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Talk:Interactive fiction

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[edit] Adventure Game

This article covers almost exactly the same territory as Adventure game. ----Isaac R 05:24, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Interactive fiction is a subset of adventure games, but there are many adventure games which are not interactive fiction (these days most commercial adventures aren't). Grue 06:06, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I don't agree with your definitions, but I wont argue with them, because they're beside the point. Articles should be arranged for the convenience of readers, not to satisfy your personal definition of "correct" terminology. If the subject matter of two articles is almost exactly the same -- as it is in this case -- it makes no sense to have two articles. ----Isaac R 17:37, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Huh? The definitions for "interactive fiction" and "adventure game" are clear and are distinct topics. If you want an example, Myst is an adventure game which is not interactive fiction. The interactive fiction uses text to narrate a story, while most adventure games use graphics and video. I don't know why you want to merge the articles, certainly IF community won't approve that. Grue 19:23, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
      • On the other hand, Text based adventure game should probably redirect there, because it's the same thing. Grue 19:29, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
        • I might be wrong but isn't the difference between other genres and adventuregames that adventuregames focuse on the story as the main element, unlike forinctanse puzzlegames or some of the hybrides. My definition of a pure adventuregame don't include myst as I think of it as a hybrid. Then again I'm not a expert in the area and my skills in english isn't nearly good enough for me to edit this article. Luredreier 16:36, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
          • Reading the article and then this discussion page it appears to me that "interactive fiction" has been used (by different people) to mean both a kind of text adventure and hypertext fiction, and that until recently each group was largely unaware of the others' usuage. That has to be changing though, because video and computer games are increasingly being viewed as a form of artistic expression, and as text adventure games become increasingly antiquated they're shifting from the realm of popular culture into the realm of historical and literary study. What both usages have in common, however, is that they emphasize the narrative aspects of the interactive story. This emphasis I think will become the distinguishing feature of interactive fiction (if it isn't already), and will include any pre-written verbal narrative presented electronicly that shifts form according to the choices of the reader. I won't be viewed, IMHO, as a genre of game as all single player text-based narratives will be grouped under the tern text adventure.

--Logomachist 07:48, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Purge non-English external links?

The External Links could use some pruning. The non-English links leap out to me as being of questionable value. The current non-English sites listed don't appear to be generally important; they fill the same niche as English-language sites already linked. As this is the English-language part of Wikipedia, these seem to be of questionable value. They seem better fitting to the Spanish and French versions (as appropriate. I'm not against foreign language links, but they should provide value beyond "Just like the link above, but in Spanish." For reference, I'm currently referring to "*SPAC, a free online newsletter in Spanish." "*Club de Aventuras AD (CAAD), the portal of the Spanish interactive fiction community." and "*Sur Terre, interactive fiction in German and French." (I think the list needs even more pruning than this, but one step at a time.) Alan De Smet | Talk 04:57, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I redeleted the links to SPAC and CAAD for above reasons. I deleted the link to InformATE. Any reference to InformATE probably should go to the InformATE article, not an external web site. The InformATE article can link to the web site. InformATE is also awfully specialized; I'm not sure it should be mentioned here; it is better placed on the Inform page where it is already mentioned. Alan De Smet | Talk 22:30, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd like you to reconsider reinstating the spanisf IF sites links. It's true that this article is linked to its spanish wikipedia samesake, but the fact remains that this english article (unless I'm quite mistaken) is referenced by a more wide international comunity than the spanish one; hence the need for the spanish sites links. --Sarmas 22:20, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not convinced. Following the logic that en.wikipedia.org is the most widely linked Wikipedia, we would need to include links in every major language, something that would cause the list to balloon out of control. Even limited to English language links the External Links section is a bit out of control. For those interested in Spanish language information, there is a Español link to Aventura conversacional directly to the left of the article (for people using the default theme). It's reasonable for someone looking for Spanish language resources to go to the Spanish language Wikipedia to find them. Alan De Smet | Talk 02:48, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Addition/Removal

I wanted to ask if Leather Goddesses of Phobos should be added to the list, and thought it might be a good idea to create, at the same time, a "general" section for such questions. Ever wonder 12:44, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Here's as good a place as any. :-) Anyway, ignoring that damn near everything Infocom published was noteworthy in some way, I don't think LGoP makes te cut. I'm pretty sure it's not the first racy IF. If you play the game, even in the "lewd" mode, at worst it's PG-13. The core game itself is Yet Another Scavenger Hunt (albet, that's part of the joke). It's not really discussed as an important point in the history of IF. In counterpoint, what do you think is noteworthy about LGoP that you think it might deserve listing? Indeed when we do add games, the initial "Why I think it's noteworthy" can provide the initial summary we need in that list. Alan De Smet | Talk 23:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Smell props...? No, seriously, I'm not sure I can or wish to argue strongly for the inclusion of LGoP, though I would have expected to see it on the list. I don't really know enough about IF in general (and much of what I do know is centered around Infocom) or about LGoP, which isn't on the rather short list of games I've actually tried. Still: If not the first racy IF (which does seem quite improbable), I understand it to be the most talked about and possibly the first attempt by such an "important" producer (and maybe by any large-scale commercial manufacturer of IF) to enter that market. Some aspects of it are certainly discussed today except from the raciness as such and it being part of the "Infocom canon" - the different modes and the possibility and method of choosing your sex (and the "smell things", whatever they were called)are the things that I think of first, but there may be more. Also, I think the fact that it is not exactly "pornographic" (though perhaps partly marketed as such) but rather part of mainstream IF may be part of what makes it noteworthy. It was probably part of what made it stand out at the time (though, admittedly, people would probably have been more surprised if Infocom had released hardcore porn, even in written form). Lastly, I guess it has some interest as part of the battle against graphic adventures (being, if I recall correctly, at least partly a response to Leasure Suit Larry).Ever wonder 13:06, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
By the way I have no idea why Leasure Suit Larry is a red-link (as it appears to me), there is an article.Ever wonder 13:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Oops... now I get it. Leisure Suit Larry. Still odd that I managed to spell it right several times when looking up the article but got it wrong twice here.Ever wonder 13:17, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Malinche

Any anonymous user drive-by added a link to Malinche without explanation. (I hate that.) I added some context. On one hand it's arguably an advertising link. On the other hand, to my knowledge, Malinche is the only existing business doing for-profit IF development as an active business venture. There is some debate over the quality of Sherman's work, but I believe he's publically claimed the business is profitable. He's pretty minor league, but these days so is all of IF. So I propose instead of just deleting as advertising, we add a short section on the current state of commercial IF. There isn't much, but there is some (Malinche, obviously, as well as 1893, and Emily Short's contracted project). Alan De Smet | Talk 22:23, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Malinche is the only distributor of IF for iPods and Cell Phones, though one may wonder if their porting results in a true IF experience. azazoth | 20:43, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it probably should be mentioned, but in PC Gamer magazine one of his games was rated 19% out of 100% by a fan of IF. So all it would do is make IF look bad...—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.0.32.247 (talk • contribs).

[edit] City of Secrets

Jake Wildstrom did a good edit, removing some sketchy stuff and adding the useful information on Future Boy to the "modern" section. In the process he deleted the bit about Emily Short's "City of Secrets". I've readded it. I believe it to be relevant: it's the only modern documented case I'm found of a company (a band in this case) trying to invest in IF (for promotional reasons in this case). That it fell through is also interesting and may reinforce how difficult it is to mark real money on it. Maybe it's not useful enough, but I think it deserves a second chance and perhaps some discussion before getting deleted. Alan De Smet | Talk 21:27, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sandbox thingie

I hope it isn't terribly wrong of me to just mention Wikipedia:Sandbox/Storytelling#Text adventure game - At War with a Crossword Puzzle which I recently started. Might be fun!Ever wonder 12:50, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anybody Ever Hear of This?

