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jeff

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jeff

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Edited By jeff
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swoxx

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Edited By swoxx

Awesome!

Edit: Good read. This will hopefully help a lot of lost souls find their way in life, or at least in the wiki.

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ZombiePie

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Nux

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This is pretty neat. Thanks Jeff. Its good to have something like this around to refer to.

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UnrealDP

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Edited By UnrealDP

I was wondering when this would show up. Awesome, man! Good foot forward for cleaning up the wiki.

Edit: Yeah, there's probably some stuff to add, but my brain's pretty tired, so I'll get back to this soon enough.

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beepmachine

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Edited By beepmachine

Just a nit-pick, the first sentence doesn't seem grammatically right to me: "Though the Giant Bomb wiki was initially designed to be easy to follow and understand."

Can a game's Main Image be the game's logo if there isn't box art currently released?

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Hailinel

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Edited By Hailinel

Thanks, Jeff!

I think it should call out that game titles shouldn't be italicized.

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FluxWaveZ

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Edited By FluxWaveZ

I think there should be an explanation as to which objects are relevant to a game's page and which are not.

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Hunter5024

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Edited By Hunter5024

Quit working on Labor Day Jeff.

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Praxis

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This might be outside the scope of this guide, but better guidelines on page formatting is probably one of my biggest requests. Having more consistency in page layouts would go a long way toward easing people into wiki editing.

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Video_Game_King

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Edited By Video_Game_King

This is pretty much what I wanted out of a wiki guide. One question that's been nagging at me, though: do characters that don't physically appear in a game but still hold a significant place in the plot get pages in the wiki?

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pyromagnestir

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Edited By pyromagnestir

Still terrified to go anywhere near the Wiki's for any reason other than looking shit up. Though I did make a game page this weekend, and touched it up a bit, and might do some more in the future, if I keep playing the game.

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ajamafalous

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Edited By ajamafalous

Typo in the first line Jeff!

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Dagbiker

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Edited By Dagbiker

Awesome. This will help a lot not just for new users but for anyone who has a question.

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Mento

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Edited By Mento  Moderator

Good stuff. I've been adding a lot of Famicom games, so it's reassuring I got the Japanese name thing right. As it must also be to any mods that would've had to clean it up.

While they're probably general wiki writing rules rather than something specific to the Giant Bomb wiki, I'm wondering if you could include "no second person" and "no subjectivity" rules as well anyway. They tend to be the most common issues on pages I've found.

ETA: Also, while I think it would be awesome to include box quotes/blurbs in a separate section of a game's page, they shouldn't suffice as an unbiased description of that game (for its bolded "overview" description at least).

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jakob187

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Edited By jakob187

WHOA WHOA WHOA!

The guides work?

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Ravenlight

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Edited By Ravenlight

I sheck'datow and I think the guide is a great place to start for anyone wondering about editing the wiki. Any chance this thread will be made a sticky for ease of access?

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Hailinel

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@Mento said:

Good stuff. I've been adding a lot of Famicom games, so it's reassuring I got the Japanese name thing right. As it must also be to any mods that would've had to clean it up.

While they're probably general wiki writing rules rather than something specific to the Giant Bomb wiki, I'm wondering if you could include "no second person" and "no subjectivity" rules as well anyway. They tend to be the most common issues on pages I've found.

ETA: Also, while I think it would be awesome to include box quotes/blurbs in a separate section of a game's page, they shouldn't suffice as an unbiased description of that game (for its bolded "overview" description at least).

Seconding the hell out of this.

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LordAndrew

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Edited By LordAndrew

Regarding region-specific title aliases, is this limited to English and the original language (often Japanese), or are all region-specific titles acceptable?

Could you add something about whether misspellings in the credits, such as Jeff Gershman, are appropriate for person aliases?

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sodacat

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@Hailinel said:

Thanks, Jeff!

I think it should call out that game titles shouldn't be italicized.

Wait, this is part of GB's standards? Why?

Also where is the most appropriate place to write a game's name in its original language (i.e. kana/kanji for japanese games, han for chinese). Release data?

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Hailinel

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Edited By Hailinel

@sodacat said:

@Hailinel said:

Thanks, Jeff!

I think it should call out that game titles shouldn't be italicized.

Wait, this is part of GB's standards? Why?

Also where is the most appropriate place to write a game's name in its original language (i.e. kana/kanji for japanese games, han for chinese). Release data?

It's a standard practice that the staff brought with them from GameSpot. You'll notice that they never italicize game titles in their articles and reviews unless it is done for some manner of emphasis. This standard has also been carried over into the wiki as a result.

