Wikipedia Creator Working On Online Gaming Mag

Ars Technica reports on the intention of the Wikia group to create a wiki-based open source gaming magazine. The gaming.wikia site is intended to be a fully editable source of information for game news consumers. From the lips of Dan Lewis, VP of business development at Wikia: "The 'open-source magazines' we're unveiling today are focused largely around topics where passionate people have already started collaborating online. The launch of Tunes, Cars, Gaming and Health is a continuation of our mission to open-source the creation and development of content around every topic imaginable — so we are obviously not stopping here."

Comments

Pretty interesting

[badenglishihave]

There are a lot of wiki's available today, but a magazine type wiki? Definitely makes you think about the future of paper magazines. Some people say you can't replace the feeling of getting a paper magazine once a month in the mail, but (especially in the gaming community) you can see something like this evolving into a great source of information.

Re:Pretty interesting

[drinkypoo]

Some people say you can't replace the feeling of getting a paper magazine once a month in the mail

It's true! You cannot replace the feeling of disgust that I feel when I get one of those pile of shit gaming magazines in the mail. As I read their bullshit, bogus reviews which are effectively advertisements (even the worst games getting scores that are halfway up the scale) I cannot help but reflect on the environmental cost of printing and shipping those pieces of tripe.

If I want to be lied to about the quality of games, surely it can happen without killing trees that should be allowed to instead grow up and participate in the cooling of the globe?

Re:Pretty interesting

[badenglishihave]

Definitely a good point about gaming magazines. But certain areas like sports or cars have great pictures only available in print or other features. Computer and gaming mags may eventually move completely online in a user-editable format for the reasons you listed.

Re:Pretty interesting

[Nasarius]

Sad but true. For me, the most memorable example is Black & White; nearly everyone gave that pile of shit obscenely high ratings.

Re:Pretty interesting

[east coast]

To be honest about it, given the quality of most of the gaming rags I've seen recently any 16 year olds blog on how BF2 r0x0rz and endless Duke Nuke 'em jokes is just as good.

Re:Pretty interesting

[Seumas]

I don't see that there is a need for this. Wikipedia already has plenty of game-related portals and information. Isn't the whole point of Wikipedia to have the data available in a single source? What's next, breaking it off into a medical wiki, a technical wiki, a geography wiki, a math wiki, a political wiki, a literature wiki and so on?

Also, I thought Wikia had nothing to do with Wikipedia?

Re:Pretty interesting

[Nasarius]

Isn't the whole point of Wikipedia to have the data available in a single source?

No. See especially "Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought" and "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information".

Re:Pretty interesting

[Seumas]

I'm not sure how anything there contradicts what I just said. Why is Wikipedia not the place for videogame information, concerning it already has an enormous amount of video game related content and dedicated portals for this? Having a separate encyclopedia, quotes database and dictionary makes sense. Breaking the encyclopedia off into separate categories outside of the encyclopedia itself seems counter-intuitive.

The only exception I can see is if we were talking about gaming reviews. But really, do we need yet more pointless videogame reviews? Especially one in a publicly editable venue like an "open magazine" that will just turn into a bunch of driveling dorks flaming each other on what color cape the guy from Castlevania wears for ten pages?!

Re:Pretty interesting

[Red Flayer]

I currently work in magazine publishing (but am getting out). With the exception of scholarly journals, magazines are simply vehicles for advertising, and most magazines throw their advertisers a bone by promoting their products within editorial content.

As for the environmental impacts, you're right, though I suspect that the inks and coatings do more environmental harm than the pulp-for-paper harvest.

Re:Pretty interesting

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

This game is very pretty, but I never got why it was so awesome.

Hell, I even waited and bought both it and the expansion pack at the same time.

There was some fun stuff -- the RTS aspect, gathering up the water globules and heaving them through the vortex to help start up the next level. Gathering up the sheep to unlock the sheep monster.

