Valve Developer Community talk:Avoid peacock terms

Is this really relevant to the VDC?

I understand how this is appropriate to Wikipedia, as the examples amply demonstrate. I'm not so convinced that it is relevant as policy here. We have two types of pages now on the VDC: pages that serve developers as development reference information, and pages about games and mods available. I can easily see that peacock terms are out of place on development pages (though I can't really see how they might end up on them in the first place).

But when it comes to games/mod pages, no one has yet answered the question of what these pages are for. Are they for dry factual reference and cataloguing, or are they for promoting these games/mods to potential players and team members?

I don't see what is achieved by striving for the former, since this is not an encyclopedia, whereas Wikipedia is (or aims to be). My instinct is that the latter is more desirable, since then the VDC is further fulfilling its role of serving developers.

If it is the latter, then I don't think the "peacock" policy justifies edits like this one. People should be allowed to write whatever copy they want when promoting their games/mods: Readers are bright enough to know when they are being spoken to in press release speech, but developers should be allowed to describe their games in whatever way they wish, bringing focus to whatever details they wish. In my opinion, page policy for mods/games should recognise this right and they should be exempt from "depeacocking", etc.

Others may disagree. I've noticed a few comments from others expressing discomfort at the marketing nature of these pages. Discuss ... --Giles 01:21, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

The "Avoid peacock terms" article (and template) in theirselves are useless, IMO, but I hate marketing-speak as much as the next guy. I've always thought of VDC articles on game titles as informative, not promoting or whatever. And for the record, I have also removed "peacock terms" from articles during may stay here. I think that as a wiki, VDC should strive for npov. Jupix 01:35, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

In my opinion, and as well of many others, this is (indeed) not an encyclopedia, but just an infomative piece of art, created by developers, fans, modders (in the way of a new MOD, not adjusting other MODs) and scripters, not bookworms (well, most of them are at Wikipedia ;) (Not all!)). I agree with Jupix with the Neutral Point of View, but again, this is not a strict informative encyclopedia, but more of a hobby (for most of us) --CrabbyData 02:30, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

The most relevant part of the Peacock category text is the "This is not a marketing vehicle" part. That's why I put it there. While most mods are free, not-for-profit ventures for experience and getting your name out there, pages like DinoHunters are clearly ad-copy for-profit "mods" in the loosest sense. --Alph Tech STUART 07:46, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

"This is not a marketing vehicle"? I don't recall seeing that text in the Terms and Conditions? (Though I may be guilty of scan-reading the legalese, feel free to prove me wrong on that point.) This site exists for the benefit of developers using Valve's technology. Marketing to players and potential team members benefits developers. I don't see what grounds you base your "not a marketing vehicle" statement on, other than personal preference? --Giles 09:10, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

Valve Developer Community:About sez: “ This site will hopefully remain: The definitive and the most comprehensive source of information on using the Source engine ”. The key phrase is source of information. Marketing speeches, buzzwords and superlatives bear no informational value, they were invented to evoke an emotional response in the reader — the kind of response that gets you to try the product. A dev wiki is not the place for marketing babble. I'm not saying this is Valve's view on the matter, but anyway.. This is what I think. Jupix 10:20, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

The key phrase is source of information on using the Source engine. If that phrase forms the terms for consideration of these pages, it argues for their deletion, right? --Giles 11:03, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

Well, ultimately, it's up to the Valve people to decide what should or should not be deleted here.. One thing we do know for certain is that we do need some kind of official guidelines on this. Jupix 11:21, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

Not really. To wit: "This is a community wiki, feel free to add it if you'd like! --JeffLane 15:37, 13 Jul 2005 (PDT)", from the top of JeffLane's user talk page. As Vaarscha pointed out, it is useless and counter-productive to enforce rules and guidelines if all they do is stagnate the flow of information. ...I stopped adding to the entity list after all those templates came into play, making it difficult to understand what I was doing. There's still a few errors in there. --Demented 13:03, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

