Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Newsletter/20160106/Interview

Featured editor: Czar

Interviewed by Thibbs

This issue we interview czar—a (relatively) recent addition to WP:VG's hale and hardy admin corps. When not engaged in full-time mopping duties, Czar can often be found hard at work in mainspace, copyediting, sourcing, re-writing, and otherwise nudging articles like Fez, select Vectorpark titles, and various members of the Mother series toward the coveted Featured Article status. Czar has used Wikipedia as an educational tool for newcomers in the past, has been active in TWL's Resource Exchange, and has worked to merge, unify, and clean up several of WP:VG's outdated taskforces. And with that as a very brief introduction, let us see what Czar has to say...

1. Where were you on the evening of June 9, 2005 (exactly 2 days before you joined Wikipedia)? Thinking back, what would you identify as the key factors that drew you to Wikipedia, and that prompted you to begin editing?

   Probably computerizing. I wrote my first research paper around the time that Wikipedia began to blow up (2004). The two are entangled in several interesting ways but, notably, they're among the few associations people will have with issues of source authority and its presentation. So I was attracted to something that we rarely discuss: Wikipedia itself became a primary source when there was no other communal place to accrete the world’s knowledge on a topic. For context, Wikipedia wasn’t much of an encyclopedia in mid-2004. WP:V was weak and both WP:RS and WP:5P did not even exist. The wiki became a place where people dumped unreferenced text and fulfilled a very basic need of coalesced, definitive, topical information. One article from that era, Kid606, remains more impressive in my mind than in its page history, but I reconcile the discrepancy by thinking of it as the moment when Wikipedia became all of the world’s knowledge. Some WP articles derive their authority from the strength of their sources but other articles received their authority from being the only legitimate webpage that aggregated (what appeared to be) facts on the subject. I don’t think we’ve really outgrown this. In some ways, the act of writing an article about an obscure artist or a forgotten game from the 80s becomes a form of activism because it reclaims a voice for a topic where it would otherwise have none.

   I’m not motivated by compulsion to complete the web with topical detail (I’d consider that a neurosis) but I do like the idea of reclaiming dead things for the purposes of the living. I like writing about topics that can be sourced to books (old fashioned research) but would be otherwise inaccessible to readers in a web browser. We’re in a weird position with source preservation and digital decay as the games project. In some cases, a Wikipedia citation may be the only remaining link to a supposedly verifiable fact. I found that Wikipedia had worked out most of the kinks that made it appear arbitrary when I came back after a stint at Quora. To me, the definition of civic duty is to replenish what we take. In a world where obfuscation is in vogue, I am proud to be among the servants chipping away at the stone towards what we trust will be a decent (or, for some, definitive) encyclopedia.

2. What is the significance of your username and how did you select it?

   It’s a nickname from college, and I got a kick out of the presumptiveness of using a regal username in the world’s most prominent acephaleous organization. I wanted to eventually switch to “wolf” but missed the SUL unification process.

3. How did you become involved with the VG project?

   It takes forever to get a review in other areas of the encyclopedia. The WPVG community just has so much more going on than the other projects. When you actually want feedback, it’s more fun to edit where other editors are. But I think the taskforce cleanup was the gateway into involvement with the templates (old and new) and the article cleanup backlog.

4. How much of a gamer are you and toward what type of games do you tend to gravitate?

   I’ve grown to prefer writing a decent Gameplay section over playing through a section of gameplay. But not even that could save me from sinking several days into emptying all of Fallout 4's containers. I played through a number of open worlds this year—certainly won’t be doing that in 2016.

5. The Newsletter noted back in 4th quarter of 2014 that you had been handed a mop and pointed in the direction of the swabbing galleys. How has becoming an administrator affected your activities within the project?

   Has it? I think (like it or not) modern adminship carries a degree of tenure as a mark of wider community trust. I’ve been asked to mediate more than in the past, but it’s hard to tell whether that is experience or adminship. In all, I’ve been more involved with the project than I anticipated with the recent video game cleanup and Nintendo stub drive.

6. Site-wide ArbCom elections recently took place and the logs show that you (along with a record number of WP:VG members) voted. One reason for this WikiProject-wise spike in civic-mindedness may have to do with the fact that for the first time a gaming-related issue was used in the candidate questions and as a talking point among the candidates. I refer, of course, to the GamerGate issue (covered in the Newsletter last quarter). To what extent did WP:VG issues play a part in the casting of your ballot? Which issues?

   The only WPVG issue in my vote was it did not have enough Salv. I’m happy with how ArbCom turned out.

