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This is the Bunbunmaru Shinbun, now on Wikipedia as a newsletter named Bunbunmaru Shinbun: Wikipedia Edition (or bbm for short). I've been waiting for this newspaper to come to this wiki for a long time, I wanted it to happen. In June 2020, I get the chance to make it for free, and it's been going on since then, even though it's sometimes less than active.
Wikipedia's fastest and most accurate report of reality!
Content
Feature
Let's mention the Request board:
WikiProject Video games has a page named "Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Requests", also known as the "Request board", where users can request a video game article to be created. The request entry must meet the inclusion criteria, and should be accompanied by independent reliable sources that significantly cover the topic represented in the entry. If it doesn't meet the notability criterion, then it will be deleted, and users are encouraged to work on an article named on the project's to do list. However, such a formerly non-notable article will become more notable enough in the future when more reliable sources report on the subject. After the request is created, then the user may remove the entry from the list. The user will optionally sign his/their/her requests because it helps people notify the one who added the requests.
The Request board was created on April 4, 2006 by a user named CyberSkull, with an alphabetical list of several entries including Microsoft Flight Simulator X (created by Caleb09 on June 19, 2006), Barcode Battler (created by Cpuwhiz11 on July 18, 2006), and Psycho Soldier (created by Nall on April 15, 2006); these days the list isn't alphabetical, it's arranged by dates. On of the top of the page was a link that directed users to edit the source of the page; that link has now evolved to "Click here to request a video game article.". One of the entries listed in this first revision, GT Advance Championship Racing (created by Fableheroesguild on April 23, 2006), became a good article (GA) on February 22, 2008 due to the efforts of Nomader; his GAN was reviewed and promoted by David Fuchs one day after a WikiProject peer review. Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device is now a redirect to Cathode-ray tube amusement device, a good article. Gamer Unlimited (an article deleted on September 3, 2005 by Tony Sidaway per a Votes for deletion page) was accompanied by a source, which was the website gamerunlimited.com, but others didn't have sources to accompany the request. Some entries were accompanied by reasons why they were requested to be made; for example Qin: Tomb of the Middle Kingdom (created on August 21, 2006 by PresN) has one with "Myst-like adventure game from the mid-90's", meaning that Qin: Tomb of the Middle Kingdom is an adventure video game released in 1995 with similarities to the seminal 1993 computer game Myst. Metal Max (created by Y control on April 10, 2006) and Mytharria (deleted by Juliancolton in 2009 due to a PROD stating that it lacked notability) were the first two entries to be removed from the page; the removals were done by Andrevan on April 14, 2006. Black Lotus (Command and Conquer: Generals) was created when CyberSkull started the Request board, but was deleted shortly afterward on April 4, 2006 by Brookie with a reason: "Nonsense as no context and NN". ("NN" means "Non-Notable")
Back then there wasn't much stringent rules on requests as there is now; in 2006, the basics were needed to make an article exist. From there, the standards were raised significantly, so that meant what was a professionally written article about something worthwhile in the past hasn't been updated much since then and as a result is now simply some brief information with prose reminiscent of a start-up effort struggling for recognition, unless it's rewritten to comply with modern standards. The 2010s were full of re-evaluations of how good an requested article is, so ultimately you now see this text in the Request board that says:
If you think an article about video games should be added to Wikipedia and know that it meets the inclusion criteria above, please list it below with URL links to the reliable sources that prove its notability (e.g., reviews or dedicated coverage from IGN or Polygon, but not forum posts, blogs without a professional staff, or the official website of the subject).
That's the text, this is where the expected and necessary quality of the requested article is at now. The page also tells you that you can read Wikipedia:Articles for creation for more information about this whole "request" thing. And there's a template of the top of the Request board page now that says the page has a backlog wanting attention from editors. We currently have to consider the inclusion criteria and several reliable sources with significant notable coverage as an utmost requirement, because there must be energy that keeps the article going. When we do this properly, we're lucky. A decent example of a recent request that has now become a GA is 868-HACK, it was created on June 21, 2017 by Zxcvbnm (who received an interview in the previous issue of this gaming-themed wiki-newspaper), and it has turned into a GA a few months ago because of the work of CAPTAIN MEDUSA; she successful nominated it for GA status back in 2019 and it was reviewed by Kingsif, who promoted it to GA-class on January 6, 2020. It has also appeared on the Did you know (DYK) section of the Wikipedia main page on January 30, 2020, saying "Did you know
...that the player controls a smiley face in 868-HACK?". (here's how it became a DYK) I think it's a good idea we can improve requested articles beyond simply creating them, we can take them to featured article (FA) status with enough skills, and possibly it can be maintained well.
