User talk:Randomran

		The VG Barnstar
		I give you this barnstar for dedication to Wikipedia's Video Game Articles

/Archive 1

You wrote at AFD last year:

A bot that notifies the creator, at worst, wouldn't do any harm. I'd support that. Randomran (talk) 18:46, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I noticed the above comments on WP:AFD, do you know any tech savy editors who would be able to create a bot which contacts the creator of an article when it is put up for Afd? Thanks.

]

• Afraid not. It's a good idea though. Just make sure you have consensus to do it. There are others who might be concerned about side-effects. (A lot of people are against using a bot to welcome new editors, for example, because it's too impersonal. I wouldn't see the same problem here, but you never know with Wikipedians.) Randomran (talk) 16:36, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for your time Randomran.
    talk) 16:51, 3 May 2009 (UTC)[reply
    ]

• I would support this idea, even though I am not too keen on welcoming new editors. It can be very frustrating to realize an article you created has been deleted and you missed the change in your watchlist and no one notified you. Preventing this would certainly outweight any "impersonality"--the most impersonal thing is to not be able to respond to the AfD! Unfortunately I wouldn't know how to program it! Cazort (talk) 15:46, 20 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Just fixing it isn't my ideal solution, nor do I think that it's the best thing to do considering the results of the RfC. But I thought I'd give it a shot. Feel free to try something yourself, I'm going to have a hard time arguing for something I think is the wrong thing, even if it's the better thing. But argue I will... Hobit (talk) 00:21, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Also _please_ archive this page :-) Hobit (talk) 00:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • True, but at the same time, things that don't have consensus shouldn't be policy. And a vocal minority shouldn't make it otherwise. Both statements are true, and I'll willing to compromise against what I think is plainly right both in terms of the policy itself and the notion of having policy without consensus. I'll still push for removal, but a half step is probably all we'll get. Hobit (talk) 18:08, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oh, I suspect we'll all still !vote in blocks, but with any luck we can find something all the "blocks" agree on. I'm more optimistic today than I have been for a while, but we'll see. In any case, thanks for the kind words! Hobit (talk) 02:56, 6 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

yeah, I'm finishing up with school this week, and I'm going to try and finish the bleepin' review of Grand Theft Auto clone next... and then I'm gonna be watching Star Trek... but I'll see where I am next week :) --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 23:57, 4 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect I can insert myself in this section... Finals period is a week and a half; naturally, I have to wait the whole week and a half, because of a final on next Wednesday. I can't say I'll be super available after, as [first] summer term starts the week after, but not having to worry about finals should increase availability. :) --Izno (talk) 00:10, 5 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to say our finals were last week. Hah I say! Hobit (talk) 02:53, 5 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your suggestions, I am retiring our discussion. If you have anything else you would like to say, don't hesitate.

]

Due to an apparent lack of interest, the WPVG Newsletter will be switching from a monthly publication schedule to a quarterly one. The next issue be delivered on July 1, 2009, and will pertain to the second quarter of the calendar year. If you have any comments regarding this, or suggestions to improve the newsletter, please post at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Newsletter.

—VG Newsletter Contributors

• Notice delivery by –
  ^talk 15:13, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply
  ]

Neverwinter Nights 2

The Good Article review for Neverwinter Nights 2 has begun! There is some work to do, but overall it looks like we're in good shape. BOZ (talk) 19:22, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, duh, and I'm sure I forgot to mention that Planescape: Torment is up for FAC. :) BOZ (talk) 23:07, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Since I'm done with finals and pretty much slumming 'till I can find a job, what was that AfD thing you wanted us to do? --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 19:31, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

moved from user talk ikip:

ikip, I just want to chime in here and say we need to be able to discuss this without accusing each other of bad faith. If we can't do that, there's no point on continuing our discussion, and we may as well invite a group of independent editors to deal with it. I can understand why you might assume bad faith from AMiB. I don't understand how you can do it from me, and continue to push comments about me and WP:FICT that are both incorrect and irrelevant. If you don't think that I would make the same criticisms should a deletionist contact hundreds of other deletionists to join some Wikipedia space and subsequently link to various policy discussions, then you don't know me very well, and you're assuming bad faith. I know it's hard to have a discussion about your behavior and not take it personally. I hope that you can look at the number of times I've tried to disagree with you in a way that's constructive and helpful. But the only other thing I can point out is that I'm not looking for a punishment, because I don't think you've done anything with malice, bad faith, or even awareness of the full consequences. I just want the problematic recruitment and discussion-linking to stop, and my hope is that some neutral party will help you to understand why you should do it voluntarily. I think we're going to have to get outside input on this issue anyway. But if we inevitably do, I'd rather it were at a forum where we were talking about the appropriate use of ARS, and not at a forum where we have to start discussing personal attacks and assumptions of bad faith. That part is really up to you. Randomran (talk) 18:44, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I had a long response written, which I removed. Because I am concerned about the subtle warning in your last couple of sentences.

