Talk:List of video game console emulators/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Problems with Visual Edit here

This problem so far happens to me only with this page, Does anyone have the same problem? If it's not just me then there's a bug that should be reported to the administration. So far what happens is that Visual edit can't finish loading and stays stuck with a full blue bar and I could edit any other page without problems. --LordKaiser00 (talk) 01:35, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

“Linkfarming”

I reverted this edit. As I understand the linkfarming policy, it refers so an excessive number of links for a single topic. This list, however, does not have an excessive number of links regarding the overarching topic of video game emulators but rather one or two per specific entry.

In the past several stand-alone articles of emulators were deleted on the grounds that an entry in this list is sufficient. By that precedent this list should contain a sufficient number of information per entry and IMO the homepage and maybe a Github link counts.

What do others think?

PS: I'm not against cleaning this list of entries such as abandoned projects that never left prototype stage or front-ends such as OpenEmu but that's a different discussion. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 23:41, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Notability Issues

At the moment, the overwhelming majority of emulators covered in this list have no established notability; they've been covered by few to no secondary sources, and many have been defunct for years (or decades!) with very little potential for future notability to arise.

Because emulators are not notable by default, and any "list of emulators" is a dynamic list that will only grow in size as time goes on, I propose that this article be culled to only include notable emulators. That is:

• Emulators that have garnered significant media exposure (Dolphin, Cemu, RPCS3, etc.)
• Emulators which, through their ubiquity and widespread usage, have featured in or been the subject of independently-published articles (ZSNES, Project64, VisualBoyAdvance, etc.)
• Emulators whose creation and release resulted in notable legal disputes (Bleem!, Connectix Virtual Game Station, etc.)
• Emulators which have been the subject of or heavily mentioned by independently-published retrospectives (Nesticle)
• Emulators whose creation and/or development have been the subject of news articles or interviews (Higan, Project Unreality, etc.)

And additionally, to encourage users to establish notability for emulators which don't meet the above criteria:

• Emulators in which there is a reasonable chance that notability can be established, such as those which:
  • Have few or no contemporaries (Xenia)
  • Are undergoing active development (Mednafen, mGBA, etc.)

The above criteria would exclude many of the emulators featured on this list, which is why I am creating this discussion; if anyone can provide any reason why I shouldn't cull this article to fit the above criteria, please give your explanations below. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 02:47, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

How do you plan to establish media exposure for emulators that predate widespread internet use? I clearly remember coverage of several 90s era emulators in paper video game magazines. Does an emulator lose notability because a print medium that was popular for a decade failed to adapt to the internet age and went out of business at some point (or successfully made the transition but never cared to digitalize their previous publications – newspapers like the New York Times are the exception, not the rule)? Pretty sure ESNES was the very first Super Nintendo emulator with sound support. Pretty sure it was a big deal because I've read about in print media.

Because of aforementioned fact, people could in theory make up notability references.

The rules you’re proposing are so strict, every single entry would be eligible for its own article, then every article would be categorized, then this list could just as well be deleted. If you plan to go out and establish notability anyway, just write a short article. I’m interested in the topic, I’d expand them here and there.

Wikipedia:Notability#Stand-alone_lists says that individual entries do not necessarily need notability, only the list as whole does. The community already decided that non-notable or less notable emulators are permitted on this list because on several occasions when their stand-alone article was deleted and instead an entry was made here and a redirect was set.

How about: Removing front-ends that use 3rd party emulators (OpenEmu,…), merge/remove entries of forks/ports (all or most -oid entries that are just Android ports of some existing open source emulator), remove emulators that basically don’t work unless they received media coverage (Project Unreality) or are in active development (decaf). Keep the rest (Esnes,…). --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 11:43, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

RE: "Wikipedia:Notability#Stand-alone_lists says that individual entries do not necessarily need notability", the guidelines also state that "editors may, at their discretion, choose to limit large lists by only including entries for independently notable items or those with Wikipedia articles." I believe this is necessary for this page; there are thousands upon thousands of video game emulators, and more coming into existence daily. As a dynamic list that has the potential to be inexhaustibly large, I believe it important to only cover notable emulators. Without notability requirements, I could insert any number of emulators I want into this article, paying no mind if they're obscure unfinished emulators from the late '90s that no one has ever paid any mind to.

RE: "The community already decided that non-notable or less notable emulators are permitted on this list because on several occasions when their stand-alone article was deleted", the result of that talk was essentially "Wikipedia is not the place for non-notable emulators." These merge discussions took place because most of the involved emulators were deemed to be notable, but their articles were stubs with limited growth potential. Per WP:ATD-M, articles of notable emulators were merged into this list while articles of non-notable emulators were deleted.

RE: "How do you plan to establish notability for emulators that predate widespread internet use", If print media can be found which supports the notability of an emulator, then it's added as a citation and the emulator can stay. It's an unfortunate situation because yes, emulators made in the mid-90s will be more difficult to collect references for.

RE: "Because of aforementioned fact, people could in theory make up notability references", WP:FAITH. People can make up references across all of Wikipedia, but notability is enforced because quality citations, created in good faith, are what makes Wikipedia's content verifiably accurate. The idea that vandals could forge a citation is no reason not to enforce notability guidelines on this list.

RE: "The rules you’re proposing are so strict, every single entry would be eligible for its own article", not true. As mentioned above, many of the emulators on this list are notable and once had their own articles, but were merged into this list due to their former articles being stubs with little growth potential.

FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 07:14, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

I didn't count exact numbers but by less strict proposal should still greatly cut down the number of entries. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 13:56, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Deleting entries of emulators, no matter how old and obsolete is akin to delete history. Preservation of history should have more priority than simply have a list to help people find emulators and such. If Wikipedia pages are required to have a limit over the quantity of characters it can have, then I propose separating the list between Arcade Systems, Home Console Systems , Portable Systems and Multi System pages. --LordKaiser00 (talk) 21:36, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a directory, especially not a directory of non-notable items. It is not in Wikipedia's interest for a list to be split into multiple articles if the notability of the initial list can't be satisfied. Additionally, merely claiming that an article is important/historic/notable is no substitute for establishing notability. The notion that entries on a list are "too historic to be deleted" is subjective, and runs counter to Wikipedia's notability policy.

Finally, a near-comprehensive list of emulators for virtually every video game console ever made can be found at the Emulation General Wiki; there is no real risk of any of the information in this article being lost to the ether. As such, I still believe that culling this list to only include notable emulators would be in the best interest of both Wikipedia, and this article's usefulness. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 03:12, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

“I still believe that culling this list to only include notable emulators would be in the best interest of both Wikipedia, and this article's usefulness.”

