, at a similar list size to ours, has split into individual letters already. Kidburla (talk) 20:34, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@Zsteve21: If you're going to do this in the midst of discussion and efforts to trim size, could you please at least fix all the links and templates? -- ferret (talk) 21:06, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: I'll try. zsteve21 (talk) 21:13, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

I completed the fixes needed. -- ferret (talk) 22:16, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, ferret! So much for all our efforts to delay the split, hey? Kidburla (talk) 22:37, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Dates/Lists/References

I would like to know why we are messing up the dates. It makes look weird now though. Should we resolve this by abbreviating the month like other competitor lists have done? It just looks odd leaving it that way as it is now. And the point of moving vgrh and hlist templates from the past edits? Can we keep those in place? If the page size is an issue for you guys, why can't we either remove some games that are non-notable or split the pages even further or everyone chip in and create the pages? This is really hard for me to try and get everything started from scratch and familiarize with so much changes being made. Do I have any say to object on the matter? No? Alright then. Zacharyalejandro (talk) 21:01, 28 October 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

And references do have a major issue here. Last time I had checked months ago, the references weren't nearly as bad as today's references were, meaning that there weren't a thousand references listed on just one part of the lists here. What happened to condensing references now? We're not going to do that? Zacharyalejandro (talk) 21:22, 28 October 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

Have you tried reading the talk page, particularly the section just above that explains exactly why? There is no change to the article's appearance, the same date format is still presented. -- ferret (talk) 21:38, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

@Zacharyalejandro:

1. Similarly to ferret above, I have no idea what you mean about the dates, especially saying "It makes look weird" and "It just looks odd". The dates look exactly the same as they did before, the only difference is that we are not using the DTS template.
2. For the same reasons, I don't think we should abbreviate the month, as we never did that before, and I don't understand what problem you are trying to solve.
3. I haven't touched any of the vgrh templates, I don't think others have touched them either. Not sure where you are seeing that vgrh templates were moved.
4. The removal of hlist templates is already discussed in an earlier talk page section. We did that to reduce the page size as it was getting too large. We may still need to split the page in future but we are trying to avoid splits if possible because there are already 4 parts to the list.
5. I will continue to remove games that are non-notable, but I don't think it will have a major impact on page size. We are now seeing that the vast majority of games are notable according to the inclusion criteria. For example, I've reviewed 922 games so far, and only 25 of them were removed as non-notable.
6. As mentioned before, if you want to create pages for games and they pass WP:GNG then feel free to do that. I don't have a particular interest in doing that. I think many of the games on this list wouldn't pass WP:GNG anyway.
7. I'm sorry if the number of recent changes are hard for you to process. But it's really not that complicated: (a) use comma-separated lists rather than hlist, (b) use plain dates rather than dts.
8. You are always welcome to contribute to any discussion. So yes, you do have a "say to object on the matter". But you have said before multiple times that you don't want to participate in discussions.
9. I disagree that "months ago, the references weren't nearly as bad as today", many games didn't have any references at all. I am working on adding references for those games where they are lacking.
10. As I mentioned to you in an earlier talk page section, if you see that some references are superfluous for proving both verifiability and notability, then feel free to remove those. So I don't know what you mean by "What happened to condensing references now? We're not going to do that?" I went through and removed some myself earlier this week as I noted above, but there are many cases I couldn't remove them because they were still necessary for some verifiability or notability reason. Again, see above for the explanation. Kidburla (talk) 22:27, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Well regarding the dates mainly, these had dts|2020|06|20 and the genres, publishers and developers had vgrh and hlist templates respectively. They're all gone and replaced by commas instead, undoing all past edits and a discussion you guys maybe had on the matter years ago. Can we go back to that? Or was it when you guys made numerous changes when I was gone? Zacharyalejandro (talk) 18:02, 29 October 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

Are you going to read why it was done? To avoid having to split the list into 8+ pages? Dts brings no value to the page but forces it to be split far earlier than necessary. -- ferret (talk) 18:05, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Zacharyalejandro: Have you actually read the messages that me and ferret left here yesterday for you? We already answered all these questions.