Any room for mentioning this interesting but bizare work by Victor Thorn called Return to Eternity, it sounds interesting. Here is the Amazon article.

It's certainly interesting, but I'm not sure that it fits with the main focus of this article. Perhaps a more appropriate place for it is at visual novel. -Thibbs (talk) 14:50, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Infocom userbox

For anyone who's interested, I created an Infocom userbox. It looks like this:

>get all This user sorely misses Infocom and its works of interactive fiction.

The code to include it on a userpage is: {{User:DynSkeet/Userbox/Infocom}}
Feel free to use it if it strikes your fancy. -DynSkeet (Talk) 20:32, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"

While I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (computer game) is a great game, and it's an adventure game, it's not interactive fiction. I may be misremembering, but I believe the game relies heavily on graphics and (from memory) audio. Most of the interaction with the game is with the mouse, not text. If I've made the wrong call, please add it back and explain my mistake here. Alan De Smet | Talk 22:37, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect link?

Hello. I have noticed that clicking on the name "Philip Mitchell" (in the "Notable works of interactive fiction" section) leads to the page about Philip Mitchell, a British playwright. Which I believe is not correct, since the person who created "The Hobbit" is an Australian programmer. Also, in the original game's instructions he is credited as "Philip Mitchel" (with one "l"), although that might be a spelling mistake. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.24.51.224 (talk • contribs) 22:39, 20 September 2006 (UTC1)

[edit] Listing interpreters

--- There should be the interpreter GARGOYLES mentionned! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 210.235.215.122 (talk • contribs) 08:45, October 22, 2006 (UTC)

I assume you mean the Gargoyle interpreter? It's a fine interpreter and the one I use, but it's not really relevant. No other interpreters are listed on this page. Oh, and a suggestion: you can use ~~~~ to sign your posts. Alan De Smet | Talk 02:29, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Weasel words

After looking at the article carefully, it occurred to me that (even though I am an IF fan myself) it fails to cite sources at some places and uses weasel words instead.

A fine example is the phrase "today, the games created by enthusiasts of the genre regularly surpass the quality of the original Infocom games".

Another example: "Infocom's games are now considered the classics of the genre, and the period in which it was active is thought of as the first golden age of interactive fiction."

Also, the "notable works" section is also affected. A "citation needed" is not enough to cover for phrases like "the game has earned notable praise for the vivid depiction ..."

As an IF fan, I know the above is very well true. But that does not mean that the article is immune to standard Wikipedia guidelines.

Therefore, I felt that marking the sections in questions with the weasel-tag is necessary. — Nikos 09:04, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I've taken a stab at it, still quite a few unsourced claims left. I've cited a webpage by Alan De Smet, which I guess is pretty border-line, but I couldn't find any Wikipedia policy towards citing editors... Hrm. — Kwi | Talk 21:10, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia's guideline: "find a specific person or group who holds that opinion and give a citation to a reputable publication in which they express that opinion." The #1 source that jumps to mind here is the DM4, which I think fulfills the requirements. Also, the IF community is small enough so we don't need to cite BBC, in my opinion ;) — Nikos 04:31, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other definitions of "interactive fiction"

As regards this:

Secondary Definition Sometimes Interactive Fiction is used to describe a method of writing whereby multiple authors contibute sections of varying sizes to a story begun by a single author, often times in an Internet forum or by submission forms on a website.

I've never heard of this definition before. Can anyone back it up, or provide a few sources? How widespread is this use of the term? Adam Conover 02:01, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)

I haven't heard that definition used widely, but there is a LiveJournal community that seems to use the term in that way [1].

However, in literary academia, "Interactive Fiction" is commonly used to refer to hypertext fiction and sometimes Choose Your Own Adventure stories. Less commonly, it is used to refer to collaborative writing exercises in which the line between writers and readers is unclear.

Oddly, Interactive Fiction in the sense addressed in this wikipedia entry is largely unknown or dismissed in literary academia. Montfort's book Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction [2] is a at least partially an attempt to introduce the academic community to IF in the sense of "text adventures" and set up a framework for discussing it in terms of literary analysis. It's also a very decent history of the craft.

For the hypertext fiction-centric meaning of the term, Montfort lists the following references (among many others):

Bolter, Jay (2001). Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and The Remediation of Print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates.

Howell, Gordon & Douglas, Jane Yellowlees (1990). The Evolution of Interactive Fiction. Computer Assisted Language Learning, pp. 93–109.

Moulthrop, Stuart & Kaplan, Nancy (1991). Something to Imagine: Literature, Composition, and Interactive Fiction. Computers and Composition 9(1), pp. 7–23. [3]


Naltrexone 08:22, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. Perhaps we should change the "alternate definition" to something along the lines of "Interactive fiction is also occasionally used to refer to hypertext fiction"?

And yes, it is odd that interactive fiction is relatively unknown in literary academia, but I think you'd agree that this medium is still the one primarily associated with the term.

Adam Conover 17:19, Feb 20, 2004 (UTC)

On the net, without doubt, yes. But, yes, it's probably worth updating the "alternative definition" link. Would you like to or should I? Naltrexone 20:11, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I got it. Thanks for your help -- hope you stick around! A few of us are trying to build up the IF resources on the Wikipedia... check out User talk:Marnanel for our discussion. Adam Conover 01:26, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)

Putting "alternate definitions" at the bottom of the article is bad practice, by the way (see Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Bottom links). I've moved it to the opening. –Unint 22:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

This article is all wrong: interactive fiction should not be limited to textbased formats but cover all media formats. Most importantly it is not a single tool nor linking method. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Leisku (talk • contribs) 02:56, December 20, 2006 (UTC)

You should use four tildes to sign your comments. The term "interactive fiction" was invented by Infocom to refer to the text-based games they produced. More than 25 years later, there is a great deal of tradition behind the use of this term. This is what people mean when they say "interactive fiction". You may want it to mean something broader, but it doesn't. Ntsimp 16:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
The article isn't all wrong; this is in fact one existing usage. There are multiple published books and articles using the term in exactly this way. This article summarizes what IF (by this one definition) is, how it came about, and where it is today. It's a good article and the name is accurate. There are other established meanings, but instead of expanding this article it would be appropriate to give them their own articles. For example, some people use "interactive fiction" as a rough synonym for hypertext fiction, which indeed has an existing article. In the event that two different fields need the same name, we'll rename the article to "Interactive fiction (video game medium)", put the new one somewhere similar ("Interactive fiction (hypertext)"), and turn this article into a disambiguation page. A general article discussing any interactive creative work doesn't seem particularly useful. It would need to stand on its own as an article, meaning it needs citations showing that the phrase is used in such a way, along with other facts like the history and development. — Alan De Smet | Talk 00:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

This article falsely limits interactive fiction only to text based fiction which is not right at all. Interactive fiction can happen in audiovisual media too using video, audio, images etc. it can be produced on various platforms: eg in radio, television, on the internet etc. Hence, this article is in dire need of rewriting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Leisku (talk • contribs) 14:18, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

My December 2006 comment above applies to your comment as well. Does it adequately address your concerns? — Alan De Smet | Talk 05:23, 28 October 2007 (UTC)


Recent "fact" notation

Someone added a "fact" notation regarding alternate uses of the term "interactive fiction." A 2004 article in The New York Times began, "In 2001, an Internet game designed to publicize the movie A.I. inspired a new genre called Alternate Reality Gaming, or ARG, puzzle-centric interactive fiction that blurs the line between fantasy and reality." Charles Herold, "NEWS WATCH: GAMES; Blur Fantasy With Reality, And Wrap It in a Puzzle." 05 Aug 2004. A footnote in my DHQ article, "Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave" reads

The term interactive fiction has also been applied to hypertext literature (Howell and Douglas 1990), AI-based character simulations (Anderson and Holmqvist 1990), and, sporadically, as a synonym for “alternate reality” or “viral marketing” games (McGonigal 2007, 6 and http://www.immersivegaming.com)...