— Whatever you believe, so far you failed convince others, therefore there is no consensus. You appear to be not even open to the compromise I proposed. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 12:56, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

So you now remove emulators without consensus. Why did you even start a discussion if you don't care at all? --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 22:26, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

I didn't start this discussion to gather consensus (this isn't a deletion discussion), but to ask for reasons why I shouldn't go through with the proposal, i.e. reasons why the proposal wouldn't improve this article. To be blunt, I don't believe any of the arguments or alternatives given by you or LordKaiser were particularly sound.

RE: "How about: Removing front-ends that use 3rd party emulators, merge/remove entries of forks/ports, remove emulators that basically don’t work unless they received media coverage or are in active development. Keep the rest", this runs counter to Wikipedia's policy of covering topics of notability, and creates double standards. Media coverage is what creates notability, it should not be part of the criteria that precludes emulators from being on this list. Why would Esnes, a defunct SNES emulator from the late 90s with no sources (currently) backing its notability, be kept over Project Unreality, a defunct N64 emulator from the late 90s that has sources backing its notability?

I hope you don't take offense at my forwardness in culling non-notable emulators from this list, and instead take the opportunity to help me find references to establish notability for listed emulators which, as of now, don't possess it. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 23:13, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

“To be blunt, I don't believe any of the arguments or alternatives given by you or LordKaiser were particularly sound.”

– Well, that's not up to you alone! Wikipedia is a collaborative platform. Deal with it.

“this runs counter to Wikipedia's policy of covering topics of notability, and creates double standards.”

– Wikipedia already has a different standard for lists, as I already made clear. I removed your intro. That thing doesn't belong on the article page anyway, even if there was consensus for your destructive edits.

“I hope you don't take offense at my forwardness”

–Actually I do. Revert your deletions. Acting against consensus is against Wikipedia etiquette! Removing emulators like RockNES and SNEeSe that were very well known in their days is insane. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 00:50, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

As I haven't been given any sound reasons why I should revert my edits (i.e. reasons why they're "destructive"), I'm afraid I can't and won't. While I understand your sentiments, it's not anyone's obligation to keep this article frozen in time because some believe it to be "good as is", especially not from the consensus of only two people.

RE: "Wikipedia already has a different standard for lists, as I already made clear", as I said several posts above, Wikipedia's notability guideline for lists (that the individual components of a list need not be notable, only the list itself) can (and should!) be put aside for lists that would otherwise become cluttered and unwieldy. Specifically:

“ Editors may, at their discretion, choose to limit large lists by only including entries for independently notable items or those with Wikipedia articles. ” — WP:LISTN

RE: "Removing emulators like RockNES and SNEeSe that were very well known in their days is insane", asserting notability is no substitute for providing it, and before claiming that X is notable due to sources lost to time (newspapers, old magazines, etc.), the existence of these notability-establishing secondary sources must be verifiable.

RE: "I removed your intro", I intend on putting up an altered, less subjective version of it once this list is cleaned up to the point where the article adheres to the intro; I'm saying this now so that this future edit won't be construed as edit warring. While I admit emphasizing notability in the article's intro is a bit awkward, it's not without precedent. Articles like List of notable trees absolutely require this notability notice in their intro, to make it perfectly clear to the reader that it's not a comprehensive list of all trees, nor should it be. I believed the same concept should be applied to this article (for all the reasons listed above), and therefore used its opener as a template for mine.

RE: "Consensus", If you wish to reach a larger audience and come to an unambiguous conclusion about what will happen with this page, I recommend you bring up to the topic to the Video Games WikiProject, where a conversation with more than 3 participants can be held. I will gladly participate in any debate held there. Until then, I'll continue as I have been.

Finally, please remember to be civil. Dismissing good faith edits as "destructive" and arbitrarily calling users "inexperienced" while they've been discussing their reasoning every step of the way will only increase friction between you and other editors. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 02:30, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

You act as you were the sole party who has a say about this. I offered a compromise. You dismissed it. You didn’t even attempt to find a resolution. You demand that other people must convince you and you alone. Nobody owns articles.

You quote a line and completely ignore that it’s features “editors” as plural. So it’s a team effort. You act in direct opposition to WP:CAUTIOUS.

The thing is that I don't even disagree with all your edits but the way how you approach editing borders, IMO, on hostility.

You ask to remember to be civil. I didn’t insult you. Being told that one is a less experienced editor is not an insult, it’s a reminder that sometimes more experienced users can offer guidance. I have no intention to act as a gatekeeper for which entries are permitted but I’d like to discuss such major changes first, just as I tried to start a discussion about linkfarming.

I prefer to leave administrators and arbitrators out of such disputes because I believe we can find common ground. Can we? --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 11:18, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Content dispute

I can see a content dispute has been going on here, namely on the topic of inclusion notability of list items. If the slow edit war carries on, the page will be fully protected. I recommend the editors take the time to review the following policies:

• Notability guidelines and their relation to stand-alone lists
• MoS (adding items to a list)

To enforce civil discussion and to hopefully stop this becoming an edit war, I have reverted a controversial (2 reverts) addition -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 15:59, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

The removal is controversial. FlotillaFlotsam went ahead without consensus. “Because the group or set is notable, the individual items in the list do not need to be independently notable” and he doesn't care. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 16:22, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Consensus isn't necessarily required in situations where an article fails to meet notability guidelines; for example, an article which isn't notable can't be saved from deletion through consensus that doesn't establish notability. @There'sNoTime:, I'd like your input on this dispute: how should we go forward in this situation?

• • A large, dynamic list of emulators is created which contains hundreds of entries, many of which are not independently notable.
  • As the list is potentially limitless (there are thousands upon thousands of emulators), I sought to keep the list manageable as an encyclopedic resource by only including emulators which meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines.
  • @KAMiKAZOW: believes this to be wrong, interpreting WP:LISTN in a way that would allow non-notable emulators to stay on the list (specifically, "Because the group or set is notable, the individual items in the list do not need to be independently notable")
  • I contest KAMiKAZOW's claim that a list of emulators is intrinsically notable; this list isn't like "List of members of bands featuring members of the Beatles" where the notability lies in the list itself (and not its individual entries). Furthermore, I pointed out the followup in WP:LISTN which states: "Editors may, at their discretion, choose to limit large lists by only including entries for independently notable items or those with Wikipedia articles." I believe this to be absolutely necessary in this article's case. As this is an inexhaustible list, not enforcing notability guidelines would mean that I could add many hundreds, even thousands of emulators to this list, all of them poorly-documented and non-notable.