But the whole giant aspect of it, yeesh. Am I supposed to play this as an RTS or as a giant/super-"hero unit" sandbox game? I also found it irritating you couldn't automate gathering grain somehow. At least I never figured out how, and stopped after only 2 or 3 maps. I had a huge civ, but apparently I needed to beat the hell out of them to get them to obey me more. Whatever.

Re:Pretty interesting

[PopeRatzo]

Listen to drinkypoo. I've cancelled every single paper magazine, and I used to get at least a half-dozen, not counting the free industry rags that used to come every week.

And he doesn't even mention the little paper fly-ins that accompany every paper magazine. Just the time wasted tearing them out of the mag and throwing them away was enough to make me hate magazines.

Re:Pretty interesting

[tepples]

Why is Wikipedia not the place for videogame information, concerning it already has an enormous amount of video game related content and dedicated portals for this? As I understand it, Wikipedia doesn't want strategy guides because original strategy guides are attributable only against primary sources (the game itself), not secondary sources.

Re:Pretty interesting

[WWWWolf]

As I understand it, Wikipedia doesn't want strategy guides because original strategy guides are attributable only against primary sources (the game itself), not secondary sources.

Eh, no. Wikipedia doesn't want strategy guides because Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and encyclopaedias don't cover in-depth information, such as strategy guides.

(There are small attribution issues with game guides, though, but not as severe as you say: Attribution policy says "Edits that rely on primary sources should only make descriptive claims that can be checked by anyone without specialist knowledge"; Most plot description and gameplay-related material is practically in this category, because they're highly descriptive in nature and don't speculate. "The protagonist has to jump to the flag pole to end these levels" is descriptive and okay. "This glitch may mean that the designers intended A---- to live" is not okay because it's kind of guessing. However, things like item lists and monster stats and like are probably research-like in nature and harder to verify for a layman, so they should probably be used with much more caution.)

We used to have game guides in Wikibooks, but they were removed because they didn't fit Wikibooks' mission - providing material that is useful in education. Explaining gameplay is not really educating (similar to having film guides that only say "Be especially sharp at 0:32:10, 0:42:15 and 1:02:52 to not miss the funny cameo appearances!"). That's why sites like StrategyWiki are better for this.

Re:Pretty interesting

[tepples]

Attribution policy says "Edits that rely on primary sources should only make descriptive claims that can be checked by anyone without specialist knowledge" But the notability guideline states that every article must have at least some reliable secondary sources.

However, things like item lists and monster stats and like are probably research-like in nature and harder to verify for a layman, so they should probably be used with much more caution. They have an article about Bellsprout.

Re:Pretty interesting

[WWWWolf]

But the notability guideline states that every article must have at least some reliable secondary sources.

Reliable secondary sources that explain the notability of the concept. Where there's a game, there's sales numbers. Where there's a game, there's press hype. =)

They have an article about Bellsprout.

And we have dozens of different printed Pokémon game guides and the games themselves present the statistics in the way that even the 10-year-olds can figure them out. So where's the problem? =)

dept?

[Red Flayer]

Posted by Zonk on Friday March 16, @11:07AM
from the still-a-big-fan-of-edited-news dept.

Then you, sir, have come to the wrong place.

I keed, I keed.

paper

[mastershake_phd]

They going to print think?

New gambling magazine?

[voice_of_all_reason]

Good Jimmy Wales, you look kinda cool now.

Those talk pages are going to fun...

[Deag]

The flame wars between fan boys could really damage something like this. Often the smaller wikis don't get policed as well so might as well get some popcorn.

Re:Those talk pages are going to fun...

[another_fanboy]

With so much negativity recently towards Wikipedia, it is interesting they would choose to move into an area as chaotic as games. It will be interesting to see how they plan to structure it in order to prevent the flamers from destroying the site.

I wonder what would the world be like without fanboys...

Re:Those talk pages are going to fun...

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Personally, I plan on producing a "Brian Peppers on Crack" game, just to throw the game Wikipedia Nazis into a tizzy of what to do.

