User talk:Martin IIIa

SNK characters

Hello. I was wondering if in the reviews you have from Neo Geo there are comments about certain characters from Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting or The King of Fighters (For example, "This boss is too overpowered or this one is good to control"). It would really helpful to expand their reception. Regards.Tintor2 (talk) 19:35, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply; I've been on a short Wikibreak. Unfortunately the reviews I've seen tend not to comment on specific characters much, but I do recall there being considerable commentary on Blue Mary and Bob Wilson when they were introduced. And of course Mai S. gets frequent mention. I'll have a quick look and see what I can dig up.--Martin IIIa (talk) 02:29, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

No problem. Also, good work with Blue Mary.Tintor2 (talk) 16:48, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Um the reason why someone put that Andy is not interested in Mai in that sentence was cuz he wanted to make it sound more specific. Cuz Andy isn’t really interested in Mai. And based on multiple evidence he isn’t. He cares about her, yes. But not as a lover. I mean he grew up with her. So it’s a bit different. I mean are you implying that “Andy being ambiguous about their relationship” means he isn’t interested? SG1994! (talk) 23:38, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

@SG1994!: As noted in my edit summary, the issue isn't the content of the sentence but the fact that it's a run-on sentence, and one which needlessly over-explains its point. If you find the phrasing "is ambiguous about their relationship" inaccurate, it would make more sense to replace it with more accurate phrasing rather than stuffing a bunch of caveats into a single sentence.--Martin IIIa (talk) 01:48, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

The kitten of DILIGENCE

Here is yet another award for those dang beautiful classic print citations. Every time I see your username on an edit summary, I get all excited -- but I quell it! Because I think "hey, this guy can't nail it every time....can he? Give the guy a break, OKAY?!!"

NOPE. CHUCK TESTA. Success kid. Nailed it.

It's usually a simple but well written statement like a sentence, but that citation is RS (rock solid) and perfectly formatted. Future generations can take that ball and run with it. Martin does it again.

Please let me know if I can help.

And please feed and care for and raise this virtual baby feline for all its days for some reason.

— Smuckola(talk) 03:44, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Heart of Darkness Reviews

You cut something on the page and said there needs to be a source for reviews. What kind of reviews will do? I have a list of pretty much every review the game has ever gotten but am still very new to how wikipedia works in regards to proper sources and relevant information. I assumed that showing the game ranking percentages at the 70-80 range would justify the term "mixed to positive" but would citing some other reviews like the IGN one for the Playstation version and the Just Adventure one for the PC version be better? Also, as I have taken interest on this page, is there anything else that could be improved on it that I could do? Luxguin (talk) 22:36, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Sources is a very good guide to determining notable/reliable review sources for video game articles. The section "Reliable sources" is especially helpful, as it contains a list of all the sources that the editors of WikiProject Video Games have determined by consensus to be reliable. Like the page says, "This list is neither complete nor can it be used as definitive proof regarding a listed source's reliability determination, but it provides a good rough guide on which to base the scrutiny of sources for reliability." And long-running printed review publications like GamePro can generally be assumed to be reliable.

There are a couple problems with making generalized statements based solely on score aggregates. One is that an aggregate is merely an average of scores, not a summary of the corresponding reviews. Reviews are often at odds with their accompanying scores, and averages don't give a breakdown; a game which received 5/10 from four publications and 9/10 from four publications would get the same aggregate score as a game which received 7/10 from eight publications. Also, aggregates assume that one publication's 6/10 is the same as another publication's 6/10, a third publication's 3 out of 5 stars, and a fourth's 60%, which is rarely the case. The second problem is that it's redundant; letting the aggregate score speak for itself and allowing the reader decide whether it means positive reviews or not is both more concise and more neutral than telling the reader what they should think of the aggregate score.

Adding info on the IGN and Just Adventure reviews would definitely improve the article, yes. Pilotwings 64, which has a Good Article rating, makes a nice guideline for what the "Reception" section for a video game article should look like. Info on Heart of Darkness's sales is much needed, too.

At a glance, the one other thing about the article that strikes me as needing improvement is that the plot summary could use trimming. It's recommended that video game plot summaries run no longer than 700 words, while the current plot summary for Heart of Darkness is nearly 900 words.

Also, though I know I've said a fair amount here, don't look to just me for advice. Try posting at places like Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games.--Martin IIIa (talk) 03:19, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Alright. Thank you for your help. I have been meaning to make altercations to the plot summary on the page by condensing it more. I do own multiple magazines and have access to archived website reviewers that I can source for reviews. You mention Gamepro which had a feature in a 98 edition of the magazine. There's not much information on the game's sales except what can be infered. For instance, in the UK it got a platinum release which means it sold more than a million copies. There was also an interview where one developer was asked if it sold poorly and he pretty much said "no because look at all the money we got." I haven't found anywhere that lists the actual statistics for how many copies sold. I can understand what you mean about the score summary thing now. It's added percentages, they can be added up from a variety of different ways. I'll definitely be looking into this further. Thank you for your help.Luxguin (talk) 03:27, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Edit summary

Hello. Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia.

When editing Wikipedia, there is a field labeled "Edit summary" below the main edit box. It looks like this:

Edit summary (Briefly describe your changes)

Please be sure to provide a summary of every edit you make, even if you write only the briefest of summaries. The summaries are very helpful to people browsing an article's history.

Edit summary content is visible in:

• User contributions
• Recent changes
• Watchlists
• Revision differences
• IRC channels
• Related changes
• New pages list
• Article editing history

Please use the edit summary to explain your reasoning for the edit, or a summary of what the edit changes. Thanks! ...especially when removing over 500 bytes (as you did on The Incredible Hulk (1982 TV series)). --Musdan77 (talk) 20:33, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Most of the bytes I removed from the article were either unsourced and obviously trivial minutia or needless repetition of the same information. I used to put edit summaries on everything I did, but five years of Wikipedia editing taught me that putting edit summaries on edits whose purpose is self-evident tends to attract trolls, can needlessly inflame edit conflicts, and at best is a waste of time.--Martin IIIa (talk) 01:18, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

How is it "self-evident"? When I look at my watchlist, two of the first things I look at are in red ("red flags"): red usernames and bold red numbers. Then if there's no edit summary, that's even more of a reason to look at to the diff. But, if you gave a reason (or reasons) for the edit, I wouldn't have had to click to see it. So, it's a waste of others time not to use one. As far as I see, providing an ES is much more helpful than it could be harmful. But, thanks for your response anyway. Oh, by the way, most editors no longer use the "talkback" (because that's a waste of time). Instead, we now use the [[User:|]] template in the reply, so we can go directly to the post. —Musdan77 (talk) 05:12, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Reading edit summaries and byte counts is not a substitute for checking the diff. Editors commonly try to hide controversial and/or nonconstructive edits by flat-out lying in the edit summaries. Even editors acting in good faith typically do not give comprehensive descriptions of their edits in the edit summary, especially not when performing a complete overhaul of an article. And the byte count is no indication of an edit's quality at all; replacing 10,000 bytes of fancruft and POV ranting with sourced material gives a byte count of about -9,000, while inserting the words "screw you" gives a byte count of +9.

I don't see how the user link template can possibly be used as a substitute for the talkback template, and upon looking in your user talk edits to see what exactly you were doing, I found that you yourself used the talkback template just a little over two weeks ago.--Martin IIIa (talk) 15:24, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Martin, why do you think that the number of bytes over 500 are in bold? It's because it's a "red flag", and so it can be seen easily. An editor who may not have that many articles on their watchlist could check every change made, but a busy editor, like me, who has hundreds on his watchlist in a 24-hour period doesn't possibly have the time to do that, so I have to be selective. And I assume (good faith) that an editor who has been around for awhile and gives an ES, made an adequate edit. Please see WP:FIES, which says in part: "Accurate summaries help other contributors decide whether it is worthwhile for them to review an edit, and to understand the change should they choose to review it. When a major edit (e.g. deletion of a substantial amount of text, a significant addition, or a substantial rewrite) doesn't have an edit summary, there are fewer reasons to assume good faith and busy editors may be more inclined to revert the change without checking it in detail." Also, major changes (say, over 2,000 bytes) really should usually be discussed on the article's talk page before making the changes.

The "user link template" is very helpful for the person you're replying to. They get a notification at the top of the page (the bell), they click on it and it takes them straight to the post. With the "talkback", the person has to go to their talk page and then to the reply. The only time I use TB now is when replying to an unregistered IP, because I don't think they get a notification (though I could be wrong about that), and I want to make sure they know that I replied. —Musdan77 (talk) 01:11, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

That Wikipedia "red flags" edits based solely on their net byte count doesn't mean that net byte count is a good indicator of an edit's quality (re-read my last post). If you don't have time to properly monitor your watchlist, I recommend not monitoring it at all. I stopped regularly monitoring my watchlist years ago, and ever since I've been a much more productive and far less stressed out editor. I can always review all the edits since my last visit whenever I go to an article (using the "cur" link). Among other benefits, this ensures I don't become a revert monster who looks with suspicion on every edit to an article while not making any constructive edits to it myself. Indeed, your claim that major edits must be discussed on the talk page first strongly suggests that you're suffering this same ailment. Discussion is for edits that are controversial, not for every edit that makes a significant change. You need to read about the WP: BOLD, revert, discuss cycle.

Do you have any proof that the user link template does what you think it does? The feature you're talking about is not mentioned in the template documentation, and I have never received a reply notification for anything that wasn't posted on my own talk page. I suspect you're simply trying to have some fun at my expense, but just in case, I'll throw the template up here: Musdan77 Now at least you'll know if the template does what you say it does.--Martin IIIa (talk) 02:18, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure what I can say that I haven't already. But to respond, I don't really get stressed out much, except maybe when an editor doesn't follow basic WP editing guidelines and then makes lame excuses why he doesn't.^[sarcasm] Anyway, I did not say that major edits must be discussed. BRD (which isn't actually a WP guideline) is good most of the time, but an article talk page is not just to discuss changes that have already been made. An edit as big as -4,000 is in itself questionable, and the bigger the change, most likely the more explanation it needs, and the ES may not be enough space to explain it all, so it's a good idea to explain it fully on the talk page -- especially if you think it might be reverted (even just a part of it). And you seriously think that an editor that's much more experienced than you wouldn't have read WP:BRD? Please don't insult me like that.

Of course it works! I wouldn't have said so much about it if I didn't know if it works. Now if you want proof, I'll give a message to you on my talk page. See you there. —Musdan77 (talk) 19:22, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

If you insist on acknowledging only WP guidelines, try Wikipedia:Be bold. I referenced BRD only because it's a more detailed explanation of the fact that editing without discussing first works, and is much more efficient than making talk page posts that no one is likely to respond to in order to get permission for edits that wouldn't have been challenged anyway. I did not think my edit to the article might be reverted; I don't know where you got that idea. Boasting that you are "much more experienced than you" just comes off as silly, especially after you've spent much of this discussion touting the same ideas I had nearly ten years ago, before I learned how Wikipedia works.--Martin IIIa (talk) 19:48, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

"I did not think my edit to the article might be reverted." I didn't say you did. I put an emphasis on "might" - in an incidental added comment. Ten years? I guess you're talking about that you edited years before you registered. You might want to say that on your user page. And in case you don't know, I replied on my talk page.

Musdan77, I'm not concerned with anyone knowing how long I've been editing. As heavily implied in my previous post, seniority gives no additional credibility on Wikipedia (and in general, seniority is meaningless unless you've learned from your experiences). Anyway, it's apparent by now that you're not giving due consideration to anything I'm saying, and I've spent an undue amount of time on this as it is. To resist my compulsive habit of replying to everything, I will leave any further posts on this thread unread.--Martin IIIa (talk) 15:53, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, first of all, thanks for "pinging". And as for the rest, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I won't admonish you anymore. :) —Musdan77 (talk) 20:37, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Martin IIIa. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Review length and notability

All reviews, regardless of length, provide the same amount of sourced content: "[notable magazine] said [opinion] about [article subject]." Reviews in Maximum aren't three times as notable as reviews in Electronic Gaming Monthly just because they're three times as long.
— Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wing Nuts: Battle in the Sky

Moving this here since the AfD closed. This statement isn't true—reviews are also used to source the Gameplay section, as they are more pertinent than previews. If a game only has a few sentences in a single reviewer, there isn't enough to cover the Gameplay section in adequate depth. Also might be confusing notability and noteworthiness here. We talk about notability as whether a game has had significant coverage in enough sources such that we can write a complete article on the topic. Noteworthiness is the extent to which a source or a fact merits inclusion in an article. It might be that we only need a single idea from a reviewer in the Reception section prose (though I'd say this is rarely the case—it makes for bad writing), but having an in-depth review indicates that (1) the topic itself was notable enough to be covered in-depth by multiple sources, and (2) the points they chose to cover are noteworthy enough for inclusion in the article. So a review with three times the length gives us three times the noteworthy information about the topic. Without in-depth reviews, we end up going back to instruction manuals and unsourced sections for basic info on gameplay. By the same token, cursory three-sentence summaries of books in trade journals do not constitute "reviews" when we look at a book's notability, mainly because it indicates little distinction for the book and because it doesn't bring us any closer to writing a detailed article (unless there are many other sources that provide what it lacks). czar 17:00, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

I've found that 1990s game reviews rarely provide information useful to the Gameplay section, regardless of how long they are. The idea that one must explain how to play a game before giving an opinion on it is a relatively new one. This is why I usually only edit the Reception section when adding a review source to an article.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:08, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

I've found the opposite—really depends on the magazine. For instance, even the main British mags covering the ZX Spectrum in the mid-80s would tell readers "what you could do" in half- and full-page game reviews, outlining the core gameplay and notable features. But something like Nintendo Power didn't settle into reviews for a while and when they did, especially in the 90s, they were short both in length and in criticism. At the same time, EGM would give much more pointed criticism from differing reviewer perspective and GameFan would have length similar to the British mags. However even when the American mags had short reviews, they also had lengthy preview sections as well as features on a new game's first few levels, going over the mechanics the same way the British mags did but with lots of photos and gloss. I don't put great stock in game reviewer opinions of the 80s/90s, or hell, even of today, but they do serve as noteworthy opinions and through their editorial process these magazines vet for us the information we should want to include in an article. Their coverage both inside and outside their sole "reviews" sections and its depth is how we determine whether we can source a full treatment of the topic for a WP article. I find that if a game only has several paragraph-length reviews, regardless of the decade, there is rarely hope that we can write a full article, and the contents are best off merged to the parent topic, where we can write something of appropriate weight—a few sentences. czar 15:19, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

At the risk of putting my foot in it, I have to ask why you're devoting so much interest to discussing a purely academic point on a personal talk page. Even if the AfD weren't already closed, you're talking "several paragraph-length reviews" when I was only able to dig up one. Any case for "keep" is tremendously weak if you have only one notable/reliable source, regardless of length. And it's hardly likely that this issue is going to come up again in the near future; I can't imagine that there even exists a game which got several paragraph-length reviews but no other significant coverage whatsoever. You must know that I am already well-aware of the need for sourcing in articles and the usefulness of game reviewers as sources, and I'm not vain enough to think you're compelled by my wiki-arguing abilities. This is just rather a baffling conversation to me.--Martin IIIa (talk) 04:26, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I can't imagine that there even exists a game which got several paragraph-length reviews but no other significant coverage whatsoever.