If you study something like Wikipedia:Writing better articles and extensively research the request you're creating, then quality is expected. Still, that isn't the end. Currently a lot a requests ranging from 2017 to this year are waiting for somebody to start the articles. As an option, you can do multiple requests at a time, yet you should be careful though. The standards have still been updated since 2017 and continue to grow over time, so please consider that high quality is what you should do when doing these requests, and experience is also helpful. You have to check out and read a lot of sources, and you have to make sure the articles can end up being created on good notes.
Monster Truck Madness GA postmortem: Monster Truck Madness is a Wikipedia article about Terminal Reality's 1996 monster truck-themed racingvideo game of the same name, the first in Microsoft's Madness series of racing titles. It was created by Krooga on October 7, 2005, who also uploaded an image of the game's front cover art on October 10, 2005. He made a few edits to the article (in fact the creation of the article was his first edit), and after editing some more articles, disappeared in 2007. He didn't make many edits. A member of the Monster Truck Madness (MTM) community, Kmaster, edited the article for quite a long time, and did decent work there. It went through some changes back in the day.
I joined Wikipedia on December 29, 2019 because I was interested in being able to write good and featured articles. I decided that my first edits would be to de-orphan a big list of articles because so, which is another reason why joined Wikipedia, signing in as I'm Aya Syameimaru! (current signature: Iias!:postb□xI). I knew that Midtown Madness received a GA and then a FA back in the late 2000's (it's still an FA to this day), but MTM and Motocross Madness weren't subjected to that before, and my opinion is that the Madness series of classic racing games is all great. Ultimately, I decided to do some GAs in February 2020, when I came to this very article to make another Madness game a GA.
This Monster Truck entry was in a bare-bones shape before I started editing the article. At the time, I was doing plenty of fancy userboxes (as you can see in the userbako sub-page of my user page). My edits before then were rushed, like they were plenty of topics I edited but they're not enough compared to something like MTM, so I betted to myself that if I concentrated on this article then the skills will show that it would be on par with the new quality content. This article deserved to experience miracles and wonders; I believed the soul of the article is expecting good information, and the body of the article feels like the subject needs attention. More references had to be added, and I considered strongly integrating the words from the citations into the text. I searched for it and came across reviews and some previews, and made the article as accurate as the citations. But two of the sources, Gamezilla and PC Multimedia Entertainment (PCME), weren't reliable. I showed to JimmyBlackwing my progress so far at this point, merely to showcase my interest in taking an article to GA status. He liked it and sent to me two review sources: PC Gamer US and PC Games, to replace the unreliable Gamezilla and especially more unreliable PCME. I did this easily.
I rewrote the prose to make this future GA easier to understand and keep it fresh. The prose before I came in was rusty. I treated old and new Wikipedia articles equally, this one was old and wanted improvement not only in the prose, but everywhere else. So I maintained the articles for several edits before nominating it for GA on February 25. As a result, the article's prose became cleaned up now, and the rest of the article was also very renovated. I was expanding and reworking it a lot, even after transforming the article into a GAN, handling the task of overhauling the article extensively to the point that it ended up being over 1,000 words and more than 25,000 bytes. I gave all the images alt-text for further explaining, and shaped the article into a decent effort at creating a respectable outing of fresh prose and tight references. I edited it so frequently that Monster Truck Madness appeared on Most Edited Articles in March 2020 with 944 edits, and received The Tireless Contributor Barnstar from Swordman97 for it. I ended up editing the article 1,147 times, which is crazy! Most of the edits happened before it even was subject to a GAN (good article nomination) review. Currently, it's at 1,187 words and 26 kilobytes.
I included a couple images in it, both with captions. The screenshot was taken in preparation for the GAN, with me driving a Bigfoot in first-person perspective at A Crazy Eight for 20 laps with 7 computer opponents. For the second image, I cycled through various monster truck photos until settling with the one with the Samson truck.