So that phrasing does need a bit of work. Dennis G. Jerz (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 20:40, 16 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Graphics-based?

What about adventure games with text parsers? Do those count as interactive fiction? Anything from Eric the Unready the King's Quest... Esn 22:07, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Per the definition given the in first paragraph, the answer is an unhelpful "maybe". As the article is written it focuses on games that use text as the primary input and output. By that definition King's Quest is an intermediate step between IF and graphic adventures with the text de-emphasized. But definitions exist that include graphic adventures in general, so by those definitions King's Quest would be definately included, but would wholly text parser free games like the games in the KQ series.. — Alan De Smet | Talk 01:29, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
The King's Quest games, up until the fifth, did have a parser. A parser described to me as "pretty damn lame", but still a parser. Civil Again 08:02, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

To me, anything with a story where the user interacts with the game is interactive fiction. Text-based interactive fiction should have its own article- they're text adventures. Text adventures is a subcategory of interactive fiction. This article seems to assume that interactive fiction = text adventures. While that is a common use of interactive fiction (well, among the people who still use the phrase!), that's not really what it means. Alinnisawest (talk) 22:28, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Alinnisawest that while most people think of "text adventures" when they speak of "interactive fiction" the term has a linguistically broader definition. I also believe that when most people speak of the sorts of games this article covers they use the term "text adventures." Although WP:GOOGLE applies, I find 1.49m hits for "text adventure" and only 753k hits for "interactive fiction," and I think this is strong evidence (look at the usage by country and city) as well. I feel as though "Interactive fiction" should be made into a disambiguation page with "text adventure" prominently featured at the top of the ambiguous list and others like graphic adventure game lower down. Then this article would have to be renamed "text adventure." I don't think that text adventures should be limited to text-only adventures, though. Visual games with parsers are still text-based and I would include in this article a substantial section on vector graphic games and even the early point-and-click games which still retained parsers.
Here I have made two points which should stand independent of each other. (1)I suggest this article be renamed "text adventure" and "interactive fiction" should be made a disambiguation page, and (2)Visual games with a parser should be added to this article as a subsection either way since they are distinctly text-based games.
Thoughts on either point? -Thibbs (talk) 15:27, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
The usage dates back to at least 1983 [4]. Infocom called it interactive fiction. The community currently producing new works is calling it interactive fiction.[5][6][7] Text adventures have 25 years of claim to the phrase. What's the harm in calling it IF? Someone looking for text adventure will get to the right place. Are there other things that want to be listed as interactive fiction? Apparently not, as there isn't a disambiguation link to them at the top of the article, let alone the several that would suggest the need for a dedicated disambiguation page. I think you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. As for adding more coverage of games with both text parsers and output, but also graphics, yes, perhaps the article should have more coverage of that. There already is some (see the Legend Entertainment section), and although not mentioned here, several of the later Infocom games did have graphics. — Alan De Smet | Talk 04:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
For future reference, when trying to use Google to establish the frequency of a phrase, put quotes around it. Searching for, say, text adventure will turn up pages that include "text" and "adventure", but not anywhere near each other. A more accurate study would be "text adventure" (247,000 hits) versus "interactive fiction" (525,000 hits). Ultimately it doesn't matter, as Google is an amazingly crude tool for establishing anything. All the results establish is that both phrases are in widespread use. We don't know what people are using them for. We don't know if one form is far more common in reliable sources. We don't know if the results are overly biased by modern usage, where 10 years ago te number might have been very different. — Alan De Smet | Talk 04:40, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
I am not concerned that someone trying to find information on what they call "text adventures" will be unable to find this article but rather that the article's name is unnecessarily vague. I am well aware that the community uses both terms in discussing the subject, but I seek to eliminate the distinctly existing problem of Gorgian rhetors surfacing (see example 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc.) to voice their very valid complaints of vagueness of the term. Without changing the name of the article to be more precise, it is entirely accurate to suggest that non-text-based adventure games (like Myst or Riven), interactive movies (like Gadget), interactive cinema (like Fahrenheit), or FMV-based games (like The 7th Guest) are also interactive fiction. I would like to limit the scope of this article to text-based games ranging from traditional text adventures to parsed-text video games, but to do this in a non-arbitrary manner I think the article's title should reflect the content more precisely. After all, by a literal definition, games like Doom would fit the category insofar as they are both interactive and fictional.
My use of the term "text adventure" should not be unfamiliar to anyone who uses the term "interactive fiction" and as Alan De Smet has suggested, there is a 25 year history behind the term. To those few who might be stymied by this change of term, I believe the disambiguation page would prove invaluable especially if the text-adventure definition of interactive fiction were prominently listed as at the top of the dab page.
Perhaps I am being too cautious. I realize that nobody would seriously expect to see Doom listed here despite the fact that it fits the literal definition, but I am concerned that as Logomachist has pointed out above,

"What both usages have in common, however, is that they emphasize the narrative aspects of the interactive story. This emphasis I think will become the distinguishing feature of interactive fiction (if it isn't already), and will include any pre-written verbal narrative presented electronicly [sic] that shifts form according to the choices of the reader."

I can easily imagine future problems involving games like Myst that are very divorced from text yet retain all other aspects of the text adventure genre. Ultimately I fear that an article on the topic of text-based games will become diluted by non-text games simply as a result of its imprecise name. I think this doubly likely if we add a subsection on the history of the term "interactive fiction" to the article as you suggest below. I actually rather like your idea and would be very interested to know the history of the term, but it will inevitably broaden the scope of the article to include all of the genres I had discussed earlier as well as non-text ARGs (see above). Perhaps a workable solution is not to make "interactive fiction" a disambiguation page but rather to use it more as a summary page (like this example) containing all of the genres I have discussed (possibly even briefly including first person shooters, &c.). Thoughts?
Thibbs (talk) 20:29, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
One more quick note: A good example of the threat which this article's title poses to the maintenance of its subject matter content as text-based games can be found at Category:Interactive fiction. Please note the large Visual Novels section as well as such non-text-based titles as Façade, Dark Seed, Dark Seed II, Portal, Zork Grand Inquisitor, Zork: Nemesis, etc. I feel that all of these titles would be inappropriate in this article (except perhaps for a brief mention of the non-text-adventure Zork titles) -Thibbs (talk) 16:04, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Well thanks to the slow rate of response I'm getting here I've had time to reconsider my position. While I still stand by everything I've said here, I have thought of a much simpler solution. The only real problem which exists (and it does exist) is that people unfamiliar with the genre jump in WP:BOLDly and create problems. While BOLDness is encouraged, I think it causes unnecessary hassle here. My alternative solution is to change the first paragraph such that dab links are included at the top to siphon off those who are looking for graphical adventures and secondly that the definition for IF be made as exact as possible, highlighted further, possibly by making it its own paragraph, and then placing it at the very top. Following this, I think Category:Interactive fiction should be given a definition at the top as well (as with Category:Cave geology for random example, but in greater detail). Perhaps the talk page should be edited also to include the definition clearly at the top and it could be maintained at this position by including it on a {{consensus}} flag. The only thing left, then, would be to come up with a consensus definition. I like the one currently given in the first sentence of the article, but I feel it is slightly too vague (I don't mean to gripe honestly, I'm just trying to fix future problems). The vagueness comes from the fact that by this definition, any keyboard-exclusive game could possibly be considered to issue text commands wasd-games and letter-input games like Bard's Tale could be considered IF too. I propose that the definition be updated to mention the parser. I think we can all agree that IF is defined by a parser, right? Any comments would be welcomed. -Thibbs (talk) 22:36, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Tweaking the definition seems like a good idea; as you say, one could include the Bard's Tale under some readings of the current definition. Perhaps we should mention that both the input and output strive toward (but may not achieve) non-constructed languages (that is natural and constructed languages)? The current introduction does include what I think are good DAB links to other meanings; I'm hesitant to cram them all into the first paragraph, let alone the first sentence. I suspect it will weaken the article. The article should start with the key definition, not other things. But I'm open to the possibility that it can be well done and I simply lack the imagination to craft it. — Alan De Smet | Talk 01:05, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
OK. This sounds reasonable. I guess we are agreed then to forget about my prior renaming suggestion, yes? I still think that the term "IF" is unfortunately vague but I suppose that as it seems to be a (somewhat) more common usage within today's community the term should remain. Logical argument to the contrary, it would seem, doesn't enter into cultural decisions. Darn you, meme theory! Perhaps mention could be made in your suggested "History of the term 'Interactive fiction'" of the prior history of the term "text adventure"? Anyway, I will apply what little imagination I have to the crafting of a tighter and more precise definition in the next few days hopefully. I'll post my suggestion here, of course, before altering the article so that we can gain a consensus before it is finalized. If this works the way I'm hoping it will, it should cut down on inappropriate suggestions of non-IF titles and at the very least it will provide an easy point of reference for editors to direct the voicers of such suggestion. Thanks for all the input, Alan De Smet. -Thibbs (talk) 18:41, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] never-updated sites