Pretty much all I can do is reiterate:

• We didn't have a discussion years ago, we had that in the last few days. Check the other sections of the talk page. Also this has nothing to do with stuff which happened while you were "gone" (I presume this means while you were banned)
• I don't know how many times I have to say this, but no changes were made to vgrh. If you disagree then please provide specific examples as requested above.
• The reason dts was removed is to reduce the page size and it has no impact on the page appearance. I really don't understand why you are so uncomfortable about it?
• No one has "undone all past edits", we just used a script to update the page and change the formats of dates and hlists.
• Can you explain your issue with replacing hlists with commas? This change reduced the page size by about 10% which both ferret and I agreed was worthwhile as it only has a minor difference in appearance.

Kidburla (talk) 18:18, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

PS: I think I might understand why you think we have undone all past edits, because ferret's edit to remove dts also reintroduced a lot of games previously removed. However this is perhaps a bit misleading. ferret had previously reverted an edit I made which re-added those games. So he re-applied my edit and at the same time removed dts, which was necessary as the page would have been too big otherwise. So I was actually the one re-adding those games and the original reason for that has nothing to do with dts. It's because of the clarification on the use of TouchArcade sources, as mentioned earlier on this talk page. So this is not undoing all past edits, it's re-adding previously-removed games where TouchArcade sources exist for those games. The edit also included those TouchArcade sources and removed sources that were there before but should not have been, so it's not even an "effective revert" of those removals. Kidburla (talk) 18:38, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

• Zachary, it was done to save space/data because of the massive size of the list. There's little to be upset about here. Nothing of value was lost. Sergecross73 msg me 20:36, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Wouldn't condensing it to Feb, Jun, Jul, etc., warrant anything? I don't know what makes these changes so different than others that have this implemented. Don't know if we ought to get pages split to single letters in the future. The dates just seem off to me compared to PS4 and Xbox One lists. Obviously this is also probably pushing towards a catalogue sorta thing if we add the missing what? 30-50 games that were removed previously? The only thing I'm concerned about is the date template. Zacharyalejandro (talk) 07:07, 4 November 2021 (UTC)Zacharyalejandro

@Zacharyalejandro: Personally I'm fine if people want to change it to three character months. I don't mind either way (particularly as I'm British and so already using a date format that's not my native one). I don't feel it would make that much difference to the technical limitations - the main thing we were trying to do was remove templates as those have a bigger impact on WP:PEIS. However it would make us more consistent with the PS4 and Xbox One lists which counts for something I guess.

I feel we will end up with single letter lists eventually. Other lists such as Index of Windows games have already done that. But there is value in not splitting prematurely, as it makes navigation more difficult for our readers.

"Obviously this is also probably pushing towards a catalogue sorta thing if we add the missing what? 30-50 games that were removed previously?" I'm guessing this is said in a sarcastic tone and I can see where you're coming from. Currently I'm tracking only 20 games that were removed as "non-notable". In light of that I feel the efforts to restrict the list by inclusion criteria have failed and actually have done more harm than good because it requires us to give a source for notability which adds to the page size. It also makes it much harder to maintain the list as the extra time taken to find secondary sources (which can't be automated) makes it unsustainable to keep the list up to date. (It's other editors who strongly pushed for restricting this list, not me.)

"The only thing I'm concerned about is the date template." - unfortunately I still haven't understood why you are concerned about the template as it has no effect on the page appearance. Kidburla (talk) 08:46, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

There's no reason to shorten date. It has no technical benefit. -- ferret (talk) 21:23, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Archive URLs for games removed from the eShop?

A game, "32 Secs", was removed from the UK eShop. It's still available on US and JP eShops. The UK eShop URL was https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/32-Secs-1985262.html. But it seems the Wayback Machine doesn't archive eShop URLs; the Wayback Machine just says "Sorry. This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine." Does anyone know how to access an archive of this URL so we can continue to demonstrate verifiability for the EU release date for this game? Kidburla (talk) 00:06, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

After some searching I discovered Archive.Today and Memento Project, but no one seems to be archiving the eShop URL. I can source the release date from Nintendo Life. Nevertheless, this presents a potential problem when the Switch reaches the end of its life and Nintendo take down the Switch eShop, as if those pages are not archived we will have a bunch of dead links compromising verifiability. Kidburla (talk) 10:03, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Splitting the page

The WP:PEIS for List of Nintendo Switch games (0–9 and A–B) is currently at 2097049/2097152 bytes, meaning we can't make further changes to the page without breaching the PEIS limit. Is there now a consensus to split the page? If so, should we go for "(0–9 and A)" and "(B)" separately, or do we need to combine "(B)" into "(C–G)"? If we did that, the PEIS for the resulting "(B–G)" page would be 1984241/2097152 bytes, so we may want to split that further. Kidburla (talk) 10:14, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