I also nominated Monster Truck Madness for Did you know (DYK), but took the Did you know nomination (DYKN) down to review Aranya's John HuntingtonDYKN entry. I reviewed John Huntington because I felt required to earn DYK credits. I took it easy and suggested some makeover. It was a success, and it's nominator liked it, and it was promoted to DYK status in the end. It was promoted by Yoninah on March 3, and appeared on the DYK section on March 9. I reinstated my Monster Truck Madness DYKN on February 28, reviewed by Narutolovehinata5, who wrote the GA, DYK, and failed FAC Puella Magi Madoka Magica and many more anime/manga-themed articles (including some more GAs and DYKs like Shakugan no Shana and Free (TV series)). Initially, I considered a hook telling that the game appeared on Microsoft Interactive CD Sampler, but I thought it was unspectacular. The reviewer told me I needed an "ALT" hook, so I did the ALT1 hook about the game being developed to realistically simulate the events where you see monster trucks, for example circuit tracks and drag races. Narutolovehinata5 liked it, and suggested adding the year of release. I added 1996 into this hook and had to go on to alter the hook to my liking (including adding a link to Monster truck), and fatedly, the DYKN was a success. We checked Earwigs to find any copyvios and close paraphrasing and we found none. Earwigs struggled to function until it before Narutolovehinata5 checked in, when it was now working properly. The reviewer was going to the Earwigs' Monster Truck Madness page, and we were right, no close paraphrasing and no copyvios. The reviewer said the DYK entry was ready for promotion, and moved it to the queue, approving only ALT1. It was promoted on March 28 by Cwmhiraeth, and appeared on DYK on April 3 with the entry's hook saying: "that the 1996 racing video game Monster Truck Madness was designed to accurately simulate monster-truck events such as drag tracks and enclosed circuit races?".
At the same time as the DYKN, I was also doing the Beatmania IIDX (video game) article, which I also attempted to get to GA and DYK, albeit with failure. It was unsuccessfully nominated for GA also on February 2020; I took down at Namcokid47's request because he saw that the article need more work. As an April Fools joke, I turned Beatmania IIDX (video game) into a GAN again, then took it down hours later before anyone could review it.
I asked Lord Sjones23 to assist in the article, and he reviewed it. His GAN review was actually the second one for the article, the first one on March 25 was done by a user who never did a GAN review before, Drealjosegood, who reviewed it because he saw Monster Truck Madness appear at Most Edited Articles; I call the first one "GA0", the zeroth GAN review. Little happened at that 0th GAN review (initially titled "Talk:Monster Truck Madness/GA1", so GamerPro64 suggested to me that I should speedy delete the review and start over, so I moved its original title to "Talk:Monster Truck Madness/GA0", turning "Monster Truck Madness/GA1" into a redirect that I requested to be speedily deleted. It was deleted anyways, and on March 29, Sjones23 recreated "Talk:Monster Truck Madness/GA1" to begin the article's second GAN review, perhaps its first proper one. He said that the lead should be two or three paragraphs long, and that he found one dead citation which was 100% fixed. He continued reading and assessing the article before concluding with an last rating. Usernameunique did a March 31 drive-by comment (appropriately enough) stating that Samson's mentioned in the second image's caption, and that "Although it makes sense to only list those of the game's twelve trucks that have Wikipedia articles (which I think is what's being done in "Gameplay"), it might make sense to include the other eight in a footnote."; I implemented his suggestion with a footnote, much to Usernameunique's appreciation. He slightly adjusted it and mentioned that "Also, although it's an uncontroversial statement, I would still add a source to the footnote.", so I inserted a source into the footnote. Sjones gave the final verdict on April 15:
GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It's a quickpass. He quickpassed the Monster Truck Madness article and liked it. I would go on to make more userboxes, some wiki-ads, some featured content, this newsletter, etcetera. I'm planning to do some more GAs and a FA. I love my Monster Truck Madness GA, I felt like I set standards for my own works.
Misc.
I was creating a bunch of new File talk and Category talk pages during June 2020. Also, I delistedXCOM: Enemy Unknown from GA status, even though I didn't nominate it for GA review (OceanHok did it anyways). 2 new userboxes (1 with 1 switch) and 1 wiki-ad were made during the time in-between the first and second issue publications.
Yep, it's no feature, it's now turned into Showcase.
Showcase
Prelude
Showcase, as the name says, will showcase stuff on Wikipedia, simply put it. The first Showcase will be about the Infobox, an essential template.
