Talk:NeXT (demogroup)

Lack of context

Ok, just noticed a *this article lacks of context for people unfamiliar with the subject*. I read the guide to layout, but I'm still not sure about what kind of context I should add. Technically, finding something that works also for other similar pages (other demo groups) would probably be a good idea for the sake of coherency, don't you think ?

Here is the list of existing demo groups pages on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Demo_groups I notice that a number of famous groups pages were deleted (like "The Carebears", "The Lostboys", "The Replicants", "Delta Force"), which is particularly annoying, because in turns it triggers the 'this page is orphaned' label.

The real problem here, is that I personally had to discuss hard to get this page kept on wikipedia, based on the fact I could provide a lot of hard facts, name lists, cross references with other sites, etc... to prove the existence of members, the publication in media, etc... and this took me a lot of time to do, despite the fact that as a member of the group I knew where to search. I did my search job. Doing the same thing for the other group pages is a lot more difficult, I do not have the facts, I can give lists of demos, or partial member lists, but I do not know all the real names behind the nicknames, I cannot give hardfacts about "The Carebears was the most fabous demo group on the atari st".

So in the end, to give context I probably have to give facts, and statements, that I have to be able to proove. And then the hell starts :D

Thanks for providing me with some easy/clear way to solve this dilemna. Mike 11:19, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Requested a move

I posted the following on the move page (since I cannot do the move myself):

• Talk:Next_Demo_Crew – Next_Demo_Crew ? Next (Demo crew) – I made a bad choice of name when creating the page. (I based my choice on some existing pages in the same category, they should probably be moved too) — Mike 15:34, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

If you check this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demoscene_groups You will see there is a lot of different ways currently to enter names, have _Demo_Crew some have (demogroup) or (demo crew) or (demo scene) and some have nothing at all. --Mike 19:20, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Done.

Some points

…from the user who originally tagged for possible deletion.

If kept, the correct spelling of the group seems to be "NeXT" (capital X). (NeXT without any qualification is the article about the former computer company.) The suggested title to move to would thus be "NeXT (demo crew)" — small "d" in "demo".

There are several hundred Google hits on "Phaleon demo", "Phaleon gigademo" etc. in various spellings. So there may be a basis for regarding the group as notable after all. Anyone with expertise in this area want to chime in and help decide?

General problem with a lot of material of this type—for example, the list of members of the group:

• Is it useful in its present form? (Here it's just a list of handles after all, with no indications who the real artists were. This tends to give it a "vanity" flavour)
• Is it verifiable through some authoritative published source? Otherwise it may boil down to someone's original research, which is a no-no.

I can add the real names of all members. And it can easily be checked after with some other websites like "mobygames" that at least the persons I cites have been working on the list of games I provided. I didn't put the names in first places because it was looking like vanity actually :)

I mean, I'm interested by the historic piece of information in order to get it exhaustive, not particularly to get my name written on wikipedia (I am the "Dbug" individual in the member list). — --Mike 16:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Real names are presumably much more verifiable than handles alone, which are arbitrary, anonymous, and probably meaningless to anyone who wasn't part of that scene.

Since I myself have already been burned on this for editing an article about a person I knew, I also recommend reading the guideline on autobiography, which begins:

• "It is a social faux pas to write about yourself", according to Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder. You should wait for others to write an article about subjects in which you are personally involved. …

However, a "guideline" doesn't have the absolute force of a "policy", so this doesn't mean you are totally barred from proceeding. It does mean you need to be extra careful to satisfy the standard of verifiability (which is a policy) and avoid the pitfalls described in the autobiography guideline. —IslandGyrl 01:14, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I read the link you gave me, and also parts about vanity. It all make sense.

Do not get me wrong, I was not just intending to be pretentious or anything like this. Actually considering my average skills in english, I actually more than happy to get a very short entry instead of a full featured article.

As you probably noticed, I just created my account last sunday, because when googling I found out the page about Oric machines, and when reading it noticed some missing bits. Instead of doing an anonymous editing, I created the account, and made my change. Then I started looking around for subjects of interest, in my case the demo scene, and noticed that if the Amiga and C64 scenes were actually quite correctly informed and accurate (for what I know), the Atari ST scene more looked like a desertic island: very few major demoes cited, very few demo groups described.

My decision to add NeXT as a group was just to get some more information, and I was planning to do some other additions of other known groups, complete the list of important demos, listing the technical achievements chronologicaly, etc...

If I manage to get through this exhausting 'peer review' process, I will most probably take some time to find people to help me in this documenting task.

Interestingly enough, the request for finding 'sources' made me find a lot of things I didn't actually known (or forgot about). — --Mike 11:39, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

The Wikipedia "verifiability" and "original research" policies (linked to above) are the key here. They mean that it's O.K. to make references to existing histories of the demo scene credibly documented elsewhere — but not O.K. to try to create that history from scratch in Wikipedia.

