Moon-GMD and More

Explanations : Notability, edit reverts and the Geometry Dash situation

Hello and welcome on Wikipedia! It seems one of your edits on the GMD disambiguation page has been reverted without explanation, and you have (rightfully) asked more insight about reverting your edits. I'm here to provide such explanations.

Please don't take the reverts and/or this explanation post personally or anything. It really is just a matter of deciding what needs to be put in an article and what needs not. I don't blame you for your edits, and I don't think anyone would.

(Quick note; I'm not sure if you prefer a more professionnal approach or a more informal one; while in doubt, I'll stay professionnal, but if you want me to reword in a more relaxed way, feel free to ask)

About Notability

Notability (and more particularly, Notability in the English Wikipedia) has always been quite difficult to master. I've observed that when one knows a lot about a topic, one tends to write much more than necessary, often mentionning points that are irrelevant for Wikipedia. (That isn't just your case, it happens very often to plenty of people, and honestly, had I not taken the time to think about it before starting my Wikipedia journey, I would most likely have been in the same situation.)

Wikipedia, in opposition to Wikias, is aimed to general-purpose knowledge; that is, knowledge that is relevant to anyone, including people that are not part of the community or fandom that surrounds the topic. Where Wikias would mention every details of, let's say, the tips and tricks to optimise your play in an MMORPG, Wikipedia will just give an overview of the topic : mention a game's name, some metadata (such as the authors, the date of release, etc.) and the big lines about what it is, and what apparitions and impacts it had on the rest of the world. Information that would be useful only to the players of the game are not for Wikipedia

Whenever I want to judge whether or not a given information is relevant, I ask myself : Why would some random person be interested to know about this? This can include apparitions in news articles (some random person reading the news and seeing the name of the game might want to learn more about it), its impact it had on general topics (has the given game changed the course of videogames?), and similar information that reached out of the original topic.

For more information, I suggest reading the Notability guidelines.

Let's take an example

Someone once thought it would be relevant to mention, on the Bloodbath disambiguation page, that Bloodbath is an extreme demon verified by Riot on Geometry Dash. I asked myself : Why would someone random searching for "Bloodbath" on Wikipedia be actually searching for the Geometry Dash level? It would make sense if the person is a GD player, but then the information would be more suitable in a Wikia, as mentionned earlier. A random person reading this information would most likely think, "What's an 'Extreme demon'? Who is 'Riot'? Do they mean Riot Games? What do they mean by 'verified'? What is Geometry Dash?" Only the last statement could provide an answer since Geomerty Dash has an article - though even the Geometry Dash article itself doesn't mention Bloodbath (the level by Riot), which is already a hint Bloodbath as a GD level shouldn't be mentionned in the disambiguation page.

Furthermore (continuing with the example), it is pretty much safe to assume little to no users who search for Bloodbath on Wikipedia actually mean the Geometry Dash level. How to determine that? No external source mentions Bloodbath as a GD level. All sources mentionning Bloodbath are part of the fandom (such as the verification video). If there was, say, an news article mentionning Bloodbath, and that source was completely external to GD (and that source was itself relevant to a certain degree), then it would become more reasonable for Bloodbath to have its own Wikipedia page and disambiguation link.

In your case...

I asked myself : How many people, external to Geometry Dash, read "GMD" in a context where it means Geometry Dash? Most sources shortening Geometry Dash as GMD are part of Geometry Dash themselves. If there were external sources shortening Geometry Dash as GMD, then it would become more reasonable to consider placing its link in the disambiguation page. (If you can find a few sources that are relevant and external to GD, let me know, because it would then be reasonable to contest!)

Ending words

Reminder, I'm not blaming you for anything! It's normal to not think the same, the important is to explain our thoughts so we can rightfully ajust our judgements. Like I said, you're not alone, and it could easily have been me as well (and it still can)!

Let me apologise for the wall of text :) I tried structuring it in a more eye-friendly way. If you want me to explain something further, write a little TL;DR, or re-write this in a more casual way, feel free to ask! I'm here to help :)

I hope the whole thing was helpful, and happy editing!

ShivaMaria (talk) 08:25, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

thanks. won't do it again. i'm pretty awful with editing lol

No worries! We're all here to learn :) Don't let that discourage you from editing; if ever you're not sure if an edit you want to do is correct or not, don't hesitate to use the Talk pages to get some feedback from other editors.

Happy editing! ShivaMaria (talk) 19:12, 2 June 2020 (UTC)