I saw that you already reverted KAMiKAZOW's edit in the belief that notability guidelines apply to this list, but for fairness' sake I've given the full explanation for your consideration. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 17:54, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

First and foremost I'm advocating a discussion to reach consensus before making such major edits which should not really be something controversial (WP:CAUTIOUS). I repeatedly said that I'm not against cleanups in general but the community already made precedent by deciding that some non-notable emulators should be here. FlotillaFlotsam neither cares about that nor about working with anybody. He wants to be this article’s gatekeeper. If the wider community thinks that’s OK, it’s also fine with me. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 19:42, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

RE: "The community already made precedent by deciding that some non-notable emulators should be here", the amount of discussion on this specific topic is scant to non-existent. Most times the subject of emulator notability comes up at WP:VG, it's in regards to a deletion proposal for an emulator's standalone article. I would hardly call the occasional thumbs-up to "merge it into the list" an explicit decree that non-notable emulators are accepted here by consensus.

Per There'sNoTime's request to engage in WP:BRD, along with his current statement that stand-alone lists are subject to notability guidelines, I'll continue this article's cleanup as I have been. If sources can be found which establish notability for any emulators I remove, feel free to readd them along with the relevant citations. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 20:33, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

“the amount of discussion on this specific topic is scant to non-existent”

– Not my fault you ignored that argument I made, just as you ignored (or dismissed) any opinion that diverges from yours… --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 10:58, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Just popping in because this is on my watchlist, but I agree with the idea that list entries must be given some form of vetting to keep the list from being bloated. If there is no standard, then you just end up with an unmanageable list. TTN (talk) 21:13, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Ok let's approach it on a different way. XDS, TronDS, and 3dmoo where the only emulator removed from the list? For them to be more notable how many sources per each one are required? Does FlotillaFlotsam searched ways to make them notable or he simply saw that they didn't met the standards and deleted them? I will clarify that I'm simply asking not accusing, because we are humans and make errors so this will simply mean that there's work to do. --LordKaiser00 (talk) 22:52, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

@LordKaiser00: No, he already removed a bunch of emulators (see history – some of the removals I personally even agree with but how he approached it is what I have a problem with). --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 23:30, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

@KAMiKAZOW: I see what you mean, he even removed one of the most known emulators like RockNES that have a last entry on January 20 of this very year. RockNES was widely spoken on gaming forums but sadly I guess Wikipedia may have guidelines against using forums as a reliable source... I find odd this emulator is not considered notable or that has not mention on a website that can be used as a source. Yeah I see how this removal could be problematic and also this was done so quickly that I wonder if he searched for information to make it notable or simply looked and said "This don't comply with the Notoriety guidelines" and simply removed them. And yes he did this without consensus, not even a month was given for at least try to fix the problem and typing consumes time and effort. I will try to search for something to bring at least RockNES back to the list but I can't promise anything. --LordKaiser00 (talk) 02:23, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

@LordKaiser00: Don’t follow FlotillaFlotsam made up narrative that every single entry in a list has to be notable and proven to be so. It’s a spin he continues to push. The fact is that Wikipedia’s rules state that only the list as a whole has to be notable. The approach towards notability for individual entries is up to the editors and in this regard he acts against consensus. Yes, removing RockNES is insane and the fact that he continues to remove entries despite an ongoing discussion is outrageous. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 14:03, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

For every entry on this list that I removed, I made a reasonable search to establish notability and add citations; I searched for sources such as reviews, news articles, and interviews. If I found a suitable source, the list entry would have a citation added to it (instead of being removed). Since I started chipping away at cleanup, I've added citations to OdyEmu, 3DNES, KGen, VirtuaNES, Supermodel 3, and Nesoid. Every emulator that I removed (XDS, RockNES, etc.) failed WP:NOTABLE, as a search of reasonable length and effort returned no acceptable sources.

@LordKaiser00, per WP:SELFPUBLISH, I deliberately avoided using forums as references. Also, while WP:GNG generally expects multiple sources to establish notability, I've been adding one citation per emulator at the moment; one is enough to establish that there is at least some degree of notability, and I'm worried that multiple citations per entry would create citation clutter. Finally, if you can find any verifiable source to establish a removed emulator's notability, I'd be happy to see it returned to the list. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 07:49, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Amazing how you still don’t care that others don’t agree with your approach about notability. As I already said many times before, not every entry in a list has to be notable. There is no consensus for your acts. You really should reconsider how you approach collaborative platforms. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 13:38, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Notability is not derived from consensus, and an administrator has already judged that the individual entries of this list must adhere to notability guidelines. Please reread my explanations above for how and why this was thought to be necessary. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 23:02, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

*checks Wikipedia:Notability#Stand-alone_lists* … Rules did not change. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 16:19, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

OK so far I found this https://www.techspot.com/downloads/6600-rocknes.html if you go to their home page it seems to be a website about technology news but there's no articles. Does the source has to be specifically a article? (talking about RockNES) --LordKaiser00 (talk) 05:10, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

I've personally avoided using pages which only contain patch notes/feature rundowns/download mirrors, since they may be considered advertising or press releases, which would cause the source to fail WP:GNG. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 06:38, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

@LordKaiser00: Maybe I missed something but do you even agree with FlotillaFlotsam that citations are needed in this list? General Wipikedia rules say they are not required. Please reply. Thanks. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 11:26, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

I found this dispute via the discussion at ANI. Here's my $0.02:

• WP:LISTN says that lists may consist of independently notable subjects, but they don't have to be. It's really up to the editors to decide. That being said, I've been editing list articles for years and all of those currently on my watchlist require an article. LISTN says that "[t]here is no present consensus", but it certainly feels like there is. But again, it's up to editors to build a consensus.
• Per WP:V, "[a]ll material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists and captions, must be verifiable". Remember that WP:N and WP:V are distinct policies. Subjects may not have to be notable (i.e., they may not already have a standalone article or even qualify for one), but all claims should be verifiable with citations to reliable, third-party published sources. WikiProject Video Games keeps a record of reliable, situational, and unreliable sources at WP:VG/S.
• Per WP:BURDEN, "[t]he burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material". If a list subject is removed for being unsourced, anyone who wants to add it back needs to find a reliable source. A good faith effort to find a source before removing material is appreciated but not required.
• WP:DUE comes into play as well. We're supposed to weight our articles around the sources, meaning that we (generally) write more words and give more prominence to subjects with more sources. If some subjects happen to be independently notable with more than two reliable sources each–a requirement of WP:N–then DUE suggests that we demote the less/non-notable subjects. We could do that by leaving them off the list (which is what most lists do, in my experience) or include them in a less prominent place. For example, something like this:

Emulator #1

Emulator #2

Emulator #3

Others include #4, #5, and #6.