Happens all the time... As for the rest, we cross paths and I see AfDs like this often enough that I thought it was worth taking the time to get on the same page. If you were uninterested, you only had to say so.  czar 04:37, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Actually, I had only to ignore you, but you caught my curiosity. I'll take your word for it on the "AfDs like this" though that certainly doesn't match up with any of the AfDs I've ever seen, but as for us crossing paths, I'm wondering if you have me confused with someone else. Apart from the Wing Nuts AfD, I can only think of two instances where you and I have interacted, and neither of them fall within the past few weeks.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:32, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Removal of Championship_Rally_(Atari_Lynx) page

"The contesting editor subsequently added to the article's list of external links, but apart from the IGN review none of them seem to indicate notability"

There are other sites but where's threshold when it becomes notable? Information on this was also published in multiple magazines in 2000 (I believe EGM as well). Also if you search in Google for 'championship rally Atari lynx' then the top hit is the now defunct deleted Wikipedia article. After that you get at least 50+ articles. Last it's sold by Telegames.co.uk which isn't a homebrew company.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by LucienK (talk • contribs) 01:49, 29 January 2017 (UTC) 

There's no specific threshold for notability; a lot of factors come into it like the significance of the subject to the cited article. However, you pretty much need mentions in at least three notable/reliable sources to be even considered as possibly meeting notability standards, and I have not been able to find that for Championship Rally. I've used search engines and turned up pretty much nothing apart from fansites and listings at sites which cover every video game ever released (e.g. GameFAQs, Mobygames, etc.). Which vendors sell the subject is not relevant to notability.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:54, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Very few games released in 2000 had a lot of online coverage obviously. Reviews for this game were published in magazines like EGM. I don't know if there are online scanned resources but regardless if you go through the list of Atari Lynx games, pretty much all will fail your criteria. And note that Songbird acquired legally several unpublished Atari Lynx games source code.

I'm not clear what makes a site trustworthy. I think videogamecritics, Atarigames.com, and several other reviews you find in google.com results (they are not all fan sites or just game databases), are just as trustworthy than a bigger site like ign.com. I hope that's not the criteria to give preferential treatment based on that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LucienK (talk • contribs) 00:26, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Believe me, I'm well aware that coverage for games released in 2000 and earlier is mostly in print form; most of my editing on Wikipedia for the past year or so has been citing print coverage of 1990s games. However, with about 99% of notable games, you can easily find at least an indication that printed coverage exists. For example, Mobygames lists eight reviews for ElectroCop, a Lynx game released in 1989, when online gaming publications were nonexistent and even printed publications were few and far between. Mobygames lists zero reviews for Championship Rally.

I said "notable/reliable", not trustworthy. (Though as a former frequent reader of videogamecritic, I can tell you the site is neither notable/reliable nor trustworthy.) WP:Identifying reliable sources is a good guide to what makes a notable/reliable source. A key part is the need for editorial oversight, which is why videogamecritic is not considered a reliable source. Videogamecritic is the work of a single individual, with no one to check his facts. The problem with Atari Age is that it's a simple database entry on a site which catalogs every game ever released for an Atari platform, so it establishes nothing beyond the fact that Championship Rally exists. The same basic problem applies to The Atari Times, though it of course has more in-depth content than Atari Age.--Martin IIIa (talk) 01:03, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

1989 was all magazine resources which is a different time than 2000 in middle of the transition. This applies to many games in that era. I might be able to dig up the magazines, but the bigger picture seems Wikipedia want's now no individual game pages unless they reach a certain quota of selected types of coverage. In this case it's 5 online reviews (gamefaq/ataritimes/atarihq/ign/videogamecritics) and apparently only 1 reaches that bar. I'm not familiar with Mobygames but I checked and I found it here but seems it's missing in their master list: http://www.mobygames.com/game/lynx/championship-rally_. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LucienK (talk • contribs) 15:47, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Heimdall 2 proposed deletion

I removed you prod, note this page was nominated for proposed deletion before (there is old prod full template on the talkpage). I added reference to review in Amiga Format to establish notability. AMR shows dozens of reviews for the Amiga version alone, but feel free to start AfD... Pavlor (talk) 11:16, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

No, the article was never proposed for deletion before; the old prod full template was added by me. Thanks for adding the reference. I may take the article to AfD some time down the line but for now I'll give the benefit of the doubt that it can be improved.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:11, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Not so common use for old prod full template. As of AfD, well this would be entertaining... If you intend to improve that article, you may use reviews and previews available on the Amiga Magazine Rack (mostly scanned from magazines). Pavlor (talk) 14:02, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

thanks

for your comments at ivor cutler category deletion - I discovered the main library that is in the city I live in has none of his books! It is going to take a bit longer to create articles about his written works - thought - when I was creating the cat I had the delusion that I'd be able to access some of the oevre, not to be... JarrahTree 10:17, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	For regularly applying {{Old prod full}} to the talk pages of articles you PROD, something which nowhere near enough editors do (myself included). It's a huge help as an admin in the event the article is de-prodded. Ks0stm (T•C•G•E) 02:08, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Osu!! Karate Bu

Just wondering, why do you want to delete Osu!! Karate Bu? I don't understand your pattern, I saw that you "retouched" an article few days ago about a totally obscure game (note that the page has no info at all) without "proposing for deletion", however you did that for this article. You should be really careful while making these "irresponsible" proposals. I would suggest a redirect, instead of delete. You don't own Wikipedia, so stop "deleting" articles. --89.180.151.225 (talk) 01:23, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Um, actually, proposing articles for deletion is a prescribed Wikipedia practice. See WP: Proposed deletion.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:31, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Block.

"Indefinitely blocked for Wikipedia." - sorry but that's just childish... Go ahead and make the block requests you want, I will support you and the so-called administrators. The IPs are irrelevant... just like you (as a user). Bye. --89.180.144.183 (talk) 20:23, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, but it'll take more than one last nonsense post on my talk page to justify wasting administrators' time on you.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:39, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Imagineer/Sunsoft

I'm having mixed feelings about you and one of my pet articles, Quest RPG - you AfD nom'ed the JP publisher Imagineer (Japanese company), but then argue to keep the NA publisher Sunsoft. ;) ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 16:30, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't understand the point of your post. Surely you aren't saying that voting to delete one company's article and keep another company's article is contradictory if the two happen to have any overlap in the games they publish?--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:41, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure there was a point to my post! I just noticed this amusing coincidence and thought I'd share. :) ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 18:00, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Ah, okay then. :) --Martin IIIa (talk) 18:47, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Awwww, you guys are just too sweet. :) --Justice League Master (talk) 17:10, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Deprodding of Cosmo Gang the Puzzle

I have removed the {{proposed deletion/dated}} tag from Cosmo Gang the Puzzle, which you proposed for deletion. I'm leaving this message here to notify you about it. If you still think this article should be deleted, please do not add {{proposed deletion}} back to the file. Instead, feel free to list it at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Thanks! (Note that I was not the one that removed the PROD, the IP 93.168.124.101 did). Thanks, DoABarrelRoll.dev(Constable of the WikiPolice)(Chat!) 18:53, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Edge magazine issue #209

Hey there! I wondered if you, by chance, had a print or digital (online?) copy of the Edge magazine issue #209 (from Q4 2009) lying around. According to an old copy of the MachineGames website, they had a two-page coverage over there, and I would like to use it to expand the article. Cheers! Lordtobi (✉) 16:41, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

@Lordtobi: - I'm afraid not. Sorry.--Martin IIIa (talk) 20:13, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Bummer, but thanks for trying! Lordtobi (✉) 20:15, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

NWC 1990 and 64DD

Hey there brother. I hope you notice me combing through article edit histories just to click 'thanks' on your excellent citations. I was wondering if you've ever seen any RS coverage of the Nintendo World Championships from 1990. I want something that defines that event as a groundbreaking phenomenon in video gaming, for what we now call esports, and for Nintendo. You see how I went to the lengths of cobbling together a Reception section, to show what people thought of the event itself as well as the players. What do you think? Should I post a request on WP:VGRS? I have another question that's probably best suited for a Japanese dead-tree historian; I wanna know the morbid history of the 64DD development. I want to know the exact internal reason for all the delays, and I want to know whether there was another manufacturer for the prototypes predating the contract and press release with Alps. Thanks man. — Smuckola(talk) 22:44, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

You know, it's odd. It never occurred to me until you brought it up, but I don't think I've ever come across a mention of the Nintendo World Championships in my researches. I don't have any magazines dating to before 1993, but you'd think I'd have seen some historical mention of it by now. All I can say is I'll keep an eye out. Nice work on that article so far, though. I've become interested in the 64DD delays, too. I'm working my way through my magazine collection in chronological order, and right now I'm in mid-1996, so I've been running into more and more 64DD content. With any luck I'll run into what we're looking for before too long.--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:13, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

@Martin IIIa: Wow I really wish I had those magazines, or even just a photo of a relevant article. I know some of them are on archive.org or whatever, and others are available from various other archival sites but they're image downloads and not OCR-text-searchable. Anyway, I'd like to read a variety of feedback about 64DD. It would be good to know various key perceptions.

For example, last night I found and cited a Popular Science article about the 1995 Shoshinkai introduction of 64DD, that says that Nintendo hadn't released almost any technical specs such as storage capacity. So that's a tiny little nothing of a factoid on its own, but that's how it comes; they all trickle and then add up. Also last night, I found and haven't yet cited a comprehensive analysis of 1995 Ultra 64 previews, where people are underwhelmed by the disparity between Nintendo's early promises versus its actual demonstrations. So that's another example of how the rosy hindsight of historical victory overshadows the years and years of subtle facts, back when it wasn't a sure thing.

And then it's the opposite for the 64DD, where the optimism was staggering even as of 1996 and only started being questioned in 1997 but still it was the core focus of all of Nintendo's efforts--and then it was wiped off the earth upon launch. You wanna talk about delays, dude I want to know the details about how it created such a snarl that Nintendo *canceled* Shoshinkai 1998!!!!! All I know is IGN's summary statement of that fact, but few of the particles of the nuclear fallout cloud. Also about delays, I'm trying to learn how to make a vertical graph of the timeline, accentuating the delays. I've only been able to create a very loose annual outline of a 64DD timeline, man. Because I operate off of google. As a commercial failure, 64DD is too obscure to be in any books I've ever found. People don't care to track failures in such a cruelly strictly hit-driven industry.

It's not like Apple lore where there's a whole chapter dedicated just to codenames, and multiple chapters of multiple books dedicated to deathmarch projects, and multiple books published about the very worst deathmarches lol. Magazines are where it's at, for the ongoing dialog of current events. For computer stuff, Google Books is so sweet with InfoWorld, ComputerWorld, and Byte. By the way, I recently launch a massive campaign about dead computing platforms of the 90s, including Copland, Workplace OS, PowerPC, and Taligent. I already published a lot and still I have piles of notes and drafts and I've ordered more books.

So maybe you notice that last night I went berzerk and redid 64DD development and Nintendo 64 development, and synchronized everything into Nintendo Space World. The diffs are trashed lol so it's hard to follow. I finally began my plan I've had for three years, of introducing Reality Immersion Technology and Dream Team. I'd like to know some reception about the Dream Team, because those companies were a bunch of unknowns and noobs and not-obvious choices. And like the rest of the stupid industry that thought they wanted stupid cdroms for mass quantity at all costs, people questioned Nintendo for selecting only a few developers to nurture properly for quality.

I've already made the overwhelming case of why the cartridge was the painfully obviously necessary choice over CDROM, and the super floppy disk is the ingenious complement (as per traditional Nintendo storage strategy) as seen in 64DD and Nintendo 64 Game Pak. I've already quoted multiple bits of the awesome reception the Nintendo 64 got upon launch, who state why cartridges are not just a technology but a culture of quality over quantity. I'm going to nuke the abominations that are Nintendo_64#Game_Paks and Nintendo 64 programming characteristics, and probably rename or merge the latter to something not-stupid.

Okay so that's a snapshot of my overview. I never really told anybody; I've just been occasionally bursting out in this mostly thankless and solitary medium. Thank you so much for everything. :) Whatcha doin? :) — Smuckola(talk) 20:37, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

BTW, why are we doing this? We're building a Wikipedia time machine. We're making a clear overview of RSes for other people to make something else. We're probably inspiring the collector market. I've already seen one example where a YouTube producer made yet another Satellaview history video, but I recognized some unique facts among all Satellaview history videos and I made a comment and he said that yes he did source Wikipedia on some articles I'd worked a little bit on, into which I'd researched and cited some key facts. Interest in 64DD has spiked with the dumping and the American discovery, and it is ready to blow up a bit more, when someone starts making videos and streams of real tutorials about the games that have been recently dumped and translated to English. So that's one reason. :) I'm trying to heal the wounds of all the endless giant broken promises of the most optimistic outlook of the technology revolution of the 80s and 90s. All the millionaire developers moved on but we didn't! Maybe we can keep pushing people to bring it back, and deliver on their promises. — Smuckola(talk) 20:54, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't find it so surprising that people were optimistic about the 64DD in 1996/97. Late '96 was its original launch date, and delays of a year happen. The M2 also was delayed from 1996 to 1997, and would have made its new date if Panasonic hadn't decided to pull the plug entirely at the last minute. The N64 itself got pushed back over a year. The Neo Geo CD, bizarrely, came out on time in Japan and Europe but got delayed a whole year in North America. What I find it amazing is that Nintendo wasn't able to get it out earlier than they did, after all that prep, and given that it was just an add-on drive rather than a standalone console.

Yes, I certainly did notice your edits to 64DD and Nintendo 64. I didn't take the time to try and work out exactly what you changed, but the end product certainly looks good.

I don't understand what you mean by "I've already made the overwhelming case of why the cartridge was the painfully obviously necessary choice over CDROM, and the super floppy disk is the ingenious complement". It sounds awfully POV, but I know that's not the way you edit, and it's definitely not what I'm seeing at 64DD or Nintendo 64 Game Pak.

Right now I'm working on going through the last few pages of the September 1996 issue of Next Generation (which is the reviews section). I have the October and November issues as well, and expect to find some 64DD info in at least one of those.--Martin IIIa (talk) 17:43, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

@Martin IIIa: Yeah that was the actual POV of a huge segment of the actual industry that I quoted and cited in those articles. :D Thanks so much for verifying that the prose doesn't sound like it's my POV. ;) I was just trying to tell the complete truth for once, past the cliched tropes of pop culture history. It's been extremely hard to find any specific account saying that industry members were so incredibly glad for the supposedly obvious necessity of the CD-ROM, except for Final Fantasy which I did also expand a bit, and even they are clearly stating that they were reluctantly forced onto the medium. When I originally got to them years ago, Nintendo 64, Nintendo 64 Game Pak, and especially the clunkily named Nintendo 64 programming characteristics were all of an overtly negative bias *against* the entire subject lol, when it comes to the storage and chip design strategies. Also E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600) for that matter lol. The way they were written, you'd think the Nintendo 64 was a commercial failure or was widely decried as being a technological failure of needless complexity that wasn't worth understanding, like the Atari Jaguar and Sega Saturn. And you'd think Nintendo was just the most incompetently and pathetically monopolistic company in the world. — Smuckola(talk) 22:39, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

All that recent work I did on Nintendo 64 and 64DD, which was then transplanted into Nintendo Space World and Rumble Pak, was about 10 hours solid until I couldn't see straight anymore lol. Here's us citation superfreaks while we're doing our thing: [1] — Smuckola(talk) 06:55, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

@Smuckola: I've seen quite a few mentions of developer dissatisfaction with the cartridge format. Granted, they're mostly individual cases, like a developer interview where the interviewer asked about the platforms they're making games for, and the answer includes something along the lines of "We're not making anything for the Nintendo 64 because cartridges are too costly, too risky, and/or don't have enough space for the games we're working on", but they're out there.