Announce
Design, FA, & TFL
I've been giving the newsletter an aesthetic makeover because I'm pushing the limits of Wikipedia! Well of course I have truly been doing such a thing since I'm into professionalism, so I got to make new exploits for new good faith contribs. I'm also planning to turn The Need for Speed into a GA, and then a FA. My FL List of Puella Magi Madoka Magica episodes is now scheduled to appear on the main page as Today's Featured List (TFL) on August 10, 2020.
Video game-themed articles on Wikipedia have used templates widely and frequently, we can say. They have provided readers brief, convenient information inside boxes that are much smaller than the article in general. If you want to know what's going on in this situation, let's put it simply: you're at the right place. In this occasion we'll tell you about all those templates you see in gaming articles.
In case you're wondering "why do articles have templates?", it's because during the early years of this website, articles were primitive and old-school: basically, in the early years before templates came into being, many pages consisted of nothing but text, external links, and CamelCase links; some users inserted images and audio files to articles, then they were making these tables and other unusual code that looked quite simple. If they wanted to go further, then it would be difficult, and it would require something new. So to make it easier for people to do put such idea into pratice, the Template system was created, and Wikitext was expanded upon to support the new system. Those who had expected fancy code from other websites now had the chance to put a decent box of colors, headers, information, etcetera; some of the earliest templates such as Infobox and Navbox fulfilled this purpose. Of course the video game articles had to experience this embracement of templates, as they felt compact and explanatory to users and readers alike for providing information about video games. As the encyclopedia got bigger, more unprecedented experiments happened, and people found out ways to incorporate templates in ways no one ever heard of before. And that brings us to today, where we have so many things to do in articles that the possibilities keep on growing, so now have stuff to show to you in this feature.
Perhaps the most common template seen in video game articles is Infobox video game, a video game-themed variant of the Infobox template. Used in individual video game articles, it provides the reader with essential information about the game in a box. What's with all these "Insert subject here" texts? I inserted that and a free image I didn't create, merely to give you an idea of "placeholder". The full syntax includes 22 parameters, most of them being who made the game, what the game is, how it is played, and whatever it's made of, the whole thing. What's shown here is the title, the image (can be cover art, logo, or else applicable like a screenshot), the alt text, the caption, the developers, the publishers, the platforms, the release date, the genres, and the modes, as well as italic title (I set it to "italic title = null", de-italicizing the page name, without the italic title parameter the title is automatically italicized, if the parameter is set to "italic title = yes" then the name is in italics).
Infobox video game was created by Grunt on June 15, 2004, 18:20 UTC. The first version is very different from the current one seen here, featuring a table layout instead of a light grey box, and both feature rows and columns for parameters. The top part is just one cell, succeeded by two cells representing two cover art images, and the rest (except for the bottom part, which is permament text) is just divided into two halves, the left providing names for the components of the game (example: "Producer"), the right containing the descriptors (example: "Youmu Konpaku"). All the left-side cells end with a colon, which is absent from this infobox's current version.
At the top, the generally known title of the game is in a dark red background, followed by spaces for images of the front cover art and back cover art, the full title of the game, and other titles associated with it; in the template's current version, the title is simply the full title sometimes assisted with alternative names for the game, and you only get one image (generally front cover, could otherwise be screenshot, logo, or else applicable like poster or photo) that is optionally accompanied by a caption and/or alt text. The developer, producer, and publisher credits are present in both versions, the new one incorporated links to Video game developer, Video game producer, and Video game publisher, the old one doesn't have it. The "Systems" parameter present in the original version became the platforms parameter you see here in this template's most recent iteration. The "Genre(s)" portion remains the same in most revisions, except in some revisions where the "(s)" doesn't appear. Speaking of the presence of "(s)" in these names like "Genre(s)", all the other left cells' names didn't have "(s)", but several such as "Publisher" and "Developer" earned the "(s)" to become "Publisher(s)" and "Developer(s)" later on. "Multiplayer" tells readers whether or not the game had multiplayer functionality. This ended up turning to the Mode(s) parameter that simply lists the modes present in the game, as in single-player and multiplayer modes. System requirements and Recommended system spec were useful for games playable on personal computers (PCs). The bottom part is a single cell reading "This infobox is part of WikiProject VideoGames". WikiProject VideoGames became merged with WikiProject Computer games to become WikiProject Computer and video games, also know as WikiProject Cavg (hence why in early 2005, that part read "This infobox is part of WikiProject Computer and video games"), and was renamed to WikiProject Video games.