PS: The figure quoted above for a hypothetical "(B–G)" page is based on a direct copy of the page, without rescuing orphaned refs. I don't have any specific data on that, but I would assume that the action of rescuing orphaned refs would breach PEIS again, necessitating a further split. Kidburla (talk) 13:39, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Go ahead with pulling B out. It's that or abandon WP:V, which we shouldn't really entertain. -- ferret (talk) 14:10, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I suggest pulling B out ASAP, otherwise I am going to do that myself in a week's time. zsteve21 (talk) 14:45, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

What's special about 2097152?? Do Wikipedia articles larger than that get error messages?? Have you had experience with such articles?? Georgia guy (talk) 17:06, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

@Georgia guy: There is a technical limitation to the size of content produced by templates. This page is currently right against that limit. If any more templates (Such as {{cite web}}) are added, they will start to fail and not output their content. You can read WP:PEIS for more information. -- ferret (talk) 17:17, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

 Done - Should the original page (which is now a redirect) List of Nintendo Switch games (0–9 and A–B) be put forward for deletion somehow? I notice that previous pages have been deleted under CSD R3 after split, but that CSD is meant to only be for recently-created pages. Kidburla (talk) 21:27, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Where we have verifiability sources for some regions but not others

This is following on from the above section which I managed to solve using Nintendo Life, but I just came across another one which is the same situation and the release date is not on Nintendo Life either. The game is Alchemist Adventure and eShop URL was https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Alchemist-Adventure-1971435.html The game is still available in Japan and US. If we can't verify the release date for one or two regions, what should we do?

1. Do nothing, keep that release date present without verifiability source
2. Remove the release date so the box appears as blank
3. Set that cell to "Unreleased" even if we know it was previously released

Kidburla (talk) 23:08, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Technically we should be doing option 3 if we can't cite proof. But this is why I still think going with single release dates (the game's initial one) is preferable. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 10:51, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

@Dissident93: Thanks for sharing your views. Personally I'm not sure that I agree it's option 3. We can't cite proof that it's released, but we can't cite proof it's unreleased either. Our current approach to put "Unreleased" for any game not having reliable sources has worked well generally, but technically speaking it's bordering on original research. All it would take is for someone to put "citation needed" on the fact that the game is Unreleased, and we'd have to remove that information as unsourced. So I'm tending towards option 2, just leaving the cell blank for such games (I have found at least 3 of them just in "A" by the way).

Regarding replacing all three dates by just the earliest date, that's a whole different kettle of fish. The fact is that all of the reliable sources differentiate between regions for release dates. If we could easily get and source the earliest release date then I would probably agree with you (although it's still helpful to see when games are JP-exclusive). But in practice we'd still have to source all 3 release dates in order that the "earliest release date" would be verifiable, so it wouldn't help us much. Also, what would we do for games where the earliest release region had no reliable sources? We'd be back in a very similar situation, as putting the "earliest verifiable region" release date is equivalent to option 3 above of putting information we know is wrong. Kidburla (talk) 09:22, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I would agree with this. Calling games that we know were released "unreleased" is just unacceptable to me, and I'd much rather we leave a blank spot for all regionally unsourcable or unreleased games.--Alexandra^IDV 11:08, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

A radical approach, part deux. Or three? whichever.

What if we consider dropping regional dates again? Single release date field, earliest known release. This has a tremendous impact on the article's size and PEIS issues. -- ferret (talk) 16:59, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd support that (though I won't push for it if it's not a popular option...) Sergecross73 msg me 20:40, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

That's exactly what we were discussing above after Dissident93 proposed it. I can only give the same comments again which I gave in the previous section: The fact is that all of the reliable sources differentiate between regions for release dates. If we could easily get and source the earliest release date then I would probably agree with you (although it's still helpful to see when games are JP-exclusive). But in practice we'd still have to source all 3 release dates in order that the "earliest release date" would be verifiable, so it wouldn't help us much. Also, what would we do for games where the earliest release region had no reliable sources? We'd be back in a very similar situation, as putting the "earliest verifiable region" release date is equivalent to option 3 above of putting information we know is wrong. Kidburla (talk) 20:44, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

