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Wikipedia:Featured article review/GameFAQs/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept 21:34, 26 November 2007.

GameFAQs

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Recently was the Featured Article on Wikipedia. Was a fairly controversial nominee. My main concerns with the article are that it just doesn't seem like a good featured article. There is no evidence about why LUE is notable and the article devotes a large chunk to talking about contests. The size is appropriate, but the real information is very small. The fact that GameFAQs pulled an April Fools joke by pretending to change its name to GameFAX is not really the most important fact ever cited. The article talks alot about ads being moved. It also contains unsourced facts in the message board section. I don't think GameFAQs is one of the best articles on Wikipedia (I would doubt it is one of the best 2000), so it shouldn't be listed as a featured article. Life, Liberty, Property 11:41, 8 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hear hear! The massive amount of references seems to be an attempt to blind with science - yet a fraction of them actually pass WP:RS and WP:SELFPUB. Quite frankly I was amazed that this even got FA'd, and especially so that it got on the main page. An amazing 60 out of 85 references are from GameFAQs itself. While there's no question GFAQs is notable, certain sections have little or no importance to the overall subject - the message boards section seems to be a WP:COATRACK as there is nothing remarkable about it yet it contains nearly half the page's content. This is a B class article at best. -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 14:12, 8 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, the article uses quite a few primary sources to document the history and whatnot, so oftentimes the importance of any given piece of information is decided by editorial judgment, obviously. What facts are uncited? Feel free to add in some {{fact}} tags and I'll add the appropriate footnotes - as far as I know, everything in the article is from the sources given, but obviously not every line has an inline citation. --- RockMFR 14:10, 8 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I specifically questioned the notability of including the line about LUElinks and spinoffs sites in general, but WP:CON at the time pointed towards including the line in there. It's good to see some more objections to the line. hbdragon88 23:17, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've been waiting for someone to bring up something actually related to the Wikipedia:Featured article criteria, but so far I've not seen much besides a whole lot of WP:IDONTLIKEIT and a healthy dose of primary source paranoia. The points I've seen so far:

  • "Was a fairly controversial nominee": The only controversy I see is one person who refused to accept that (paraphrasing) "Oh noes! Another video game article!" isn't a valid reason for opposing.
  • "Notability" of various sections: Wikipedia:Notability states "These guidelines pertain to the suitability of article topics but do not directly limit the content of articles." As to whether LUE and spinoffs should be given the weight they are currently given, that can be fixed and merits discussion.
  • "the article devotes a large chunk to talking about contests": One medium-sized and two small paragraphs are too much? The table makes it appear larger than it is, which could be trimmed if it is excessive.
  • "The article talks alot about ads being moved.": I see two mentions of ads in the whole article, only one of which is about them being moved. Since when does "one" equal "alot"?
  • Too many primary sources: This seems to be primary source paranoia. If there are primary sources being used for original synthesis or contentious statements, identify them. But if they are being used to support uncontentious facts, there is nothing wrong with them. I don't think GameFAQs has a whole lot of controversy to discuss in the article, so primary sources might be appropriate for a good chunk of the material.
  • "a little over 70% of the citations suck": Ditto.
  • Nearly half of the article is about the message boards: About 30% by my count excluding references, both by screenfulls and by visible characters. Hyperbole is not helpful.