After its creation in 2004 it was overhauled frequently. The first change to the template was made by Mrwojo accompanied by this edit summary: "hijacking: format like WikiProject Cavg infobox (which is not a template)". He was implementing the features of the WikiProject Cavg infobox: light blue and light grey colors, a one-image parameter, half of the parameters' background color became light blue, and the rest light grey, things like "{{{modes}}}", etcetera. The two images part became one image only, and there was also "Rating(s)". Yes really. "Rating(s)" isn't in later versions of the infobox. "Media" (storage medium like cartridge or disc or download) came into existence, and "Systems" was renamed to "Platforms". In his later edits to the template, he added "(s)" to the parameter display names, as well as other things such as making all the left-half of the parameters have a light blue background, removing the bottom part with permanent text in it, and making the template gain a minimalistic table look. Several edits by other users followed. In one edit, the Input parameter was created. Like "Media", "Input" (controllers used for playing the game) was also part of the template, and then removed/deprecated. "Distributor(s)" was even added to the infobox, but later it was merged with "Publisher(s)". At one point in early 2006, most of the left portion of the infobox were covered in light blue; later in the same year, all the left portion's covered in that color. We go further into early 2007 and find out that the whole box had a light grey background; later in the same year the background color switched to a slightly darker grey, which is normal grey. Collapsible, state, and italic title parameters were inserted into the template. Ultimately new parameters like "Writer(s)", "Composer(s)", and "Artist(s)" were put into the template, several parameters received Wikipedia article links, arcade-themed parameters were added, and the whole box lost its "multiple cells" look in favor of another simplistic light grey box look. For a few years, the parameters were redesigned so that some parameters were regular grey and some others were light grey. Later, the whole box again became light grey.
Video game release table:
Release years by platforms
Platform
JP
NA
GSK
PC-98
1992
Amiga
1992
N/A
1993
MS-DOS
1994
1995
Next up is Video game release table. It was created by an IP on August 13, 2016, 02:47 UTC. The template tells the reader when a game's released, and what platforms it's released for. Region names are abbreviated, and you can modify the regionC parameter to make it say something like "AUS" or something. The leftmost cells are parameters naming the platforms the game's released for, all other ones are release dates. If you see "N/A" it's because there's no release for that. Again, I made up the examples.
Video game reviews, invented by CrimsonFox on October 14, 2007, 12:43 UTC, is a template where you can list the game's reviewers, their review scores, the aggregates and their ratings, the platforms, the awards, and the publications who give out their awards. What you see here is random crazy examples I made up just for the sake of placeholders.
Crimsonfox's initial iteration of the Video game reviews template was similar to the late 2006 version of Infobox video game I talked about earlier ago, but now we have a light blue color for the Publication and Compiler parameters. Awards was made out of copying that Infobox VG template, so he changed it into something that didn't resemble the infobox. He added many variables for the critics, the ratings, the platforms/systems, and the awards, and he italicized many reviewer names too. He tidied the code just to polish the template by October 22, 2007, and subsequently several editors improved on his conceptual basis. The aesthetic went through a similar history like Infobox video games, and more people added parameters for more publications, systems/platforms, scores, and awards/nominations. What it ended up with was including a mixture of light-greyish shades of green and blue, as well as the color grey itself. The title and subtitle parameters, among other features like custom aggregate parameters and custom publication parameters, were inserted into the template to create a comprehensive, very handy tool for the Wikipedian.
Infobox video game series is similar to Infobox video game, the difference is that everything applies to a video game series, which is more than one video game. The full syntax includes 19 parameters, most are used for conveying information. Shown here is the title, the image (can be logo, or else applicable like a cover art, or even a screenshot), the caption, the platforms, the developers, the publishers, the genres, and the first and last release versions and release dates, as well as italic title (I set it to "italic title = null" again). The template was created by ViperSnake151 as a fork of Infobox video game on November 19, 2008, 15:31 UTC. It went through a history similar to Infobox video game.
Video game series reviews:
Sales and aggregate review scores As of August 8, 2020.
Last on the list is Video game series reviews, first made by LOL on April 20, 2009, 18:24 UTC. The template tells readers about the sales and critical reception of a game series, plus the years of the games' releases, their names, and when all of this was updated. You can use QID to earn data from WikiData and the template instantly receives and delivers what could've otherwise took a lot a searching to do properly. There's even icons that say you can "edit this on WikiData"! You can also use references to make something that would've otherwise took lengthy incursions into the wild for usage in articles, like put in a reference from an aggregate in the place where you specify an aggregate's review score and suddenly the score appears.
