Category talk:Borrows from Wikipedia

No sense rewriting everything from scratch. Why not just import these articles over entirely, and then work on them from there?  D r e a m Focus  15:18, September 16, 2010 (UTC)

While I agree that some content of a page should be imported I don't think everything should be. But yeah I do agree, there's just a lot of games that's not on this wiki yet. And adding everyone one of them now when new games is constantly being announced just seems too much.Though I haven't grasped the whole export from wikipedia/import to wiki thing so I don't really know how to do it. Otehrwise I'd be doing that right now really Veilor 17:04, September 16, 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't bother replying to this, since it can depend on certain circumstances and certain individuals and all, but since the person who had started this up also did an edit on my Star Control article, I figured I should toss in a few thoughts. Other than that, if someone has a question about a specific person, why not just ask them?

Personally I have the time right now to do full-fledged articles; a few months from now, possibly not. Might as well. If there's nothing in here at all I might as well do it.

If you take two people in a situation, chances are, being individuals, they're going to do it a different way. I only write about games that I play and/or own, get them out to play them again to cut down on the chances of errors.

Wikipedia and any other like sources are going to have errors in general. No, not like I don't make mistakes myself -- I need to go correct an error on my Sub-Terrania article actually, come to think of it -- but that's one reason.

I personally flat-out don't like borrowing material as it is. If there's nothing here on something, might as well do it justice rather than taking it from somewhere, even though it's under the general license agreement or whatever. Again, I have the time for it, why not?

People are going to have differing opinions and think some things I contribute don't have a need in an article, and I'll think likewise...hence why I don't bother taking from something else. But, I've also expanded on many stubs and have left original stuff intact, pretty much, save for correcting errors or bad grammar. I did that with Flashback and Dare Diver; no point in wiping those out. One of the few exceptions was with the Time Pilot one, which said something to the effect of 'it does this, but doesn't do that, but it's still a fun game'. I just totally wiped that out because that was an editorial, and those are not needed in Wiki articles. Putting up a link to a review that says just that at the end in the Links section, sure, but not in the article itself.

I can't say for sure, but it looks like a lot of Wiki stuff was added to my Star Control article; it looks like it when comparing revisions, but as far as the article I can't tell, since I tried refreshing it but got kicked out to the start-up screen on my browser (huh?). Yes, I can refresh again, clear the cache and delete cookies, but at times I've done that and it hasn't worked. It'll come up sooner or later.

If so, I saw no need to put in any info about Star Control 2, 3, 4, or whatever. I wrote about it as a single GAME for multiple platforms, not the series. Perhaps a mere mention of the sequels would have sufficed. I agree that the Star Control from the Atari website should be there, I just forgot to check it out and add it, but nothing else. Likewise, I'm working on an article for, yes, an entire game series, then once I do write-ups on the individual games I'll be copying the stuff in that one article, putting them in the individual games, then doing the 'this has material from another Wiki article blah blah' deal at the bottom. So I do leave quite a few things in after all, if this is in regards to what I've done on here.

Anyway, like I said, it depends on the situation. People are going to do things differently and I'll write out new things as I see fit. If another person wants to copy and paste, that's their thing. For a place that needs new material I don't see what the problem is.

And for the other note... ''While I agree that some content of a page should be imported I don't think everything should be. '' Is there a specific article you mean in particular? Perhaps you should address that one specifically.

''But yeah I do agree, there's just a lot of games that's not on this wiki yet. And adding everyone one of them now when new games is constantly being announced just seems too much.''

Not sure what you're saying, if there's too much coming out and you can't keep up, or whatever. There's not many of us on here who are coming up with a lot of new articles anyway, unless I've missed something recently. I can say for sure that hasn't been going for the last two or so months I've been on here because I check in on this site on pretty much a daily basis.

Darrylb500 17:41, September 16, 2010 (UTC)

''Is there a specific article you mean in particular? Perhaps you should address that one specifically. ''

No I am not talking about a particular article. I am talking about articles in general. Wikipedia articles copied here tend to have a lot of things which makes it look bad. But there are sections which would work perfectly fine.

I can say for sure that hasn't been going for the last two or so months I've been on here because I check in on this site on pretty much a daily basis.

Well I created pages before when I was new to the wiki(back in April I think) but later I stopped because I didn't feel this wiki really got that much attention. I mean when only 3 edits happen in a 3 days time you kinda loose your will to continue. And I just went on here every day and did a few edits.