I keep meaning to mention, some time ago I read an interview with Trip Hawkins in which he accuses the Nintendo 64 / 64DD model of being "a Trojan horse". His theory was, Nintendo was only using the cartridge format because cartridge-based consoles are cheaper to manufacture, meaning they could more easily undercut the competition. Then, after the Nintendo 64 had been on the market just a few months, Nintendo would bring out the 64DD and from then on virtually all 64 software, both 1st party and 3rd party, would be for the 64DD. Thus, Nintendo would ultimately be charging more for their console than their competitors, while making it look to consumers like they were charging less. I didn't add this to any article because Hawkins, as the head of Nintendo's then-competitor the 3DO Company, is obviously biased, but his theory does fit with the known facts at the time (Nintendo was planning on launching the 64DD just a few months after the base system, Miyamoto and others were saying that Nintendo's software strategy revolves around the 64DD, and third party developers were reluctant to undertake the cost and risk of making cartridge games), so I'm wondering how many people believed it. If there were a lot who did, that might have even been a contributing factor to delaying the 64DD. Unlikely, but it's a thought.

Incidentally, does pinging work for you? It's never worked for me, or for a few others I've talked to.--Martin IIIa (talk) 17:19, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

@Martin IIIa: Hey buddy yeah pinging has always worked fine for me. This is the first I've heard of it not working.

See also: Help:Fixing failed pings

Yeah there was some kind of talk about Nintendo supposedly using overbearing practices by controlling the entire supply chain of the medium, which is only possible with a proprietary medium like cartridges. I don't have any evidence of that, but I do have Howard Lincoln's rebuttal of it. And beside that, it's an indisputable objective fact that their game design and price point objectives were only possible with cartridges whereas CD-ROM was garbage. And I've cited quotes in 1993 and 1994 in 64DD and probably Nintendo 64 Game Pak where they were officially *expecting* to eventually use optical discs pending the arrival of specific characteristics of CD-ROM (cheaper drives and 8x speed), as they did in the following generation right on schedule.

There's a lot of bad blood and resentment of the top dog. People have described Apple as a monopoly ... just over their own products! Just because they only allow the App Store for iOS and iOS can only use the App Store! Just like every other vendor naturally must. It's a feature, not a bug. It's sour grapes nonsense.

So maybe Nintendo coincidentally occasionally leaned upon the business characteristics of cartridges in an abusive way, but that's not the point. And maybe life was sometimes hard for some people because of cartridges, but that's called a tradeoff. CD-ROM was still hard for some. "Howard Lincoln said, "[Genyo Takeda, the Nintendo engineer working with Silicon Graphics to design Project Reality] and those guys felt very strongly that it was absolutely essential to have it on a cartridge in order to do the kind of things that we wanted to do with Super Mario."" And then you see how Nintendo moved Zelda 64 from disk to cartridge because Link couldn't even move fast enough even in the middle of the development period. Still, if we had some kind of very strong and very unlikely evidence or even a notable pattern of reasonable belief, that might be worth citing. If a lot of highly notable people said the same thing for the same obvious reason like "I won't use cartridges because X" then we can cite a number of individual cases, but we already cite general magazines making general statements like "lots of developers won't use cartridge because X".

I did read that Nintendo was capable of just selectively providing one type of cartridge to one developer while hurtfully withholding it from another, as in the case of Enix when they left Nintendo in favor of Sony PlayStation. They weren't given enough space and another company was, with a new type of cartridge. But we don't know exactly *why* Nintendo did that. We don't know if it was a callous or hurtful intent, or whether it was a shortage or what. We have no statement from Nintendo about that and it's not an obvious situation. I think we probably do have various details, like the prices and the spurious availability, and the fact that Nintendo mandated a high volume minimum order. There was one article somewhere talking about how Nintendo *always* required a client to drastically overbuy cartridge quantities, all or nothing, which was very risky for any smaller company. I never heard of anybody going out of business from it, which I would want to cite. I've found several sources on the prices of cartridges versus CD-ROMs, but they vary wildly and they don't name *their* sources. They just say something like "cartridges cost $20 each and CDs cost $2 each". I don't know how they know these things, or at what quantities, or whatever. I don't So I only cited it to show "whatever, dude, cartridges cost a lot more time and money than CD-ROM and stuff".

I think Nintendo was dependent upon 64DD because it was absolutely the right thing to do, as stated in the 64Dream interviews in 64DD. Miyamoto cannot tell a lie! :D But yeah the hardware was absolutely that unique, a truly disruptive technology even more than the controller and Rumble Pak, which became totally standard on all platforms thenceforth. Maybe there's some optimism bias at most after 1997 but still they had to totally replicate and transplant the 64DD's core features like RTC and rewritable storage onto some cartridges. If Trip Hawkins thinks the entire 64DD platform was a Trojan Horse, then that's just daft. That's cheap paranoia lol. And it's coming from a guy whose garbage product and business model were practically trolling the entire industry, with no hope for success. Nintendo's reputation and business plans dipped hard because of 64DD, and the device was fully optional for most games. I would want to cite him as a notable counterpoint, but that's just such a stupid idea. — Smuckola(talk) 20:24, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

"I'd pay two hundred bucks for a nice pepperoni cheesecake right now." -- Luigi, on Super Mario Super Show (seen on youtube) — Smuckola(talk) 22:34, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Google apparently doesn't yield anything about "trip hawkins 64DD" :) Okay so yeah I do wish there was a mass market of cloned consoles like 3DO or Pippin, but not with hardware that sucks that bad, and the CD-ROM drive is such a gimmicky albatross around its neck, yuck. At least it has a big slow expensive drive to play its soundtrack from because it can't spare any processing power to render it. :/ I guess that niche is filled now by Android-powered system-on-a-chips like Amazon Fire TV Stick and Raspberry Pi lol. — Smuckola(talk) 08:18, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

@Smuckola: The CD-ROM drives on both the 3DO and the Pippin are actually fine; the 3DO drive is a double-speed and the Bandai Pippin is actually 4x speed. It was the Neo Geo CD which had the lousy drive. (And the Sega CD, too, but in fairness at the time the Sega CD was introduced a single-speed drive was still respectable.) I wouldn't call it "expensive", either, because the Panasonic and Goldstar 3DOs were both down to $199 by the end of 1995, so essentially it had price parity with the N64.

It's not surprising that you haven't heard about anyone going out of business from Nintendo's cartridge practices, when you think about it. If a company went under because Nintendo made them buy more cartridges than they could sell, then the immediate cause of the company going out of business would still be that their game didn't sell well enough, and that's probably what the media would report as the cause. And if a company went under because they couldn't afford to buy lots of cartridges from Nintendo and instead put their game out on a console with a smaller installed base, then the connection would have been even less direct.--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:33, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

@Martin IIIa: Yeah but. They're only "fine" for the standards of those faux-3D systems with their junk games. :) They were at $199, where the CD drive is still about half of the cost, with almost nothing left for actual performance. Nintendo and Factor 5 said they'd need at least 8x to even start talking about Nintendo 64 performance, but CD drives wouldn't be at that level until about 1998. And is still a different set of performance tradeoffs versus the cartridge. You couldn't do your random-access streaming of assets from CD-ROM to RAM like Factor 5 did with a cartridge, because RAM size is still always the main limit. BTW I just tweaked back your recent contributions, which were not tidbids lol. I avoid parentheses everywhere possible though. And I recently expanded the development of Super Mario Bros. and the development philosophy of Shigeru Miyamoto with a really good source. Oh man we'd be in the dark ages without IGN. See also the awesome photo I shot at Crystal Pepsi lol. — Smuckola(talk) 02:02, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

@Smuckola: "Junk games"? Sez you. :) The 3DO's performance is great. The launch game, Crash 'n' Burn, is polygonal and not only looks better than anything else on consoles at the time, but better than anything that ever appeared on the 3DO's three contemporaries: the Jaguar, 32X, and Amiga CD32. Slayer, The Need for Speed, and Samurai Shodown are some other good demonstrations of what the 3DO could do. Obviously it doesn't hold up to later consoles of the generation, but that's true of all such mid-generation consoles; even the much-vaunted Dreamcast library looks undeniably second-rate compared to what the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox could do.

I wouldn't avoid parentheses; the literacy level of the general populace is not great, but there are few if any people who don't understand parentheses. By the way, that Next Generation article I added to the Nintendo 64 article a couple days ago also has another 64DD theory which I'm doubtful I can use, since the source chose to remain anonymous: "The DD64 is mainly necessary because Nintendo was let down by technology. It gambled in the design stages that the slow, high-density ROM needed for carts would be cheap enough by the time it launched. For various reasons the market didn't go as well as expected." The 64DD being essentially a big "Whoops, looks like cartridges aren't going to be terribly viable this generation" would explain why it took a while after the initial announcement for Nintendo to produce specs, even if it's a bit out-of-character for Nintendo to produce a platform as an emergency response. So that's something to keep an eye out for confirmation of.--Martin IIIa (talk) 15:35, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

@Martin IIIa: Ahoy ahoy. Okay back when you wrote that message, I went and watched a gameplay video of your favorite 3DO games as you said, and yeah they're groaners alright. Wow. lol.  :) You mentioned Jaguar, 32X, and Amiga CD32 which are all super clunkers too. Wow you know how to pick em! Somehow you forgot that the SNES is a contemporary too, so that's what you're looking for with the games that don't suck. ;) Except for the Virtual Boy, Nintendo doesn't fall for that tweener tech. :)

I saw that you recently edited Tom Kalinske and I thought I'd point out that I am pretty sure that I kinda co-edited it with Tom a while back, by pure weird coincidence. Check the history down a bit where I said Tom has been editing it. lol. That's a California IP address with a lot of personally specific content. He recently had a stroke but I guess he's ok. I would like to contact him sometime but I never have.

When I mentioned my aversion to parentheses, I was talking mostly about tidbitting -- adding things suddenly as if they're out of place. Because either it's included or it isn't. And some people do that with entire sentences. But also I use commas unless parentheses are absolutely necessary. :)

Let me know if you come to IRC, irc.freenode.net #wikipedia-en coz I'm always there.

I would like to see a full copy of that article you mentioned about the DD64 quote. I referred to it as "DD64" in my own mind ALL THE TIME for the first ENTIRE YEAR of my modern Wikipedia research on the subject, even though all the sources call it 64DD (which it *is*, duh), because that's what people had called it in the 90s! We didn't know what the heck it was gonna be! — Smuckola(talk) 16:13, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

@Smuckola:No no, apart from Slayer those aren't my favorite 3DO games. In fact, I haven't even played The Need for Speed or Samurai Shodown. We were talking hardware, so I brought up some of the games that demonstrate the hardware. My favorite 3DO games actually include Flashback and Iron Angel of the Apocalypse, which are pretty much the last games I'd bring up to establish the system's upper limits. As for the consoles, again, talking hardware, so by "contemporaries" I meant consoles that launched around the same time. The best thing the SNES had in the way of polygons, Star Fox, required a special chip and is still left in the dust by Crash 'n' Burn, but that's not a big accomplishment for the 3DO; the SNES technology is three years older. So the Jaguar, 32X, Amiga CD32, and maybe the PC-FX are the only fair ones to compare it to.

Yeah, I did notice Kalinske on there. It's funny the people you can bump into on Wikipedia. Some months ago I had a little chat on here with a former employee of American Laser Games. He shared some info with me about their unfinished PlayStation game Shining Sword. Obviously we can't add any of it to WP, but it was interesting stuff.

Thanks for the IRC invite. I'll probably head on over there as soon as I figure out how IRC works.

The article's all about contemporary developments in memory technology. Here's a scan of the only page (I think) which talks about the 64DD.--Martin IIIa (talk) 21:29, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

The Great Videogame Swindle?

Hey, you just added a Next Generation source to a few articles, but only the ref itself- what does the actual article say that you are citing? Can you provide links/scans/photos? --PresN 01:45, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

@PresN: Yeah, but it's kind of a long article (15 pages to be exact) and I've got stuff to do... Is there any particular part you wanted a scan of?--Martin IIIa (talk) 01:51, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Just occurred to me that there's an alternative. The article named in the heading is actually just an abridged version of the first four chapters of Steven L. Kent's book Electronic Nation. So if you've seen that book, you've essentially seen this article.--Martin IIIa (talk) 02:26, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, don't have access to that book either, though I'll keep my eye out for it. I guess I'm just curious because you added the reference to here and here, but added no text, and I'm wondering what exactly it was you were citing; if it's a summary of the start of Kent's book, I found a website with chapter 2 from that book, and that chapter seems to cover the period of those two articles; that said, there's nothing about those sentences in particular that seemed especially linked to it as opposed to any other sentence, so I really just wanted to know if it said anything unique. If not, then don't worry about it, I guess. --PresN 18:49, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

@PresN: Here are the scans of the relevant pages for the two edits you linked to above: [2] [3] Hope they're of use.--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:17, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! --PresN 16:53, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

• Hi Martin, similarly, could you please share a scan of "NG Alphas: Killer Instinct Gold". Next Generation. No. 23. Imagine Media. November 1996. p. 130.? czar 18:23, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

@Czar: Sure. Here: [4] --Martin IIIa (talk) 21:15, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Dreamcast-"only"

This user is pushing the whole "Dreamcast-only" category thing again. I've reverted them again, but I'm pretty much done with this. Don't have the patience right now. --Jtalledo (talk) 11:20, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

@Jtalledo: - Thanks for the heads up. The bright side is we can now point to the consensus at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Archive 132, in case you'd forgotten. Sorry I didn't contribute to that discussion thread, by the way; I'd been neglecting to visit the project talk page for a while, so I didn't see it until after it was archived.--Martin IIIa (talk) 15:19, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

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The Video Game Critic

What makes you say The Video Game Critic isn't a reliable source? Hirameki (talk) 15:51, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Hirameki Are you sure you don't have me confused with someone else? I haven't made any Video Game Critic-related edits in a long while. Anyway, to answer your question, five or six years ago I added a Video Game Critic citation to an article and was reverted by a more experienced editor (can't remember who) who said VGC is unreliable because it's a one-man operation with no editorial oversight. WikiProject Video Games hasn't yet made a firm consensus about VGC, but the discussions thus far (which are conveniently linked at Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Sources) have been leaning towards VGC being unreliable, and the aforementioned editor's reasoning made sense to me.--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:08, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

And olive branch & holiday wishes!

Martin IIIa, please accept these holiday wishes :) I've caused this year to end on a chord of disappointment for many, but I hope that despite my mistakes and the differences in opinion and perspectives, and regardless of what the outcome is or in what capacity I can still contribute in the coming year, we can continue working together directly or indirectly on this encyclopedic project, whose ideals are surely carried by both of our hearts. I'm hoping I have not fallen in your esteem to the level where "no hard feelings" can no longer ring true, because I highly respect you and your dedication to Wikipedia, and I sincerely wish you and your loved ones all the best for 2018. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 03:59, 21 December 2017 (UTC), humbled but optimistic about the upcoming year of renewal and growth!