• Per WP:ELLIST, we shouldn't be including external links to every emulator. Remember that we're here to write an encyclopedia by summarizing what reliable sources say, not advertise software.

Just some thoughts. Woodroar (talk) 04:24, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

My experience of list content seems to be more diverse than Woodroar. I think it rather depends on the notability requirements for the subject matter that determines whether every item in a list can or should have its own article. For example, geographic place names seem to be an automatic shoe in for getting an article, so List of lakes of Nova Scotia is full of wikilinks, most of which lead to stubs that are likely to never be expanded. On the other hand List of Pirates of the Caribbean characters includes many characters who do not have articles. In the latter case we have a fixed set of characters and the list would be incomplete without them.Derek Andrews (talk) 10:17, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

@Woodroar Regarding WP:DUE: IMO this list is already the less prominent place. Prominent emulators already have their own articles, like Dolphin (emulator) for which I'm the main editor. As for web links, I tried to discuss the issue under Linkfarming but nobody replied. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 12:10, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I have seen a fair number of lake and town lists filled with red links (now that you mention it, Derek Andrews), and per WP:NGEO we usually presume that these locations are notable and will be added at a later time. On the other hand, there's no such presumption for fictional characters and so we default to WP:GNG. To me, that suggests that we follow the most applicable notability guideline on this list, which is WP:ORG. After all, if companies and their products have no inherent notability and no inherited notability, then our coverage should be minimal (if at all). I feel like many lists tend to develop into directories and linkfarms and other WP:NOTs over time, so it's up to us to prune them back from time to time. Woodroar (talk) 13:09, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

so it's up to us to prune them back from time to time

– I already offered three or so approaches (that can be combined) how to cut down the list regarding of applying notability for entries or not. One is the merger of forks and unofficial ports into one entry (I already did that on several occasions and there was zero backlash). The second one was to cut mere front-ends. The example I presented was OpenEmu. I removed it from all lists except Other. Zero backlash. The third approach – and that was dismissed without giving it much thought – was my proposal to remove non-working emulators. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 13:30, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I think this list should be limited to those emulators that have standalone articles that meet WP:N (which is pretty much the first 5 bullet points made). I would avoid the criteria that an emulator that is in active development should be included, only because emulators are a dime-a-dozen and being in development doesn't mean it will be notable. As Woodroar points out, this isnt a place to advertise software, which this list can dangerously fall into if not careful, so it's better to use a more neutral metric of notability for inclusion. --MASEM (t) 13:13, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I think this list should be limited to those emulators that have standalone articles

–By that logic we might as well delete the whole list altogether because categories do the same job better. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 13:30, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Not really, as you can still have a useful table that lists the target emulated platform, the initial and latest releases/whether still actively developed, and any other notes that a categorization can't capture. --MASEM (t) 13:36, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

But one could just click on an entry and see that information at the first glance in the infobox. With the exception of the *oid emulators (Android ports of existing emulators full with ads), this list does not seem to have a problem of this list being used as a medium for advertisement. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 13:48, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Since more people have joined the discussion and more radical cleanup measures are being discussed, I'd like to agree with @User:Masem, @User:Power~enwiki and @User:Woodroar; only including entries which have an independent article would be an excellent way to clean up this list. There's already precedent for this at List of emulators and List of terminal emulators, and both articles have come out clean and uncluttered because of it. I also agree with User:Masem that this list would not be rendered redundant if such a change were made; List of emulators segregates emulators by type and provides brief descriptions for most entries, giving a reader information that a lone category would not. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 19:08, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

A New Opinion

After seeing this on ANI. I see two ways out of this.

1. This is reduced to a standard "list" article; it contains links to the Wikipedia pages of emulators that have their own Wikipedia page, and no further content.
2. It contains any emulator that is verified to exist; a link to a currently-functional download page or a reference should be enough.

I don't think there's any possible way to determine notability of specific emulators on this page, so I don't believe any editors should even try to do so.

Power~enwiki (talk) 05:52, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I would like to offer the following suggestions and comments:

• Take this to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games. I am rather surprised that there hasn't been more involvement from that front already.
• Where individual sections of the list become unwieldy, cut it down to the emulators with articles, and create another more inclusive list for that particular manufacturer or system.
• Alternatively crop the list and use a Further Reading section to places like Emulation General.

Derek Andrews (talk) 11:08, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I am rather surprised that there hasn't been more involvement from that front already

–Video games and emulators are distinct topics, although there is some overlap. Emulators themselves are not video games, they may be a tool to play video games but they are just as well development tools and platforms. I don't see a point in WikiProject Video Games being deeply involved with articles regarding Visual Studio (which many game developers use) or Windows (which many games run on). Historically much of the culture behind video game emulators does not even stem from video gaming which is why (rare exceptions excluded, such as Nintendo Virtual Console or the occasional article regarding Dolphin) video games media usually does not cover it, just as they don't cover the latest developments in Visual Studio. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 14:06, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, the remit of WikiProject Video games is "topics related to video games" and their banner is at the top of this very page. VS and Windows are designed for a plethora of applications whereas Video Game Emulators are designed for, well, Video games. I rather suspect that video games media steers clear of promoting emulators as their advertising dollars come from games developers, not to mention the possibility that emulators are used to play illegal copies of games. Derek Andrews (talk) 14:27, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

"topics related to video games" and their banner is at the top of this very page

– So does an Apple Inc. banner. 😉 On Talk:Dolphin (emulator) is WikiProject Computing.

Video Game Emulators are designed for, well, Video games

– While that sounds intuitive, it's not entirely true. Most emulators (exceptions such as Bleem or UltraHLE exist) actually have the goal to accurately represent the hardware. Playing games is one aspect, allowing developers without access to dedicated developer hardware to develop any kind of software (be it games, media centers, or whatever) is another, totally legitimate aspect of emulators. Performance is a critical aspect of video games. For emulators (most notable higan) the most accurate representation of hardware (at the cost of performance!) is also an important aspect – often emulators have more than one runtime mode. I'd rather avoid another discussion about the name of this article, though. 😉 I'm not denying that the is a connection to video games (obviously there is) but it is not that alone. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 15:25, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Continued content dispute

I've fully protected the article for a couple of days to encourage some discussion, and hopefully consensus forming, on the subject of this content dispute -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 12:27, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm eager to see an explanation for [1], given that Woodroar explained the difference between notability and verifiability. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 12:56, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm a little confused about the point you're making. Woodroar explained that most lists he's edited interpreted WP:LISTN in such a way that each entry has its own article, which would require all entries on the list to be both verifiable and notable. As a result of this, he believed there to be soft consensus on the matter; indeed, this article's sisters (List of emulators, List of terminal emulators) largely require that each entry has its own article. He also explained that all information on Wikipedia must be verifiable, which would render List of video game emulators a problematic article (most entries on this list do not have references that lead to a reliable third-party source; Zophar's domain and emulator homepages largely fail WP:SOURCE).