And yeah there's a lot of games not on here, and I don't feel like writing up articles for everyone of them simply because I haven't played them all. Sure we can wait for someone to do it, but that might never happen. So I think it's easier to import/copy some pages as a start really so the game(s) is on here and this wiki might get more hits from example google when people search. But I don't think the whole page should be copied, the main info the only thing needed, which later can be built on.Veilor 18:04, September 16, 2010 (UTC)

That's cool, I see what you're saying now. It's good you're adding some new stuff as well ;) There have been literally over 100,000 games created since the earliest ones ever in the 1950s and there's barely just over 10,000 articles on here, and not all of them are entire games, they're stubs or articles about various characters in games (not that there's anything wrong with those, just pointing it out). So there's not even one tenth of games in here, which is a bit of a shame. Granted, not everyone is familiar with this place and think 'well, I'll just go to Wikipedia and write one', but I think all-games places are where they should be done.

But I don't think the whole page should be copied, the main info the only thing needed, which later can be built on.

Ok, I got what you're saying there too, I didn't catch the meaning with the first post. Just like how I thought I'd add in regards to writing that I'm not like 'well, I'm doing stuff MY way and no one else's, nor do I need anyone else's input on it', in case it came across sounding like that, which it might have. Anyone who has that thought should stay out of a Wiki and just put it up on their own website, or else they won't last long on here, they'll delete their own account in disgust!

Plus I type over 80 words per minute, so that's another reason why it's also not a big deal for me to type up stuff straight up personally :)


 * I imported things over in batches, in one case all of those in the Star Control category. I saw that Star Control as it was already, had more detailed information, so I set it back to what it was before I imported anything over. .  So no change there.  Star Control 2 and 3 didn't have articles yet, so no problems there.  If anyone wants to rewrite an article, they can always do so.  To import things you can go to the Wikipedia export page and enter in whatever articles you want.  Then you can export the current version only, or the entire edit history, plus an option to grab templates if you don't think they are already over here.  Then on the wiki, anyone who is an administrator can go to Special:Import and load up that file.    D r e a m Focus  20:55, September 16, 2010 (UTC)

I imported things over in batches...

Hence why I'd appreciate it if you could slow it down a little. Just like with the "Lists of video games" that was updated. I went and corrected the links to include the Genesis and Sega CD ones that were already there, they weren't formatted to link to the lists that are already on here. And there was, and still isn't, a link to Microvision, Vectrex, "Plug and play", etc. games. There's now three redundant separate lists for 3D0 games, which isn't needed. Yeah I know, I was responsible for one of them. I've been meaning to see about contacting someone on here to copy my list over to the original one and then mark mine for deletion, since there's no reason for the person who did the original list to have theirs deleted (it didn't show up in a search for some reason).

Plus I've gotten three e-mail alerts in well under 24 hours of updates to pages that I've followed. It takes time to read the e-mails, hit the link to try to figure out that seemingly nothing was changed, then delete them and have all the other regular e-mails I get and such. Granted, I've learned from the first two I got that you ended up not updating them after all, but with chronic fatigue, all that adds up, and I'm not looking forward to a slew of more messages because I worked on a lot of pages. Some of it HAS been for the good and a learning experience though, such as when I thought at first it was really anal when I saw someone had made a 'correction' to an entire article I did just by bolding the game name in an opening paragraph of an article. But then I saw later when it suggests the writer to do that with a new page. So I was like 'oh, oops', and have started doing that since...saving my and any editor's time for having to do that. Same goes for putting up tags for years a game comes out in a new article, as well as putting in a tag for uploading a picture. I'll start doing that as well too, again, to save time. I've learned that.

But now I can't even enjoy this site any more because the Activity Feed feature is hardly working at all now. It used to be until a few days ago I could press that to see what's been updated, I could press another button to keep on showing new stuff until I'm caught up, and that's it. Now it only goes down not even an entire page and I don't know what I've been missing, as a lot of the time someone will update an article I didn't even know was here that I'm interested in and I could go look at it. That's not the case any more.

So in order to try to see what's current, I looked through page after page after page on your channel to see what had been updated recently. Once I came across an article I didn't know was there (I think it was in regards to WildTangent games, which I was interested in, since they have some good product), I clicked on it just to find it was a stub with no information at all. So that was a waste to go through all of that for nothing.

I'd suggest just doing a few batches at a time, then go back and copy information over so the articles will be complete, or at least have stubs with SOME information in them. No one's going to steal your thunder in what you're doing, believe me.

Oh, and to clarify, for anyone reading this and thinking 'wait, how is it he said in his other post he has time to write articles, yet is now saying he has chronic fatigue?', it's because I can write the articles out in between naps. And I type fast. And I plan out many of the things I'm going to say before I start writing...makes a bit of the process go by faster.

Darrylb500 17:32, September 17, 2010 (UTC)
 * You just ignore the email messages for a few days while everything gets done. Most of the time the Wikipedia article is more updated and complete.  It would be great to see just a list of articles that were changed, and not just the thousands of newly imported ones.  I think overall, gaining thousands of new articles not previously here, is more important than some momentary discomfort.  And I can't just do a few at a time, since there are thousands to add, and it'd take forever and then some to go through every one of them.   D r e a m Focus  18:00, September 17, 2010 (UTC)