Re:British Open Championship Golf

Many thanks! I remember that article being a struggle to source, so I'm glad it turned out in the end. And thanks again for all your hard work on sourcing VG articles—it's always great to see your additions pop up on my watchlist. Have a good 2018! JimmyBlackwing (talk) 00:02, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Finding sources for vintage video games

Hi there, I just responded to your deletion nomination for Cosmo Gang the Video.

When searching for sources in the future, I've found this guide to be super useful for finding references to vintage games that might not have a large internet presence. If you're not returning any search results for an older title, it might be worth it to sift through the Internet Archive for a couple minutes; that's how I found the sources I listed in my response. Thanks for bringing this article to my attention! FlotillaFlotsam (talk) 06:32, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

@FlotillaFlotsam: Thanks! I actually discovered the Internet Archive a few months ago, but I'd been finding only minimal results for even high-profile English language releases, so I assumed I wouldn't find anything substantial on a Japan-only puzzle game like Cosmo Gang the Video. That guide is new to me, though, and should be handy. Thank you for taking the time to do the research on the game.--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:14, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Art of Fighting games

Do you think it's possible to make separate articles for each of the three Art of Fighting games? Here I found some interviews: 1. AOF1 2. AOF2 3. In general Cheers.Tintor2 (talk) 16:01, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

@Tintor2: I'm not sure. I haven't stumbled across as many sources on the games as I expected. I'm still a bit incredulous that GamePro never reviewed Art of Fighting 3; I just now checked the issues in my collection to make sure I didn't overlook something, but all they have is a two-sentence blurb about the game's appearance at an arcade game expo. I haven't even looked into publications from the time of the original Art of Fighting's release. Looking on archive.org, it seems it got some coverage in EGM and DieHard GameFan at least.--Martin IIIa (talk) 18:52, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Images for characters' infoboxes

I was curious since you have been editing video game articles for a long time, but what do you think it's the best use of image for characters' infoboxes? Use the most famous like Kyo Kusanagi's high school student or the latest ones like Kazuya Mishima's suit? I'm asking since I think Lars Alexandersson might be kind of pushing it with three images. Cheers.Tintor2 (talk) 20:00, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

@Tintor2: Honestly, I have no idea. I've done very little editing on character articles and absolutely none on their infobox images.--Martin IIIa (talk) 20:11, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

User:Govvy/NFL Football (1992 video game)

Hiya, I was working on NFL Football game that was released on the Atari Lynx in 1992 in my sandbox, I noticed you added a load of reception stuff to Lynx games and wondered if there was any for the NFL Football to help me on the article, cheers. Govvy (talk) 10:50, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

@Govvy: Actually, all I had was an article in STart, and that article was published long before NFL Football came out. The Retromags database says NFL Football was reviewed in the November 1992 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, though.--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:11, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

@Martin IIIa: So what's the article in STart about then? lol. Is it just preannouncing the game? @Govvy:, I saw your post here so I gave a shot but I couldn't find anything else via google so I copy edited it a bit since it's important to you lol. The game sounds pretty rancid and buggy so I would be surprised if any more coverage exists in print. — Smuckola(talk) 19:45, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

@Smuckola: No, the article in STart is about other Lynx games. By the way, there's no need to ping people on their own personal talk page. :) --Martin IIIa

@Martin IIIa: ok but there's a need to manually format everything since we are forced to abuse a wiki into emulating a forum lol, such as indicating who among multiple people I am addressing :) — Smuckola(talk) 00:17, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

(talk) 20:13, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Do you have a link to that for me? Cheers, Govvy (talk) 16:23, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

@Govvy: Yeah, here you go.--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:28, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

STart magazine

On all of the reviews you added for the Lynx games, did they not offer any ratings? Scores out of 10 or 100? Govvy (talk) 19:30, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

@Govvy: Yeah, they weren't rated. It was a special feature on Lynx games, so it's possible STart does give ratings on their other reviews.--Martin IIIa (talk) 19:41, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Okay, no problem, just wondered about that, cheers. Govvy (talk) 19:45, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

In regards to contemporary Fight for Life reviews

@Martin Illa: Hi! I saw your edit in regards to reviews of Fight for Life and you said you were searching for reviews from back in the day. Fortunately i've found 4-6 in regards to the title + which magazine said the TV comparasion against Tekken. Give me 1-2 days and i'll post them. Thanks and have a nice day! Oh and i've also found some reviews for Kasumi Ninja and Ultra Vortek from back in the day as well! KGRAMR (talk) 19:16, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

@KGRAMR: Thanks! I was actually going to add the Next Generation review myself - it's the one contemporary review that I was able to find - but computer troubles delayed me. I'll put in the detailed info now.--Martin IIIa (talk) 15:42, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

@Martin Illa: You're welcome! I also plan to do the same thing with other Atari Jaguar games such as Super Burnout. Oh I forgot something! Here's link to old magazines containing info in regards to Fight For Life:

• https://archive.org/details/NextGeneration40Apr1998
• https://archive.org/details/Gamefan_Vol_3_Issue_06
• https://archive.org/details/Gamefan_Vol_4_Issue_07
• http://oldgamemags.ukprintarchive.com/Multi-format%20Publications/Edge/Edge-015.pdf/
• http://www.stformat.com/stf85/index.html
• http://www.abandonware-magazines.org/affiche_mag.php?mag=51&num=7825&album=oui

I hope it helps a lot! - KGRAMR (talk) 16:59, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

In regards to Atari Jaguar reviews

@Martin Illa: Hi, it's me again! Hey if you want help in searching reviews and review scores for Atari Jaguar games for their articles then feel free to talk to me and say "Hey KGRAMR, I need your help in searching for Atari Jaguar reviews". I can help as much as i can for the reviews you're looking for. List me the ones you need at the moment right now and i'll give you links to them :-) KGRAMR (talk) 16:09, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

@KGRAMR: I'm actually not focusing on Jaguar content for the most part right now; I've been going through my magazine chronologically, and right now I'm up to early 1997. (As you can imagine, after March 1996, Jaguar coverage quickly dribbled down to the occasional letter from a reader who didn't yet realize the console had been discontinued.) However, one thing that's bugging me on the Checkered Flag (video game) article is the fate of the unreleased sequel. The screenshots in the magazine I've cited there look an awful lot like World Tour Racing, but I haven't yet come across a source which establishes that the game which was first announced as Checkered Flag 2 and later renamed Redline Racing eventually became World Tour Racing. It would be great if you had a good source for that, but just your personal confirmation of whether or not the games are the same would make me feel a little better, since you're clearly a Jaguar enthusiast.--Martin IIIa (talk) 00:43, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

@Martin Illa: World Tour Racing and Checkered Flag are completely separate games developed by 2 entirely different devs. While Checkered Flag was developed by Rebellion Developments, World Tour Racing was done by Teque London. Redline Racing was one of the early names given to Checkered Flag (and the Checkered Flag 2 name was given by some magazines to denote that it was sort of a sequel to the original on the Lynx). On the June 1994 issue of GameFan magazine, Checkered Flag was previewed under the name Redline Racing. World Tour Racing's earlier name was Teque's F1 Race IIRC and was shown at WCES 1995. Hope that helps. KGRAMR (talk) 03:15, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

@KGRAMR: Yeah, that is indeed most illuminating. It also checks out with the aforementioned article; I don't know why I didn't realize before that since the article was published over half a year before their review of Checkered Flag, it couldn't possibly have been discussing a sequel to the Jaguar game. I'll go fix that now. Many thanks!--Martin IIIa (talk) 20:54, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

@Martin Illa: You're welcome as always! KGRAMR (talk) 23:20, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

@Martin Illa: Hey man, i hope you're doing well! Look sorry if i'm bothering you right now and i know you're not focused at the moment on the Atari Jaguar, on top of the problems you're having with your computer but can you help me in expanding the reception section of these games for the system when you can? They're Cybermorph and Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy. I've added pretty much all of the contemporary reviews that i could find about those two games. Thanks and have a good day buddy! KGRAMR (talk) 02:37, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

@KGRAMR: The problems with my computer have been cleared up, actually. Some good finds on those reviews. I'll definitely get to work on Cybermorph soon, likely tomorrow, as I've always been curious about the contemporary reception for that game.--Martin IIIa (talk) 02:29, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

@Martin Illa: Awesome! It's also good to know you managed to resolve the issues you had with your PC :) BTW, i've managed to find almost all the reviews from back in the day for Iron Soldier :D Oh and let me know if you want to see contemporary reviews for Checkered Flag on the Jaguar. Now that i think about it, that version should have it's own article knowing that it's a completely different game from the Lynx version ;) Oh, speaking of that, Blue Lightning should be splitted into two different articles, as the're completely different games as well! KGRAMR (talk) 00:44, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

@KGRAMR: Yeah, I couldn't find many contemporary reviews of Checkered Flag when I looked, which surprised me since it was such an important title for the Jaguar. I probably won't have time to do any more serious editing on that article within the next few days, but I'll get to it eventually (unless you or someone else does it first, natch!). I agree, the Jaguar and Lynx Checkered Flags should probably have separate articles.--Martin IIIa (talk) 02:17, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

@Martin Illa: Pretty much yeah! I've been very lucky in finding stuff in regards to the Atari Jaguar in old magazine (especially GameFan, since pretty much all the issue of the magazine are now available on archive.org for now by the way :)) and even reviews for titles that would not be released until the 2000s such as Rebellion's Skyhammer. I like doing this thing of finding old reviews for video games a lot actually! KGRAMR (talk) 02:26, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

@Martin Illa: Hey man! I hope you're free 'cause I found almost every single contemporary review of Iron Soldier. So, if you're curious to see how people received, IMO, one of the best 3D games on the system then feel free to check them out!. Oh and i've also found out 2-3 contemporary reviews for Iron Soldier 2 that i plan to add as well :D KGRAMR (talk) 22:35, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

@KGRAMR: Hey, sorry for the late reply! As you may have noticed from my contributions page, I've been on a bit of a wikibreak though I've occasionally done some light editing. That doesn't excuse my not responding to your post, but that's why I haven't gotten around to Iron Soldier yet. I have a few things I want to finish up first, but I do plan to help with the reception section there, assuming someone hasn't already beaten me to the punch.--Martin IIIa (talk) 03:33, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

@Martin IIIa: I was wondering what happened to you but good to know you're doing well! Take your time buddy. Do The Math (talk) 03:55, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

@Martin IIIa: Hi! I hope you're doing OK pal! So, i'll start doing Checkered Flag's own article about the Atari Jaguar game. Once its done, i'll tell you to help me with the reception section of the game. Do The Math (talk) 13:18, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

@KGRAMR: Sounds good. Hope that my work on Iron Soldier was of help.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:20, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

@Martin IIIa: OK so, while not completely finished, I've managed to get the hardest part of Jaguar Checkered Flag done: The reviews. Now, you can write what critics thought of the game back then. If you can also help me with Breakout 2000 as well, then i would be really grateful :) Do The Math (talk) 02:36, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Next Generation

Hi there! I have been working on the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/Next Generation Magazine. The page has a lot more redlinks than I expected, although most of it is just because the page is probably overdue on maintenance. A lot of the redlinks had actual articles but were pointing at non-existent titles so I either made reasonable redirects or fixed the link on the reference page, and some were just typos, a few had been deleted, and some of the blue links were due to pointing at the wrong article or at disambiguation pages so I fixed those links as well. I actually created articles for all of the remaining redlinks, and I restored one of the deleted articles - Burning Soldier which had no sources on the article 10 years ago, but I found a few... the article needs massive cleanup though. I did not add the NG reviews to most of the articles though, but hopefully fixing up the links on the page will inspire someone to go through them. :) I have finished the issues #1 and #2 so far, and I started on issue #3. BOZ (talk) 03:30, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

@BOZ: Wow, Burning Soldier! I really dig that game and was coincidentally just making a fresh attempt at completing it. And wow, is that article ever in bad shape! If that's the standard for articles on 1990s games then I guess I might as well put my draft for Three Dirty Dwarves into the main space just as it is. I don't have most of my editing resources with me now, so both that and fixing up Burning Soldier will have to wait, but I'll be back in a couple days.Martin IIIa (talk) 18:43, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

No problem, and no rush!  :) BOZ (talk) 19:30, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Good work - at least Burning Soldier is better now than it was. :) I have started (or restored) a number of other articles on games from the era using reviews from the (so far) first three issues of Next Generation as starting points - including Battlecorps, Doctor Hauzer, Shadow: War of Succession, Armored Fist, Family Feud, Motocross Championship, Zephyr, NHL All-Star Hockey '95, PGA Tour Golf III, The Shadow, and more! In cases where I found the games on pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/GameFan or Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/Computer Gaming World, I made notes of this below the reception section, since I do not have access to the reviews myself. BOZ (talk) 04:10, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Credits and personnel

As I stated on the article, please take your concern about the heading to either the article talk page, or up at WikiProject Songs per WP:BRD because when your change(s) have been disagreed with, it is not best to reinstate them or edit war. If your concern is that I didn't cite a content guideline, that doesn't matter—it's preceedent. Most song articles use "credits and personnel" as the heading (hence MOS:ALBUM does not apply in this instance, as that is the standard for albums), and I don't see why we should differentiate from those. If your concern is over that heading, then it affects more than just this article. Thanks. Ss112 09:04, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

You're wound way too tight. Not every editing conflict needs to be addressed on a talk page after the first revert. Your argument about precedent is completely wrong; Wikipedia policy is quite explicit that not every article needs to use identical section headings. Also, I've been editing song articles for many years and can't recall any heading other than "personnel" being used outside this article. Saying that album and song articles should use different headings for the same thing is more than a bit counterintuitive. But you obviously intend to make this petty issue many times more trouble than it's worth, so I'm dropping it.--Martin IIIa (talk) 14:48, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

Then perhaps you need to look at more song articles, because as I said, plenty do. I've been editing song articles for many years too (and dare I say—though not a competition—probably more than you because I edit almost exclusively within music), and it's far more common on modern song articles to incorporate "Credits" into the heading. Just looking at featured song articles of a comparable caliber at WP:Featured articles provides: 4 Minutes, Hey Baby (No Doubt song), Diamonds (Rihanna song), Déjà Vu (Beyoncé song), Cry Me a River (Justin Timberlake song)... though, sure, you could probably find examples that use just "personnel" too, mostly for older songs. I didn't add it to this article, either, I just don't see why we need to alter it for this. Other Spice Girls song articles use the same heading. Finally, I didn't say this was based in policy; I said it's based on precedent. Why we'd be following an album guideline for songs I don't know. There are other specificities relating to albums we don't replicate on song articles. Ss112 23:22, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

You don't seem to understand. When I said "I'm dropping it", I meant I'm dropping it. Even on Wikipedia I have much better things to do with my time then debate whether or not an article should say "Personnel" or "Credits and personnel".--Martin IIIa (talk) 01:56, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

User:Govvy/Sandbox

Hiya Martin, I have a list of Atari Lynx games in my sandbox I started on, I couldn't find a lot of the web to help them get to a good enough GNG level. I was wondering if you could have a look through them, edit them if you so wish. I was wondering if you know of any printed sources where there might be additional reviews for them. Cheers. Govvy (talk) 14:07, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

@Govvy: To be honest I haven't had a lot of luck finding sources for Lynx games, even though I'm sure they must be out there. But, I'll take a look at those when I get a moment.--Martin IIIa (talk) 03:39, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Double redirects

A bot automatically repairs these so you don't need to do them manually (unless you so choose) (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 00:43, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

@Czar: Yeah, thanks, but I do know. I just find it oddly satisfying to do them myself, and usually in the process I find a few other problems with the links that need fixing.--Martin IIIa (talk) 01:14, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Hope you're using AWB then, for your own sake! ;) czar 01:22, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

@Czar: I don't have AWB. You can only register for it if you have a specific use in mind, and on the few occasions when such a use has come up, I've never felt it worthwhile to delay the intended edits while I request registration, wait for admin approval, download the software, figure out how it works, etc. In this particular case, I suspect AWB wouldn't be any faster anyway, since you still need to enter in the names of the articles.--Martin IIIa (talk) 02:21, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Haven't touched it in a bit, but I believe you can ingest all links from a page (say a list before it was reverted), then set to skip all articles that aren't the redirects you want, then auto-replace the text and simply prompt for your approval. It's just automation for the rote stuff. I'd wager that it's worth pursuing for next time, but depends on the length of the task czar 02:30, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Reviews and scores

From a percentage score perspective, how do you consider a positive, mixed, or negative review? 172.250.44.165 (talk) 13:18, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

You can't assess reviews as positive, mixed, or negative based on their score. Different publications use different ratings scales, and even when the scales are the same, 70% in one publication doesn't always mean the same thing as 70% from another publication. Plus, reviewers don't always pick scores that accurately reflect their review. I've seen scores as low as 5.5/10 accompanying a review that had no complaints and lots of praise, and scores as high as 90% where the reviewer had nothing but bad things to say about the game. And then you have cases like Allgame, where the score was determined by a different critic than the one who wrote the review.--Martin IIIa (talk) 14:25, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Foreign language sources:

I was reading your comment on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Saturn Bomberman Fight!!, and you stated:

Foreign language sources are acceptable when no English alternative exists, but if Japanese sources are the only ones available then the subject clearly does not meet notability requirements for the English Wikipedia.