7. In which areas of Wikipedia have you involved yourself beyond WikiProject Video Games? Have you any insights on how WP:VG excels or comes up short when compared to other WikiProjects?

   Most other WikiProjects are dead. I try to edit broadly, but outside of games, I tend to edit in contemporary arts and history/philosophy of education. To be honest, I think WPVG is the bar to beat as far as discussion participation goes. Our review apparatus could be better, but that’s more an issue of new blood than something we’re doing wrong.

8. What kind of potential do you see Wikis having in education? Do you foresee a time down the road when this educational potential is realized? Are there advantages for educators to use Wikipedia rather than a classroom-specific Wiki? [for the latter, do you mean a fork of WP for classrooms? czar 11:52, 5 January 2016 (UTC)] Do you believe that WP:VG articles provide a good starting point for new editors? Why or why not? Can you share some thoughts on what works and what doesn't work when leading a group of new users through Wikipedia in an educational context?

   I am a researcher in alternative education. I’d be interested in seeing an extended (year+) Wikipedia literacy curriculum developed to meet state writing standards. I learned more about Internet search and research through Wikipedia than in my course of study. I received better peer reviews on Wikipedia than in my course of study. It’s here for those who want it. And I think it's more important to know how to interpret the source you use every day (Wikipedia) than to obfuscate simple points for your instructor. (Fun story: I recently observed a high school class doing an "intro to research" PowerPoint, which instructed that the lock in the upper right corner meant that the page was vetted.)

   I taught a Wikipedia class at a charter high school. The lessons are worth their own debrief but my biggest surprise is that the students were more interested in the politics of sourcing and community than writing articles. And that’s good, because we all read Wikipedia far more than we write it. My students were really into the conversation about what makes a source authoritative. Some of my students worked on WPVG topics and, with luck, I’ll be teaching a writing-intensive college class about games in the future. Plenty more to say on these topics, but perhaps next time.

9. Which article(s) are you most proud of writing or do you believe exemplifies your best work?

   I think my best video game-related work is my collection of free use images and my breadth, but otherwise, my featured articles are an easy choice. ‘’Fez’’, as you noted, is a solid article.

10. What got you involved in producing Featured content? Can you talk to us about your Q4-2014 experiences with the 2014 WikiCup and about the article quality improvement process in general? What is your take on Fram's recent Signpost op-ed criticizing the DYK process? Do you agree with The Rambling Man's 3rd quarter 2014 take on DYK hooks?

    I nominated Menacer for merge and after print sources were unearthed, ultimately brought it to featured status. (This story was planned as a newsletter feature, no?) Reviewing is hands down the best way to get involved with the project in any capacity. It requires no Wikipedia background apart from reading a few noted pages and it gets you in a mutually beneficial learning relationship. I also think that GA/FA are unhelpful names. We would do better to have more descriptive names (decent article, definitive article, etc.) The reader is better served when they know (at a glance) to what degree an article has been reviewed.

    DYK, I feel, is more bureaucratic than GA/FA. I did over 100 DYKs mostly as verification of my productivity in preparation for my RfA, but that time might have been better spent writing articles. This said, I liked being able to show off free use image donations from indie game devs as a courtesy for contributing to the commons. I think the linked DYK inaccuracies report is overblown—I don’t see how errors in new articles are limited to those that go through the DYK process. I think everyone agrees that too many uninteresting hooks slide by unchallenged, though. If editors are doing this for validation, I’d like to see us as a community develop more ways to provide that. It’s not for me to decide, but if DYK is truly supposed to support new blood, old editors should be encouraged to step aside. Apart from that, let DYK devotees decide how they want to run the space.

11. What are your plans for the immediate future? Are there any projects with which you are currently involved or which you are thinking about starting?

    Always, but doesn’t everyone have a list? First, I’m trying out a crowdfunding campaign for my editing. I’ve always aspired to be a public scholar (an editorially independent researcher producing works for the public good—not a paid advocate), but I don’t have as much time to volunteer as before. I haven’t heard of another publicly funded Wikimedian before, though I think there will eventually be many.

    I’m nearing the end of the ’’Rare Replay’’ project (topic of all 30 games in the Rare retrospective compilation) with Jaguar. I’ve also been working with the Zotero project to write translators for the metadata on major video game websites so we can generate full citations at the click of a button. I'd love to work on an off-site reference supplement to the project where we could compile primary sources for stuff like obscure reviews and release dates—things outside Wikipedia's scope but still worthwhile for the medium's historic preservation. We could also use a tool to assist in our cover art/screenshot backlog. I generally care more about writing than coding and sorting, so this stuff has been a recent interest. And then there's the project's cleanup backlogs and dozens of articles in draft... The best part of self-imposed goals is your ability to change them.