If I shifted gears and focused on verifiability rather than notability, the end result would largely be the same; many entries from this list would be culled as not only are there few/no secondary sources to establish their notability, there are few/no third party sources which meet the reliability standards of WP:SOURCE. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 18:45, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm sorry that I could not reply to the meeting but I had personal things to do and was away from my PC. Anyway it seems it changed now to a case of verifiability... The list have a protection now? If it's as hard to edit as the Spanish version of the list, I may quit. --LordKaiser00 (talk) 21:00, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

This article was temporarily protected by There'sNoTime until everyone works out what's going to happen to it. There's a bit more discussion going on above regarding that. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 21:16, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

• Third party here. The current scope is unrealistic. Limit inclusion to those emulators that have their own articles or dedicated sections on the encyclopedia (meaning that they have content somewhere on WP backed by reliable, secondary sources). Remove the external links from the tables, which goes against policy, and remove the other content that cannot be backed up by reliable, secondary sources (try using the video game reliable sources custom Google search). Stuff like latest version and license are minor details better suited for another wiki—we're an encylopedia. I recommend keeping the columns to name, platform emulated, platform of emulator, and notes (which could include milestones, features, license, in brief and as appropriate). These suggestions are not new—at a glance, I see they have been suggested multiple times by outside editors. Looks like you have all the input you need. If you disagree with the scope of Wikipedia, feel free to take the cc-by-sa-licensed content elsewhere.  czar 21:56, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

try using the video game reliable sources

– That would not work because video game publications usually don't cover console emulators. Details. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 13:18, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

It doesn't only index "video game publications" (actually read the page...) but good try. Find reliable sources however you want, but WP requires that you do czar 15:57, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

• Another third party here (saw a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lists). Wikipedia is not a directory and doesn't have indiscriminate lists. The notability of the list is not in question. The question has to do with inclusion criteria. As with just about everywhere on Wikipedia, that something exists doesn't mean it's encyclopedic (at the risk of overlinking policy: WP:NOT). The individual emulators should be notable at minimum. The reason I say at minimum is because you can show an emulator to be notable by citing reliable sources that provide significant coverage, regardless of whether or not it has an article. That can get messy, however, so I'm certainly not opposed to the much simpler criterion of having its own article. Also, get rid of the external links. Any emulator with its own article will have said link. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:41, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Several days without additional input. It seems that leaving only emulators that have their own article is the majority opinion. Although that's not my preferred approach, IMO it certainly beats deletion of hand picked entries based on gut feeling. No resistance from me. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 14:42, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Article overhaul

With the content dispute now resolved, I've started work on an updated list. You can view an unfinished version in my sandbox, but it's very messy at the moment. Originally I was intending for it to be a bullet point list like List of emulators (to address the concerns of linkfarming/superfluous info that Woodrow and Czar brought up), but midway through I tried Czar's suggestion of editing the table's columns to only cover Name/System/Notes/Platform, which looks nicer IMO. The bullet point version is on the top half of the sandbox, the (unfinished) table version is on the bottom half. Only one will be used in the final article, of course.

I consolidated consoles of the same manufacturer into the same table; the WIP looked very messy when I gave each console its own table (since at this point, there would only be one eligible 3DS emulator, one eligible Wii U emulator, one eligible Gamecube emulator, etc). Is this acceptable? If there's a better way for me to categorize, I'd be all for it. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 21:29, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

I like the top version, without the tables. There's less clutter and extraneous information that can be found at the article about the emulator itself. Woodroar (talk) 22:41, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and pushed the sandbox to live, using the non-table version of the list. If improvements need to be made (or if people decide that the table version is more appropriate), I'll be here to discuss. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 04:50, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

It's a chaotic move, I'd rather you start with what should be removed based on consensus than trying to replace the article with entirely different layout with many nice-to-haves removed. Rukario-sama ^ㅈ^ -(...) 08:26, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

It's clear from the discussions above that emulators without articles, external links to those emulators, and unsourced content should be removed. Several editors did express a preference for tables, but it looks to be about 50/50. Of course, that content would have to be reliably sourced to be included. To me, it's better to prune this back to a stub list and build up from there–adding tables when sources are found, for example–than keep an article that nobody wants and violates all kinds of policies and guidelines (WP:V, WP:OR, WP:NOT, etc.). Just my $0.02. Woodroar (talk) 15:18, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

@Rukario-sama: The external link column is almost certainly going to go, based on consensus reached above that it goes against WP:ELLIST. As Czar mentioned above, license and latest version are redundant minor details already covered by their main articles, which don't aid in categorization. What's left for a table-format list (emulated platform(s), platform(s) emulator is available on, notes) can arguably be covered by a bullet-point list without significant omission of information, which is why I pushed that version to live. What would you do to better format this list? What're your opinions on the unfinished table-format version of the list I posted above? FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 22:29, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

It's been a week without a reply, so I have reverted back to the minimal list version. These changes were broadly agreed to in the discussions above and they're fully supported by our policies and guidelines (WP:NPOV, V and OR and WP:NOT). Woodroar (talk) 14:21, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Apparent unilateral decision to remove content

Was this decision made with the "consensus" of the two or three editors I see on this talk page arguing in favor of destroying it? This page is practically useless in its current form; it almost looks like it's been vandalized. atomicthumbs‽ (talk) 18:55, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Addendum: if you want to replace this article with a list of emulators that have Wikipedia articles associated with them, you can save yourself a significant amount of effort and keep Wikipedia simple, clean, and less useful by replacing it with a redirect to Category:Video game platform emulators. If you don't want to maintain the article, perhaps consider finding someone else. atomicthumbs‽ (talk) 19:07, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I recommend you reread the dispute in its entirety, because it certainly involved more than 2 people; the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee was involved at a point, and the input editors gave from the exposure it got there led to the decisions reflected in the current revision. For the reasons I and other editors listed above, indiscriminately allowing every known emulator onto the list was not only unsustainable (at what point does an editor cull the list if there are 500 NES emulators with no verifiable coverage online?), but violated Wikipedia policies regarding lists. I understand your concerns with the formatting of the list, but the article as it stands is not "unfinished" or "vandalized"; it contains every emulator from the original list which has its own article, sorted by manufacturer like the original article, with extraneous citations/version numbers removed (as these can be found on the relevant article).

