On 4/26/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 06:11:55 -0400, you wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapleStory --a long article about an MMORGP with no explicit references for any particular facts in it, but a slew of external links to official websites and fansites
Sometimes I think I'm in the wrong project. That article is well over *three times* the size of the one on Robert Hooke, and then there's a listcruft of monsters as well.
That shouldn't come as a surprise. MMORPGs are known for their addiction potential. Players spend hundreds of hours in these games. They form emotional attachments with the game and the players. Writing about the game allows them to re-experience some of the positive emotions they associate with it. The same goes for movies, fictional realms, and so forth.
The real problem is not that we have an extremely detailed article about MapleStory. In fact, that is a good thing. Who will describe the cultural artifacts of the early 21st century in detail, if not us? Academia can never catch up with the pace of development of these games. Incidentally, I was recently trying to learn more about the MMORPG phenomenon, and guess what my best source of information was? Wikipedia, of course.
The problem I have seen, aside from the fact that many of these articles about games and movies are written by teenagers and read accordingly, is that they often focus entirely on the content of a game, movie, etc. The parts which are emotional are described in detail. However, little attention is given to aspects such as history, production, commercial success, critical reception. That is true for the MapleStory article as well. It is full of screenshots and details about gameplay. However, there is virtually no history or additional information to put the game into context.
Getting back on topic, perhaps one thing that would help is a "School of Wikipedia" where new contributors can find mentors for different aspects of editing, with rewards on completion of different courses (the final exercise being to get an article to featured status). Has such a thing already been tried? It seems one of the things that has really worked well is the "barn star" reward model. Perhaps we could also learn a lesson or two from MMORPGs, as long as it happens within a very limited context such as such a School of Wikipedia.
Erik