i removed brasslantern and xyzzynews as they havent been updated for years and re now horribly out-of-date —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.3.66.189 (talk) 22:34, 10 April 2007 (UTC).

Untrue. In fact, on the day you removed those links, it had been less than six days from the last update to both sites. Civil Again 08:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Xyzzynews's latest edition is January 2008. Seems to me it's not "horribly out-of-date"! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alinnisawest (talk • contribs) 22:29, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ifarchive.org

its a bad idea to link to the achingly slow (unusably so) www.ifarchive.org website. much better to link to a random mirror via this link: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive.html —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.27.137.212 (talk) 00:12, 4 May 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Fair use of Zork I screenshot

There is apparently some disagreement about the validity of a Zork I screenshot. Here's my reasoning for a fair use claim (also present in a comment in the article proper: The screenshot illustrates: 1. IF games in general. 2. One of the first IF games. 3. One of the most famous IF games. 4. One of the most influential IF games. It is so important to the history of IF, that this is clearly more fair use than, say, the many images in First-person shooter or the stills in Western movie. It is perfectly reasonable fair use to take an important work within a medium and show a small snippit (and this is a very small snippet of the game) of a particularly famous work as illustrative of the medium as a whole. — Alan De Smet | Talk 01:56, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Also, I think this particular image really helps illustrate IF for people who may have only had a brush with it in the past, so they can say "yes, that is what I was thinking of" -Rebent 02:42, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Umm ... but wouldn't you get all of that from a screenshot of a game in the public domain e.g. Don and Woods' original Colossal Cave Adventure (computer game) or Dungeon, the more-or-less public domain precursor to Zork? Not sure what the reasoning is for using a commercial alternative.--Samwiseuk (talk) 14:51, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm not aware of Colossal Cave being public domain. The copyright doesn't appear to have been enforced, but the copyright still exists unless the authors explicitly released it into the public domain. Were we to have evidence that Colossal Cave was public domain, that would be an interesting argument. Zork did have a much wider exposure, and seems likely more influential, but I might be convinced. As for Dungeon, it's definately not in the public domain. From the article itself, "Infocom agreed that if an Infocom copyright notice was put on the Fortran version, noncommercial distribution would be allowed..." A noncommercial limitation is not acceptable for Wikipedia; we'd need to use it under a fair use claim. If we're claiming fair use, why not go with the more widely recognized image? (Do note that Zork being commercial is completely irrelevant. What matters is copyright, and noncommercial works are protected equally well.) — Alan De Smet | Talk 17:59, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Textfyre

I've pulled the addition of Textfyre information for now; they haven't shipped anything, no articles have really been written about them, we have no idea if they're really notable. They may, sadly, go under without shipping anything. When they ship something and get some coverage, feel free to re-add them. Be sure to give them their own article and use the media coverage as citations to establish notability and avoid the gaze of editors more interested in deleting than creating. Note that while a company founded online may have lots of of valuable information on Usenet or on Blogs, the stricter editors frown on such things. You can sneak some such citations in (Wikipedia:Ignore all rules), but if that's all you've got, you're destined for deletion. Fortunately the founding of an IF company is a rare enough event that I expect you'll get at least some minimal coverage. Note that under no circumstances a link to Textfyre's home page appropriate here. It would belong on Textfyre when that article exists. In the meanwhile, here's a place to start collecting citations. — Alan De Smet | Talk 03:39, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I never really got the "no advertising" rule until just recently, but getting a slew of stuff deleted was fun. I guess in a way that's what I was doing, but seeing Malinche's link here irritates me. But it's fair that we haven't released a game yet. We will soon enough and the entries will take care of themselves. Textfyre is real, has over a dozen people working for the company, and is inching closer to launch. - --David Cornelson (talk) 06:29, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rendition?

In these edits, an anonymous editor added Rendition (game) to the notable games list. From the description it sounds notable. However, the two citations given don't appear to lead to a discussion of the game. Can someone track down more direct links or more accurate citations? — Alan De Smet | Talk 05:30, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

this quicktime movie contains the slides and the audio of the CU presentation: http://www.natematias.com/cam/trag-elit/Tragedy-Electronic-Lit-7-Examples.mov
this is a SWF of the slides: http://www.natematias.com/cam/trag-elit/TragPresentation.html#SlideFrame_26 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.107.192.92 (talk) 11:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I think Rendition is a strange choice for inclusion in this list. It has seen some discussion, but so have other (and far more substantial) works not mentioned in this list. In the IF-community, Rendition has not made a big splash. Victor Gijsbers (talk) 13:37, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Pretty much any game notable enough to justify a non-stub Wikipedia article is probably notable enough to list here. If the article gets glutted with games, perhaps we should look to pruning to a smaller set, but I think we're good for now. — Alan De Smet | Talk 00:56, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I might have my disagreements about some of the other choices, but I don't think anyone in the IF world would think "Rendition" is a notable game in the sense of the others listed. Dozens of IF games are discussed in university courses or in academic conferences and publications: that in itself is no indication of notability. Victor has modestly neglected to mention that one of his own games is also discussed in the link provided above; but unlike the self-promoting authors of "Rendition", he hasn't created a Wikipedia page about it and added it to the list of all-time notable games. I'm removing Rendition from the list until someone can come up with a much better reason for keeping it there. 193.190.253.149 (talk) 15:40, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
I've suggested a clear standard of notability: notable enough to have a Wikipedia article. You have not suggested a clear standard, instead appealing to unsupported claims that "anyone in the IF world." Being discussed in an academic conference or publication is absolutely evidence of notability. If the academic world discussing the work isn't evidence, what could possibly meet your standard? However, the list here is moderately long, and we do need to keep it from growing out of control. We don't want to duplicate; that's simply not helpful. I'm not sure that Rendition is more notable than, say, most of Infocom's games, all of which also have articles. So I'll yield to the deletion of Rendition at this time. — Alan De Smet | Talk 03:35, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] History of term "Interactive fiction"