If other articles related to this topic also have these problems, yes, that should be dealt with too. —IslandGyrl 16:12, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Deletion

I notice the article was listed for deletion. It may not produce any google hits on " Next Demo Crew", but it does on the words: Next Demo Crew atari[1]. Perhaps it is just a case of bad article name, should it perhaps be: Next (Demo crew) instead? anyway, perhaps the author should justify it, not me. Jens Nielsen 14:46, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Justification

Concerning the 'group'/'crew' label, it is my choice. Actually I just took a look to what existed, and I saw that both TCB and TLB atari groups were entered as "The_Carebears_Demo_Crew" and "The_Lost_Boys_Demo_Crew". Considering the "next" is also a generic name, I decided to remove the ambiguity and to follow the trend of using "crew" at the end.

Thing is that the group was called "Next" (on the Atari ST), but there is also an old cracking group on the Amiga having the same name.

Perhaps I made a bad choice of name ? But at least on the main demo page "group list" I used the "Next" name redirecting on the "Next_Demo_Crew" page.

Next (Demo crew) <= This seems a good choice of name, but then I guess that these other TCB/TLB and numerous demo pages should be renamed accordingly to get things straight and coherent.

Considering the importance of having this page because of the fact that NeXT has been the group behind the Phaleon Giga Demo.

The Phaleon Giga Demo is aknowledge on the demo scene as the first 4 discs demo ever made, and has a long history (being started in 1989 by The Replicants from the Union, then project was transfered to Next that managed to release it in 1992).

It is in the atari st demo history website: http://www7.in.tum.de/~brandtf/ataridemos.html

 1992: The Phaleon Demo
 The biggest ST-demo ever (A Giga-Demo). It comes on 4 disks and was compiled by NeXT. 
 Among many others there are screens by TCB, ACF, Agression, Delta Force and MJJ Prod. 5-20-1992. 

Appart of being the biggest demo on the Atari ST, this demo is also the first one to feature multiple selectable main menus, and the first "lamer test" screen on the Atari ST. It also contains the "Illusion" demo screen, aknownledge as the first real attempt to exploit the Atari STE new features.

Some other wikipedia pages talk about the Phaleon demo: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Demos

On the main demoscene file archive site, this demo is well known and respected too: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=496

Suppressing this page means that we are effectively suppressing a significant part of the Atari demo scene history, and if this is done then there is probably a lot more page to remove because they are no more and no less important.

please cite sources

Please cite whatever sources are available, or at least provide an external links section with a link to the group's website, if any. Jens Nielsen 15:43, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I quite heavily edited the article, adding lot of sources tha makes sense in the page (like reviews in the magazines). But to not increase the page I did not put everything, so here are some links to prove the data:

About the members of the group:

• http://www.st.scene.free.fr -> http://www.st.scene.free.fr/main.php3?Groupe=NEXT (list of members of the group)
• http://amp.dascene.net/newresult.php?request=groups&strict=yes&search=NeXT%20st (list of musicians in the group)
• http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?p=1688&sid=f08b21a40dedcd82f13e326474d20961 (list of major atari soundtracker musicians, includes Chromix and FFT, but not LAP that only wrote chiptunes)
• http://42nd.net/saint/html/scenemembers/198.htm (Dbug)
• http://42nd.net/saint/html/scenemembers/127.htm (Pulsar)

Various web demoscene related articles/interviews about members of the group:

• http://alive.atari.org/alive7/128.php (Dbug)
• http://strider.mjjprod.free.fr/toxic15/articles/postmort.htm#2 (Dbug)
• http://strider.mjjprod.free.fr/toxic15/articles/postmort.htm#5 (Lonewolf)
• http://toxicmag.planet-d.net/toxic_9/articles/05.htm (Almost all members are describe here, but in French)
• Toxic mag 1 from google cache (FFT)

Video games links, who did what

• Mickael Pointier (Dbug) -> http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,45003/ (by the way the "developer bio" also talks about the demo group)
• Olivier Lhermite (Mit) -> http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,41915/
• Emmanuel Courossé (Chromix) -> http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,61090/

Reviews in magazines, they are hard to find, but I managed to find an 'abandonware' project with some copies of magazines, so here it is:

• http://www.abandonware-magazines.org/affiche_mag.php?mag=28&page=6 -> Tilt 105, september 1992, pages 46 and 47

For the other sources (tv) I fear I will have a hard time finding a tape of "MicroKids"

There is other kind of material I can add:

• a picture with the well known Next logo by Pulsar, that has been used in most of our productions as a fade in introduction
• links on Next productions on www.pouet.net

Editing

I'm in the process of adding material. Should I remove the deletion warning on the page ???

I'll remove it temporarily and replace it with a "not verified" tag. —IslandGyrl 16:36, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Phaleon st format.gif

Image:Phaleon st format.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 00:54, 14 February 2008 (UTC)