Wikipedia

Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Civilization media/archive1

< Wikipedia:Featured list candidates
The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by Giants2008 via FACBot (talk) 00:25, 17 September 2018 (UTC) [1].[reply]

List of Civilization media edit

List of Civilization media (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Toolbox
Nominator(s): PresN 16:58, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In my last stop in my series of FLs on video game developers/publishers, List of games by Firaxis Games (FLC below), I noted that they've focused pretty exclusively on the Civilization series since 2005. That, combined with the lack of a dedicated "media" list for such a long-running and expansive franchise, meant that I thought I could pull together such a list with rows pulled from the Firaxis list as a base. And so, here we are: 27 years of games, board games, books, and albums, for a franchise that didn't invent the 4X genre but is nevertheless considered the definitive version of it. Thanks for reviewing! --PresN 16:58, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Anarchyte

Great work on the article. Here are some comments:

  • In the opening sentence, would simply saying "Civilization is a franchise composed primarily" suffice? This removes the repetition of "media" later on.
  • Sid Meier developed the first game in the series and has had creative input for most of the rest, and the formal titles of the series, core games, and most spin-offs include his name, as in Sid Meier's Civilization. This is a bit of a mouthful in my opinion. How about changing it to one of these?
    • Sid Meier developed the first game in the series and has had creative input for most of the sequels. Consequently, the formal titles of the series, core games, and most spin-offs include his name, as in Sid Meier's Civilization
    • Sid Meier developed the first game in the series and has had creative input for most of the sequels, with the formal titles of the series, core games, and most spin-offs including his name, as in Sid Meier's Civilization.
  • Additionally, what does "formal titles" mean here? If it means the official titling of the series, then wouldn't this work better? the formal titles of the series, consisting of the core games and spin-offs, including his name, as in Sid Meier's Civilization. (this does not change the meaning of the next sentences, too)
  • Why does the article mention the months things took place in only twice? As a reader, I see no benefit from knowing that they took place in November of 2004 and 2005.

When these issues get resolved or I receive clarification (i.e. your proposal changes the meaning), I'll happily support. Anarchyte (work | talk) 03:24, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Anarchyte: Dropped 'media' and the months, and reworked that messy sentence into two: Sid Meier developed the first game in the series and has had creative input for most of its sequels. The official titles of the series, core games, and most spin-offs include his name, as in Sid Meier's Civilization. Thanks for reviewing!--PresN 17:42, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Aoba47 edit

  • I have a comment about this sentence (Business changes resulting from the consolidation of the company in 1996 with Spectrum HoloByte, which bought MicroProse in 1993, resulted in Meier leaving the company to found Firaxis Games in 1996.). Is there a way to avoid using the words “resulting” and “resulted” in the same sentence?
  • I am confused by this part (Music album CDs). Shouldn’t it be either albums or CDs? I have never heard the phrase album CDs before, and I am not sure if the “music” part is necessary.
  • You currently have Linux linked in the “Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri” portion of the table. Shouldn’t Linux be wikilinked on the first instance in the body article (i.e. in the “Sid Meier's Civilization V” portion of the table). If you are wikilinking items that appear in multiple tables, then should they both be linked? I am just confused on the linking for this one.

These are my only comments; once everything is addressed, I will be more than happy to support this for promotion. It makes me want to play some Civilization lol. Have a great rest of your week! Aoba47 (talk) 03:18, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Aoba47: Adjusted the sentence, made it "Music CDs", and move the linux link to the first instance. Thanks for reviewing! --PresN 14:45, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for addressing everything! I support this for promotion. If possible, I would greatly appreciate any help/input with my current FAC? Have a great rest of your day! Aoba47 (talk) 17:58, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – About the only thing I can even nit-pick is that I'd put a comma after "as well as a spin-off title" in the second paragraph. Otherwise this article looks good. Giants2008 (Talk) 21:13, 14 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comments by TompaDompa
  • The WP:ALT text for the logo doesn't match the image file.
  • digital albums have been sold for Civilization VI and its expansion, and Civilization: Beyond Earth and its expansion would be clearer if the second "and" were replaced with "as well as for".
  • I don't like the table layouts where entries are built more vertically than horizontally. I'd rather see additional pieces of information relating to the same entry presented in additional columns than in additional rows. In the first table, for example, I would split the "Details" column into a "Release years by system" column and a "Notes" column rather than keep it the way it is now (although I might split it into even more columns than that). The current layout looks disorganized, even though it isn't.

