Forum:Citations in Gale article (BG3)

Greetings Possessed Priest. I will assume, for the sake of your soul, that you are only possessed by a love of Our Lord, my Father, and not by any sort of evil being.


 * "Your points make a lot of sense, however, we just don't have the resources to dedicate to this. The wiki has about 14 editors who contribute regularly, and a small portion of them are interested in video games, and even less are interested in documenting them. The only people who contribute to such articles are a couple of trusted editors, and if others update them (which is very rare), we can talk through if their edits are legitimate or otherwise. I'm going to try to address your main points one by one:"

Clearly what is required then is a recruitment drive. When I was younger, I did this by absolving the entirety of humanity of their sins by sacrificing myself. Now, obviously, I was young and a bit dramatic. But it worked. Do you have a member of staff who is particularly noteworthy that you may use as a blood sacrifice to appease the masses?

If not, I would recommend a recruitment drive where you advertise the posts and do some recruitment and induction. Some targeted advertising towards specific groups that may have an interest would be key. For example, I wonder if some of the lore-nerds on Youtube that use your content would be willing to help advertise that drive - after all - many of them rely on the Wiki for their content I'm sure. There's a guy named... Barbs Flarbs... something like that, he would be a good candidate to use as an example.

Essentially, as I said to my lesser-known disciple, Sneving, whose name has sadly gone out of fashion: "If we don't have enough people, Sneving, go and f____ find me some!! Tell them I can get free wine! And... bread!!"


 * "This isn't what the citation is. The citation is for Baldur's Gate III (the game itself), not our own wiki page. The links are there to be useful for finding out further information on the developer or the game. We point to both Wikipedia as a link to Larian Studios to point the reader to a wiki about the developer, and point to our page to give the reader access to information on the game itself."

In my (not yet omniscient) defence: that is what happens when you see the citation and click it. On something like Wikipedia (normally) you would click the citation, be taken to the citation list where the source is cited and linked if possible. But this is a side point, for sure. What may be another way of doing it, is to link to the game page itself somewhere (I.E. Steam as an example) so it's clear that the game itself is being referenced and not the Wiki page for the game (because I did go trawling to see if those Gale quotes were on the page linked.. I say trawling.. I got a disciple to do a CTRL+F)


 * "Making the citations lead to videos of the game that are uploaded somewhere (e.g. a FR Wiki Youtube)"
 * "This sounds like a good idea, but it would be exceptionally time-consuming. I personally don't have time to document the information by playing the game, then recording it, uploading it, describing it, and citing it."

This is why, my child, you must learn to be a Priest and a shepherd. You must assemble a flock of dedicated followers who can preach your gospel and do your bidding. All things worth doing take time. And if all else fails, automate it. Sorry, that was my inner Supply-Side-Jesus coming out.


 * "...or, more risky, to external videos with timestamps."
 * "Yes, this would be less-time consuming initially, but very risky, and potentially take up a lot of time in the long run. I'll list some reasons why.

I agree completely - not really an option especially because of mods or externals being taken down, breaking the link.


 * "In the citation itself, specify roughly in the game where it is"


 * "Good idea. However, this would only work for some games, but not for many. Not all games have chapters, and a different course of events can lead to other sources of events. Some events happen in completely different places at different parts of the game in terms of time. The editor might not know what led to such an event, or an editor might not be aware of randomly-generated events so could not document it correctly. This holds true for a lot of old Forgotten Realms games, and some modern ones too. As you're familiar with Baldur's Gate III, imagine if Shadowheart was walked past by the PC. They'd later be confronted by her, or find her in the Grove, or kill her and take the artefact from her corpse, or something else. Let's say they met her in the Grove, the editor could write that "Shadowheart went from the crashed nautiloid to the Grove, and sat on a bench, trying to understand the strange artefact in her position". This is pretty misleading when the event has multiple different paths and outcomes. I also think this would discourage a lot of new editors from editing the wiki, as would them having to cite a video reference."

I think you have a good point here, my child. What I would have done, in my younger days, is created a more standard format. For example, the version of the game cited would be useful (Patch 5) in order to see out of date information. Frankly, the Harvard referencing system has nothing on the one at the library of Alexandria... but alas, Sneving had a of a bad day hearing he was not recorded in the Bible and the rest is a rather heated affair involving a lot of missing books.


 * "Not using citations until EA is out and you can get a better policy on it"
 * "I strongly disagree with this. Pointing to the game itself is better than pointing to nothing."

Hopefully I have outlined a better option above (naming patches). It was quite divinely inspired, if I do say so myself!


 * "Otherwise you have a potentially very abusable system where people can just cite the entire game for anything and anyone who wants to error-check it has to trawl through the ENTIRE GAME which is... not a good system, I think we can all agree."


 * "This is a decent point, but it isn't much different from "updating" these video citations if a video gets deleted or finding a citation if the editor doesn't add it in the first place."

Very true - but I feel the point still stands that - should for example someone make a claim that "Gale says he is ____" and then cites the entire BG3 game.. it's very difficult to disprove. The thought comes to mind a great saying I invented around 33AD but is often misappropriated to other people: "A lie makes it halfway to Judea before the truth even has its sandles on."

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 * "For what it is worth, we're currently updating our policies.


 * In an ideal wiki with hundreds or more editors interested in documenting video games (instead of just two or so), this would already be implemented. If more people join the effort to edit the wiki, giving us a great resource pool, some of these ideas would likely pass.


 * Until then, cheers for your comments."

I would welcome all of the suggested changes to your policies, they are the will of My Father.

Until then, I wish you all a happy Litha!

JESUS THE LORD SAVIOUR OF CHRISTENDOM (talk) 21:46, 21 June 2022 (UTC)