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jakob187

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Edited By jakob187

@Hailinel said:

@sodacat said:

@Hailinel said:

Thanks, Jeff!

I think it should call out that game titles shouldn't be italicized.

Wait, this is part of GB's standards? Why?

Also where is the most appropriate place to write a game's name in its original language (i.e. kana/kanji for japanese games, han for chinese). Release data?

It's a standard practice that the staff brought with them from GameSpot. You'll notice that they never italicize game titles in their articles and reviews unless it is done for some manner of emphasis. This standard has also been carried over into the wiki as a result.

...but shouldn't they be italicized? I was always taught in English class that proper titles of books, movies, games, albums, artwork, etc. needs to be italicized.

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sodacat

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Edited By sodacat

@Hailinel: Ah, OK. I prefer italicization myself, and I figured most pages on the wiki didn't have it just due to lazyness on the part of wiki editors.

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Hailinel

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Edited By Hailinel

@jakob187 said:

@Hailinel said:

@sodacat said:

@Hailinel said:

Thanks, Jeff!

I think it should call out that game titles shouldn't be italicized.

Wait, this is part of GB's standards? Why?

Also where is the most appropriate place to write a game's name in its original language (i.e. kana/kanji for japanese games, han for chinese). Release data?

It's a standard practice that the staff brought with them from GameSpot. You'll notice that they never italicize game titles in their articles and reviews unless it is done for some manner of emphasis. This standard has also been carried over into the wiki as a result.

...but shouldn't they be italicized? I was always taught in English class that proper titles of books, movies, games, albums, artwork, etc. needs to be italicized.

Not on Giant Bomb, they aren't. Yes, in most circumstances, they should be, but at the same time, Jeff has stated before that game titles specifically should not be italicized in the GB wiki.

It's his website, and so I abide by what he rules.

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MattyFTM

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Edited By MattyFTM  Moderator

@jakob187 said:

@Hailinel said:

@sodacat said:

@Hailinel said:

Thanks, Jeff!

I think it should call out that game titles shouldn't be italicized.

Wait, this is part of GB's standards? Why?

Also where is the most appropriate place to write a game's name in its original language (i.e. kana/kanji for japanese games, han for chinese). Release data?

It's a standard practice that the staff brought with them from GameSpot. You'll notice that they never italicize game titles in their articles and reviews unless it is done for some manner of emphasis. This standard has also been carried over into the wiki as a result.

...but shouldn't they be italicized? I was always taught in English class that proper titles of books, movies, games, albums, artwork, etc. needs to be italicized.

All those things other than games should be italicized. I assume the reasoning behind that is to do with games being the primary subject matter of the website.

Either way, all of that stuff is included in the Giant Bomb Guide To Style.

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Hizang

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Edited By Hizang

Very good guide, I need to get back into wiki editing, people need to know about the many characters in Banjo-Kazooie!

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Hailinel

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Edited By Hailinel

@MattyFTM said:

Either way, all of that stuff is included in the Giant Bomb Guide To Style.

And yet, there are so many people that blatantly ignore this.

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jeff

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Edited By jeff

If writing in a spot where you need to call emphasis to a title to help the reader understand that you are talking about some other work, yes, italics make sense. If you are writing on a game site where games titles are not special and are going to be understood by the reader, there's no need for emphasis. So movie and TV titles get italics, games don't.

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mosespippy

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Edited By mosespippy

@Praxis said:

This might be outside the scope of this guide, but better guidelines on page formatting is probably one of my biggest requests. Having more consistency in page layouts would go a long way toward easing people into wiki editing.

I'd like to see this too. Specifically I'd like to see a standard for Soundtrack. It seems like everyone places it last in the wiki or second last behind system requirements and it always has different ways of listing songs (bullets, numbers or page breaks, with quotes on song titles or not, artist or song title first, etc). I'd go through and clean it all up to meet a standard if such a standard existed though I suspect songs might end up being a new category once the site redesign goes live.

@Hailinel said:

@MattyFTM said:

Either way, all of that stuff is included in the Giant Bomb Guide To Style.

And yet, there are so many people that blatantly ignore this.

I'd like to see the style guide updated to clarify if it should be power up, powerup or power-up. Also, 1 Up or 1Up.

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FLStyle

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Edited By FLStyle

A good start, I hope to see more added to it in the future.

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Karl_Boss

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Edited By Karl_Boss

@Hailinel said:

@MattyFTM said:

Either way, all of that stuff is included in the Giant Bomb Guide To Style.

And yet, there are so many people that blatantly ignore this.

Because its not easily accessible, its buried within the site.

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Hailinel

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Edited By Hailinel

I think this guide should also call out the rules regarding characters that are just another form or part of an existing character.

