Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Board and table games

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Board and table games page.
Archives: 1, 2
Archive
Archives
  1. August 2006 - December 2006
  2. January 2007 - June 2007
  3. June 2007 - October 2007

Contents

[edit] Warhammer articles

A concern has been raised at WT:VG#Excessive Warhammer articles about the Warhammer 40,000 articles. As Warhammer is primarily a table game, I thought I'd let you know here. Cheers, Miremare 19:43, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Greenspun illustration project: requests now open

Dear Wikimedians,

This is a (belated) announcement that requests are now being taken for illustrations to be created for the Philip Greenspun illustration project (PGIP).

The aim of the project is to create and improve illustrations on Wikimedia projects. You can help by identifying which important articles or concepts are missing illustrations (diagrams) that could make them a lot easier to understand. Requests should be made on this page: Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project/Requests

If there's a topic area you know a lot about or are involved with as a Wikiproject, why not conduct a review to see which illustrations are missing and needed for that topic? Existing content can be checked by using Mayflower to search Wikimedia Commons, or use the Free Image Search Tool to quickly check for images of a given topic in other-language projects.

The community suggestions will be used to shape the final list, which will be finalised to 50 specific requests for Round 1, due to start in January. People will be able to make suggestions for the duration of the project, not just in the lead-up to Round 1.

thanks, pfctdayelise (talk) 12:34, 13 December 2007 (UTC) (Project coordinator)

[edit] Assessment

I think we should create our own assessment template and begin tagging articles. 99% of board and table games are not claimed by any project, and not assessed. This can be easily modeled on Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Assessment and Template:Vgproj. PS. Would we include ccgs within our framework? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 18:25, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I've noted we already have a template that can be easily modified for that: Template:BTGProject.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 05:58, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
I have been going through many of the articles for this project, updating the ratings (class and importance). The ones that I have found seem to be mostly stubs and "start" class articles, with the occasional "B" class article, and the very rare higher class article. I have generally been giving importance ratings of "low", with a few getting a "mid", and the rare one receiving "high" or "top". As an exception to this, for gaming companies and designers, I have been giving them "mid" or "high", as without the designers and publishers we, of course, wouldn't have many of these games.  :) Feel free to join me in the assessments and/or alter ones that I have made if you disagree with me. I have also set up the category pages for the quality/importance, so we can soon add a table having the ratings of articles such as can be found at the Video Game WikiProject. I hope this encourages people to contribute to those articles that are lacking. Many of them are in desperate need of references/reviews. --Craw-daddy | T | 01:59, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Having thought about this a little more, I had the following idea about rating the importance of articles:

  1. Most games will, by default, receive a "low" rating.
  2. If a game has won something like the Spiel des Jahres, then this should likely bump it up to "high". If a game has won an Origins Award for something like Best Game/Best Miniatures Game/Best Science Fiction Board Game/Best Card Game/etc. this should bump it up to "high" (most likely) or possibly "mid". If the Origins Award is for something like Best Graphic Presentation then I would say that this would, at most, raise it to "mid". If it won an Origins Vanguard or Gamers' Choice Award, however, this would rate a "high" value on importance.
  3. I think that board game and card game publishers would, by default, receive a "mid" rating. Some company like Hasbro would merit a "high" rating because of the influence and longevity of the company. Similarly, a company like Avalon Hill (in their separate article) would also merit a "high" rating. Simulations Publications, Inc. would have a "high" rating, as another example.
  4. Most game designers would merit a "high" rating, except, perhaps those that only have one or two game designs to their credit.
  5. The "top" ratings go, firstly, to the "obvious" articles, the board game and card game articles themselves, but also a few games and game designers would rate here too, but that's a more subjective measure.

Comments? --Craw-daddy | T | 04:01, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Dice Tower

Hey. I wrote a brief stub for the podcast The Dice Tower. This is a well-known podcast among board game geeks, hosted by prolific game reviewer Tom Vasel. It's been in existence for 112 episodes (some weekly, some every two weeks). Tom has interviewed many of the cream of crop of game designers. His podcast is hosted by Funagain Games, a major internet game distributor. Anyway, the stub has been nominated for deletion for non-notability. Is there anyone out there with more knowledge/experience of The Dice Tower who might be able to dredge up notability stuff so this article is not deleted? I emailed Tom, and he said he thinks they are going to be mentioned in a gaming podcast article in Knucklebones magazine's next issue. Applejuicefool (talk) 06:52, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll add the citation there. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:30, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Monopoly

Monopoly (game) has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.