This is mis-reading the guidelines. WP:NOENG. The rules as stated now say that ENG should be preferred only if there's equal sources. However, for a topic about something from another country, it's very likely English language sources won't exist or be lacking. In that case, any foreign language source is valid. For gaming, famitsu, Dengekionline, 4gamer, Game Watch, are all valid sites. Japanese gaming magazines and books are valid too. It's entirely possible for an article to be FA status while using 100% foreign language sources.

For JP only games from the 80's and 90's, the majority of the coverage is going to be Japanese magazines and books. It really should be no shock that they'd be covered more by JP sources than English language. Saturn Bomberman Fight would have been previewed and reviewed by all the major gaming mags. Bomberman artbooks would also likely cover the game. There are few online archives of these gaming mags, and only the most notable of Japanese series gets English language artbooks released in the West. Google Books and Archive.org help online searches for print sources, but they're incomplete. Archive.org tends to feature European and American magazines typically. So it's entirely possible that if all the sources for Saturn Bomberman Fight were to be found, it could be brought to GA or FA status, while at the same time it appears to fail GNG because english language online sources can't be found.

For Majyūō, it got a re-release in may, which means it was covered by 4gamer, and Game Watch. The JP Wiki cites a book called "Nostaliga: Super Famicom Perfect Guide". All of these are valid sources. There's likely way more print sources, and probably some English ones too. Harizotoh9 (talk) 05:33, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

WP:NOENG has to do with verifiability, not notability. You're arguing on the assumption that a subject does not need to be notable to warrant an article on Wikipedia, only verifiable; this is not the case. See WP:Notability. Why are you digging up AfD discussions from over two years ago, anyway?--Martin IIIa (talk) 12:57, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

And WP:Notability specifically says: "Sources do not have to be available online or written in English." You seem to be arguing from the assumption that notability can only be established via English language sources, but that's not what WP policy says. Notability can be established by written and non-English sources. WP English just happens to be presented in the English language, it's not meant to cover specific topics only covered in the English language. Ideally, every single language version of WP would have the exact same amount of articles.

Now, I'm mentioning this because I expanded Majyūō, using JP language sources as a basis before even touching the English sources. I noticed that you recently listed the article for AFD. Then I noticed you've done this for several other games too. For Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mobile Suit Gundam (1993 fighting game), you seem to imply that a game not being released outside of Japan is a reason it shouldn't get an article. Which, is not based on WP policy.

The broader issue is that pretty much all officially licensed games will go through the preview-review cycle. For this reason, pretty much all the games are notable. However, if they are games from the 80's and 90's, most of the coverage is going to be print magazines and these are difficult to access decades later. And if it's Japanese only, it's going to be in print Japanese magazines, which is even more difficult. Because of that, it's hard to establish notability online for these older JP only games. If I were to have 100% access to all the JP language sources for these games, they could be brought to GA or FA status quit easily. But because these sources are hard to access, the notability of these games will be brought into question, and some will be deleted.

In these debates over notability, typically a user will do an online search, turn up nothing, and then declare the subject not notable. However, all they've done is seen that there doesn't seem to be any English language online sources. The world is bigger than what simply is written about online however. Print and foreign language sources are valid sources for verifiability and notabilty, but they're difficult to find. Sources like Google books, and archive.org make it easier to search, but they still tend to favor English language sources. JP online sources typically only start to cover games from 2000 onwards, meaning their coverage of material from before is typically printed text only.

For Majyūō, there are several JP language sources, and the JP wiki lists "Nostalgia Super Famicom Perfect Guide", which are all valid sources for both notability and venerability, and there's likely way more books and magazines not listed. In addition, Majyuo was featured recently in Game Center CX episode. I've never seen it cited as a source or for venerability, but I think a case could be made. In addition to this, there's several English language sources like destructoid, HG101, etc. These aren't the best quality wise, but it's more than enough to start articles and establish notability. Harizotoh9 (talk) 09:41, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

"Ideally, every single language version of WP would have the exact same amount of articles." - Nope. See WP:OTHERLANGS. (This claim also defies common sense, since under that policy 99% of all Wikipedia articles would be written in a language that no one interested in that article is going to read. Talk about a waste of editors' time...) Anyway, a personal talk page is not a worthwhile place to discuss this, since even if we came to agreement, the two of us alone do not dictate WP policy on notability. Further posts on this subject will go unread.--Martin IIIa (talk) 19:33, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Metal Warriors

In 2014 you changed the release date from April to Feb in this edit. The original date was correct. The Nintendo release date pdf confirms it. I changed it back. Harizotoh9 (talk) 23:23, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

And you're telling me this because...?--Martin IIIa (talk) 19:41, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Useful information to consider in the future. Gamefaqs isn't the best source (and should be phased out entirely), but the release info is typically accurate. Famitsu is a good source for JP release data, and that pdf is a good source for American release dates. Harizotoh9 (talk) 05:00, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Restored articles

• Saturn Bomberman Fight!!
• Lennus II
• Makeruna! Makendō 2: Kimero Youkai Souri

Restored article. One online review, and many print previews and reviews found. Several other sources not used listed on the talk page. Harizotoh9 (talk) 15:38, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Also restored Lennus II. Harizotoh9 (talk) 01:24, 18 August 2018 (UTC)]

Restored Makeruna! Makendō 2: Kimero Youkai Souri too. Several JP sources, as well as several English web sources since it was released on JP Imports. Please check with the RS Search Engine before redirecting articles. Amusingly, the JP exclusive seems to have more English online coverage than the original. Harizotoh9 (talk) 18:25, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

TRST

re: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Archive 139#TRST, I'd be interested in the source that you mentioned. From what I've gathered, TRST is affiliated with the NPD Group so that would be a good place to cover the topic in summary. czar 09:54, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

@Czar: It's the April 1997 issue of Next Generation, page 19. Here a link.--Martin IIIa (talk) 20:42, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for your sales info

FYI, I saw your comment at the CDI talk page. I just wanted to let you know that you are not "under fire" for your sales info at Gex. That whole situation is all because of a very difficult editor making a lot of (invalid) complaints across a number of articles. I've just been making discussions for them because consensus never sides with him, so its an easy fix to his disputes. But yes, anyways, don't be discouraged by that. Your contribution there was fine, and the only real consensus for change was merely to represent your info in prose rather than primarily in your note. Just didn't want you to feel discouraged about that one. Thanks. Sergecross73 msg me 19:27, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

@Sergecross73: Oh, I wasn't complaining about changes to my edits being proposed, just the fact that on each of those talk pages an individual editor wanted to straight up get rid of one of the sources. In retrospect "under fire" may have been too strong a term for the situation, so sorry about that. Would you recommend I edit my post to delete or cross out that sentence?--Martin IIIa (talk) 22:40, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

No no, it’s fine, I just meant that you shouldn’t feel bad about it because the complaint against your Gex info was invalid and by a disruptive editor, that’s all. I just didn’t want you to be discouraged- you do good work, presenting old hard copy sources that would be largely locked away from most otherwise. I wouldn’t want all this to stop that. Sergecross73 msg me 00:13, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

@Sergecross73: Thanks, man.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:33, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

No problem. And I dont know if you noticed, but both the user and the IP who were complaining about your info were both blocked 2 days ago, for being socks of a past disruptive editor (that I had my suspicions of too.) So let me know if you find any newer accounts/IPs that are irrationally against the info/sales you provide. It’s possible it’s that same guy socking again. Sergecross73 msg me 15:23, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Useful information in regards to ActRaiser on the Sega Saturn

Hi! I hope you're doing well man! I bet you haven't seen this information in regards to an ActRaiser game that was being created for the Sega Saturn years ago: - https://archive.org/details/Gamefan_Vol_4_Issue_11/page/n163 - https://archive.org/details/Gamefan_Vol_5_Issue_01/page/n123 I hope it helps a lot! Have a good day.Do The Math (talk) 15:51, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

@KGRAMR: Yeah, I had no idea about any of this! I'd read a few tidbits about Solo Crisis on fan sites, but its originally being designed as an ActRaiser game is completely new to me. Thanks for the info! I will get to editing it into the relevant articles soon.--Martin IIIa (talk) 02:51, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

The King of Fighters '99

Hello, I've been recently expanding The King of Fighters '99 due to its reviews on the Switch. By any chance do you have reviews of its Neo Geo release? The reception is lacking that. Also, by any chance did you find anything to expand the development section? Happy editing.Tintor2 (talk) 15:56, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

@Tintor2: Unfortunately, all my issues of GamePro from February 1999 onwards are at my other house right now. A similar situation applies to my Official Sega Dreamcast Magazine collection; I've got almost the complete run, so I'm sure there must be some KOF 99 coverage in there, but I don't have it at hand. And our friend JimmyBlackwing's helpful Next Generation index shows no coverage of the game. So, all I can do right now is see if I can dig anything out of EGM.--Martin IIIa (talk) 19:00, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

I see. I'll ask in the project to see.Tintor2 (talk) 19:43, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

I've been working in other articles since the last time we talked. By any chance, do you have reviews about the Neo Geo release of '97? It's the one lacking reviews. I also plan to do something for 2002 and 2003 but I wanted to give the oldest KOF priority.Tintor2 (talk) 16:57, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

@Tintor2: Sadly, I'm finding that Neo Geo coverage in general really dropped off in 1997, at least in the gaming magazines I'm looking at. Maybe because of the unveiling of the Neo Geo 64? I had a look through my magazines from around KOF 97's listed release date, and couldn't find even one review. However, there is an issue of EGM from that period which I'm missing, and every now and then a magazine gives a game a very belated review, so I'm not giving up just yet.--Martin IIIa (talk) 04:20, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

No prob. By the way, a fellow user reorganized the '99 article and I don't know if it's correct or not. What do you think?Tintor2 (talk) 22:05, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

More in regards to Telegames and the Jaguar

Hey man! I hope you're doing well :) Look, I found something that may pick your interest :D https://archive.org/details/Ultra_Game_Players_Issue_74_January_1997/page/n21 That's all for now! Have a good day ;) Roberth Martinez (talk) 16:46, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Wachenröder

Restored article. 8-9 previews or reviews found so far. This page lists several other JP magazine sources. More than enough for a start. Harizotoh9 (talk) 18:54, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Super Tempo

Restored article. Several magazine previews and reviews found in European and American magazines. A few JP reviews as well. Harizotoh9 (talk) 02:27, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Multiplayer

This. What is your problem? I was just curious. It is definitely not under WP:BROKEN at this instance though previously it was. You maybe experienced but this edit was totally nonsensical. Harsh Rathod Poke me! 11:34, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

@Harshrathod50: Still making NOTBROKEN edits to multiplayer redirect, are you? This talk message and the inability to see how it's the same thing you've already been warned for doesn't instill in me confidence that you'll re-earn your AWB access. The battleground mentality you have with every user who challenges your edits has to stop. -- ferret (talk) 15:53, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Harshrathod50, I'm frankly baffled that you would acknowledge multiple talk page posts about WP:NOTBROKEN, write an edit summary like this one, and then try to feign ignorance of why anyone would delete unnecessary link piping.--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:51, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm writing this because I got another notification of your reverts to my edits I had done with AWB. I was just wondering why are there still pages left if all of my AWB edits were reverted? But I'm still firm to my beliefs that I was doing positive things back then. What can I do if this community has to behave stupidly? Still, make sure that none of the pages are left, or else, you know, the earth and the sun might collide. Harsh Rathod Poke me! 18:02, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Your bait is amusingly misplaced; your battleground mentality about the issue (with comments like "What can I do if this community has to behave stupidly?") shows that you obviously assign it a great deal more importance than anyone else on Wikipedia does.--Martin IIIa (talk) 18:33, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

There's a block in his future. His talk page is basically near constant warnings about the same. -- ferret (talk) 21:23, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

This. Just undo what is needed and not the other edits. I stopped playing PUBG and I don't have battlefield/battleground mentality anymore. Harsh Rathod Poke me! 05:56, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

The only other edit I undid was the change from "refimprove" to "more citations needed", which, as you apparently didn't know, is no change at all. They're the same template.--Martin IIIa (talk) 14:21, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

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Virtual Pool (video game)

Thanks for adding the paper source. However, what exactly does "GamePro's Gideon" mean? Is that an editorially abbreviated writer name? A writer only identified by a one-name handle? A column or feature title "Gideon"? — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:48, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Sorry, I realize now that that phrasing wasn't exactly clear. Gideon is the writer's pseudonym; all of GamePro's bylines at that time were cutesy pseudonyms like Scary Larry and Manny LaMancha.--Martin IIIa (talk) 15:19, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification; given a non-notable, anonymized author, better for them to just be in the template [5].  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:01, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Thanks for taking notice. I've been wrestling with the issue of reviewer attribution ever since I started working on reception sections. The sticking point for me is that it doesn't seem appropriate for an encyclopedia to anthropomorphize a publication, for example by saying "GamePro's opinion was that" or "GamePro felt that".--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:09, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Yep. But the review they published is theirs, so "GamePro's review" or "a GamePro review" will do the trick. I don't think anyone is apt to object to something like "According to a Game Poop Chute review by Janet Boorman", especially if what follows is a direct quotation. But pseudonymous reviewers are meaningless to readers in the actual article content, and only of use for citation identification ("Wait, five people reviewed this game at this site; am I looking at the right one?"). Regardless, whatever author info we have should go in the citation anyway, even if also in the article (as with "Janet Boorman" in my example), since if someone does remove from the main text any non-notable reviewers' names, that aren't fake names already removed, then they'll still remain properly in the citations. PS: These days, we're using |first= and |last= parameters for real names and |author= for pseudonyms; the latter is also for organizational authors ("Committee to Investigate the Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa", or whatever; not likely to come up in VG articles). Hope that helps.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:24, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

