Talk:Half-Life 2: Beta

What purpose does this article and other beta documentation serve on the wiki?

I previously put a deletion notice on this article shortly after it was created, but it was removed by the article's author and brought up for further discussion on my talk page. I tried to clarify my reasoning for the deletion, but the original author never got back to me. Since then, I've noticed that the article's subject has been expanded upon by other editors, with the creation of a game template and weapon_gauss.

I'd like to reiterate my concerns: What purpose does all of this actually serve to developers using the Source engine SDK? At face value, these articles seem to only be dedicated to chronicling their existence and hold no value as documentation.

Why do these articles exist? Would anyone be opposed to deletion notices being raised for them? If so, why? --Blixibon (talk) 12:32, 7 October 2022 (PDT)

IMO, pages like weapon_gauss, if cleaned up, could provide useful information for developers attempting to reimplement the cut content in retail Source (ex: mods like Dark Interval or Raising the Bar: Redux). As they currently stand, however, they are messy and contain an amount of irrelevant information. I marked weapon_gauss as needing cleanup, but otherwise I'll stand back and see how this unfolds.
— SirYodaJedi (talk) 09:51, 8 October 2022 (PDT)

It's somewhat been established that leaked content isn't allowed on the VDC (IIRC a Valve employee threatened to ban someone over it a long time ago) so I would support deletion. The exceptions I'd say would be things that got left over in the publicly available SDKs (e.g. physgun), and cases where referring to leaked content is necessary for complete documentation (e.g. Source BSP File Format listing BSP version 18 as the HL2 beta). Pages specifically about content that can only be obtained from leaks should be removed. I should clarify that "leak" in this context specifically refers to when files are illegally released online by a third party, not when Valve accidentally includes references to an unreleased product in an update or the like (so pages like npc_combine_advisor_roaming can stay despite arguably being an HL3 "leak"). - Luke18033 (talk) 18:58, 18 January 2023 (PST)