A brief bit on the history of the phrase "interactive fiction" seems like a good addition. Here is what I've turned up so far as possible sources. (Many thanks to Peter Scheyen of [8] for his collection of articles].) — Alan De Smet | Talk 04:35, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Earliest usage: These are from reliable sources and are the earliest I can found. They establish legitimacy.
    • 1983, Time: "Computers: Putting Fiction on a Floppy" Time (magazine) December 5, 1983 By Philip Elmer-De Witt. Refers to "interactive fiction" several times. [9] [10]
    • 1983: New York Times: "Reading and Writing: Participatory Novels" The New York Times Book Review - May 8, 1983 By Edward Rothstein. "Infocom has been a major pioneer in such games, which have been called 'participatory novels,' 'interactive fiction' and 'participa-stories.'" [11] [12] [13]
  • 1984, New Zork Times: The New Zork Times (Infocom), Winter 1984 [14] First mention I can find of Infocom using the word. I can find later ones, but when Infocom publically first used it is most interesting.
  • 1985 Usenet discussions with the term, including several that overtly refer to Infocom's games as IF. This establishes general public use.
  • We continue to have mainstream, reliable usage:
    • 1985, Newsweek: "Zorked Again" by Bill Barol. Newsweek, December 23, 1985, page 70. [15] [16]
    • 1986, AmigaWorld: "The Wizard of Wishbringer" by Brian Moriarty. AmigaWorld, January/February 1986, pages 70-73. [17] [18]
    • 1988, Compute!: "Interactive Text In An Animated Age" COMPUTE!, Vol 10, No 1, Jan. 1988, Pages 17-19 By Keith Ferrell. [19] [20]
    • 1991, CGW: "The Rise and Fall of Infocom" by Johnny Wilson. Computer Gaming World, November 1991. [21] [22]
    • 1996, "Computer Game Review: Where Are They Now?" By Steven Greenlee (Computer Game Review, April 1996, pages 82-88) [23] [24]
    • 1999, PC Gamer: "Game Gods: Steve Meretzky." PC Gamer, September 1999, pages 80-81. [25] [26]
    • 2004, New York Times: The Ivy-Covered Console By Michael Erard, February 26, 2004, New York Times [27]
  • Places with more links to check on
I would just like to voice my endorsement of this proposed new subsection. I think the idea would serve the dual purposes of establishing legitimacy of the term as well as providing an interesting timeline to the genre. I also suggest that a pre-history be added where the genre was referred to strictly by the term "text-adventure" as this would advance the timeline goal of the subsection. Thoughts? -Thibbs (talk) 18:46, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Classicfilm's edits; electronic literature

I've reverted these three edits by Classicfilm. The general gist of the edits was to include electronic literature in the definition. This seems well intentioned, but overly broad. Hypertext fiction has a reasonable claim as being a sort of interactive fiction, but electroic literature doesn't. According the article, EL does include HF, but it also includes, "Novels that take the form of emails, SMS messages, or blogs" and other forms which aren't interactive (beyond the level you interact with, say, a book, by looking at it/reading it). This just muddies the definition of IF in a way that I don't believe to be supported by actual usage. There was also other oddness, including limiting the definition of video game IF to commercial works; I see no reason to do so. So, I reverted it. I'm certainly open to arguments that I've made the wrong call. — Alan De Smet | Talk 22:36, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New sourced claims about ZIL

Does High Score really claim that "Zork Interpretive Language" [sic] was Infocom's parser? If so, I'm not sure I'd call it a reliable source. ZIL stands for Zork Implementation Language; it's the Lisp-like programming language Infocom's games were written in. I can't speak to the claims about Inglish, but if it got ZIL so far wrong... Ntsimp (talk) 21:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion of Slouching Towards Bedlam statistics

I'm not sure that anything in WP:RS mandates the removal of this information. Is the suggestion that ifcomp.org is not a RS? I disagree. WP:RS states that "[T]he[] authors [of Reliable Sources] are generally regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand" (italics in the original). Within the small community of IF-players this in fact is a fairly reliable source... Is there a better rationale for this edit? -Thibbs (talk) 14:42, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm assuming that all of the anonymous edits are the same person; it seems more plausible than that three or so strangers simultaneously decided to almost exclusively focus on this. Dearest anonymous editor, would you be so kind as to get a user account? It will make it much easier for everyone involved so we can do things like leave notes on your talk page, and generally address you.
As for the reasons to delete the claims; they are varied, shifting, and occasionally contradictory. [28] [29] [30] [31]. Fundamentally, the claims are good additions to the various interactive fiction articles. The IF Comp is a neutral, third party with a vested interest in getting honest results. Year-to-year results aren't perfectly calibrated to each, but like competition figure skating, it's good enough. That someone who once held the record has since lost it to someone who scored better is irrelevant, or shall we stop mentioning Babe Ruth's home run record just because Hank Aaron later beat it? — Alan De Smet | Talk 00:04, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

For reference, here are the relevant anonymous editors:

As is probably obvious, I've linked a few other articles that had similar deletions. Floatpoint and Slouching Towards Bedlam both had IFComp scores deleted. Anchorhead (video game) had the IF ratings rating deleted. The IF ratings site isn't as strong of a reference as the Comp, but it does exist, and while the MOS:FILM doesn't like such things, there doesn't appear to be a guideline against it for video games. (And the guideline in question is probably intended to limit every single movie mentioning their rating. I suspect that a truly noteworthy score, like a movie that held the top spot for several years, would warrant the ignoring the guideline to include a mention.) — Alan De Smet | Talk 00:14, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

if a game wins the ifcomp or a xyzzy award, it is valid to note that. the particular average score it receives is irrelevant, just as MOS:FILM prohibits imdb scores, as it constitutes synthesis of user-generated data (WP:SYNTH). Do not include user ratings submitted to websites, as they are vulnerable to vote stacking and demographic skew. as there is no fixed caucus of voters, nor of rating schemes to be used, any statistical synthesis is irrelevant.

while making your favorite games seem more important than they are by artificially synthesizing achievements for it (eg "the highest rated game excluding games with more than twenty votes and less than seventeen votes between 1996 and 1997 written in Inform with a file size of more than 200Kb" etc) please remember this is an encyclopedia about facts, not your personal opinion (WP:OR). sadly freeware amateur videogames, IF or not, lack the body of reliable 3rd party sources to draw upon that commercial releases might have, nevertheless wikipedia's standards for reliability are not thrown out: rather, they are maintained, and even text adventures must follow the same high standards of sourcing as every other article. i advise that you familiarise yourself with wikipolicy (WP:POL) before making further unfounded statements in talk pages and edit summaries.

regarding ifratings.com and other user-generated content sites, see WP:VG/S: "Many sites allow users to submit content, like Wikipedia itself. These reviews are often not independent, and are not reliable because they have not been checked for factuality by an editor.". WP:RS is inviolable, not a reason to apply WP:IAR. any further edit-warring will result in 3rd-party arbitration. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.26.52.50 (talk) 17:56, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

It appears that WP:RS and WP:OR have been improperly conflated. Synthesis is a policy violation and WP:RS is merely a guideline. As such it is incorrect to suggest that WP:RS is inviolable. In fact WP:RS is violable under either IAR or UCS. This conflation clouds the argument for remedial deletion to address a purported synthesis. Let's be quite clear. The argument here is that the edit fails WP:OR.
I have not checked the sources and at this point I make no assessment of this charge. Regardless, it is pertinent at this juncture to remind all users that the WP:AGF and WP:SIGN guidelines are still "generally accepted standards that editors should attempt to follow," and that WP:DG suggests that the use of untagged alternate accounts is a violation of WP:SOCK - an issue of wikipolicy. I'm not extremely concerned about these violations as they relate to the topic of discussion, but in light of the fact that this is the first attempt at the "D" portion of the BRD-cycle, it's probably safest to judge not... -Thibbs (talk) 19:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
WP:UCS is "Use common sense" and WP:BRD is "Be bold, revert discuss," for people who don't know what they stand for (like me as of a few minutes ago). — Alan De Smet | Talk 23:55, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
I appreciate your desire to be anonymous; there are any number of reasons you might wish to remain so. However, a user account doesn't reveal who you are. You don't need to give an email address, and you don't need to use your real name. Indeed, with a user account most people can't tell what your IP address is, so you actually become slightly harder to identify. The only "advantage" of using IP addresses, especially ones that change frequently, is that it is harder for people to review your edits as a whole. Be proud of your work and get an account!
We're using the average score because it is the standard used for ranking the competition. It is as appropriate to list as scores in competitive figure skating. For the IFComp ratings, the results are hardly artificially synthesized. Floatpoint does currently have the record for highest average score. Slouching used to hold that record. The IF Rating for Anchorhead was only limited in a single way: to exclued a game that had a single vote. I think that's a reasonable exception and the exception was clearly called out in the article. The claims in question were cited and easily checked by anyone who can browse the web, so this is hardly original research. WP:SYNTH is clearly irrelevant, as these aren't multiple sources.
As Thibbs notes, be careful when you swing around words like inviolable for guidelines clearly marked as "best treated with common sense and the occasional exception. And do take care that [you don't step over] the WP:3RR 3 revert rule policy. — Alan De Smet | Talk 23:43, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, as User:Alan De Smet suggests, a pseudonymous account is generally recommended for anonymous editing. See WP:IP edits are not anonymous and WP:DG. In fact, WP:SOCK#Wikipedia:Alternative account notification recommends that editors inform ArbCom about untagged Alt. Account use. I believe the IP editor here in discussion means well and I have not reported this to ArbCom nor do I suggest that anybody here take such an action. As my point earlier may be misconstrued, I will clarify that the aggressive tone and selective throwing-about of policy is bound to ruffle editors with whom an anonymous editor has a disagreement and as such it should be avoided lest the indirectly invited scrutiny reveal policy violations in the apparently policy-knowledgeable IP editor. -Thibbs (talk) 15:49, 5 November 2008 (UTC)