It does. Thanks!--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:28, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Actually, one other concern comes to mind... GamePro typically did separate reviews for each version of a game, and I feel like the reader should have some indication whether GamePro's publishing significantly different opinions of the same game is due to the version being different or simply the critic being different... Any thoughts on that?--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:38, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, well, there's no way for us to ascertain why the reviews significantly differed (if they did), since we can't read minds. I.e., trying to ascribe it to one cause or the other, or a third (such as different expectations among console versus PC players, or players of two different consoles, due to different competing products for each market) would be original research. So, our "job" would be to simply factually distinguish the reviews. E.g., "A 2012 Publication Name review of the PC version of the game concluded [A, B, C]. However, their 2014 review of the Xbox version was more [positive/negative], noting that [X, Y, Z]."  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:48, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: I'm not ascribing it to any cause, just providing the information needed to avoid leading the reader to the wrong conclusion. Simply stating that a publication gave a more negative review to one version implies that the reviewer thought that version was worse, when in fact it most likely wasn't even the same reviewer.--Martin IIIa (talk) 20:08, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Ah, okay. Easy fix: "Another reviewer for Publication Name was less/more critical of the Xbox version in 2014, noting that [X, Y, Z]." There's a simple way to write around all issues of this sort, without shoehorning in a bunch of names no one needs to read.  :-) Mentioning a random journalist or reviewer's name implies either that they're notable and we should/do have an article on that person (i.e. that their view carries more weight – like Siskel and Ebert – in the public mind than that of some 18 year old on his/her first writing job), or that something else in the article pertains to them and their name is going to come up again so pay attention to it. If neither of those things are really true, it frustrates, confuses, and/or misleads the reader. It's one of those WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE matters. Just because a bit of trivia can be verified doesn't (since it's trivial) mean it should be included.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:51, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Belated reply, but... I've actually used exactly the format you describe here many times. I stopped using it after a while because I started to feel that it might be a bit awkward and even needlessly vague. Hearing another experienced Wikipedia editor endorse it makes me feel a lot better about using it, so I dare say I'll go back to employing it when it's called for. Again, thanks.--Martin IIIa (talk) 23:16, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Glad to help. And it's not like it really is vague, since the reviewer is identified in the source. We do this all the time in other topics, e.g. "A December 17, 2018 CBS News report claimed that Trump said ...", or whatever. No one cares who the journalist is unless it's someone like Declan McCullagh (i.e., someone notable). :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:26, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Colony Wars

Hello there. Thank you for fixing up my grammar. I do not speak or type English as my native language, but I have played the Colony Wars game and I know about its story and different results and outcomes that occurs, after either failing or succeeding on different systems. Also: The wiki page for my own native language about Colony Wars does not exist.

Could you check the Colony Wars wiki page again when you can? There may still be some grammar and other text mistakes that I may have either of both: Missed and/or mistyped. Specifically at the "Alpha Centauri" part, as I noticed that I hadn't properly explained The Faction as for: What is The Faction? What are the participants of The Faction, what are its or their goals etc...

Nonetheless: Thank you once more for fixing my mistakes on the text and because I saw that no-one has explained the events for what would happen for example on Draco system at the original "plot" now "story" text, while I knew I'll be making quite many grammar and other mistakes, I still decided to take initiative and hope that I will not get warned by my mistakes. I also forgot to add my signature on this message so I apologize for that. StormRaiser245 (talk) 10:49, 10 March 2019 (UTC)StormRaiser245 — Preceding unsigned comment added by StormRaiser245 (talk • contribs) 10:19, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

@StormRaiser245: Not a problem. We all make spelling and grammar mistakes on Wikipedia, to one degree or another. So long as your edits are constructive, no one should get upset at you over grammar. I'll take another look at the Colony Wars page now.--Martin IIIa (talk) 22:03, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

LP track listings

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at Second Helping and Paul Simon (album). Your edits appear to be disruptive and have been or will be reverted. Generally speaking, each side of an LP is numbered starting from 1. Very rarely would side two of an LP begin with a track numbered anything but 1. This idea is reinforced at MOS:ALBUM#Track listing, which advises not to use "continuous numbering" across discs and LP sides. Stop undoing edits that correct the track numbering. Continual disruptive editing may result in loss of editing privileges. Thank you. Dan56 (talk) 21:33, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to use disruptive, inappropriate or hard-to-read formatting, as you did at Live Rust and Rust Never Sleeps, you may be blocked from editing. There is a Wikipedia Manual of Style, and edits should not deliberately go against it without special reason. MOS:ALBUM#Track listing discourages "continuous numbering" of tracks, and WP:PSEUDOHEAD discourages using semi-colons to create headings. Dan56 (talk) 21:39, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

@Dan56: This is mystifying. An experienced editor responding to a disagreement over formatting by calling the other editor's work "unconstructive" and "disruptive", and making hollow threats of blocking?

When you're ready to discuss this in a WP:CIVIL manner, I'm willing to listen. Until then, you've been on Wikipedia long enough by now to know that you're the one who's putting himself in danger of blocking.--Martin IIIa (talk) 21:44, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

You don't have to talk to me. I am simply warning you; reverting constructive edits by other users, who are in the right per the aforementioned guidelines and doing hard work to improve the articles (as Koossepa was doing, and without engaging in discussion with them, while violating clear style guidelines yourself, warrants a warning. And, hey, if you say so. Be "mystified" all you want. But I still stand by the warning. Dan56 (talk) 21:48, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm no longer mystified. A bell rang in my head, and searching my talk page history for Dan56, I found this. So apparently making false accusations and hollow threats on the other editor's talk page is Dan56's default response to an edit conflict. Well, since Dan56 has refused to engage in discussion in the above post, that leaves me no alternative but to simply revert his edits.--Martin IIIa (talk) 22:42, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

I explained the guidelines to you. And the fact of LP labels, sides, packaging, etc. do not number the sides the way you are numbering them. Dan56 (talk) 22:54, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

March 2019

You have been blocked from editing for a period of 31 hours for persistently making disruptive edits. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions.

If you think there are good reasons for being unblocked, please read the guide to appealing blocks, then add the following text below the block notice on your talk page: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}.  
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 22:54, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Experienced Wikipedians know to take this to a noticeboard and not treat WP as a battleground. You seek consensus and not go on a revert spree.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 22:56, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

...Berean Hunter said, as he proceeded to block a longstanding and well-respected WP editor without even attempting to discuss the edits which he disagreed with, then posted a series of flame-bait filled rants to the blocked editor's talk page in a transparent effort to goad him into providing a justification for an indefinite block.

Sorry to see you had to go through this, Martin, but I commend you on keeping your cool in the face of Berean Hunter's shameless bullying, proving beyond doubt that you're the one editor in this conflict who doesn't have a battleground mentality. FYI, Berean Hunter has been inactive on Wikipedia for well over a year and has consequently been stripped of his admin privileges, and Dan56 (who changed his handle to Teflon Peter Christ) was indefinitely blocked for personal attacks and disruptive editing this past January (yeah, I don't know what took them so long, that guy has done little but disruptive edits and vandalism accusations since he joined). So I think you're clear to go back to formatting album articles the way WP policy and Wikiproject consensus dictates.--NukeofEarl (talk) 21:31, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind words and the info, NukeofEarl. However, I think "don't know what took them so long" is the key takeaway here. Berean Hunter and Dan56/Teflon Peter Christ were not subtle about their bullying and disruption, and admins were aware of their misbehavior, yet they allowed them each to continue for over a decade. Who knows how many good editors were driven off Wikipedia in that time because they were attacked by Berean Hunter or Dan56 and decided "I'm not wasting my life dealing with this schoolyard nonsense."? Dan56 was blocked seven times even before this incident, and let off in each case with an obviously insincere promise not to repeat his misbehavior. Meanwhile, I see countless good faith editors with a clean record blocked indefinitely just because they ran afoul of an admin, then have their unblock requests rejected on technicalities. In light of all that, which do you think Dan56 is more likely to do: (a)Leave Wikipedia just because, after 15 years of treating other editors as his enemies, someone finally declined an unblock request from him, or (b)Open a sockpuppet account and resume business as usual? My bet is on (b). Martin IIIa (talk) 21:17, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Martin IIIa (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

---

Request reason:

I'm confused here, because apart from appealing to Dan56 to be civil in the above thread, all I did was make some good faith edits and then revert Dan56 once (across a dozen articles, but still) when he reverted me. That hardly seems like an indication that I have a battleground mentality. Going to a noticeboard would have been my next step if he still refused to reason, but I thought that if I'm going to appeal to others I should first make some attempt to resolve it myself, and I didn't know the 3-revert rule had become the 0-revert rule. Nevertheless, there's no need for the block, as I have no intention of wasting any more time on this conflict; I have better things on WP to do. I promise not to do any more editing on the articles in question, or on music-related articles in general for the near future.

Decline reason:

Block has expired. SQL^{Query me!} 07:21, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

---

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

• Baloney. "Well, since Dan56 has refused to engage in discussion in the above post, that leaves me no alternative but to simply revert his edits." WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT<== You refused to engage, not Dan. You will need to discuss your ideas on track listings at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums and try to gain consensus there. If you don't have it then don't get caught making such changes again.
   — Berean Hunter (talk) 00:27, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm minded to accept this unblock request because a) it seems to be a one-off spat and b) a blocking administrator calling a blocked user's comments "baloney" sounds WP:INVOLVED to my ears (otherwise why not simply address the issues and not call the blocked editor names?) However, 31 hours is not a long time so it would be far simpler just to sit the block out and then avoid interacting with Dan56. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:40, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Who called the blocked editor names? Baloney = nonsense and "that leaves me no alternative" is indeed nonsense and he needs to realize that so that it doesn't happen again. Dan56 was communicating and that is why he was here on this talk page, so a claim that "Dan56 has refused to engage in discussion" is baloney. Martin could have started a thread somewhere to get other editors into a discussion without engaging in edit warring behavior. Involved? Where? What? I don't recall ever interacting with this editor and I don't care about the track listing issue. I see this as having potential to be an edit war again which is why I said that he should go to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums to get consensus. His assurance of that would help in the appeal. On the other hand, if he resumes those same edits without consensus then he could end up blocked for much longer.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 14:22, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Given his previously-nonexistent block log, I would be willing to accept that Martin made an error in judgement on how to handle this encounter, and that if he can commit to avoiding further disruption I don't see the need to keep him blocked that long. BOZ (talk) 00:50, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Venting and wikibreak

I've always been troubled at the fact that the only acceptable way to deal with antagonistic editors (unless you happen to be admin or mod) is to simply let them have their way. It seems contradictory to have a policy which says to discuss editing conflicts civilly while rewarding editors for doing the opposite. Now it's looking like I may ultimately have no choice but to leave Wikipedia because of this policy; I've just been effectively banned from music-related articles (see the above two threads), and I've already had to abandon many articles that have been claimed by antagonistic editors over the years.

Anyway, the above threads have left me sickened, less at Dan56's behavior than at Berean Hunter trying to argue that "Baloney" is a reasonable and objective comment and the general hubbub. All this because I wanted an editor to discuss a disagreement with me civilly - it's like something out of a comedy flick. So I'm taking an indefinite wikibreak (might be a week, might be six months) and anyone posting here should not expect me to reply until I get back.--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:34, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Take it easy Martin; I understand your frustration and I hope you can be back soon. BOZ (talk) 20:51, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@Martin IIIa: Martin, I wrote you an email the moment I saw the block. Now that I see how it affected you, I'll vent too if you don't mind, speaking only for myself though countless people would agree. I apologize for the length, but I can't say nothing as usual anymore and I simply don't know how to copy edit this one.

This is so freaking mean on behalf of the admin. I have seen other admins many many times specifically make a vocally conscientious effort to take the modicum of patience, respect, and dignity needed to look and see if a user has a history of being blocked, and realize that no you don't just give a prolific and trouble-free editor their first block except as a last resort when they've clearly lost their grip or are doing damage.

In crazier situations than this, I've seen even admins who have a twisted and pedantic sense of justice (but I repeat myself), nonetheless explain their rationale prior to sanction and thus prevent the whole sanction, however condescending, humiliating, and inconvenient they made the conversation. In this situation, all it would have taken was a message or two, maybe even to say so expressly, and Martin IIIa hadn't even done any damage in the first place.

Nor would he. Martin IIIa is one of the most prolific, patient, diligent, compliant, productive, servile, and kind editors I've ever met. He is a model Wikipedian with a true fealty to hard silent thankless public service through building Wikipedia, including serving his fellow editor community directly. The community, especially WP:VG, depends on a handful of people like Martin IIIa for its least desirable, hardest, and most essential work of WP:RS research and new essential content. If he can be blocked, anybody can be blocked for seemingly anything.

It's no exaggeration to say this kind of callous treatment of the all-powerful admin class versus the zero-powerful user class pisses off and scares the better admins and drives people permanently away from Wikipedia. We non-admins are all just no-name scrubs. A callous scrub drags in the attention of a callous admin, boom, headshot with collateral damage. Bonus if the bully gets away with it.

A block is not nothing to a conscientious Wikipedian -- that's like forcing a kid to stand in the corner of the class with his pants down and everybody sits and watches, for talking in class, even asking to borrow a pen. Even just being called out like a kid, on Wikipedia's permanent public record of discussion, is humiliating enough to an expert editor but whatever. You're cruising with years of hard, unimpeachable, thankless, volunteer work and then faceplant into a wall. The very same day, I reported a user to AIV for spamming his Youtube channel into 20 articles and he totally got away with it, didn't even undo it or reply.

Me, no block history, no problem, I simply LIVE IN FEAR. This could have happened to me a dozen times over NOTHING, but the admins were nicer or even just plain weirder. I specifically avoid all high traffic content altogether, editing ONLY the dead articles about dead pop culture that NOBODY ELSE WANTS TO EDIT, with NO aspirations for anything more because on anarchist Wikipedia, power rules and bullies win. This is some of our life's work and we can't trust ANYBODY.