The only issue that people bring up in opposition to this would be for certain games like Persona 5 that released over a year later in other regions. But I'd counter in saying that we already do this in short descriptions (2016 video game) and other similar things. Kidburla: I can't see us ever failing to verify a game's initial release. That seems almost exclusive to secondary regions once publications stop caring to cover such things, as you already noted was a problem. ~ Dissident93 ^(talk) 09:19, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

@Dissident93: I respectfully disagree, as explained above. Can you point to which websites you would cite for verifying this, or give some examples of URLs you could use for any specific games? Generally I find all reliable sources will just say "game X will be released on date Y in Japan" (or US or whatever). For sources that are themselves region-specific (e.g. Famitsu for Japan, EuroGamer for Europe, IGN.com for US, etc) they will just say "game X will be released on date Y" and the region is assumed. There is rarely, if ever, any reference to whether or not this game has previously been released in any other region or if this is the "earliest" release date. Kidburla (talk) 14:45, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

This isn't ours to worry about. I do hate to quote WP:TRUTH but, the best we can do is cite the earliest date we know of or can find. One benefit however of moving to a single release date and therefore reducing our citation load is that we would be in a position to populate archive-url without it destroying PEIS. -- ferret (talk) 14:52, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: I'm sorry I really don't follow this logic. WP:TRUTH is exactly the reason I'm bringing this up. We "know" (truth) that this is the earliest release date because we couldn't find any earlier ones, but how do we verify that? Adding it on the basis that "well I had a look around and couldn't find any earlier release dates" is exactly the opposite of what WP:TRUTH is saying, and is bordering on original research. I totally agree with you that if we were to follow this approach it would bring huge benefits in terms of PEIS and that's why I don't disagree in principle, I just don't know how the practicalities of verifiability are meant to work with this. Kidburla (talk) 15:29, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

We are only worried about three regions, and these three regions have strong documentation as to when games are released, so we know whether they are or not. It's not synth to compare dates then to determine the earliest. It would be different if we were talking anywhere in the world and have to consider countries/regions where release dates are not well tracked like in South America, then it could be a problem to be claiming "earliest release". --Masem (t) 15:34, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

@Masem: I agree it's not WP:SYNTH to compare release dates with each other. This is actually more similar to WP:CALC which is allowed. However, what I'm saying is that I don't see the basis for not citing all the sources used as inputs to the WP:CALCulation. And if we did cite all 3 sources, we'd be back to where we started in terms of PEIS. Kidburla (talk) 15:55, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Here's a alt approach:

• Include the earliest release date, and its region.
• For the other two regions, if their release date is within the same "release window", group those regions into the earliest. Eg, using "0 Degrees", that I would list as "May 19, 2021 (NA, EU, JP). (sorted on the date)
• If the region's release falls outside that window, then it should be a separate line (eg br element, but have the column sort on the earliest date), eg "Absolute Drift" would be December 3, 2020 (NA, EU)(br)October 7, 2021 (JP).

The only question becomes what is the reasonable size of this "release window" to do this grouping. It clearly should be larger than a few days, that would handled 90% of the cases I see, and a release day-or-two diff is trivial for purposes of this list. It should be shorter than 6 months, as to me that's a significant enough delay to be noted. I think a 2 month window is about right as just eyeballing it, very few cases fall in that range - either they are far shorter or far longer. (if this approach is used, it should be described in the lede about simplification) --Masem (t) 14:57, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

@Masem: Thanks for your suggestion, I'd be happy with this as it avoids the issue of missing release dates (rather than putting "Unreleased" for those regions we would just put nothing at all), but I would have to note that this would gain us absolutely nothing in terms of PEIS, as we'd still have to cite release dates for every released region. Kidburla (talk) 15:29, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Take an example of a game that is released in the same "release window" for all three regions. Then the only source you really need is the one for the first release date. You'd only need additional references for those outside the release window. --Masem (t) 15:34, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

@Masem: Right, I didn't realise that's what you were saying. In that case I don't think I could support this unfortunately for the same reasons as above. I just don't understand how for a release date like "May 19, 2021 (NA, EU, JP)" we could get away with sourcing this only for NA but not EU and JP. The fact that it's released during this window in NA is verifiable, but the fact it's released during this window in EU and JP is not verifiable. Kidburla (talk) 15:55, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I think you're getting hung up on the idea that we have to list all known releases to "prove" that the one listed is the earliest. We don't have to do that. We list the earliest date we know and the source for it. That stands until a source is found that supports an even earlier date. We don't have to have sources for later release dates to prove the first is earlier. All that would be required is to present a new source with a earlier date to change it. If no such sourcing is found, nothing changes. There's only an issue to evaluate if we find a conflict, such as two (reliable) sources claiming the release date of a region differed. -- ferret (talk) 16:14, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: Which Wikipedia policy are you referring to which says we don't have to do that? Material on Wikipedia must be verifiable. If we take the approach you are suggesting, I don't understand how the stated fact that this is the "earliest" release date is verifiable. Kidburla (talk) 17:20, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