[edit] Wall Street Spin

Could someone will more knowledge of the notability standards for board games chime in at Wall Street Spin? There was an interesting bit of link hijacking going on there, but verifying the remaining content is probably best left to editors who have worked in the genre. Thanks! Kuru talk 18:22, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Chinese chess players

This category name is highly confusing, since Chinese chess is the common English name for a different board game, and one would naturally expect it to be filled with players of Chinese chess. Any suggestions on renaming it? 70.51.9.174 (talk) 07:47, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Just like Category:American players of Canadian football (for players of Canadian football that are American nationals), how about Category:Chinese players of Chess? kelvSYC (talk) 20:27, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Project's article structure guide (strategy sections)

  • I've made some changes to the front page guidelines ("Structure" section top) for what "at a minimum" needs to be in an article, trying better to spell out what should be in a strategy section (at the level of whether to include one or not). The later section "Structure > Style guide for game articles > Strategy" goes into more detail. I thought the previous text wasn't what an encyclopedia is trying to do (unless the thing most noted in reliable sources was "why it is entertaining, etc."). Please compare the present version to the previous (15-December) text and feel free to suggest further changes or to be bold. Barno (talk) 03:53, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Richard Borg

I would think that the designer of games such as Memoir '44, Battlelore, and the Command and Colors series should have his own page here. When I have a chance I will start one, but please feel free to do so in the meantime. (If you start one on your own sandbox, feel free to post a link here so that others can add to the work in progress if you like.) There's a relatively recent article in Knucklebones, namely the relevant information is < ref>Drake, Matt (September 2007). "Richard Borg: A Regular Guy". Knucklebones 2 (5): 38-41. Jones Publishing. </ref>. When (if?) I make an article, I will certainly include some mention of the material in that article. Obviously the project would want more references than a single article, but I mention this one as a start. Cheers. --Craw-daddy | T | 15:41, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] (Video) Games

Hello from Wikiproject Video Games. I'm just here to tell you about a discussion[1] that a an IP user started on our discussion page. The point raised is about the where your non-video and our video game articles overlap as regards the people who actually create games. Please chip in to the conversation, it always helps to get a different angle on a subject. - X201 (talk) 09:26, 15 January 2008 (UTC) -

Had I known this project existed, I would've posted my original rant here instead of there, but there's no way I would have found that out from the pages in question - which is exactly the point I was trying to make. 71.126.99.212 (talk) 13:17, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ICE, Merp and The Hobbit Adaptations

In order to source some of the adaptations of the Hobbit, I'm trying to find reviews or magazine articles for several Iron Crown Enterprises boardgames namely the Battle of Five Armies, The Lonely Mountain and The Hobbit Adventure game. I've looked through indexes of Dragon (magazine) and White Dwarf (magazine) but can't find any reviews or references to them (othe than the odd advert). I was wondering whether anyone could help track down reliable sources and possibly add them to the article, or point me in the right direction. Thanks. --Davémon (talk) 18:32, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

I saw that our project page lists only Category:Tabletop games. Looking there, I see that Category:Board games and Category:Card games are two of the categories within the Tabletop games cat-tree. There are others... and looking down Category:Wargames I see more detailed subcats at different levels. Reviewing Diplomacy (game), I see that it's tagged with category "Board wargames", but that doesn't make it come up in the list for category "Wargames". I think this means we just have to make each cat a member of its parent cat by adding its tag. But that should be done for all the tree that we're concerned with, correct? That will help us see the whole group, and help users see all games in our project's scope, is that right? I might be away for 48 hours but I will look into this (if nobody else gets to it first). Originally I just intended to ask whether to put the "Board games" category tag on the Dip article, then I was going to ask whether to add mentions of that and "Card games" in the cats section of the WPBTG front page. Barno (talk) 01:55, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Don't add Cat:Board games or Cat:Wargames to the diplomacy article. From Wikipedia:Categorization and subcategories: "In straightforward cases an article should not be in both a category and its subcategory." Diplomacy is in board wargames, which is a subcategory of board games and of wargames, so it should not be in either of the parent categories. Regarding adding Cat:card games to the list on our front page, I'm in favour of it. Percy Snoodle (talk) 10:20, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Excess gameplay description template