This really hurts and the admin owes an apology to everyone, right now. Martin IIIa, in my not so humble opinion, you are DEAD WRONG in that I will not let you quit Wikipedia. I need you, brother. I mean the public good needs you. — Smuckola(talk) 22:03, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

More malarkey. I used the word "baloney" and gave a 31 hour block after plain warnings that blocking could occur had already been given. Martin mischaracterized Dan's warnings as uncivil with IDHT and proceeded with a battleground mentality. I stand by the block as it prevented him from further reverting. Smuckola, you are the one giving personal attacks by calling me a bully and I owe no apologies here. If you want to persist then go ahead and file at ANI for a review of my actions. Martin is now refusing the idea that he must collaborate with others. If his edits have merit then he should hold that discussion at the respective WikiProject and they will let him know. His comment "I may ultimately have no choice but to leave Wikipedia because of this policy" reflects that the problem is real and that he was wanting to ignore policies. This is his response to being asked to have a discussion. He's just mad because he didn't get his way. If he diva quits then that is up to him but your pandering to him won't help him understand why he is wrong in his approach and you might would enable him into thinking he was in the right...and then it might lead to him being blocked again.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 18:23, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words, Smuckola. Editing Wikipedia is indeed a pretty thankless task, so it means a lot whenever I see that there are people out there who appreciate it. And hopefully I've said it before now, but thank you as well for your hard work on the articles. I don't think I got your e-mail, but I'll ping you about that on your talk page rather than prolong discussion in this thread; I was really expecting mine to be the only post in this thread.

Anyway, wikibreak's over. I'm a little concerned to see Berean Hunter still posting openly hostile messages on my talk page after the block has expired and the entire issue has been closed, but with any luck he'll have gotten bored of WP:WIKIHOUNDING me over my two-and-a-half months absence. A prolonged wikibreak fixed the problem the last time I was wikihounded.--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:54, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

It's a relief to see that you're back on the job! I found out about this whole business with Berean a few weeks ago and was pretty bummed out. You're one of the best WPVG has—it was a shame to lose you. Made my day to log on to a notification from you just now. Happy editing and I'll see you around! JimmyBlackwing (talk) 20:47, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

@Martin IIIa:Hey, welcome back man! Roberth Martinez (talk) 17:17, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

NGen reviews for VG reviews template

Hi Martin, hopefully your coming back will be a "when" rather than an "if". That being the case, I just spent a few days switching "revX" for "NGen" in several hundred articles – probably not a major issue, but definitely a good thing for housekeeping. I went down the list of reviews at Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/Next Generation Magazine and fixed/added NGen to the template on articles up through issue #36 for now – if you look at any issues from 37 and on and if you want to fix those up, now you know what to do.  :) I did not add the VG reviews template to any articles that did not already have it. BOZ (talk) 19:50, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

@BOZ: An "if"? Why would I say I would do something and then not do it? Anyway, thanks for letting me know. I agree, switching "revX" for "NGen" is worthwhile housekeeping, so thank you for taking care of it.--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:56, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

My pleasure; I have made significant progress on adding Next Gen reviews to articles since March (I finished issue #53 yesterday), and maybe 10% of the articles already had the review, so when I find the time I will have to pick up where I left off on finishing the template - I doubt it will take anywhere near as much time or effort to catch up. :) And glad to have you back, I have been wondering when that would happen! BOZ (talk) 16:21, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Linkle Liver Story

Article restored after 2014 deletion. Game previewed and reviewed in multiple magazines. Harizotoh9 (talk) 07:00, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Metal Warriors

Hey! As I've stated before, welcome back to the website. I don't know if you have played it or not but I've massively reworked the article for Metal Warriors on SNES, which is one of my favorite titles on the system. I may have told this to you already but I suck at writing the reception section of a game article, which is still my one flaw when it comes to rewriting articles. Anyways, you're welcomed in expanding that last section of Metal Warriors' article. Have a good day. Roberth Martinez (talk) 23:53, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

@KGRAMR: Thanks! I'll have a go at it when I get a minute.--Martin IIIa (talk) 02:49, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

@KGRAMR: Took me a bit longer than I anticipated, but I got the expansion done.--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:14, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

@Martin IIIa: Well done man! It looks great! Roberth Martinez (talk) 16:17, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks!--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:24, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Oh hi. Hello there. I tried writing you two more messages about what I’ve been working on but I got distracted by working on it! I’m gonna blurt it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Phillips_(consultant) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.O.B. And those led of course to the AVS and NES launch sections here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Nintendo_Entertainment_System See this new archived source, Computer Entertainer magazine. We don't have Joystik listed yet, which is another crash-period video game magazine. We need all the crash-period magazines.

Major expansion on R.O.B. there for ya bro. Get to know him.

— Smuckola(talk) 08:38, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

@Smuckola: Awesome! Have you seen the Gaming Historian episode on R.O.B.? (I don't think it qualifies as a WP reliable source; I'm just asking by way of conversation.) Nice work on those articles. Makes me wish I had access to more NES-era sources beyond what's out there on the net.--Martin IIIa (talk) 18:36, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Yeah I think that video is what someone saw that prompted the addition of two brutally uncited and intriguing claims a few months ago about Nintendo's intention to make four new Robot Series games and about Nintendo's survey that said most kids wanted NES because of the robot. I was rather pissed that some random filthy IP user dropped that bomb and took off, without a clue of sourcing so I left them a message. lol. In the course of researching R.O.B., I watched that video again and there those claims were, so I sniped his sources. I'm going to say that the new holy mission is to find a review of R.O.B. that's *positive*. You can see that the best I have, is to be thrilled at the idea but then soon leaving him in frustration. So let me know if you come across any other reviews of R.O.B. or the two games lol. — Smuckola(talk) 20:53, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Bro I have blown up Family Computer Disk System and Nintendo of America. I'm going to eventually turn NoA's section into its own article, which is already overlapping into Donkey Kong, Howard Phillips, and the history of the NES launch. I've been committing about 10,000 bytes a day lately. — Smuckola(talk) 01:45, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

@Smuckola: Very cool to see that shaping up. Hope that you don't mind the little revisions I did. A few of the page numbers were mixed up, and I couldn't understand the line about Space Fever and Sheriff until I'd read the source. I also replaced the three quotations with paraphrasing; quotations without indication of who said them have always bothered me, though I can't seem to find any Wikipedia policy or guideline on the matter. (MOS:QUOTE says to paraphrase rather than quote whenever possible, but I can hardly go preaching that when I've been doing such a bad job of following it myself with my recent "Reception" edits!) Keep up the good work.--Martin IIIa (talk) 01:03, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

No, thats the opposite of what MOS:QUOTE says! It says quotes are indispensible and not to be blatantly overused in place of any prose. It should be used exactly as you and I always have. You needlessly sterilized all those quotes and factually sourced descriptors, just wholesale deleting anything you dont immediately understand instead of reading the linked article to see why the games are lame, so now a reader will think "what? Nintendo made BAD games?! oh well", making it now just a dumb sequence of events. Anyway, the quotes were obviously attributed in the each same sentence, not that that's a problem anyway as they are all contextualized and sourced. You just said Wikipedia would ideally have no quotes! I think youve gone a little haywire here coz also, youve never made any problem with quotes. You do lots of quotes in reception sections because that's their purpose, showing these expert observations. Yes youve done a bad job of making receptions that are formulaic, boring, and identical! Well done! As for Nintendo of America, now the barnstar kittens are plaintively mewing out their frowns. — Smuckola(talk) 06:39, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

@Smuckola: I'm not clear on what you're disagreeing with about MOS:QUOTE, since the explanation you give is exactly what I just said. The idea about not understanding the line is that if I don't understand it, in all probability other readers won't either. I did read the linked article; it doesn't say why the games are lame, or even that they're lame at all. No idea what you mean about Nintendo making bad games.

No, there was no attribution, just sourcing, which gives the reader no indication of who said it. Who compared Yoko's situation to "two captains shouting into [her] ears about what must be done, about how disastrous things were"? Was it Sheff? Yoko? Minoru? Without reading the actual source, I'd have had no way of knowing. In some cases the quote's content is also unclear; even in context, "barely keeping above water" could mean several things. Was Far East Video understaffed? Or not getting enough games? Or ran out of stock early in the four-month boat ride? Paraphrasing in this case not only avoids an unnecessary quote, it makes things more precise.

I never said Wikipedia would ideally have no quotes; no idea where you got that. Quotes are more often necessary in reception sections because the writer's opinion is always important; in history sections, most of the time (emphasis on most) it's just the facts that matter. My problem is I sometimes yield to the temptation to throw in a quote that I find wonderfully witty even when it doesn't help to clarify the reviewer's opinion.

Anyway, assuming your above post isn't all meant as a joke (sense of humor is one of my weakest qualities), you're free to revise or revert my NoA edit as you see fit. I value your good will much more than my edit. Hopefully at least my page number corrections are appreciated.--Martin IIIa (talk) 14:51, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Help in regards to the reception section

The title of the section is just to make it stand out and to ask you for help with the reception section of any video game article, when you have the time to do so that is. Anyways, I know you're busy with some stuff here on the site but if you have the time to do so, can you help me with the reception section of Wolf Team's Granada? Thanks! If you haven't played it, its a cool tank shooter game reminiscent of two rather obscure Namco arcade games, in addition of being an awesome game for the Sega Genesis in general.Roberth Martinez (talk) 19:10, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

@KGRAMR: Huh, somehow I've never heard of that game. I'm happy to help, but it'll probably take me a few days to get to it.--Martin IIIa (talk) 03:34, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

In regard of game titles

Hey! Sorry if i'm bothering you about this but it's in regards to Shock Wave and its name. The reason why I moved it from Shockwave Assault (its PS1 title) to Shock Wave (1994 video game) is because most people would think about the original 3DO version and they don't know it had another title on the PlayStation. That and to differenciate it from the other Shock Wave game (the NES one). I know you have your own reason as to why the title should remain as the PS1 name but I wanted to gave my explanation about the matter. Hope you have a good day! Roberth Martinez (talk) 18:27, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

@KGRAMR: Hi, sorry for the late reply; I've been on a wikibreak. Sorry also for the ill-tempered tone of my latest edit summary on this article. Years ago I took the trouble of starting a merger discussion for the two separate articles on this game and, after getting unanimous consensus for a merge to Shockwave Assault, performed the merge myself, only to have another editor promptly revert the merge, post flame bait to the editors who had endorsed it, ignore all directives to discuss the issue, and game the system to have all editing to the article blocked for six months just so that he could have it at his preferred title. So I'm on a short fuse when it comes to people moving that article without discussion.

Anyway, both the objections you bring are non-issues: Explaining different titles for the subject is the article's job, and can't be reasonably covered by the article name anyway (otherwise RayStorm would have to be moved to "RayForce a.k.a Layer Section a.k.a. Galactic Attack a.k.a. Gunlock"). The NES game was titled "Shock Wave", not "Shockwave Assault", so "Shockwave Assault" actually provides better differentiation in that regard, not worse.--Martin IIIa (talk) 15:08, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

@Martin IIIa:That's OK. I actually do plan in tackling some 3DO game articles in the future and Shock Wave is one of them. Roberth Martinez (talk) 17:03, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

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Ryu

After expanding Jin Kazama, I decide to give Ryu (Street Fighter) a try. I guess I'm in a fighting marathon. I managed to find information about almost all his appearances except his Alpha persona most notably his Evil Ryu alter ego. By any chance do you happen to have a source that might explain how Capcom handled Ryu in the Alpha series? Keep up with the good work.Tintor2 (talk) 22:31, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

@Tintor2: Hey sorry, I looked through the half dozen or so magazines I have covering Street Fighter Alpha, but I couldn't find anything specifically on Ryu except game-guide-style stuff.--Martin IIIa (talk) 17:03, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

I see. No problem with it. Game guide might be cool as it might indicate what type of players it might appeal. For example, Jin Kazama debuted in 3 for beginning players due to his skills while he became more hardcore in 5 because he became quite weak in comparison to Devil Jin.Tintor2 (talk) 18:21, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

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I'm wishing you a Merry Christmas, because that is what I celebrate. If you don't like Christmas or just don't celebrate it in any of its forms, then please accept a generic "Happy Holidays". If you celebrate no holidays at this time of year, then hopefully you will be satisfied with an even more generic "Season's Greetings".  :) BOZ (talk) 21:48, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Leona

Happy new year. I managed to find some creation info about KOF character Leona but little about her reception (two polls and one article centered around all KOF characters). If it's possible, I am trying to create an article for her character but I other that the stuff I mentioned there is not much to add. I thought it might be possible considering Kula Diamond's article considering her character appeared later but there is enough commentary by journalists. If you manage to find sources about Leona's reception it would be awesome cos we could create her article. I heard that she once appeared in Metal Slug too but I don't know too much about that series. Cheers.Tintor2 (talk) 22:25, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

@Tintor2: Happy new year to you! I just got back from wikibreak. Sadly I was never able to find much coverage on KOF 96, which is the first place I'd look for reception of Leona since that's the game she debuted in. Really puzzling, since KOF 96 was probably the biggest Neo Geo game of 1996, and magazines published in 1996 make clear that while the Neo Geo was past its peak, it was still a ways off from being yesterday's news. Anyways, I double checked the six articles/reviews on KOF 96 which I was able to find, and there's no specific mention of Leona apart from a sidebar showing the names and portraits of all the playable characters. I'm not sure where to look next, but maybe I'll try scans of 1996 Die Hard GameFan, since I usually don't look through that magazine.--Martin IIIa (talk) 22:34, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Btw, I don't know if certain magazines talked about it, but did any writer talk about the making of Cloud Strife's Hardy Daytona bike? I can't find interviews anywere but the wiki states that it's based on Harley Davidson. Kinda weird considering there was a lot of promo material of FFVII with Cloud riding the Daytona. Cheers.Tintor2 (talk) 21:04, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

@Tintor2: Unfortunately I haven't seen anything like that either.--Martin IIIa (talk) 23:14, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Edit summaries

I've noticed you making several edits on Star Trek episodes which is great, thanks, but you aren't leaving edit summaries, which makes it difficult for other editors to know what is going on. If you could please leave some edit summaries, that would be appreciated. StarHOG (Talk) 15:11, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

@StarHOG: My Star Trek edits have pretty much been self-explanatory copy-editing - fixing grammar, trimming unnecessary details, etc. Is there some particular edit which confuses you?--Martin IIIa (talk) 17:17, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

The edits don't confuse me, I think most of them are great. It is the edit summary, letting other editors know what the general scope of what you did in your edit so we don't have to click on the edit and look at your changes. Make sense? StarHOG (Talk) 15:26, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@StarHOG: You have to look at the changes anyway, because people can make mistakes or even lie, so edit summaries are often inaccurate. You will never see an edit summary saying "Correcting director in the infobox, and accidentally removing an important bit of infobox code so that the article now displays a bunch of raw coding.", "Adding false claims, inserting them in front of an existing source to make them appear legitimate.", or "Adding reliable source and statement which misinterprets that source." But edits of that sort frequently take place. As with air bags and seat belts, edit summaries clarify WP diffs; they don't make referring to them unnecessary.--Martin IIIa (talk) 15:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

That is true to some extent, especially where you see a single edit, with no edit summary, you wonder if it is vandalism. But when I see that you are making multiple grammar corrections to articles and I have previously looked at your work and I know you are helping, the need decreases for me to worry that you are editing maliciously. So if you leave an informative edit summary, it lets other editors know the gist of what you are doing and I can simply say, "that's cool" and keep skimming. It hurts because if 90% of your edits a re grammar and then 10% you add content that should be reviewed more carefully for consensus, we have no way of distinguishing between the two. Even an edit summary of "correcting grammar" or "added content" would be extremely helpful. In the end, it's your choice as an editor. I can't make you do it, I was just asking if you would do it to help other editors. It isn't as if I'm proposing some radical thing as wikipedia asks all editors to leave good edit summaries. I certainly don't want to argue about it. StarHOG (Talk) 13:32, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