[edit] A note about reliable sources

user-generated content, such as reviews and ratings of games by the general public on sites such as youtube etc is not considered a reliable source. info from such sites should not be cited on wikipedia. such sites are considered self-published sources as they have the potential to be "gamed", and the relevant authors are not domain-experts. this includes sites such as: IFDB, IFRatings, IFReviews.org, Mobygames user reviews, IMDB user reviews, Wikipedia, IFWiki etc. random blogs in which individuals may review the odd IF game also fall into this category. i have just removed several additions by user User:Thibbs that violate this policy. please ensure citations are always to reliable 3rd-part sources. thanks!

(btw, beware of wikpedia pagescrapers - they simply republish wikipedia content. nationmaster is one such scraper). 82.20.32.232 (talk) 19:06, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm not necessarily disagreeing that NationMaster is a scraper site, but do you have anything you are basing that on? I notice the wikipedia article on NationMaster calls it a scraper in an un-cited sentence, but as you pointed out wikipedia articles are hardly reliable third party authorities. I'm content with the removal of the sources that I supplied provided that they were reverted in good faith. I'm sure you're aware that POINT edits are frowned upon since you seem to have passing familiarity with wikipolicy so I won't caution you about that. I'd also like to commend your attention to detail in this article. I agree with a lot of your tags concerning needed citations. Out of curiosity, have you considered searching for any of these citations yourself? I was able to find a number of them (beside the ones you disagree with) within moments simply by running a google-based search. Also, have you considered User:Alan De Smet's suggestion above concerning creating a pseudonymous account? I hadn't noticed your problems ([32], [33], etc.) following WP:3RR before, but this may be a good way for you to preserve your anonymity while avoiding IP prejudice. At the very least, it would perhaps provide a more useful place for editor-to-editor discussions to take place rather than the nebulous cloud of IPs we currently have. Anyway, please take both suggestion in consideration. You have potential to be a real asset to this article. -Thibbs (talk) 20:17, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Really, anonymous, is your time here on Wikipedia best spent deleting cited claims and arguing about proper interpretation of guidelines? There is nothing more productive you might be doing? A reader of the articles in question can trivially check the citations and decide on how meaningful it is. The IFComp scores are the basis for the competition. They have active incentive to reduce gaming of the system. IFRatings may be a flawed site, but being at the top of the list is noteworthy. The only guideline argument you have is that MOS:FILM, an unrelated guideline, has decided that similar ratings are inappropriate. And, I'm pretty confident that if a movie dominated, say, the IMDB ratings that it would be worth a reasonable exception to note it, courtesy of IAR and UCS. — Alan De Smet | Talk 04:21, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Really, wikipedia *is* "user-generated content". It's not a "reliable 3rd-part source" either. Several users go and give high ratings for a game in a community site such as ifreviews.org and their opinions as people who actually played the game don't count because it's not "reliable"?! Gimme a break! I prefer basing my assumptions about a game I've not played yet based on such statistical feedback (and metacritics) rather than the opinion of a single paid analyst on mainstream magazines. So much BS going on in wikipedia... 189.11.192.130 (talk) 21:27, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Third Opinion