There's a template under discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Role-playing games#Excess gameplay description template for marking articles for cleanup. Comments from members of this WikiProject would be welcome. Percy Snoodle (talk) 15:12, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Request for comments on (and additional references for) Ogre (game)

Greetings! I've been working on the article for Ogre and would like to have additional input on it. Despite having never played the game myself, it's my desire to get this article up to WP:GA standards in the next couple of months (I don't think it's ever going to be a candidate for WP:FA, so that's why I'm going for GA). Anybody that has access to (print) magazines (like White Dwarf, Dragon, computer magazines where they review the Atari/Commodore versions, etc), I'd like to request them to please add some appropriate info/citations to this article. I think this game is an important milestone in the history of gaming, bringing lots of attention to, and attraction for, the Microgame concept. After all, if this game wasn't as successful as it was I doubt that Metagaming Concepts would have printed so many other microgames, and likely other companies would not have entered into the microgame (or minigame) market either. Many thanks in advance! --Craw-daddy | T | 20:23, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] BTG Project template

Hmmm, would it possible that someone with more knowledge than me about how templates work, and how to change them correctly, could edit the {{BTGProject}} template? I'd like the template to automatically add the appropriate category (or categories) to the talk page, indicating whether it's a "Low-importance" or "Mid-importance" article and so forth for the project (and the same for the "class" too). I've tried to edit the template a little bit, but there is obviously more going on than I understand at the moment. Basically I've seen other WikiProject banner templates that automatically add these categories to the talk pages based on the parameters in the template and would think it would be rather useful to have here as well. Many thanks. --Craw-daddy | T | 18:44, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, now I think I understand a little better. The edited template seems to work fine, I was assuming that it worked something like Categories did. I thought that if I changed the template them it would apply to the old pages that used the template, but you have to update those pages (even if you change nothing on them) to have the template re-applied to them. So I don't think that any further editing has to be done to the template (just the part of my brain).  :) Sorry. --Craw-daddy | T | 20:35, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reference available for games

Having mentioned this to a few other people, I thought I'd share it here. Check out the book Hobby Games: The 100 Best, edited by James Lowder (2007 by Green Ronin Publishing). This is a collection of essays done by game designers (like Gary Gygax, Greg Costikyan, Allen Varney, Richard Berg, Steve Jackson (both the US and UK Jacksons), Richard Garfield, etc) about their favorite games (they couldn't choose their own, or one in which they had a financial interest). It's the closest thing to an "academic reference" that you might find for many modern games (i.e. ones published in the last 25-30 years or so). The coverage is mostly geared towards board/card/war games (with a few articles on role-playing games). Now go forth and improve more articles.  :) --Craw-daddy | T | 22:31, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Recent edits about card games

I don't want to bite the newbie, but a new editor is starting to edit articles on card games, inserting the word "sport" in various contexts, as well as add them to Category:Sport (which should be an empty category anyway, as the category page says). See, for example Speed (card game). I don't think it's appropriate to do this, but wanted some additional input before I start reverting these kinds of edits. I will leave a similar message with my thoughts on this editor's talk page. --Craw-daddy | T | 15:55, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Whatever the editor is trying to achieve, there's got to be a better way of achieving it than replacing "game" with the awkward construction "sport/game" every place it occurs. -Stellmach 17:07, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Also, if the thesis is that card games are sports, then the existing categories for card games should be subcategories of sports. Articles should not be in both a parent and child category, as noted above. So in no case is adding these articles to the Sports category called for, as far as I can see. -Stellmach 17:10, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
The editor clearly has a non-standard understanding of things. I reverted some of the edits, Craw-daddy didn't. They should be reverted everywhere, at least until all board and table games are redefined as "sports". 2005 (talk) 00:02, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I asked at the time here to see if there was any consensus before I just started reverting them. I know I reverted some of the changes at some point, but there still could be a few that remain. --Craw-daddy | T | 00:26, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Just to clarify my above comment, I reverted some of the edits; Craw-daddy reverted some of them also... "I reverted some of the edits in addition to the ones Craw-daddy reverted" I believe they were all fixed as of teo days ago. There may be more since then..2005 (talk) 01:51, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Now also more "sports"