@StarHOG: Honestly, I would rather editors reviewed my edits properly so that they catch my mistakes, as someone did here just two days ago. Besides, it's rare that I make edits which are purely grammatical fixes, and when I do I always mark them as minor, so if your concern is solely skimming past my grammar edits, then just skip the ones marked minor.--Martin IIIa (talk) 18:15, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Prose

Thanks for dropping those comments at Kyo's peer review. In case you are interested, I'm planning to bring The King of Fighters XIV to GA. Since my prose is not good I wonder if you could edit it too or coonimate it based on your recent comment. Originally I planned to bring XIII but there is far more content in that article work. Cheers.Tintor2 (talk) 16:17, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

I closed the Kyo peer review. Thanks for the input. It was quite helpful considering how the reception became much smaller. If possible could you check the prose of XIV if you have the time?Tintor2 (talk) 23:46, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly when I'll have time over the next few days, but yeah, when I get the chance.--Martin IIIa (talk) 03:09, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

@Tintor2: I got to it today. There were a few lines in the reception section where I couldn't understand what was meant, so I looked up the cited reviews and rewrote those lines based on my own understanding of the reviews. Hope that those are okay.--Martin IIIa (talk) 01:34, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Nice work. I think the article covers everything about the game but I can't find info about the release date of the arcade port or some sort of enhanced PC port I often hear about.Tintor2 (talk) 17:53, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

KOFXIV became GA. Thanks for the copyedit. It really helped.Tintor2 (talk) 02:22, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

@Tintor2: Awesome! Congratulations on having your good work pay off. Glad that I was able to be of some help.--Martin IIIa (talk) 21:38, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Nintendo 64

Uh oh, are you by any chance off reading something about not-Nintendo 64 for some reason? Here let me fix that, with this super summary of the platform's technological and financial performance and industrywide reception. Especially the bad news of cartridge versus CD-ROM. I think I might put this in Nintendo 64 Game Pak as another counterpoint. This weblog is probably a RS or situational source in itself, as it's written by a former leader of n64.com and such.[6] — Smuckola(talk) 21:57, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

@Smuckola: Thanks! I remember reading the article it references, though I couldn't tell you offhand where I added it as a ref. I tend to put info on the CD-ROM versus cartridge debate in Fifth generation of video game consoles since that article relates to all the consoles involved.--Martin IIIa (talk) 02:14, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Why do you keep calling GameRankings' 76% score "mixed" instead of "favorable" in NFL Quarterback Club 98?

It seems that you keep removing my good edits and calling them "unjustified". Why do you keep calling GameRankings' 76% score "mixed" instead of "favorable"; and why do you never put GamePro's overall fun factor score in the Reception chart in the NFL Quarterback Club 98 article? Everyone knows that an 89%-75% score on GameRankings and Metacritic is "favorable" and that a 74%-50% score is "mixed" or "average"; and that the overall fun factor score in GamePro should go in the Reception chart, yet you keep removing GamePro's overall score from said Reception chart and calling GameRankings' 76% score "mixed"! Why? If you keep this up, I'm never gonna edit that article again. --Angeldeb82 (talk) 20:44, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I am not simply "calling them 'unjustified'"; stating "Fixed" is not a justification, nor is an incomprehensible sentence fragment. I thoroughly explained my edits in my original edit summary. Cool down, read it, and all will become clear.--Martin IIIa (talk) 22:44, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

So you're saying that GamePro should be removed from the Video game reviews template, and that a 79%-50% score on GameRankings should be mixed? --Angeldeb82 (talk) 23:00, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm saying that we shouldn't assign review scores to reviews that were published without review scores, or give our own interpretations of what aggregate scores mean. Those both fall under the policy WP:No original research. GamePro reviews from the period where their reviewers gave overall scores should include that score in the reviews template.--Martin IIIa (talk) 00:02, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I see. I understand now. Well, thanks for your advice. --Angeldeb82 (talk) 00:41, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

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Copyedit request

I don't know if you know of him, but I have been expanding the article Subaru Sumeragi for a future GA. It's quite smaller than Kyo and KOFXIV so if you could give it a look I would appreciate it. Cheers.Tintor2 (talk) 17:04, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@Tintor2: Yeah, it might take me another day or two to get to it, but I'll take a look at it.--Martin IIIa (talk) 23:01, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

@Tintor2: I finally got to it today. Maybe you can consider it my Christmas gift to you. :) It looked pretty good already, though I did make a few fixes. There is one sentence which I found puzzling on two points: "Subaru was present along with the original cast of whom only Hokuto Sumeragi and Seishiro Sakurazuka remain." First, the original cast of what? Tokyo Babylon? Second, remain after what? Since the characters appear in multiple series, it's not clear if this means that the rest of the cast was dropped early on, weren't carried over to the later series, or were dropped during the later series.--Martin IIIa (talk) 03:17, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for this present. I'll check this sentence. Tintor2 (talk) 13:34, 25 December 2020 (UTC){{subst:Xmas2}}

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I'm wishing you a Merry Christmas, because that is what I celebrate. Feel free to take a "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" if you prefer.  :) BOZ (talk) 05:12, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

@BOZ: Thanks! I hope you're having a merry one as well.--Martin IIIa (talk) 15:13, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

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Could use your insight on the talk page regarding The Last of Us Part II

Hey man so we're having a discussion on the talk page for The Last of Us Part II regarding whether or not the narrative/transgender character was polarizing among critics and if we should remove it. I saw you chime in on the "Universal acclaim" descriptor thing for The Last of Us Part II's reception, maybe you could chime in here as well. TheMassEffector (talk) 01:24, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

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Merry Christmas!

BOZ (talk) is wishing you a Merry Christmas! This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove and hopefully this note has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Don't eat yellow snow!

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I'm wishing you a Merry Christmas, because that is what I celebrate. Feel free to take a "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" if you prefer.  :) BOZ (talk) 20:22, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

@BOZ: Thanks Boz! May you have a Merry Christmas too!--Martin IIIa (talk) 12:44, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Questions

Hey Martin is it OK if I ask you a few questions? Guroghviono (talk) 22:49, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

If it's not too much trouble. Guroghviono (talk) 22:51, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, no problem. Martin IIIa (talk) 23:27, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

User Guroghviono is banned user Jinnifer, evading their block in order to continue harassing other editors into making WP:OR edits in articles. Strongly recommend deleting thread as per WP:DENY--Mr Fink (talk) 05:26, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm not into deleting threads (unless you count archiving). Besides, reviewing the block details I see no reason to think WP:DENY is merited in Guroghviono's case, nor any reason to think deleting a thread on my talk page is any form of WP:DENY. Stats for this page show 15 views over the past month, most of which are probably from you, me, and Guroghviono. Martin IIIa (talk) 21:37, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

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Merry Christmas!

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I'm wishing you a Merry Christmas, because that is what I celebrate. Feel free to take a "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" if you prefer.  :) BOZ (talk) 23:14, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Hope you've been having a merry one as well. Martin IIIa (talk) 23:58, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Martin!

	Great Wiki cleaner and polisher!
	I appreciate you cleaning up the Harley-Davidson & L.A. Riders Wikipedia article I made way back in 2010. I spent a great couple days cleaning it up several months back and awesome to see you add more sources and material to the article. Thank you ;) ConversusWV (talk) 22:26, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

You're very welcome! Martin IIIa (talk) 13:08, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Akuji

Made an edit on the article for Akuji the Heartless, eh? Plan on doing more soon? Visokor (talk) 19:59, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

It all depends on what sources I run across. There's nothing else about Akuji the Heartless in the issue of EGM I'm going through right now, so I probably won't be getting back to the article for a couple months or more. Martin IIIa (talk) 01:44, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

You think you could rewrite the plot a bit at least? There's even a secret ending for collecting all 52 ancestors. I know YT might not be a reliable source, but I can show you a longplay to watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hIqSWEekm4 Visokor (talk) 20:16, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

While I readily use YT longplays to check plot points that I can't remember with both exactitude and certainty, I don't like to rely on them for writing plot summary from scratch. There's always the chance of key plot points being omitted during the editing of the video, or of a glitch in the recording software producing the same omission, and since I can't cite YT longplays on Wikipedia, by posting info from them I would be essentially assuming responsibility for potential errors that I have no control over. Martin IIIa (talk) 21:39, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Toyman

Stop fucking around with Toyman sections.JosephWC (talk) 21:45, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Read WP:CIVIL before posting to talk pages. Martin IIIa (talk) 00:26, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Casting aspersions

While it's completely acceptable to restore edits made by banned users, it's not acceptable to call my reversions of the banned users edits vandalism. Bans apply to all editing, good or bad is policy for a reason.-- Ponyo^{bons mots} 17:08, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Vandalism is defined by content and intent, not by whether or not you were reverting another user, and the content and intent of your edits was plainly vandalism. Martin IIIa (talk) 22:44, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

That is completely untrue, and to continue to state that I was making bad faith edits with the intent to vandalise is a personal attack.-- Ponyo^{bons mots} 17:38, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

It is completely true, and you admitted it yourself; "Bans apply to all editing, good or bad is policy for a reason." are your own words. It's increasingly obvious that you're posting here for no purpose other than soothing your pride, so I will be ignoring any further posts from you. Martin IIIa (talk) 20:58, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

How about I add that if I see you casting aspersions like this in the future, a block might follow? WP:CIVIL is a policy, and you cannot simply go around accusing people of vandalism falsely, and then adding on to that accusations of bad faith motives in blocking sockpuppets. -- ferret (talk) 21:49, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

As a postscript to this (which I should have written before my impromptu Wikibreak, but oh well), the related discussion thread here is sadly far from the first time I have approached a Wikipedia admin humbly asking advice on how to handle a situation only to come away with the impression that I was the only one in the discussion who was willing to look at said situation calmly and objectively. Indeed, during my over 13 years of editing on Wikipedia the admins have been so consistently unhelpful (and in too many cases actually made the situation worse) that at this point I have to conclude that it is never a good idea to seek help or advice from an admin.

I'm in the habit of being critical of myself, so I can't help but wonder if it's my fault, if in spite of my innate respect for authority figures, I am somehow provoking hostility and disregard for the good of Wikipedia from admins. But that supposition allows the admins ludicrously little responsibility for their own actions, presumes they are pathetically susceptible to provocation, and simply doesn't hold up to the facts, since I don't get the same sort of reactions from non-admins on Wikipedia nor from authority figures on other sites. On the contrary, non-admins have often been very helpful when I ask them questions, even questions concerning their own edits.

So what I'm left with is that there's no way to modify my own behavior which I can reasonably expect will produce better results, that there is something so incredibly wrong with Wikipedia's adminship that even asking their advice is a huge faux pas. It's an unpleasant conclusion - 13 years on Wikipedia has not made me any more confident that I know how to resolve an editing conflict on my own, and one would think an admin would be the logical person to ask - but at this point it's inescapable.--Martin IIIa (talk) 16:23, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I know you're talking in general terms rather than just this specific incident, but it's pretty funny that you ponder whether you're to blame as a reply to an admin threatening to block you because you described another admin inserting the text "So anyways she’s apparently bi?????? Yese such a good character but not my fav Yeeeessssse" into an article as vandalism. That's not behavior you could possibly provoke even if you wanted to. That's the sort of thing you would expect to see in a political cartoon on what's wrong with Wikipedia.

What's even funnier is how the admins claim Ponyo was reverting edits without paying any attention to what he was reverting as a defense for his behavior, as if knowing what your edit does before hitting "publish edit" is some unattainable standard rather than something you had better do if you don't want to be indefinitely blocked. Can you imagine if a non-admin tried that defense? "Look, I saw this editor made a couple of bad edits, so I just reverted all 300 of their edits without looking at them, assuming everything they did was bad." That would never fly, and that's the inherent problem with Wikipedia's adminship: They're given so much power that they feel their behavior should be held to a much lower standard than admins. They're all too often lazy, bullying, and deconstructive, simply because they have ban sticks and we don't. With Wikipedia having become as influential as it is, it's past time more checks and balances were worked into the system, but I don't see how admins like Ferret, Ponyo, and Sergecross would ever stand to let their power to cower editors with ban threats be diminished.

The good news is that hardworking and civil Wikipedians like yourself far outnumber the admins. That's the sole reason Wikipedia maintains what integrity it has. NukeofEarl (talk) 21:41, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, NukeofEarl; that does make me feel a tiny bit better.

Just for the record, I must point out with respect to the claimed "couple of bad edits" that there's nothing to substantiate that Sedgethgdt made any bad edits; all of the half dozen or so of his contributions that I looked over were clearly constructive, Sergecross failed to identify a single bad edit to support his claim, and Ponyo has stated very clearly that he considers it irrelevant whether any of Sedgethgdt's edits were bad. Going by all the evidence presented, Sedgethgdt never did anything wrong. Martin IIIa (talk) 00:33, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Rascal

Been doing stuff over on the Rascal game page, I see. Perhaps you could reword some things if you have the time? such as the Gameplay section? Visokor (talk) 20:44, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I did do some tinkering with the gameplay section back in 2018, but there's a limit to how much I can safely change without having played the game. Martin IIIa (talk) 21:00, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

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Merry Christmas!

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I'm wishing you a Merry Christmas, because that is what I celebrate. Feel free to take a "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" if you prefer.  :) BOZ (talk) 00:20, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

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Run Like Hell vocals

Hello there. Concerning the revert of the Run Like Hell vocals, I was a bit confused by your explanation.

First, the article does list Gilmour's vocals, as follows:

• David Gilmour – guitars, bass guitar, backwards cymbals, vocals (chorus)

As for the chorus vocals referred to here, it is the part where Gilmour sings (harmonizing with himself as he often did) 'Run! Run! Run! Run!' with a descending melody eight times, and then repeats it with a single note eight more times. After the first chorus, Waters takes over the verses, starting with the line 'You better make your face up in your favorite disguise.' After Gilmour sings the second chorus, then Waters takes over again, starting with the line 'You better run all day and run all night.'

Here is what it looks like written down:

Run Like Hell Lyrics - The Wall - Pink Floyd (neptunepinkfloyd.co.uk)

And here's what it sounds like: Gilmour comes in at 0.55 and sings for about 15 seconds, then after the second verse and another instrumental section, he comes back in at 2.01 and sings the same part again.

Pink Floyd - Run Like Hell (With Lyrics) (youtube.com)

At any rate, in my experience, Pink Floyd references generally list this as a song in which the two men trade lead vocals, as they did for a number of songs on The Wall. I'll have to check this when I get home tonight, but in the meantime, it seems clear that Gilmour is the lead vocalist for approximately 30 seconds of the song, and should be listed as such, regardless of what we consider the chorus to be. Mabewa (talk) 02:17, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

First of all, my apologies; I was reading the prose sections of the Run Like Hell article (in particular the line 'Waters provides the vocals (except for Gilmour's multitracked harmonies singing "Run, run, run, run,").'), and didn't think to check the personnel section to make sure it didn't say something different. Calling Gilmour's part on the song a lead vocal is reaching; he just sings a rhythmic accompaniment, pushed behind Waters' part in the mix. Bits like that are commonly referred to as backing vocals. We don't, for example, list "Santa Baby" as a duet, even though the male vocal in that song is both more elaborate and more prominent than Gilmour's part in "Run Like Hell". Martin IIIa (talk) 14:32, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

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