I'll ask you what I asked Rukario-sama above; what would you do to better format this list? What're your opinions on the unfinished table-format version of the list I posted above? I'd be happy to make changes, but I'd need to know what needs changing.FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 22:13, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

A couple of quick notes: this ended up at ANI rather than ARB, though DRN was suggested. (It didn't come to that, thankfully.) On this page, I count nine editors with sound, policy-and-guideline-backed reasons to remove unsourced content, non-notable entries, and external links. I'm not opposed to the article being restored to its prior state, but of course any editors who do so bear the BURDEN of ensuring that every claim is reliable sourced, new articles are created, and external links serve an encyclopedic purpose, because Wikipedia isn't just a place to put whatever anyone wants. We don't think such a thing is possible, which is why we've pruned it back to a barebones list. Woodroar (talk) 23:16, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I can't support any version of this article that makes it less useful, other than removing unsourced information after at least minimal effort to verify that the things involved aren't notable, or to find sources for it. I had been using it semi-regularly, and other Wikipedia users (not necessarily editors) are upset with this change; I have been away from the scene from a while, and only learned about this from someone posting on Twitter about it. If you'd like to read the opinions of people who actually use this list and found it useful, the thread is here. atomicthumbs‽ (talk) 23:47, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia is WP:NOTEVERYTHING. We only summarize what reliable sources say about subjects, which keeps us from being a specialist site. And that's absolutely by design. If you're looking for a specialist wiki about emulation, you might enjoy EMU General. Woodroar (talk) 00:05, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

While I sympathize, all content on Wikipedia must be verifiable, and the previous version of this list was at odds with this policy. There are other wikis available for those who want to peruse a comprehensive list of every video game emulator, as Woodroar pointed out. If you want to see culled emulators readded to this list, investigate if that emulator meets criteria to have its own article.FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 00:14, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

This is not a matter of verifiability. The overhaul quite literally only removed useful correct verifiable information and the article is now a list of "familiar" emulators. An list of old emulators is not a list of emulators, it is a list of familiar emulators. Familiar does not mean more verified, it means older, and older means less useful. This page right now is worse than useless for consoles that are not modern. Someone who comes here researching emulators will find out about the worst of the worst emulators for old systems and not the good "new" (10 years old!) ones that anybody in the emulation community itself would know, understand, and respect, and which have countless sources of verification.

This page is a disgrace, and the people who destroyed it represent the biggest problem the Wikipedia project struggles with: not the deletion of content that is important and verifiable, but keeping **invalid** content in its place due to sheer inertia, the very inertia that Wikipedia's philosophy is supposed to avoid. Wikipedia's philosophy is designed to filter out false information made up by crooks and cranks, whether it was made in the past or present, not to filter out new information altogether.

Wikipedia is not a contest to see which information on a particular topic is most familiar, and this especially applies here. There's no reason that BoycottAdvance should be listed here if you're trying to keep the list down to reasonable entries. It is very old and very bad. The only reason to include it is because it's familiar. And if you're including BoycottAdvance, there's no reason at all to exclude mgba. There's nothing edgy or uncertain about mgba at all. It is verifiably an important valid GBA emulator, and the only reason to exclude it from a list of emulators is if you're excluding any emulators newer than five years for consoles that are sufficiently old. 67.246.23.0 (talk) 00:51, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

• RE: "The overhaul quite literally only removed useful correct verifiable information and the article is now a list of "familiar" emulators", you are absolutely wrong on this. The page exists as it is now because the sweeping majority of emulators that were formerly on the list had no verifiably accurate sources. WP:V requires that all information on Wikipedia be verifiable, and the former revision of this page completely failed at that.
• RE: "An list of old emulators is not a list of emulators, it is a list of familiar emulators", as mentioned above, this list is not intended to be a comprehensive list of every emulator ever made. No favoritism was given in determining which emulators remained on this list; any emulator which has an article that meets Wikipedia's notability/verifiability standards could be on this list.
• RE: "Familiar does not mean more verified, it means older, and older means less useful", absolutely confused what point you're trying to make here. NESticle is on this list, and it was made in 1997. Cemu is on this list, and it's a cutting-edge Wii U emulator still in active development. No discrimination is given towards an emulator's age, provided an article can be written for it that satisfies Wikipedia's guidelines.
• RE: "Someone who comes here researching emulators will find out about the worst of the worst emulators for old systems and not the good "new" (10 years old!) ones that anybody in the emulation community itself would know, understand, and respect, and which have countless sources of verification", if an emulator has "countless sources of verification" that are both reliable and establish some modicum of notability, an article could be written on it, which would allow it to be included on this list. I encourage you to help in writing these articles if you're confident that they warrant the effort.
• RE: "There's no reason that BoycottAdvance should be listed here if you're trying to keep the list down to reasonable entries. It is very old and very bad. The only reason to include it is because it's familiar", An emulator being "old and bad" does not preclude it from being on this list. The reason BoycottAdvance is included is because it has established notability and coverage from verifiably accurate sources, all of which are covered in its article. If you want to see mGBA on this list, write an article on it that includes likewise verifiable sources. It's not Wikipedia's responsibility or policy to host unverifiable information because some believe it to be important.
• RE: "Wikipedia's philosophy is designed to filter out false information made up by crooks and cranks, [...] not to filter out new information altogether", I agree, and as I've explained above, the only prerequisite for an emulator being on this list is that it have its own article. It's assumed that any new article will abide by Wikipedia's notability/verifiability standards, so no additional criteria is needed. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 01:17, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

As someone previously stated, if this is supposed to be a list of emulators with associated articles, it should be a list of emulators with associated articles. It presents itself directly as a list of emulators.

Something does not have to have an article to be verifiable and noteworthy. You are conflating two completely different things. Individual pieces of software or entries in fictional series are relegated to single lines or sections in larger articles all the time. There would be no problem whatsoever in verifying the legitimacy of individual entries in a list of emulators. It is downright mental to insist that something has to have its own Wikipedia page to be notable. Note that I'm not even close to implying that mgba does not deserve its own Wikipedia page. It's simply a matter of fact that because it's a new emulator for an old console people are much more likely to insist that it's unfamiliar and delete an article on it.