For example, the Shadow characters related to each character in Persona 4, Ryu/Evil Ryu, Noel Vermillion/Mu-12, and so on.

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MikeGosot

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Edited By MikeGosot

What should be the main image if the game has North American alternate covers? Ex: Starcraft and Catherine

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Scrawnto

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Edited By Scrawnto

This page is the only result on Google for "Sheckatow".

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sweep

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Edited By sweep  Moderator

You know we have a fairly extensive Wiki FAQ already, right? Is your guide designed to compliment this or replace it? I'm not bothered either way, I just noticed that a lot of the sections you have added are already explained at length elsewhere.

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Hailinel

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Edited By Hailinel

@Sweep said:

You know we have a fairly extensive Wiki FAQ already, right? Is your guide designed to compliment this or replace it? I'm not bothered either way, I just noticed that a lot of the sections you have added are already explained at length elsewhere.

Like what?

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sweep

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Edited By sweep  Moderator

@Hailinel: How about the "Adding consoles/platforms" or "Japanese games" sections?

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Mento

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Edited By Mento  Moderator

The Wiki FAQ was why I was reluctant to bring up basic stuff like no 2nd person/subjectivity, since those are the kind of common sense rules that the FAQ goes into quite thoroughly, but the items covered in these style guides from Jeff are basically judgement calls that could feasibly go either way without a solid law in place. Since Jeff owns the wiki, more or less, it's kind of cool (and necessary) that we get some rulings on this stuff. Like Hammurabi just slamming that tablet down in the middle of his kingdom and telling folks what's up.

I do think that the earlier Style Guide could be combined with this one for convenience's sake. And then have the whole thing made way more visible than most guides currently are. (I'd like that SNES wiki completion project of 's to be a bit more visible too, but maybe this isn't the time or place.)

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EarlessShrimp

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Edited By EarlessShrimp

That's... not too bad! At least a decent frame-work is laid out there

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Hailinel

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Edited By Hailinel

@Sweep said:

@Hailinel: How about the "Adding consoles/platforms" or "Japanese games" sections?

That's not what I would classify as "a lot."

And despite your best intentions, it's honestly easier to consider Jeff's guide the more official of the two. We need staff judgment on a lot of wiki-specific behavior; not just on what's baseline acceptable for moderator approval.

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sweep

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Edited By sweep  Moderator

@Hailinel: The current wiki guidelines and rules are staff judgement. What, you think we make this shit up as we go along? If only you knew...

Whatever, it's not like anyone is going to read either of them anyway :|

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Hailinel

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Edited By Hailinel

@Sweep said:

@Hailinel: The current wiki guidelines and rules are staff judgement. What, you think we make this shit up as we go along? If only you knew...

Whatever, it's not like anyone is going to read either of them anyway :|

Well, judging by what's in the "What's denied" section of the FAQ you linked:

  • Plagiarism: The big, obvious one, Giant Bomb is a unique database of video game knowledge: Copy/pasting a massive article from another source is only hurting you, the user. Please be aware that this includes content copied from official sources, such as game manuals and press releases.
  • Opinionated, subjective text or text that sounds like an advertisement for the game: While everyone is free to have his or her own view on a subject, we like to keep things objective.
  • Short, poorly written edits: If an elaborate article exists and a user submits an irrelevant paragraph, it wastes everyone's time.
  • New pages with bad titles: Incorrect title case and punctuation, bad spelling, or unnecessary acronyms make page titles unattractive; taking time to submit correct information shows.
  • Lists: Though not every list is off-limits, character lists in body text are unnecessary; check the relationships sections!
  • Excessive use of images: Images out of context do not improve articles. The images section of a page is there for a reason.
  • Linking everything: Linking every item found in China is unnecessary, and it makes page navigation more difficult. Game-relevant items or characters are fine, broader links like Call of Duty 4 to Earth are a definite no-no, though.
  • Franchise games linked as Similar Games: Some games are linked together by being part of the same Franchise, these should not be linked as Similar Games.
  • Multiple names for the same thing: These can be hard to identify, but similar concepts are often submitted under different names. Make sure to do a thorough search on what it is you're trying to add, as it may already been on the site.
  • Subjective concepts: A concept should not be open to opinion. Truth, not thought.

I can't count the number of times I've seen most all of these violated, seemingly with moderator approval.

It's one thing to list basic dos and don'ts as bullet points, but there are a lot of specifics that the FAQ simply doesn't cover, or at the very least, it only skims over certain items.

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StarFoxA

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@Mento said:

I do think that the earlier Style Guide could be combined with this one for convenience's sake. And then have the whole thing made way more visible than most guides currently are. (I'd like that SNES wiki completion project of 's to be a bit more visible too, but maybe this isn't the time or place.)