I have searched for second party sources that cover this competition and can find none so, unless someone has any, then we should conclude it is not a notable competition. It should only be included if we can get the results from a relaible second party source. Self published info and user generated content are rarely acceptable. User 82.20.32.232 is correct that these sites should not be used as sources. --neon white talk 13:50, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I assume you're talking about ifcomp.org? If so, would any of these count?
ifarchive source, 1up source, AllTheRage source, University of Pennsylvania source, eliterature.org source
This just scratches the surface for ifcomp.org... -Thibbs (talk) 16:16, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
It's not too hard to show the competitions notability. It gets several pages of coverage in the book Twisty Little Passages. And while there isn't quite the depth of coverage of, say, the Oscars, you get a fair amount of third-party coverage of new competitions opening or final results.For example, you have Hackszine published by O'Reilly Media, Destructoid published by ModernMethod, Slashdot (article) published by SourceForge, Inc., Joystiq (article) published by Weblogs, Inc., mediabistro published by Jupitermedia, or GameSetWatch published by Think Services. Sure, many of those are technically "blogs", but they're also published by corporations with a vested interested in not embarrassing themselves. Apparently a fair number of third-parties (third-party to the competition) think the competition is worth at least mentioning. Now, it is not necessary to pull actual competition numbers from third-party sites, any more than you would need to go to a third-party for Oscars results. All the third-parties are going to do is reprint the information from the competition itself. — Alan De Smet | Talk 16:18, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't want to forget The Wall Street Journal. — Alan De Smet | Talk 16:35, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
On the up side, we're helping build a collection of citations for the competition's article. :-) — Alan De Smet | Talk 16:36, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
On a related note, I'm not aware of the need for a source to itself pass WP:N to be counted as WP:RS. The RS guideline suggests, "reliable, third-party, [and] published" are the key tests. It's certainly published. (WP:RS doesn't appear to define this; I'm assuming it means, "Potentially available to the public so other people can review it.") It's third-party for the articles in question (but would not be for Interactive Fiction Competition, but that's not what is under discussion), and it's reliable in that it is "trustworthy [and] authoritative in relation to the subject at hand." (from WP:RS again). — Alan De Smet | Talk 16:23, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Further, it should be emphasized that WP:V#Reliable sources states that "[a]rticles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources..." As such, secondary sources aren't really the issue here. -Thibbs (talk) 16:29, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
The book is one source, WSJ, because it's a blog is of less use, none of the others are really verifiable sources, i'd be looking for something in magazines, jorunals, newspapers etc. as a good source. Other equally non-notable sites are of no use. This issue is not about notablity but whether the competition is important enough to warrant inclusion. If you can't source the results to a reliable second party, i'd say it probably shouldn't be included. see WP:SPS. If it was uncontroversial it might have been ok but seen as it has been contentious, we should be careful about using self published sources. As has been stated user generated content can never be used as a source, this includes 'fanzines' like the one at [34], however citing the results of the competition from their own website might be acceptable if all parties agree. If you can cite second parties then those are the sources to cite. Reliable second and third party sources are what are usually used, they are established at WP:PSTS.--neon white talk 21:13, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
WP:PSTS says "Primary sources that have been published by a reliable source may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. For that reason, anyone—without specialist knowledge—who reads the primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia passage agrees with the primary source." I don't think there is any doubt that the passages in question agree with the primary source and can be verified by anyone reading the primary source. I think Thibbs and I have shown that the IFComp is a reliable, third party, published source, meeting the core of WP:RS and more importantly that the awards are relevant and meaningful. Common sense suggests that the competition's own site is an ideal source for citations about winners, as anyone else is simply reprinting what the competition claims themselves. (And Wikipedia:SPS#cite_note-4 suggests that the WSJ blog is suitable for inclusion. And while note 4 specifically refers to "newpapers", as sites like Slashdot or Joystiq are "subject to the newspaper's[publishers] full editorial control," I believe common sense suggests they are appropriate as well.) — Alan De Smet | Talk 22:20, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
It's the 'reprinting' of results in reliable sources that makes them verifiable. The official site should be fine especially if they issue a press release. News blogs are sometimes but not always acceptable and, as with all opinion pieces, should be used carefully, attributing the opinions to the author when necessary. IFComp is not a reliable, third party, published source, it's a first party source if you are quoting it directly. A third party would be another site discussing IFComp.--neon white talk 18:04, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
Well everyone agrees that the book, Twisty Little Passages clearly demonstrates the notability of IFComp. Another book from a lecture series by the obviously qualified Ana Paiva (which unfortunately is not available online) can be found described here and discusses the IFComp. A doctoral thesis by 2004 National Thesis Award participant, Mariëlle Gebben, discussing the IFComp can be found here in Dutch. I would argue that the Wall Street Journal article would also count as a reliable source (despite the fact that its online version allows public commentary). As Alan De Smet points out, the footnote to SPS clearly demonstrates the weight accorded this sort of "blog." Although they may not be 3rd party, 1up.com (publishers of EGM magazine), GameSetWatch, and Joystiq.com are all well-respected sources for video games generally and the IFArchive and SPAG are well-respected source for IF titles specifically. As I mentioned earlier, WP:RS states that "[T]he[] authors [of Reliable Sources] are generally regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand". To me this indicates that these sources have sufficiently demonstrated the notability of IFComp in the matter at hand and that in deference to IFComp as an authority in relation to the subject at hand, these other sources have proven the reliability of IFComp as a source.
Treating that much as established, it would seem to be fully acceptable to cite IFComp as a reliable source. Despite this it is here suggested that IFComp is not a reliable source itself but rather a self-published primary source, however even regardless this would not be a problem as I see it. A re-examination of the manner in which it has been used here demonstrates that it is being used to report on its own rankings. As WP:SELFPUB explains, "[s]elf-published ... sources may be used as sources of material about themselves, including in articles about themselves, without the requirement that they be published experts in the field." As WP:RS#Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources explains, "Primary sources are considered reliable for basic statements of fact as to what is contained within the primary source itself (for example, a work of fiction is considered a reliable source for a summary of the plot of that work of fiction)." Doesn't this indicate that the IFComp scores are citation-worthy at least in this context? -Thibbs (talk) 18:57, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
I think there is some confusion on "first/third party" and "primary/tertiary sources." They are different things with different standards. WP:RS muddies things linking from "third-party" to the obviously unrelated definition of primary/tertiary. WP:RS says we should use third-party sources. WP:RS does not define third-party. It does link to this section of WP:NOR, which defined primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. More tellingly, WP:NOR says, "Wikipedia articles should rely mainly on published reliable secondary sources...." So which is it, secondary sources or third-party sources? If we assume that "third-party" and "tertiary source" have the same definition, we simply cannot resolve this. However, if "third-party" means, "Not the subject of the article," this works fine.
If that's the case, and I believe that it is, the IFComp is third-party to individual games, in much the same way that Roger Ebert is third-party to individual movies. Now, the IFComp is a primary source. But WP:NOR says that primary sources may be used, with care. It even helpfully describes what sort of care is needed, "anyone—without specialist knowledge—who reads the primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia passage agrees with the primary source...." I believe the IFComp claims in question meet this standard. — Alan De Smet | Talk 23:06, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
This sounds correct to me. The only thing I would add is that there is a perfect difinition of "third-party" at wikt (see "third party"), a sister project to wikipedia. As Alan De Smet suggests, there is no requirement that sources be tertiary to be reliable. I think it is clear that IFComp is perfectly fine as a third-party source on the topic at hand and that even if it is considered a self-published first-party source as it is used to report on its own rankings, it is nevertheless acceptable under WP:SELFPUB and WP:PSTS. I can see the potential for an argument that a secondary-source is required to combat WP:SYNTH, however this is a matter of deductive summary accomplished without changing the meaning of the source or advancing a position contrary to the source. WP:SYNTH characterizes this sort thing as "good editing." To further expand on this, a cursory examination of Jimbo Wales' brief comment on synthesis ought to assuage any fears that deductive reasoning vititates the reliability of the information reported. As concisely as possible, WP:SYNTH is intended to block "synthesi[s] work [employed] in a non-standard way," but it is clear that a total bar of synthesis would prevent summary and directly conflict with WP:UCS (see WP:OR, FN1 and WP:NOTOR).
Would either the anonymous IP Editor or User:Neon white care to comment? -Thibbs (talk) 18:10, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I've asked Neon white on his talk page to rejoin the conversation. Also, I'm not sure we're really getting anywhere, so in hopes of getting more viewpoints, I've asked at WP:RS/N. I haven't bothered trying to contact the anonymous editor; he never appears to use the same address more than once. — Alan De Smet | Talk 22:37, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

ifcomp.org is a sufficiently reliable source for past results. Whether to mention those results here depends on IFC's importance within interactive fiction. Are there other, more notable, awards in the genre? --Apoc2400 (talk) 08:39, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
the XYZZY Award for Best Game is a more notable and significant award, since it covers *all* games released in a given year, not just the handful entered in the IFComp. IFComp is not decided by a panel of experts, but by anonymous public votes (liable to vote-stuffing), so is far from the "oscars of IF" that user "Alan De Smet" misleadingly claims. its 's already a stretch to include ifcomp as a signifier of notability. as per neon white, including unverified user-ratings averages (and manipulating them to suggest one years IFComp winner is better than another because it has a "higher average") is certainly out. 82.9.26.153 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 13:48, 15 November 2008 (UTC).
User:82.9.26.153 is correct to the extent that there is no third-party support for the suggestion that IFComp is the "oscars of IF". The comparison I believe User:Alan De Smet meant to make was to the Super Bowl. As Vauhini Vara of The Wall Street Journal notes in her article, Keeping a Genre Alive, "The [annual Interactive Fiction Competition] contest, going on now and in its 11th year, serves as a sort of Super Bowl of the genre."
The Super Bowl is arguably one of the most notable annual sports events and as the IFComp has been given this sort of recognition from an obviously qualified Wall Stree Journal writer, it seems to me that the unsourced synthetic observation by Alan de Smet that the IFComp is also similar to the Oscars does little to damage its objective notability. Further, I've seen little to indicate manipulation of the statistics. As I understood it, the question was whether IFComp could be used as a source absent conflicting sources. Are there conflicting sources at XYZZY? Suggesting that Alan De Smet has selected IFComp in order to further his own opinion that the game is question deserves a higher average is a clear violation of WP:AGF. Do you have anything to base this on? -Thibbs (talk) 16:33, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
The IFComp is a reliable source for information about the competition itself. Other sources have decided that the competition is notable. That another competition is "more notable" or "more significant" for whatever standard you care to select is irrelevant. That the numbers come from public votes is irrelevant. The competition has decided that those numbers are meaningful, as they are the entire basis for the final ranking. We don't need to judge the quality of the numbers; the competition already has. We can report the competition's decisions. If there is criticism of the competition's scoring system (That is, beyond your personal opinion), I am absolutely in favor of including it in Interactive Fiction Competition; we would be remiss to omit it. But that criticism is not grounds to remove these cited claims from a reliable source.
Floatpoint did rank first place in the 2006 Interactive Fiction Competition[35], it did so with an average score of 8.41[36], and that score is the highest scoring game game from 1999 through 20087.[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46] Are you claiming that IFComp site does not support these claims? Are you claiming that the IFComp site is not a reliable source for information about the rankings they themselves issued? — Alan De Smet | Talk 19:47, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
On the subject of my claiming that the IFComp is the Oscars of IF, please re-read what I wrote again. I said that the IFComp is like the Oscars for purposes of my argument, in that both are the authoritative and reliable sources for information about their respective results. I grabbed the Oscars because it happened to spring to mind. If it helps, pretend I compared it to the Daytime Emmy Awards; my resulting claim remains identically accurate. — Alan De Smet | Talk 19:55, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
This is so frakking insane it's hilarious. How big is the IF community? Does this neon guy really thinks IF will get coverage on the New York Times?! It's still a notable subject to appear on wikipedia, but unfortunately nothing new on the front can be included because it's not notable and it's not notable because the community of authors/players is too small. Is that funny or not? It's pretty notable, though, in this is small community! It shines like the sun! 189.11.192.130 (talk) 21:56, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
  • I think the best way to go here is to use the sources to improve the Interactive Fiction Competition article were they would be acceptable and wikilink to it here maybe with a brief summary. No point in repeating info here that can go in that article. --neon white talk 17:00, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Improving Interactive Fiction Competition is certainly a good idea, but it seems orthogonal to the issue here. This is about claims regarding two games, Floatpoint and Slouching Toward Bedlam, and citations for those claims should appear where the claims are used: this article and the games articles themselves, before the anonymous editor deleted them. I don't understand what you're proposing. Could you please clarify? — Alan De Smet | Talk 20:03, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Indiscriminate information?