I don't really mean that the pages should be deleted; I just had a bit of a devil's advocate mood going. My point is simply that these pages seem to be outside the original remit of the site, since they have little to do with helping developers use the source engine. This makes comparisons to entity pages and other quotes about "add what you like" kinda ambiguous. Therefore if these pages are going to continue to be added and edited then someone needs to sit down and figure out exactly what purpose they are serving. --Giles 15:48, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

As to article relevancy, if this is going to stay it needs to be moved into the Valve Developer Community namespace. I disagree with it staying because all it is is a copy of a Wikipedia article. It's trivial to make a link to any article on Wikipedia. --AndrewNeo 13:45, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

Perfect example of how aimless and confused this community has become

I've been keeping myself from ranting about this for quite some time now, but I just have to. I do not want to offend anyone (if I do, I'd like to apologize already at this point) or make their work look less worth than it is. I'm also not saying that I am not guilty of it.

This whole article is irrelevant and totally misses the point of this wiki. Remember what it is about, in all it's simplicity:

Helping developers!

It's not going to make a difference whether the mods and games have a neutral view in their article or not. Players who want informations about these games don't come here, they go the the website, review-sites, meta critics, forums, whatnot. If you want to make a wiki about that, make your own and call it Valve Player Community. The mods and games are supposed to be listed, which is OK. Everything else is beyond the scope of this wiki imo.

Same thing goes for all these nitpick-edits in the last time. 99% of the changes I see here lately, while improving the articles, do not make the wiki significantly better. It doesn't really help a developer whether the formulation is 110% correct, the picture blends perfectly into the layout or the article is not named in plural (I mean no offense to anyone. Yes, your work does improve the articles, but it does not really add to usability in many cases. And yes, I've done so as well.). While it certainly is important to reach a certain level of quality for all articles, a lot of articles beeing edited have reached it and more important things are left to be done.

Take a look at the help forums (like VERC) to see what kind of help people need. In some cases, you can point them to an article on the wiki and everything is fine. In some cases, you can not. Let's focus on that, find out how articles can be simplified or complex issues be cleared with the help of pictures. Find out what kind of articles are missing or not explained exhaustively. Let's focus on the core of this wiki instead of the gadgets.

...and now tear me apart. --Vaarscha 05:55, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

Isn't it sad to see a new article contribution like Half and half method is so easily to lost in the tide of nitpick-edits? Especially the fact that it got "cleanup" notice without any specification - how demotivating. I need a rest from all of these nitpicking noise... I miss Wise... --n-neko 19:47, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

To all these wiki-gnomes - what you're doing is very useful, but it's far less important than new content. So go on, choose a topic that's not properly covered, and write a new article! —Cargo Cult _{(info, talk)} 00:56, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

My feeling is that if folk want to spend literally hundreds of hours of their time beautifying the pages, they are entitled to do that (and you are just as entitled to berate them for it, of course, and yes, I agree with you, there are probably better purposes to put thousands of edits towards). You are right that the site now cohabits with what could be called a Valve Fan Commmunity and that the majority of edits these days revolve around this new, secondary site purpose. I don't really mind them doing what they do, so long as it doesn't conflict with the developer aspects of the site.

I disagree with you, though, on the subject of players visiting this site. You can see that they do from any of these pages, imo, even if it's a tiny audience. So if a developer (especially one who has paid Valve for a Source-engine license) wants to come and use these pages to promote their game, then that is helping them as a developer, right? --Giles 01:42, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

Thanks for all your comments, good to see that some (more or less) share my opinion :)

As for Minerva and MoP, both have been extensively linked from other sites - Minerva is the #4 here and has far more views than any tutorial! Anyway, as I've said, I think a listing is OK and if some contents of the official website are copied over, fine. However, any license-game (and virtually any mod) has a proper website as source of information. But I don't see why (or even how, for unreleased / unfinished mods) we should write neutral articles... as I've said, there are enough other places tailored towards this already. --Vaarscha 04:44, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

Fixed the dead-link to Special:Popularpages... Correct me if I did something wrong, but it returned me an error with 'You requested a page that is not reconized by the Valve Developer Community software' (I translated it from Dutch...) --CrabbyData 06:22, 8 May 2006 (PDT)