12. What is the most difficult part of editing Wikipedia? Has your impression of the most difficult aspect changed over time since 2005? If so, does this change reflect a change in Wikipedia or in your understanding of Wikipedia?

    Easy: ego. There’s so much room for friction: two people with vastly different life experiences meet in a room—do they care enough about the joint project to drop their pretenses and work towards the good of the article? Are they self-aware enough to reevaluate their own best intentions? It’s not hard for a few irascible editors to quickly drain another editor’s interest, but that’s why it’s so important to have a wider community to take those situations out of isolation. Ego is easily mitigated by deescalation—walking away is very effective towards those seeking an audience.

    I’m impressed by Wikipedia’s piles of guidelines—I see it more as the codification of common sense (otherwise, it would change) instead of the ossification of hard rules and policy. We do a much better job of not biting the newcomers now than we did a decade ago, and a better job of not citing from an alphabet soup of shortcuts. It took Wikipedia a while to wrap up some basic debates on its purpose and structure to become an encyclopedia.

13. You have spent a fair amount of time in the VG-AfD trenches commenting on deletion proposals for video game articles throughout the last several years. Do you think the WikiProject tends to err on the side of inclusionism or deletionism? What do you think is the most effective way to avoid conflicts in this disagreement-prone area? How does one take the sting out of a "delete" !vote on an article created by a new user? Is WPVG doing enough as a WikiProject to welcome and recruit new users for whom the project's goals may be of interest?

    The terms inclusionism/deletionism are from a bygone era. Today, they’re exclusively used in inflammatory contexts and do more harm than good. The general notability guideline is, at its core, common sense: is there enough coverage to write a decent article on the subject from reliable, independent sources? The standard is inconsistent across discussions (hello ‘’Dunnet’’) but, by and large, sufficient. My best tip is to ask how your individual replies move the conversation towards a common understanding. Usually this means accommodating others. In contentious discussions, it’s best to make your point elegantly in the name of consensus and then desist—let the crowd response do the work. (If your idea is not being accepted, you’re in the wrong room.)

    As a project, our deletion discussions are mostly on par with the rest of the encyclopedia with two notable exceptions. We're lenient on mobile game sources (though it's my own fault I haven't yet brought those sites to WT:VG/RS) and fictional characters (though we're headed in the right direction after the Ken Rosenberg case). As for our overall coverage, we could be doing a lot more to make our articles presentable—that's chiefly infobox reform and more merged lists amalgamated from languishing, unsourced, and empty articles. And re: recruitment and retention—all of ours is ad hoc (Wikipedia has always been a coalition of the willing). It wouldn't be a bad idea to expand our circles, but someone would have to make it a priority.

14. What advice would you give a new editor interested in working on video game articles?
    • Review an article. It's the simplest way to learn the ropes. Just read the criteria, be as thorough as possible, and...
    • Permit yourself to get things wrong.
    • As you warm up to the place, read through the main guidelines (WP:5P). The best reads are WP:NOT and WP:ATA, and you'll save yourself much agita by reading these few in advance: WP:VG/GL, WP:VG/RS, {{infobox vg}}, {{vg reviews}}
    • Ask for help. It's not as imposing as you think and everyone was new once.
    • Advice for everyone:

    1. Use shortcuts but don’t write shortcuts. Use a text expander to write out the full address of a page instead of linking to some WP:ABBREV. Use a clipboard extender (such as Alfred on Mac) to have more than one of your recent pastes on hand. Search directly from Chrome’s omnibar (add the video game reliable sources custom Google search as a search engine for easy access, as well as WorldCat and Google Books). Take a few minutes to poke around in your preferences and the available gadgets to make your typing environment friendlier.
    2. Deescalate as a rule. If your response in any way ramps up tensions, it does not work towards consensus in any way.
    3. Take the most direct route. This usually means merging/redirecting instead of AfD, which explicitly asks for an article to be salvaged as a search term before it is nominated for deletion. If another editor disagrees, take it to discussion. As for whether anyone benefits from letting unsourced articles languish in mainspace for years: "The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material."
    4. Readability is more important than detail. Think about it—if you try to pack every detail on a subject into an article, someone is going to have to come along and clean it up so readers can actually read it. This means considering what Wikipedia is not.
    5. The more you dig into the encyclopedia, the more work you’ll create for yourself. If you don't like doing that extra stuff, rein it in.
    6. Let Wikipedia go on without you. (If it can’t, what’s the good of the project?)

15. Anything else you want to say to our readers?

    Thanks for your time 💆

Notes

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