Our dear anonymous friend is back. Apparently he's given up on his previous arguments (including WP:RS, WP:OR, MOS:FILM(?!), WP:VG/S, and WP:SPS), but is still looking for any guideline that might justify his deletions. Today's theory is "so what? irrelevant trivia. pick 2 random years and claim its the 'highest score' between them? WP:NOT an indiscriminate collection of information". Well, let's check what WP:NOT sayins about indiscriminate collections of information. No general statements, only a list of things Wikipedia is not. The only entry that even marginally applies is "Statistics," but that is clairified as "Long and sprawling lists of statistics". One number does not a long and sprawling list make. The two years were not randomly selected; they represent the earliest year I can find data for and the year in which another game received a higher average score. And since he brings up "trivia", let's take a quick look at WP:TRIVIA, if only to save us yet another revert round trip: WP:TRIVIA regards lists of isolated facts, and the recommended treatment is integration into the article. The facts in question were integrated into the paragraph about the game's reception and don't qualify as a Trivia section. — Alan De Smet | Talk 21:34, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Floatpoint statistics

I copied 86.25.206.218's post below from Talk:Floatpoint in order to keep the dicussion in one place. — Alan De Smet | Talk 21:24, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

the correct place for the statistical miracle that User:Alan De Smet has discovered (that floatpoint received a high average rating in a user-voted competition, despite it not being the highest, and despite the fact that figures are not available for many years of the comp) is his own blog and/or webspace, or perhaps ifwiki. Not a wikipedia article, which reports encyclopedically on what others have said about the subject in question. Surely such an amazing statistical fact, will be reported far and wide, right? why else would mr de smet be so keen on including this trivia? let's take a look at the game very own promotional page: http://emshort.wordpress.com/my-work/ - how odd! doesnt seem to mention this statistical miracle, which is so important it merits several sentences in the intro! surely the games very own promotional page would mention this? in fact, i couldn find a single discussion of this statistical miracle anywhere at all. why is that?

"Just as giving undue weight to a viewpoint is not neutral, so is giving undue weight to other verifiable and sourced statements. An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject. Note that undue weight can be given in several ways, including, but not limited to, depth of detail, quantity of text, prominence of placement, and juxtaposition of statements." (WP:NPOV) in this case, the appropriate weight for this statistical miracle is nil, until sources can be found that discuss it. even the ifcomp pages themselves don't discuss it. strangely, they don't even put a ranking of all the ifcomp games together into a "greatest of all time" list. why is that? could it be even ifcomp doesn't deem such comparisons relevant or noteworthy?

is there any particular reason this particular editor is so keen to promote this irrelevant trivia on the wikipedia page? would he care to share why he deems this largely-ignored statistical miracle so important to the wikipedia page, when it has nobody else other than mr de smet raving about it? until then, it shall be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.25.206.218 (talk • contribs)

The "statistical miracle" is not some carefully manufactured number. I have not cherry picked dates. The data goes as far back as I can find citations for, and goes forward to the date in which another game received a higher average score. I have not cherry picked statistics, the average score is how games are ranked, it is the only statistic directly used by the competition. This is similar to reporting "the coldest day since 18xx, the earliest year data is available" or "So-and-so hit the most home runs in one season since records were kept until that record was beaten by That-other-guy."
The meat of your newest argument appears to be that undue weight is placed on the information. How so? You quoted a bit chunk of the NPOV guideline. Is it placed too prominently? I'm open to moving it. I'm guessing you mean "depth of detail, quantity of text". I don't think three sentences noting the score, the score in context, and the game that had a higher score is undue quantity of text. Perhaps it drowns out the XYZZY score a bit, in which case we can discuss placement. Or, even better, I'd love some more context on the XYZZY score.
What am I "keen" on? What exactly are you insinuating? What I'm keen on is making Wikipedia a better place. Not in grand ways, just one small improvement at a time. I believe the addition is good. It's cited, reliable, verifiable, and provides some context. Its removal makes Wikipedia ever so slightly worse. — Alan De Smet | Talk 22:22, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
A quick reminder: you can sign your posts with "~~~~". Doing so is encouraged. Also, I know it's been mentioned before, but if you haven't already, I recommend reading Wikipedia:Why create an account?. An account actually gives you a bit more privacy, as your IP address is hidden from almost the general public (including most editors), and can be a pseudonym. It also makes it a lot easier for people to address you in conversations (my selfish reason for wanting you to have one), and provides other benefits. — Alan De Smet | Talk 22:35, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


Before we go any further, I believe WP:SARC is directly on point here (especially the bit about the IP editing). That's not binding of course but WP:POINT is, and based on nothing more than what I see here it appears that the IP editor has made the proverbial mountain out of what he seems to consider a trivial molehill. This is not a battleground and the point of editing is not to win. If this can help at all for reasons of consensus, I would come down in favor of keeping the information. The information is quite clearly deductively achieved and thus WP:SYNTH doesn't apply. The source does not fail WP:RS (as we discussed in depth above), and although there is a weak argument that it is trivial in nature, I personally find the information to be worthy of at least minor note. As far as the current manifestation of this dispute, based on the course this whole matter has taken, I believe that this WP:TRIVIA-related concern is less likely a concern for wikipedia's style than it is an example of moving the goalpost due to the development of some kind of barely concealed enmity. -Thibbs (talk) 22:50, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Citations for Disch's Amnesia

I'm afraid I'll have to give up on finding a cite for the fact that Amnesia was EA's only text adventure. I have searched long and hard, but apart from the many reviews open to the public and self-published sources, there seem to be no sources which address the fact that this is the only text adventure. I have found sources that give a list of all EA games and I have checked to see that of the ones in the list the only text adventure is Amnesia, however that could easily be interpreted as synthesis and with matters as they currently stand I have great reason to believe it would be challenged as violative of this policy (or possibly as violative of WP:RS somehow...). I think the only solution is to either come to a consensus that in this case WP:UCS trumps WP:OR, or to remove the word "only". Any thoughts? -Thibbs (talk) 23:43, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Seeing no citations or agreement to use UCS, I'll go ahead and act BOLDly to remove the word "only." -Thibbs (talk) 16:36, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Citation penny jar

Have a citation? Leave a citation. Need a citation? Take a citation. A place to dump promising looking sources you don't have time to integrate, or to find sources to investigate.

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