Re: Cemu, etc: Old consoles have older emulators. The oldest usable emulators for a given console are listed in this article. There is not a single very old console where the most important relevant emulator is listed, and it is because those emulators are unfamiliar to people who don't keep up to date with the emulation community. NES does not list Mesen or puNES. N64 does not list cen64. There aren't even any GB/GBC emulators listed. GBA doesn't list mgba.

Anyone who knows the first thing about the current status of emulation accuracy for these systems would recognize and validate the importance of these emulators, but they're so new that mainstream society continues to recognize the old, familiar emulators, not the new ones.

All the reference on the BoycottAdvance page are from 2006, and that's when the page was made, too. 2006 was a very, very different time for Wikipedia. It was very easy to create a page about a single piece of software and not have it deleted for notability concerns on sight. Today, if you make a page for a piece of important software, you make or change for weeks, digging through the media to find things that WikiProject members deem suitable, because they rightfully have to defend against Wikipedia becoming a dumping ground for glorified advertisements. The problem is that this rightful defense turns into power-tripping when they have to deal with things they are not well-educated about, like exactly this article here.

It's unreasonable to expect every single important piece of software to have its own Wikipedia page, and it's also unreasonable to insist that every important piece of software should have one. Having a Wikipedia page is no longer exactly the same as being notable and verifiable, and it shouldn't be. That is exactly the reason this article should not be constrained to list only emulators that have their own Wikipedia pages. It's better for everyone. 67.246.23.0 (talk) 04:46, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

This is becoming a matter of grievances you have with creating new articles rather than curating this list, but here are my two cents;

• RE: "Something does not have to have an article to be verifiable and noteworthy", you're absolutely correct, but something needs to be verifiable and notable to have an article, which is the prerequisite to an emulator being on this list. This was the easiest and most effective way to cull this list of all unsourced/unreliable information, which is why it's recommended as a guideline in WP:CSC, and why the editors above agreed upon this as a course of action.
• RE: "It's simply a matter of fact that because it's a new emulator for an old console people are much more likely to insist that it's unfamiliar and delete an article on it", pages are seldom deleted because editors are "unfamiliar" with the material. More likely is that an eager editor heard about X new emulator and rushed to make a page on it, forgoing the necessities of establishing verifiability and notability. This is not how Wikipedia is run; original research is not welcome, and one cannot establish notability by merely asserting importance. If I were to make an article on mGBA right now with no verifiable sources, it would be deleted because it contains no verifiable sources, not because of some imaginary popularity contest.
• RE: "All the reference on the BoycottAdvance page are from 2006, and that's when the page was made, too", notability is not temporary. Any article which was notable in 2006 is still notable in 2017, provided the supporting citations have always been appropriate. But again, this isn't a popularity contest; if you believe that BoycottAdvance's article doesn't hold up to Wikipedia's notability/verifiability guidelines, then the solution would be to nominate its article for deletion and remove it from this list if the nomination goes through, not to add additional entries of dubious nature.FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 06:34, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

It may be easy and effective, but it is downright destructive. That is the very reason this argument is happening.

I did not say that people delete pages because they are unfamiliar with the material. I said that they delete pages because they cover unfamiliar material. Everybody knows about things that have been around for ten years, and Wikipedia was a much easier place to make pages then. Very few people know about things that have been around for only a few years. Look no further than Wanikani, which had a deletion attempt specifically because Wanikani was unfamiliar at the time, despite having very valid references (EDIT: references available through minutes of very cursory research, not talking about references used as citations on that page) This is not an invented problem. This is an actual tendency that modern Wikipedia editors have.

I'm the one saying this shouldn't be a popularity contest. Emulators like ZSNES and NESticle are very popular. Making new pages on modern Wikipedia is extremely stressful and time consuming, and there's no reason that unpopular but very notable software (and for things like emulators, popularity and notability are basically not correlated at all) should require a user going through the arduous effort of creating and maintaining a page for it just to have its name on a list. If you think things should be easy and effective, making a new page for every important emulator not on this list is exactly not the right thing to do. The people who destroyed this page could very easily pick out the most notable emulators without pages and added references about them to this page.

I sincerely apologize for being rude, but consider Wikipedia's reputation on the larger internet for a minute. Its reputation is very bad, and situations like this are exactly the reason. 67.246.23.0 (talk) 08:36, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

• RE: "The people who destroyed this page could very easily pick out the most notable emulators without pages and added references about them to this page," this was close to my original idea for how the list would be formatted, in that each entry would have one or two citations that establish some degree of notability through verifiable sources. As more people gave their input this idea was put to the side in favor of the current layout, presumably because it would result in a very messy list with an arbitrary barrier to entry.
• RE: "Look no further than Wanikani, which had a deletion attempt specifically because Wanikani was unfamiliar at the time, despite having very valid references", looking at the talk page for Wanikani, the concerns editors brought up aren't entirely unfounded. Forum posts and one-man blogs are almost never acceptable as a means of establishing notability, as they are self-published sources; the confusion with Wanikani was in regard to its sources, not the application itself. These policies extend to emulators as well, so even if a 200-page Neogaf thread on mGBA existed, it wouldn't be a satisfactory source in establishing notability. It's worth emphasizing that notability is not popularity, importance, or ubiquity; a dirt road isn't notable just because thousands of people have driven down it any more than mGBA is notable because thousands of people have downloaded it. This isn't to say that mGBA isn't notable (I'm currently investigating on whether or not an article can be made for it), but that its popularity in the emulation scene doesn't automatically grant it notability.
• RE: "If you think things should be easy and effective, making a new page for every important emulator not on this list is exactly not the right thing to do", the selection criteria for this list was chosen because it's absolutely the easiest method of ensuring that this list adheres to WP. Any emulator with an article would naturally contain verifiable sources that establish notability, so no further effort needs to be expended on figuring out how to format a dynamic list in such a way that every entry has verifiable sources. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 20:41, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

It really comes down to reliable sources. If they exist, then it's easy to write those new articles. But if reliable sources can't be bothered to keep up with emulation technology or devote more than a couple sentences to the latest emulator, there's a great indication that we shouldn't, either. That's the essence of WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV. They're called our core content policies for a reason, so if Wikipedia has a philosophy about what's in and what's out, that's it. Saying that the article is being unfairly gutted isn't productive, the conversation isn't going anywhere good, and it's certainly not building a consensus. If reliable sources exist, please bring them to the table and let's discuss them. Woodroar (talk) 01:13, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Go delete and this List of computer system emulators! It's a great job to remove! --91.210.109.75 (talk) 14:44, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

This is a total disaster, the argument has resulted in, among other things, the BoycottAdvance article being removed. Rather than having new articles added for emulators or having an even remotely complete list here, we have a very, very incomplete, sparse list here that is a total joke, only made up of emulators with Wikipedia pages, and it seems some emulators have even had their Wikipedia pages deleted as a result of the argument here. We might as well just delete everything on Wikipedia! Why stop now? Seriously though, deleting emulators that do not have Wikipedia pages was a horrible decision and then deleting Wikipedia pages that people already put in the hard work of making about existing emulators adds even more to the horrible decisions going on here. Look at WP:PAPER, Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, we do not need to delete information in order to make everything fit into a limited amount of space!