I am willing to follow all rules and guidelines of wikipedia, and I have. No one is arguing that I have not. I would appreciate an acknowlgement of this by you. If the current rules and guidelines are not to your satisfaction, the wonderful thing about wikipedia is that anyone, if they have a convincing enough argument, can change them.

talk) 19:52, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

]

I'll say that I don't know if you have acted in bad faith. But in terms of rules, you still

WP:WIKILAWYERING

.

Because I consider you a good editor, I'm not turning this into a user conduct issue. The fact that I'm talking to you should show you that I'm not looking to punish you. I think other people would, but I'm not them, and I don't want to be grouped with them. I'm asking for a voluntary solution to prevent ARS from being systematically abused, because I think you can understand how disruptive it would be if AMiB were to link hundreds deletionists to

WP:SCISSORS

to various discussions that are only indirectly related to its scope. I'm open to ideas to stop this indirect form of canvassing. I can't imagine a way to rebalance ARS's membership, so the only thing I can ask is that ARS stops linking to talk pages (or at least substantially scales it back), and confines its work to tagging and rescuing articles. Maybe temporarily, until things are less lopsided at ARS. If you have any other ideas to fix this systemic problem, I'm all ears. But for us to cooperate, there has to be some work towards a solution.

If we can't cooperate on a solution, I hope you'd at least have the civility to work with my on preparing an RFC on the issue. I may not be an inclusionist, but that doesn't mean we can't work together to get closure on the issue. We'd at least be able to agree on what actually transpired. And we'd be able to agree that other attempts to resolve it, such as by AMiB, have not been helpful, and escalated the problem too much too quickly. The only area we'd disagree on is whether or not there is a problem, and what should be done to fix it. We'd pose the question to the broader community, and try to get rid of any input from the usual faces so it doesn't become an inclusionist/deletionist food fight. (We could make a list of people who have tried to personally attack you, if necessary, and say that we'd ask them to voluntarily step aside and let other users deal with this for now.) I think that if we actually get independent feedback on the issue, not only would we get closure, but it may totally vindicate your approach. But you'd also have to accept that what you've done may be viewed as disruptive by the broader community, and that some sort of solution will be necessary. But I wouldn't ever want it framed in a way that calls for you to be punished, because you haven't descended into acts of bad faith, or attacking others. I hope that you never do. Randomran (talk) 16:50, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Because I consider you a good editor, I'm not turning this into a user conduct issue. The fact that I'm talking to you should show you that I'm not looking to punish you.

As you have begun to use my words in more casual talk page settings as evidence of unacceptable behavior, I would appreciate all comments back and forth being in a more formal setting, such as

talk) 18:04, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply

]

I'm confused as to what you mean, but okay. Randomran (talk) 04:47, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I noticed that your page has finally been archived. Would you mind if I applied {{

]

It's okay. I'll deal with it myself eventually. Randomran (talk) 16:19, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try and do some of this tomorrow, but we should look to standardize the headers for each month. that way I can get a script written to tell us how many of XYZ category VG articles were kept/deleted/no consensus per month. For some months we can get month to month data (though I don't imagine there is a seasonal variation to it. I have some other ideas once we get that out of the way. Protonk (talk) 04:25, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for the help. David Fuchs looks like he's going to finish up the month of November. I was actually going to do just that as the next step: turn the sorting by month into a sorting by type. Ideally, I'd like to find someone who can script something that will convert it to a nice table with a few columns: the type, a link to the article/discussion, the month, the result of the discussion, and maybe if it was later merged. Let's wait for David to do his thing. Randomran (talk) 04:30, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should hang on to the sorting by month but just make sure that types are constant across months. It's arbitrary but it keeps chunks of the AfDs to a size that is remotely manageable. Protonk (talk) 04:40, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fair points. Well, the page is protected, which'll probably help. Gives some time for consensus to emerge. I'm not sure I like it being in

]