We're not stating "earliest release date", at least not directly. We're stating "release date", to the best of our knowledge and the sourcing we found. A source that shows a later release date does not contribute to proving than an earlier release date is actually, in fact, earlier. The only thing that contradicts that a date isn't the earliest is a new source showing an earlier date. You simply replace in that case. Any conflict that this is, in fact, not the correct date will require a new source. If that source is valid, you update. If it's not, you don't. Dates are self-calculating. We don't have to account for information we don't know and in all probability doesn't exist. -- ferret (talk) 17:28, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: If that's the case then I have misunderstood. If we are not going to state anywhere on the page that the listed release date is the earliest one, then I'm happy with the proposal to list only a single release date per game. I do however think that it may lead to people trying to edit the release date and add other release dates for different regions. For example, a game which was previously only released in Japan and now will be coming out in the West. However if there's a consensus to adopt this approach and revert any edits that try to add other release dates, even in these cases, then I can get behind it. Kidburla (talk) 17:37, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

"This is the release date" is inherently the earliest release date. To edit an existing verified and sourced release date to be a later more recent release date is simply wrong and would be reverted. -- ferret (talk) 17:39, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah that case is clear; I was more concerned about people editing the release date for Billion Road (for example) to change "November 29, 2018" to "November 29, 2018 (JP); April 16, 2020 (NA/EU)". Then that game would become inconsistent with all other games as two different dates would be listed. As long as the consensus is that we have just a single release date for any game and revert any edits that try to add multiple release dates for a game, then I'm pretty much happy. Kidburla (talk) 01:41, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Implementation of the "radical approach" above

Given that:

• The above proposal from ferret has been up for over a week (12 days, actually)
• There has been no dissent per se (there was one alternative approach proposed but no one else expressed support for this)
• There has been no discussion on the proposal for over a week

It feels like we have reached a consensus to adopt the approach proposed by ferret. On that basis, I'm posting here to declare my intention to implement this proposal after one week (i.e. on or after Saturday 4 December). This will mean:

• All parts of the Switch list will go down from 3 date columns to 1
• The date column will be called simply "Release date"
• The fact that it's the earliest verifiable release date for a game won't be explicitly mentioned on the page, but by convention the date given will be the earliest verifiable one
• For games which were released later in other regions, or were not released in certain regions, this distinction will no longer be referenced on the Switch list
• This column will be populated for each game in the existing list by the earliest of the three dates given for that game, excluding any release dates which we know cannot be verifiable as above

If anyone disagrees, now is the time to raise any objections... Kidburla (talk) 09:38, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Works for me. -- ferret (talk) 15:27, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

 Done Kidburla (talk) 20:58, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Excellent work. Next would be a pass to remove unnecessary sourcing, but you don't need to rush to it. -- ferret (talk) 21:14, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

@Ferret: Tbh, that would be quite a laborious and tedious task that I'm not particularly interested in doing, as I have other stuff I'd rather be working on. I'm more than happy if someone else wants to do that as it'll help with PEIS. (It's going to mean things like checking which cited verifiability source has the listed date, and removing the other verifiability sources while ensuring that notability is still adequately covered.) Also, obviously, I'll make sure that any sources I add going forward are not superfluous / surplus to requirements. Kidburla (talk) 22:59, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

DEEEER Simulator: Your Average Everyday Deer Game

Where is DEEEER Simulator: Your Average Everyday Deer Game? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.8.230.184 (talk) 19:04, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

@37.8.230.184: There are literally thousands of games missing from the list currently, due to the fact that we can't automate adding games because of very strict citation requirements being imposed for the Switch platform on Wikipedia. If you notice a particular game missing, feel free to add it as long as you cite your sources according to the policy at the top of the talk page, otherwise it will probably be removed again. Kidburla (talk) 10:49, 26 February 2022 (UTC)