The user is now on his/her third identity and has moved on to labeling board games like backgammon, chess and go as "table sports" and "mind sports", including making his/her own parallel "sports" category structure. Considerable work appears to be needed to keep this from getting way out of hand. 2005 (talk) 07:39, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Collectible card games

I have been working on articles contained in list of collectible card games and was wondering if there were others out there who could research additional cititions to add to these. Mathman1550 (talk) 23:33, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

It depends I guess. I have access to the Pyramid archives (which require pay access). Let me know what game(s) you're interested in and I can try to have a look when I have some free time, especially if there's something specific that you may be looking for. Otherwise you can always post more general inquires here and hope that someone can help you out. --Craw-daddy | T | 23:41, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Well there are so many of these with references and info lacking, its hard to choose which are most important to do first. We could start with the oldest games and work our way foreward. The oldest games on the list that need help are Dixie (card game), Galactic Empires, Illuminati: New World Order, On the Edge (game), Spellfire, Star Trek Customizable Card Game, and Super Deck!. Some just need referenced, some need so much more. Thanks if you get time to look at these. Mathman1550 (talk) 04:11, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Quality and importance

The project page has this nice form showing how many articles are currently tagged for each quality and importance rating, and even nicely cross references the two of them. However, there's no way to get at the cross reference. That is, I can see there's 2 'start'-class Top-priority articles, but I can't just go to them. I have to look through the 9 top-priority articles until I find them. That isn't too bad, but finding 69 high-importance stubs out 198 high-importance articles isn't very practical, and it just gets worse from there.

Is there any way for us to see what that form is already calculating? --Rindis (talk) 18:51, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't know of any way to get into one of the boxes of the cross-reference, but it would be nice to do this. (Maybe there is some way and I just don't know it.) If you have a look here you can at least see the record of the bot as it's assessing the statistics from the talk page templates. I'm not sure if this is what you're asking for above.
The categories Category:Board and table game articles by quality and Category:Board and table game articles by importance have all the article with the {{BTGProject}} template on their talk page. --Craw-daddy | T | 20:24, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
On further review, try Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Board and table game articles by quality and the pages that are listed there. At the very least, you then have color-coded lists of article titles which can help you at least find the different classes ("Start" or "B" or what-have-you). Hope this helps. --Craw-daddy | T | 21:30, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Ah, that last looks like what I want. After sorting I can see what I want to know. The categories were precisely what I was complaining about as I can't crossreference one from the other. So... is that list updated automatically, or what? --Rindis (talk) 23:55, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the lists are automatically updated (as is the "statistics block" on the main project page). You can see the history of updates at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Board and table game articles by quality log. Updates occur (I think) once or twice a week. It's all based on the {{BTGProject}} template on articles' talk pages, and the "class" and "importance" parameters associated with that template. --Craw-daddy | T | 07:07, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
You might also be able to use a tool I found called Cat Scan [2] on wikimedia. There are sometimes some bugs that make it not work at all, but I still like using it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mathman1550 (talk • contribs) 23:40, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article is listed for deletion Cake (draughts player)

[edit] Games timeline

Board and Card Games Timeline omits a lot (almost all those used in the "History" section of [4X]!) but may be useful for others tracing the history of various game genres. E.g. Tactics II seems to have been the "first influential commercial wargame." Philcha (talk) 09:02, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 4X and board games

Randomran and I have been working to get 4X up to GA, and we've found board games described as "4X". Since neither of us knows much about board games, we'd appreciate input from someone who does. Can anyone help? Please respond at Talk:4X#Board_games. Philcha (talk) 09:05, 26 May 2008 (UTC)