Aye. Just hope it works out. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 21:44, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are you (or anyone else who is working on that article) planning to make the corrections that I noted at the GAN? Per convention, I normally give seven days for those to make the necessary corrections, otherwise I cannot pass. It's getting to about seven days with no improvement on verifiability (the fair-use rationales are a rather easy fix and am not worried about that as much). Thank you, MuZemike 21:32, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've started merging/renaming section headings. I think that at first we will lose some specificity and gain some workable comparisons--if we only have 1-2 articles per month in a category it is hard to make claims with any degree of confidence. If you think I'm messing some stuff up feel free to send me a note to stop or to reconfigure section headings. Down the road we can break out larger categories and see whether or not there are any patterns to very specific types of articles. My suspicion is that there are not, but we shall see. Protonk (talk) 04:33, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As long as we're not losing bits and pieces here and there, we'll be fine. You're right that we can always drill down more specific categories if any of them grow too large, or if we notice some sort split trend. Randomran (talk) 05:32, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ready for the discussion yet? I know I finished the other month monday so i was wondering what the holdup was.じんない 07:00, 14 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Been a while. Just checking up on this.陣内_Jinnai 01:52, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know if you've taken a break, but please head over to WP:NOTPLOT as we _may_ have a winner via Masem. Hobit (talk) 14:42, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hopefully, I'll get to making my full GA review of the article after this weekend. I'm trying to go on a wikibreak over the extended weekend, so I'm not going to be fully active. I did not forget, however, about this GAN. MuZemike 16:13, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewed and placed on hold pending improvements. See Talk:Fighting game/GA1. MuZemike 17:11, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! You have not edited in over two weeks. Is everything okay? Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 23:31, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It has been a long time since your last edit. I hope you haven't retired as you were quite the editor. I'd certainly understand if you did though. Here's hoping that's not the case. :-\ (Guyinblack25 ^talk 16:28, 10 July 2009 (UTC))[reply]

I'm suggesting we ask for mediation to help build teh guidance at Wikipedia:Notability (fiction). What I propose is that a mediator be the only person to edit the project page itself and be the one to guide discussion and discern consensus. I've proposed it at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(fiction)#Mediation. As a past participant in the lengthy debates, I'd appreciate your input and hopefully your agreement. Hiding T 10:12, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I really like the essay

, which you seem to be the main contributor to. I want to thank you for your work in creating this page! I actually had been looking for a similar essay/guideline and was surprised that it wasn't more well-developed, I only found the page today.

I added a new section, outlining the treatment of non-independent sources, based on issues I have seen come up frequently, both in AfD's and on highly controversial topics. I would be grateful for any feedback you could give on these contributions.

I hope this page can attract more attention and perhaps move towards eventually developing consensus and becoming a guideline or policy. There are a lot of detailed guidelines on notability, but I feel that there is a lack of discussion of what exactly constitutes an independent third-party source, and I see a lot of wrestling with this in AfD's and disputed topics. I think a page like this could really help. Cazort (talk) 15:44, 20 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Newsletter delivery by xenobot 15:38, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dear fellow Wikipedian, on behalf of

]

Your POV please?

I know you're involved in editing the GTA series pages, so I thought I'd let you know that I flagged the Compilation packs article for deletion. I think it's pretty obvious that the article needs to be deleted, but ould you express your opinion here? VG Editor (talk) 08:51, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Randomran, just wanted to thank you for your work on the survival horror article and ask you a question. The article is pretty nice now; I stopped editing wikipedia sometime last year and it's really improved since then. My question was about some of the edits you made on the 16th and 17th of April to that article. That looks like where most of your clean-up occurred. I noticed that you removed a number of references, though, and replaced them with others, mostly from news sources. Specifically, I was surprised to see a couple of sites that contain some serious in-depth research on the topic in question replaced with articles that glean over the topic but don't go into detail. I didn't see any relevant commentary about this in your edit comments or in the discussion page, so I thought I'd ask: what was the problem with some of the external references that were removed? Thanks! --waka (talk) 13:19, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Randomran hasn't edited since May. Maybe you could be more specific about what was removed. bridies (talk) 16:05, 17 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dear colleague, I just want to wish you a happy, hopefully, extended holiday weekend and nice end to summer! Your friend, --A Nobody^{My talk} 04:21, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Newsletter delivery by xenobot 04:20, 7 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

File:Halloween Hush Puppies.jpg

As Halloween is my favorite holiday, I just wanted to wish those Wikipedians who have been nice enough to give me a barnstar or smile at me, supportive enough to agree with me, etc., a Happy Halloween! Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 23:56, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just wanted to wish those Wikipedians who have been nice enough to give me a barnstar or smile at me, supportive enough to agree with me, etc., a Happy Thanksgiving! Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 16:17, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, just saw your comments about users potentially sharing journal subscriptions. I know this happens but, as you are probably aware, it's ilegal. I actually considered sending an article that Dr. Alexander Kaufman wrote with the taskforce and it dawned on me, under the terms of JStor that I couldn't. I think Wikipedia has to be very careful about abridging the terms and conditions of journal use or it will end up finding itself in more legal trouble.

Bhneihouse (talk)bhneihouseBhneihouse (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 05:57, 11 December 2009 (UTC).[reply]

To those who make Good Arguments, who are appreciative, or supportive. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 18:04, 24 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Newsletter delivery by xenobot 21:20, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Newsletter delivery by xenobot 17:11, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that you have revised either

Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire

.

I intend to revise those articles following the

Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines

. There are more details on the discussion pages of those articles. I'd be interested in any comments you have. It would be best if your comments were on the discussion pages of the two articles.

Thank you.

Vyeh (talk) 16:27, 6 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]