I really need to work on that more, thanks for the reminder!

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LordAndrew

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Edited By LordAndrew

@Sweep said:

@Hailinel: The current wiki guidelines and rules are staff judgement. What, you think we make this shit up as we go along? If only you knew...

I can think of at least one case where the mods made up new rules, resulting in numerous deletions, and then Jeff eventually had to step in and put a stop to that. The community was then tasked with cleaning up the mess.

So yeah, I'm personally going to put more faith in rules and guidelines that come directly from the staff.

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Snail

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Edited By Snail

@Jeff: How about a "Reception" section? I usually use Giant Bomb to get my info on games, but when I want to know how it got received by professional critics and the general public I still find myself having to check Gamespot, Wikipedia, Metacritic or Game Rankings. I would like for this type of information to be available on Giant Bomb, much like you guys made available back in the day on Screened.

Now that you are part of CBSi, maybe Metacritic scores can somehow be presented on the game page? Or would that clash with the website's 5-star rating "philosophy" of reviewing games?

Regardless, even if this type of information isn't necessarily incorporated into the Wiki pages, it should still be standard for there to be a "Reception" section, much like in Wikipedia, in which the way the game was taken by audiences is described, while highlighting any notable innovations the game presented, particular harsh criticisms it had, or controversies it generated (evidently, when none of these factors are significant enough to earn their own section in the Wiki page), or other stuff that was said about said game that's worth noting.

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Hailinel

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Edited By Hailinel

@LordAndrew said:

@Sweep said:

@Hailinel: The current wiki guidelines and rules are staff judgement. What, you think we make this shit up as we go along? If only you knew...

I can think of at least one case where the mods made up new rules, resulting in numerous deletions, and then Jeff eventually had to step in and put a stop to that. The community was then tasked with cleaning up the mess.

So yeah, I'm personally going to put more faith in rules and guidelines that come directly from the staff.

I remember this, as well. To be fair, that was also partially the fault of some users as well as moderators, but still, it was a clear case of both users and mods overstepping their bounds.

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sweep

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Edited By sweep  Moderator

@LordAndrew said:

@Sweep said:

@Hailinel: The current wiki guidelines and rules are staff judgement. What, you think we make this shit up as we go along? If only you knew...

I can think of at least one case where the mods made up new rules, resulting in numerous deletions, and then Jeff eventually had to step in and put a stop to that. The community was then tasked with cleaning up the mess.

So yeah, I'm personally going to put more faith in rules and guidelines that come directly from the staff.

Well I'm going to put more faith in this brick that I'm about to throw at your face.

>:(

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mike

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@Sweep said:

@LordAndrew said:

@Sweep said:

@Hailinel: The current wiki guidelines and rules are staff judgement. What, you think we make this shit up as we go along? If only you knew...

I can think of at least one case where the mods made up new rules, resulting in numerous deletions, and then Jeff eventually had to step in and put a stop to that. The community was then tasked with cleaning up the mess.

So yeah, I'm personally going to put more faith in rules and guidelines that come directly from the staff.

Well I'm going to put more faith in this brick that I'm about to throw at your face.

>:(

I don't remember that situation at all. The one LordAndrew described, not the brick vs face thing.

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Hailinel

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Edited By Hailinel

@MB said:

@Sweep said:

@LordAndrew said:

@Sweep said:

@Hailinel: The current wiki guidelines and rules are staff judgement. What, you think we make this shit up as we go along? If only you knew...

I can think of at least one case where the mods made up new rules, resulting in numerous deletions, and then Jeff eventually had to step in and put a stop to that. The community was then tasked with cleaning up the mess.

So yeah, I'm personally going to put more faith in rules and guidelines that come directly from the staff.

Well I'm going to put more faith in this brick that I'm about to throw at your face.

>:(

I don't remember that situation at all. The one LordAndrew described, not the brick vs face thing.

You weren't involved, as far as I remember. If LordAndrew is thinking of the same event I'm thinking of, it was the decision by moderators and users to start deleting any and all game compilations from the database. A good number of such were either deleted or marked for deletion before Jeff stepped in and told those involved to stop it. A lot of pages then had to be re-added.

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Karl_Boss

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Edited By Karl_Boss

@Hailinel said:

You weren't involved, as far as I remember. If LordAndrew is thinking of the same event I'm thinking of, it was the decision by moderators and users to start deleting any and all game compilations from the database. A good number of such were either deleted or marked for deletion before Jeff stepped in and told those involved to stop it. A lot of pages then had to be re-added.

I want to say Marino was the one who coordinated that.