I don’t see any reasonable reasons for why this article was so horribly butchered, and many people have complained about it, and as a result of the complaints, even more content has been erased from Wikipedia. This is a very sad state of affairs. It makes me think that, for instance, if I were to write an article about an emulator and then add it to this list, my article would get deleted for “criteria for speedy deletion“ for not meeting the “general notability guideline” and the emulator would get removed from this list, and I would spend hours and hours writing an article all for nothing, some deletionist person would just delete it out of overzealous enforcement of certain Wikipedia rules and not others. I mean I am trying to assume good faith here but it is very hard, I suppose there is another side to this argument and maybe there might have been a few reasons to butcher this article that at least SEEMED like legitimate applications of Wikipedia rules to whoever did it. But, I just can’t wrap my head around that other side of this argument. It just makes no sense to me. It is not like the emulators listed were not emulators of the given systems, or like the information was incorrect. Perfectly accurate information was removed for no good reason. What would drive a person to want to remove accurate information documenting things that many people find useful from Wikipedia? That completely goes against the entire purpose of the Wikipedia project, and tries to narrow the scope of collective human knowledge rather than expand it.

I dare not even attempt to restore things to a state that I would like them to be in because I know the deletionists would just undo it and revert my changes. Perhaps we could come to some sort of compromise but I don’t really know how, since I do not really understand why this was done or what it is about or how to undo whatever decision was made that resulted in this disaster. Whatever process this article went through that resulted in this happening, I was not a participant in that and do not know what exactly happened, but I would like to appeal the decision and go through that process again and come to a different outcome so this article can be restored to its former glory. I guess the deletionists just understand the Wikipedia rules and procedures better than those of us who like to add useful information to articles rather than delete useful information, so they keep winning and we keep losing, it is sad. In most articles I can add content without it having to have an article about it, I can just cite a source, but in this article, everything apparently seems to have to have an article about it on Wikipedia to even be mentioned. That is not the practice in the vast majority of Wikipedia articles, where information just needs references cited to be able to verify it, and seems like cruel and unusual punishment to me. Yetisyny (talk) 17:55, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

What happen to this page?

I often came here to change some info about the emulators. But today I've seen, it is simplified to a bulletin list that redirects every emulator name to either a Wikipedia or an external page. I heard that it was maybe either to make it less cluttered or just because most emulator names on the list don't have a Wikipedia page, or simply they are not so popular. I don't like the changes in it since it's too less informative and this page is totally dependent on resources. I was thinking of editing this page to the "previous format". But I can't or else my talk page will be filled with questions. I simply thought it was vandalism until I read the arguments above this message. So, should I modify this page to the "previous" format with some changes? (Of course I'll first make a draft of it in sandbox)

(Also, I don't know much of the guidelines of Wikipedia, so I'll try to make it as much as "good quality") Sahil Gagrai (talk) 12:15, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

If you can write an article that addresses all of the concerns other editors had about the previous version, then great! I'll be honest and say that I don't think there are enough reliable sources to do that, but I guess we'll see. Woodroar (talk) 23:30, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

It was agreed upon to limit the scope of this list to only include emulators which have their own articles, a guideline recommended in WP:CSC. Instead of reverting to a previous version of the list, I'd recommend investigating whether any emulators on the previous version of this list would be fit to have their own articles. If an emulator is covered by reliable, notability-establishing sources, I encourage you to try making an article for that emulator, or to put the references here so I could give it a go. Inversely, if you can't find any such sources, it likely doesn't need an article, nor should it be on this list. You can continue to make sandbox changes to the previous version of this list, but I doubt that the original revision could be overhauled as to not fail WP:V; there were simply too many emulators on the list with zero coverage by reliable sources. FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 04:32, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Oh, is that so? I've read that Wikipedia links above this message, and I find out that it should have enough reliable sources so it would qualify as a part of the list. Uh, well, I guess I think I can't contribute anything to it until I changed my mind if somebody makes articles about emulators from the old times, or emulators which were just started. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sahil Gagrai (talk • contribs) 11:47, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Here, I left an archive for you right here. TheBuddy92 (talk) 23:24, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

@TheBuddy92: at the very least, you need to add attribution to that draft per WP:COPYWITHIN. Until then, it's a copyright violation of everyone who edited the article up until that point. Beyond that, userspace drafts are great for working on something that could reasonably become an article some day. However, that content was removed for violating policies like WP:V and WP:NOT, so it's unlikely that any resulting article would be allowed to stand. See WP:POVFORK for more on that. If someone wants to pull content from an older version of the article, it's always there in the history. Woodroar (talk) 00:34, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@Woodroar: Done. TheBuddy92 (talk) 03:09, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@FlotillaFlotsam: Thank you for improving this list page, it was previously a complex matrix!! Editor-1 (talk) 04:01, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

I've got to disagree. It went from a list of video game emulators (with information about what platforms they support and license they are under) to a list of video game emulators with wikipedia pages. I agree that there needed to be better sourcing (and potentially a cull of unsourced emulators) and we probably needed to remove the notes columns, but at this point it's gone from a page that was useful in its own right to just a mirror of Category:Video game platform emulators. 72.139.70.6 (talk) 14:36, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

I agree with everyone who thinks this page has been ruined. It used to have a great deal of useful information and now the vast majority of that information has been removed. I would suggest that rather than just including emulators that have Wikipedia articles, we can also list emulators for various systems if we cite reliable, independent sources (other than the webpages of those emulators themselves) talking about those emulators. Something has to meet notability guidelines to have its own article rather than just being verifiable from references. However we should not hold every emulator to those same notability guidelines here, all that has to be notable for this article is the subject matter of this article, namely, a list of video game emulators. I am not suggesting we restore ALL of the deleted content or layout, just that we allow emulators to be added to the list if appropriate, reliable, independent references can be cited regarding them. Yetisyny (talk) 17:03, 16 August 2018 (UTC)