Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Newsletter/20170702/Feature2
Feature: Final Fantasy VII postmortem
editIn this issue the Newsletter brings you a second postmortem feature about one of our Featured Articles. In our last postmortem (Vol. 4, No. 3), we examined the efforts to bring the Final Fantasy series up to Featured (FA) status by a team of dedicated editors including Guyinblack25, Deckiller, Ryu Kaze, The Prince of Darkness, Nimrand, David Fuchs, Ashnard, and Randomran, among others. In this issue's postmortem we examine the work and collaborative efforts that went into the promotion of Final Fantasy VII to FA-status. This postmortem intendeds to highlight the fact that over time standards change and what may have once passed as FA in earlier times may today require significant additional efforts, and to provide readers with insight into what a modern article requires to progress up the quality scale today.
- Submitted by User:ProtoDrake
Origins
editFinal Fantasy VII had originally been promoted to Featured Article (FA) status all the way back in August 2006, a time when the rules and requirements surrounding FA articles were a lot less stringent than they are now. Two years later in May 2008, a Featured Article Review resulted in the article being delisted due to quality concerns focused on the size of its plot synopsis and questionable reliability of its citations. Following a successful Good Article (GA) nomination just a few months later, the article had remained as a GA with little to no significant change while the rest of the Final Fantasy series on Wikipedia went from strength to strength.
The project had its roots in a minor discussion had in January 2017 on the Video Game WikiProject talk page about notable anniversaries in 2017; among those mentioned were the Megami Tensei series and Final Fantasy VII itself. This discussion coincided with the release of an extensive feature was published by Polygon, featuring interviews with original staff members from the entire process of production through to its release, later ports, and additional media. Two other external factors were increased interest in the game following the confirmation in 2015 of a high-definition remake and the advent of the game's 20th anniversary. A few days after that first discussion and some serious thought on the subject, I proposed a collaborative effort to bring Final Fantasy VII to FA status within 2017. The response I received was beyond what I expected. It needed to be — this was perhaps one of the biggest projects undertaken within the WikiProject.
Research and editing
editThe group of editors became divided based on ability, preferences, and available time, in addition to their liking for the Final Fantasy series. Prior to this, Sergecross73 and Dissident93 had worked together to maintain the article at as high a level of quality as its overall state allowed. Since my strength was gathering citations and writing plot synopses — a skill honed on projects ranging from obscure to country-exclusive game titles — I decided to expand and rewrite the "Development" and "Release" sections, while also trimming down the plot and adding citations, in addition to reducing the amount of in-universe lore. If I had taken on the whole article rather than bringing together a group, I guarantee it would have remained in an unfinished state.
PresN, whose efforts on the music of the Final Fantasy series resulted in it becoming a Good Topic, rewrote the entire "Music" subsection, allowing me to focus on other aspects of development. TarkusAB, true to their word, focused on rewriting the lead and acted as a general copyeditor alongside Dissident93, Deckiller and Brayden96 over the course of the project. TarkusAB also did sterling work on rewriting and sourcing the gameplay section. GamerPro64 worked miracles with the "Reception" section, adding in a table and helping trim fat and archive references. Dissident93 performed similar work on the "Legacy" section, while Brayden96 continued to assure the prose was clear and was as concise as possible. TarkusAB also enabled a minor miracle by finding an image to help illustrate the game's graphics using a GIF image,
Review
editOver the next few months, Deckiller, Dissident93, Xiomicronpi and myself generally tidied up and refined the article. There had been ideas of making the FA nomination a collaborative one, but after a while I decided that I would just go ahead and nominate it. The Featured Article nomination went up on 24 March. It was only my sixth game-related FA and my third involving a single video game. I knew that a large amount of work still needed to be done based on reviewer comments, and knew that if it was not promoted, all our hard work would, while certainly not wasted, have been leading up to disappointment. To my surprise and delight, the review went far smoother than expected. Aside from some late answers, a difficult image review, and some tricky rewriting, the response was generally positive. It took nearly two months, and anything could have gone wrong, but on 29 May, the word was spoken; Final Fantasy VII had been promoted to FA status.
Conclusion
editMore than anything, the push to bring Final Fantasy VII to FA status proves that a community spirit exists within Wikipedia. It is not just single editors pursuing their own passion projects—a dedicated group of editors can come together over a common cause, can push ahead, debate, elaborate, sometimes clash, but still come up with something wonderful. This experience has helped crystallize (no pun intended) what I love about Wikipedia, and why I can do what I do. It also helped confirm a few things I feel are important with Wikipedia;
- Research is important, as it can make or break an article. The biggest issue with the many sections were that the sources were either questionable, old, proven wrong, or dead. While the Polygon feature helped, the rest was hard slogging through the depths of the internet, finding translated interviews on fan sites, digging through foreign language sites for information, and persisting through the moments when your eyes began crossing from untangling Google Translate's version of Japanese-to-English. Because of that, the source review went through without a single hitch.
- Collaboration is essential. The only reason the project came through at all was because a group of editors worked together. There was no team leader, only a group working organically together, looking out for each other, questioning and clarifying each other's edits, ensuring the citation style was uniform, trimming a little here and there to keep the flow consistent, picking up spelling and grammar mistakes, and many other things. One person never sees everything when the article is this big. It takes a group.
- Never resist a challenge. Just like when I decided to create articles for both Persona 2 games, or created a set of articles about Blood-C that are all GA and above, I proposed this effort as a test — a challenge to myself and other editors to bring this article back from its purgatorial state and set it among the greats of Wikipedia. There were roadbumps a plenty, but we overcame them and continued to challenge ourselves. We did not let a lack of information, or a sprawling plot, or twenty years of legacy slow us down. We pushed on, and created something special. Not just because of what it is, but because of what it took to make it.
If you have reached this point, I can only say thank you from the bottom of my heart. Turning Final Fantasy VII into an FA is something I never thought I would do, let along jump-starting a collaborative effort among upwards of ten editors over nearly half a year. I take pride not only in the work I did myself, but on the fact that it was the work of so many that turned this article into what it is; I would rank this as one of the best collaborative efforts not only for video game articles, but for Wikipedia as a whole. Once more, thank you for reading.