What happens when multiple articles are submitted?

I spent a long time writing an article for Majora's Mask when there wasn't one, apparently one got approved before mine.  I'm curious if you guys take the time to merge them together, or just keep letting the new ones overwrite the old ones.  I'm only worried because if people spend a lot of time on a good article, it could be overwritten with a half-assed one.

I always backup my articles, and it could turn into an edit-war if people keep re-editing it for their writings.  I wouldn't, but I would like some clarification.

It seems the mods look at both the current and the proposed, and choose the on they think is better. They don't really merge them.

"It seems the mods look at both the current and the proposed, and choose the on they think is better. They don't really merge them.
"

I'm sure they will take the time to merge in the future, but right n0w they probably wont...

Yeah, this system seems a little weird to me. For a while I thought of perhaps letting users "claim" pages but they might not do a good job or some punk will run around claiming every game possible. I can definitely see edit wars coming, especially when people start hitting 1,000 points. For now I'll just do articles for SNES games and the like and see how that goes.

"Yeah, this system seems a little weird to me. For a while I thought of perhaps letting users "claim" pages but they might not do a good job or some punk will run around claiming every game possible. I can definitely see edit wars coming, especially when people start hitting 1,000 points. For now I'll just do articles for SNES games and the like and see how that goes.
"

They chose the better one

No, I can confirm we look at what the article is like now, before your edit, and what you want to change. If the content that is already live is 'better' or more extensive, we will not approve your content.

"No, I can confirm we look at what the article is like now, before your edit, and what you want to change. If the content that is already live is 'better' or more extensive, we will not approve your content.
"

"Banzaiaap said:

"No, I can confirm we look at what the article is like now, before your edit, and what you want to change. If the content that is already live is 'better' or more extensive, we will not approve your content.
"

Very cool, thanks for the clarification.
"

"Still doesn't stop 1000 point members overwriting perfectly good articles. I have had a couple of my articles overwritten in parts of it with good info however presentation that looks like crap, for example they added a whole paragraph of text and underlined it as well as using bad grammar. Very annoying...
"

I've been wondering about this too. Maybe the forum for each game/object could be used to debate the merit of suggested improvements when the site calms down a bit and approval times are more manageable.

I think that maybe (and I might get shot for this), the folks at Giant Bomb should shut off the Wiki for a few days to catch up.  I wrote an article for a game that was missing and checked 24 hours later to find it was put in by someone else.  Now I'm hesitant to duplicate efforts, and some of my pendings are over three days old, leaving me to believe that if I do something now, it might be done by someone else already and just waiting for approval. 

For the new game I submitted, I put in the same info as the one that's up now but my photo was much better, so I can at least hope my photo gets in...but then again, 100 other people might submit for a better photo over the next few days...

We have both the articles side by side to compare/contrast and decide which one we like more, sometimes however we have a problem with people say writing a really good plot section, and deleting the already great gameplay section. In those cases we have to weigh what's worth more, which can be tough.

I like the idea of shutting down the Wiki for a few days, getting the backlog cleared out, and getting some new moderators to speed up the process once they open up the wiki once more and the floodgates are opened.

You gotta think, what takes more time: selecting one article which you think has the overall higher quality even if it is missing some part the other has, or sit there and cut and paste the two articles together while still hoping the whole thing flows well.

At this juncture, I'm gonna say they pick the first one.

Yeah, I'm going to have to go for: take the time to combine them.  If you always choose the first option, you'll never get a complete article.

I have faith that the staff will make a decision to fix this problems one way or another.

"Yeah, I'm going to have to go for: take the time to combine them.  If you always choose the first option, you'll never get a complete article.
"

"dvaeg said:

"Yeah, I'm going to have to go for: take the time to combine them.  If you always choose the first option, you'll never get a complete article.
"

 I can say for sure that that happened to me. I wrote up a quick summary for the Pokemon Red/Blue page, but someone else had theirs approved first. Instead of wiping one out, they got merged: Most of my Story and Gameplay sections remained, but parts were added, along with the whole Overview and Multiplayer sections. 
"

"sometimes however we have a problem with people say writing a really good plot section, and deleting the already great gameplay section. In those cases we have to weigh what's worth more, which can be tough.
"

I'm now starting to see a lot of rejections because items I submitted days ago have been approved for others in the meantime.  I can see 6 games, concepts and characters that were not in when I submitted them that will soon get rejected. 

Yeah, I had a location submission pending for four days, and a guy with 8,000 points or something added the same page a few hours ago. So all the mod sees is that it was already in the database and I get rejected.

Hello,

I just want to add that if both old and new article are of good quality, then we do try to merge them if suitable. It has to be done manually (we always do the approve first, so you still get your points), so it doesn't always happen and is up to the mod handling it. But generally we do try if we feel it would improve the article in question.

A good example would be the Easter Egg concept page which has had a bunch of simultaneous submissions, each adding paragraphs about different games - that one has been manually merged together by myself.

Hope that helps.

"

Hello,

I just want to add that if both old and new article are of good quality, then we do try to merge them if suitable. It has to be done manually (we always do the approve first, so you still get your points), so it doesn't always happen and is up to the mod handling it. But generally we do try if we feel it would improve the article in question.

A good example would be the Easter Egg concept page which has had a bunch of simultaneous submissions, each adding paragraphs about different games - that one has been manually merged together by myself.

Hope that helps.

"

Typically I do not take the time to merge a user's submission with the current article.  I will usually just tell the user to incorporate his text into the more current article and then resubmit the entire thing accompanied with detailed notes on what changes were made.  There are just too many articles to spend time merging and editing every single submission as they come in.  It's more efficient and more fair to everyone to just send those types of submissions back and have the user resubmit them after editing it in themselves.

There are some new mod tools being worked on that will allow the moderators to do real time edits of submissions before approving them, along with a compare tool that will allow us to easily see the differences between the original and edited articles.

It’s the moderator’s discretion on how they handle the submissions.

Curently if I think both the live article and the one that’s been submitted have very interesting parts I will copy both into word. Accept the edit (giving you points for submitting) then ill edit in the merged article.

But new tools are comming soon to make that process easier.

Awesome.  Thanks guys.