TompaDompa (talk) 23:50, 15 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@TompaDompa: Fixed the first two. As to the row format, a few things: 1) it's a template used by 200+ lists, including several FLs, so I'm disinclined to change/replace it on a whim, but more importantly 2) I hacked together a version of it where the notes is a new column instead of a new subrow, and tested it here. I actually find that much more visually confusing than the present version, and on smaller screen resolutions (aka <= 1200 pixels wide) it still stretches vertically in the way you disliked, but with the columns squashed. I'll keep playing with it, but right now I'm not going to change the template for this list. --PresN 01:31, 16 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I see your point about smaller screen resolutions. Would it be possible to structure the recurring information (such as developer and publisher, genre for the second table, number of pages for the books, duration and number of tracks for the music) in a way similar to the way "Release years by system" currently is? I think it would look a lot more structured if there were what might loosely be called "headings" for recurring types of information rather than just identical placement in an otherwise featureless bulleted list. TompaDompa (talk) 12:28, 16 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's problematic to keep subdividing it into sections, because if you don't split it into columns then each sub-row needs to have their own headings (like "Release years by system:" and "Notes:" here) in order to still meet WP:ACCESS requirements (and just to be easily comprehensible). And since you need a header for each section, you end up with even taller game-rows then you currently have. The solution is obviously columns, but as previously noted that gets messy if you have a lot of words per column (and you also can't split some subrows by columns and not others, again per WP:ACCESS- it's talking about column headers in the middle of tables there, but it's really cells that span multiple columns when the cells above/below that row don't do that). In fact, for lists that have too many games to really use the format of this list that's exactly the tradeoff I make- see List of games by Epic Games for example, where everything gets its own column but I have to drop all language around the bare fact and don't have space to talk about extra details except in footnotes at the bottom.
I guess ultimately I don't see anywhere near the issue with this format that you seem to (with the possible exception of the extra space to the side of games with long platform-releases, like Civ 1). I'm not 100% satisfied with it, but I'm also not so dissatisfied that I want to sink a ton more hours into trying to make it slightly better, especially when I don't think there's a good way to do it without just dropping all non-structured "notes" from the table itself. --PresN 20:26, 16 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There is a way to make the structure of the notes more apparent while changing little else: preface the publisher with "Publisher:" (using bold), and do the same for the other pieces of recurring information. TompaDompa (talk) 21:14, 16 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Tested that for the first section: [2]; I don't think it's an improvement. It makes it clear what each sentence is about, but they're not exactly long sentences: "Developer/Publisher: Developed and published by MicroProse" is pretty redundant. I don't think I'll keep this change. --PresN 19:45, 17 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking more like this. TompaDompa (talk) 01:42, 18 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, so more converting the prosish text into essentially cells without borders? Well, honestly, I don't really like it- I don't like the way it looks, and I don't like how it drops information even though there's plenty of space for it. --PresN 04:01, 18 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think the increased navigability of the list more than makes up for the loss of information (and I'll admit that I'm not a huge fan of the look from a pure visual appeal perspective either), but I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this. In summary, I find the presentation of the data lacking inasmuch as recurring categories of information are not labeled with headings or similar, but rather presented in a featureless bullet list which makes it look like a miscellaneous collection of information. The data is well-organized, but that's obfuscated by the presentation. TompaDompa (talk) 13:15, 18 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Should the Alpha Centauri novels be included, if you're including a books section? SnowFire (talk) 20:06, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @SnowFire: Wow, yes, that was a big oversight. Now added (novels and graphic novel and GURPS sourcebook). Thanks! --PresN 15:58, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support on content. Not reviewing any weird FL stylistic requirements though, if they exist. SnowFire (talk) 09:41, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from The Rambling Man (talk) 18:30, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  • " Sid Meier developed the first game in the series" it seems odd that you don't link the first game in the series here, instead opting to link it in the second lead para...
  • AmigaOS is one word (avoid the piped redirect).
  • Ref 45 has a spaced hyphen. There are three more examples in the refs and one in the main article ("Beyond Earth - Rising Tide").

Otherwise good to go. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:09, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support although I must register my dislike of floating logos (per the amendment below), but it's not a deal breaker. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:30, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Driveby comment The CIVILIZATION logo text looks extremely hemmed in by the frame around it. Is it possible to increase the white space around the text in the image?—indopug (talk) 15:02, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Indopug: You know, I think it's pretty clear that it's the logo without a caption, so I've removed the box altogether. --PresN 16:00, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Source review – The reliability and formatting of the article's sources look okay, and the link-checker took reveals no problems. This is a pass all the way around. Giants2008 (Talk) 20:10, 13 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Featured_list_candidates/List_of_Civilization_media/archive1&oldid=859894445"