Are there any points I've missed? Anomie 04:36, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    • I wish you wouldn't nitpick by pointing to the definition of WP:N. Yes, it is true that sections inside articles are not absolutely required to have secondary srouces. Yet in my opinion it is commonplace to require as such. Take The Best Page in the Universe, for instance, another website. People have been trying to insert the so-called "Orbitz incident" 2-3 times, and each time I reverted it based on the fact that if we included a non-notable incident like Orbtiz, then that would open the door to basically include a huge long plot summary of each article he has ever written. No. Keep it to those incidents that have garnered outside attention. hbdragon88 07:38, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      And I wish people would say what they mean instead of trying to bend WP:N all out of shape. It's a perfectly valid argument that this "Orbitz incident" (whatever it is) might be completely irrelevant to an encyclopedic treatment of "The Best Page in the Universe" (whatever that it). But Wikipedia:Notability doesn't have anything to do with it; WP:NOT#IINFO and WP:TRIVIA might be a good start instead. Anomie 16:40, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • And now, take GameFAQs. Where does it end? Okay, so we have LUElinks. No reliable source tells us how big 10,000 members is in relation to other spinoffs (and on the anecdotal side, it's extremely huge relatively). So where does it end there? I'd like to include every spinoff I ever went to, and I can point to the primary source that confirms that it exists. There was LUE2 and other great big spinoffs that are related to LUE. What about certain fads? LUEshi too seven AFDs to delete, but the WP:RS say they are as notable as LUElinks is. I can prove those exist, too. Is it notable? The answer, in my opinion, is a resoudning no. We have to draw the line somehwere. Therefore, that's why I discussed "notability" of LUElinks in that context, which does in fact deviate from the overused and beaten-to-the-ground WP:N. hbdragon88 07:38, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      I never said that LUE (whatever it is) or spinoffs (which I don't care about) shouldn't be trimmed or even removed. But it's not a Wikipedia:Notability issue, it's WP:WEIGHT, WP:NOT#IINFO, and WP:TRIVIA. The problem with trying to differentiate between Wikipedia:Notability and wikt:notability is that people tend to jump back and forth between the two very different meanings as it suits their position (I'm not saying anyone here has done so, but it's even easier to do than to accidentally use a primary source for WP:OR). It's better to just avoid the word "notability" completely unless Wikipedia:Notability is being discussed and avoid that whole problem of conflicting definitions. Anomie 16:40, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • (edit conflict w/ above) I'm sorry, next time I'll point out that my assertion that "70% of the citations suck" is based on policy. Coming in and making accusations that there's a cabal of users that absolutely hate GameFAQs is "hyperbole" itself. Primary sources are used to prop up extremely trivial content like how GameFAQs' message boards use plaintext, that the board's number is a reference to Douglas Adams, that the administrator got hate mail, that some users of this sub-board of a message board made their own message board, and that the advertisements got moved. The FAC being violated in this case are 1c (reliable sourcing) and 4 (going into unnecessary detail/not focusing on main topic). -Wooty [Woot?] [Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!] 07:53, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Did I ever mention a "cabal" or claim anyone "absolutely hate[s] GameFAQs"? I just stated that this discussion so far is less about the featured article criteria and more about nitpicking the article and wikilawyering to support the nitpicking. If you feel there is "extremely trivial content" in the article, discuss that content. Is there any real belief that the primary-sourced postings references are not authentic, that they contain false, biased, or misleading information, or that original research is happening? If not, then bringing up WP:V smacks of WikiLawyering and the discussion should instead focus on the merits of the content instead of the details of which source is used.
    At least someone finally mentions some criteria! I don't agree with you that there is a problem with 1c, especially based solely on your broad assertion that "primary sources suck", for reasons detailed above. 4 is a valid concern, but it needs rational discussion about the actual content and not argument over unrelated issues. Anomie 16:40, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Has anybody bothered to read the footnote at the bottom of the article, that says "This article uses posts to message boards as references. These posts are from the site's staff and thus can be contextualized as official announcements and regarded in the same light as announcements on a corporate website"? If they weren't forum posts, would anybody care...I'm guessing not. Oh yeah, and I think the article should uphold FA status, if you hadn't already guessed. Dihydrogen Monoxide 00:06, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Life, Liberty, Property, please follow the instructions at WP:FAR to notify involved editors and relevant WikiProjects with {{subst:FARMessage|GameFAQs}} and leave a summary of notifications here as in this sample. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:22, 14 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:SELFPUB: the article is not based primarily on such sources. If 70% of the sources are all self-published, that's a problem. And if primary source != self-published source, then I apologize. hbdragon88 (talk) 06:15, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    I for one accept your apology. Even with a self-published source, the use needs to be considered. For example, reference 56 is certainly self-published, but is there any better possible source for a statement on the site's rules? IMO, WP:SELFPUB generally applies to use of a self-published source in a secondary rather than primary manner. Anomie⚔ 16:11, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Wait...I thought a self-published source has to be primary. The guideline says that you can't use a SPS to make claims about third parties, so the primary source has to only make claims about itself. And I think 70% is way too much overuse of SPS. In fact, if this was any other article, I'm sure that the nuances and details about spinoffs, LUE, etc. would have been probably removed by now since they do not feature third-party coverage. There was a major war on Han shot first over that issue (including parodies that were only sourced to the parody itself, and now there is a huge comment that says don't add them unless someone else has covered it). hbdragon88 (talk) 23:25, 18 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I feel that WP:SELFPUB is being misapplied by a lot of people when looking at this article. The point of the policy seems to be that you shouldn't accept someone's claims about themself without proof. So, for example, pages on GameFAQs itself shouldn't be used to support claims like "GameFAQs is popular" or "LUE is important", since they could just be stating that without it being true. However, facts like "GameFAQs terms of service says X" or "Y is a administrator", with links to the terms of service or a page listing the administrators are different. Those aren't opinions or claims that are likely to be false, but facts that are reasonably shown to be true by the site itself. To compare with articles about people, the first set of examples would be like believing the person's word that he is important, while the second set would be like physically bringing that person to every reader's home and showing them that he does indeed have gray hair and a missing finger. I think WP:SELFPUB was worded with articles about people or companies in mind, and since you can't physically bring the person or company to each reader, it doesn't make a distinction between such cases. However, for articles about web sites, each reader can actually view the website themself. I think in this case using links to the website itself for the second type of claim I described are good, since it is really like physically showing the readers what you are talking about. I think we should only try to fix any cases where such links are used to support the first type of claims I described, such as about the popularity of the site. Calathan (talk) 14:30, 23 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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