Re:Those talk pages are going to fun...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what would the world be like without fanboys...

No-one would know what Linux was, the Middle East would be the worlds #1 tourist destination and a man could get a blowjob without fear of impeachment. Next question?

Reviews

[MeanderingMind]

I think we can expect the review for Halo 3 to give it a 10, followed by a 3, then a 8, and finally a -eleventy jillion.

Too Many Fanbois

[Anonymous Coward]

Take the worst problems with Wikipedia, multiply then by 1000, and then you'll have the gaming wiki. I recall the PS3 product description Wiki on Amazon being edited about a thousand times daily right around the PS3 release. XBox fanbois would drop in crap about how "PS3 is an inferior system" and then the PS3 fanbois would delete it and post their own propaganda.

For a gaming wiki to succeed you will have to find some way to ban the fanbois.

What about accuracy?

[DanloRingess]

While this kind of online gaming magazine seems interesting, I suspect that many people will post completely unsubstantiated rumors as articles. On the Internet, lots of idiots post misleading info just for the fun of it.

At least most editor-controlled magazines try for accuracy. They don't always get it right, but at least a good editor will post a correction if it is wrong initially. Other than the occasional April Fool joke, the information is usually based on reality rather than just wishful thinking.

mag, or fansite?

[xiong.chiamiov]

I have a feeling this is going to end up being a massive, confusing replacement for WoWwiki, GuildWiki, etc.

Breaking Gaming News from gaming.wikia

[andrewd18]

Breaking Gaming News - The population of elephants in Second Life has tripled in the past year!

Wikipedia creater NOT working on online gaming mag

[Rob T Firefly]

For those unfamiliar with Wikia, the work isn't actually all done by the one organization. Anyone can come up with an idea for a wiki, write up a mission statement, and submit it to Wikia. If the admins like, then you've got yourself a host for your wiki.

Wikipedia creator Jimbo Wales may have started Wikia itself, the engine behind this and the other bajillion wikia out there, but he doesn't seem to be actually working on this particular wiki.

That site will make you cringe

[Mongoose]

I took a look at it the other day linked from ars and again today. It's mostly a bunch of fanboys jerking each other off, and spreading misinformation. Also everyone is modded down around -1 to -5 no matter what they say in general. I saw posts saying "you can't run Linux on PS3 / can't use Cell from hypervisor" all over the place and corrections marked down to -6. I'm using PS3 as an example, since I know that hardware best. Imagine if someone came on slashdot and started spouting out misinformation to push some agenda for their love of Microsoft. It would be better if it wasn't some horrible mix of digg and a blog. They need to setup wiki pages for some community quality control, and remove the trolling box too. I don't think a thousand fanboys telling you how they feel about the Wii controller or an uninformed or purposely misleading blog entry contributes anything.

What a peice of garbage, and a blight to wikis everywhere. I only give it 1/5, because you can't give 0/5. ;)

Finally...

[Sunburnt]

It's nice to have somewhere to spread my great expertise! After all, I'm a tenured professor of computer science at a private university, and have a PhD in videogameology and a degree in IP law.

-Essjay

Re:Wikipedia creater NOT working on online gaming

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Wikipedia creator Jimbo Wales may have started Wikia itself, the engine behind this and the other bajillion wikia out there, but he doesn't seem to be actually working on this particular wiki.

Yeah, he still lost oodles of credibility in my book when I looked at his first Wikia offerings and nothing seems to have improved. Wikipedia is smooth, fast, well designed, cross-platform, and easy on the eyes. All these wikia powered magazines are messy, behave unpredictably, and seem to have serious issues with several browsers including Opera and Safari. I mean if you write an engine and template you expect to be powering not just one wiki, but a whole series of wikis that are your company's only real business, don't you think you can at least test it in all the major browsers out there? What kind of a company has Web development as their only business and can't even do that acceptably? Maybe you need to get Sanger on board in order to come up with something usable.