Conclusion:
Templates are important for video game articles. They answer questions very well in decent volume. They tell readers and editors alike everything within so small a space, and so short a time.
Review
Prelude
A new section is finally revealed! We will review stuff that exists on Wikipedia, it's decent we can tell you now. Stay tuned for the next issue.
Misc.
Announce
I have now truly finalized my signature, adding the minus and plus signs to make it resemble an electric battery. I modified it several times before over the course of my experience at this website so far, and it's so many to count! Here it is for everyone here to see: -iaspostb□x+ I hope that you enjoyed it very well.
Also, I have stop counting my achievements (userboxes, switches, and wiki-ads), because it has done exhaustion.
I was blocked for 24 hours on August 6-7, 2020 because I did BLP-violating edit summaries and received previous warnings about it. The blocker, Paul Erik, restricted me to only editing the talk page, and was initially gonna notify me about the edit summaries but then decided to block me because I was notified by another user about the same thing days before the block happened; he used a rev-deletion technique to remove the edit summaries. I was never upset about the block, I easily calmed down hours before the block happened. I explained the situation, and I was fine about the block. It ended upon the 24-hour mark being crossed. So even though I calmed down long before the block happened, I still remain calmed down.
This is the infobox, one of the earliest and most used templates in all of Wikipedia. It is a meta-template meant to be recycled for topic-related infoboxes such as {{Infobox building}}, for example. These kinds of infoboxes are present in articles to inform readers of the various things associated with subject matter, and are also seen in some other pages such as WikiProject Transwiki.
Infobox has several content parameters. The title parameter clearly identifies the subject matter by naming it. "Above" is treated as space to fill in a brief definition of what the subject is or whatever's majorly related to it, as with the subheader, which is used similarly to the title and above parameters. The image one illustrates the topic via a file easily understandable to everyone, and the caption is a description of what happens in the image and/or something about the topic. Most of the remaining parts of the template belong to header/label/data, which lists the links to pages related to the topic the infobox is themed after. Below is merely a place to put additional information pertaining to the template's theme, let it be footnotes, see-also, et cetera.
As shown here, the template can also be customized quite easily through the presentation parameters. Coloring the style parameters with decorated code is sure to attract some attention. User style is a good possibility, and you can inject CSS code into the box for artful looks. I heavily customized the one you see here just for the potential, which is very large I think. The design found in this showcase is the same one used for this newsletter, the Bunbunmaru Shimbun: Wikipedia Edition, with the Courier font, radial and linear gradients, shadows, and colors utilized heavily for aesthetic reasons, namely for abstract wilderness.
Embedding the template can be done. It is possible to put an infobox inside an infobox. You can also make subboxes to put more data into the template. The "Template:Infobox" also has a section on "Controlling line-breaking in embedded bulletless lists", which reduces confusion for wrapped long entries and multiple entries.
Infoboxes were invented on August 11, 2004 by Netoholic, with an edit comment saying: "Base Infobox template. use {{subst:Infobox}} to copy this content into your template as a base.". The template looked primitive backed then, with basic HTML stylings of blocks and cells. The parameters were basic; you had subject_name in which users can insert the name of the subject just like with the title parameter, then after the subject name came the image and caption, followed by the first and second items, where editors put in items related to the topic. Later on, users including Netoholic improved on the template to look nicer and cleaner, turning subject_name into "name" (which is placed above the simplified blocks and cells), and replacing items with data (as in data1, data2, and data3), this was the case in 2006. Data parameters are defined in order for text to appear, therefore filling in the blanks is an expected oppurtunity. The definition of data2, if not filled in, would say "this text displayed if data2 not defined", and data3 is hidden if its empty or not defined. Footnotes also became possible, and eventually the default navbox style gained a new redesign.
Yes, it did gain a new redesign; "name" turned into "title", the appearance gained some light blue-colored bars, the lines defining the cells and blocks disappeared (a grey line that looked like scissor cut-out lines appeared though), the "above" and "below" parameters were inserted, and the data parameters can now be optionally replaced with header or label parameters. On one early 2008 revision of the template page, there's a text saying "( etc )", and you could replace it with some information. The row limits increased over time, and infoboxes later appeared in other wikis and similar sites such as Wikimedia Commons.
Later in 2008, the infobox gained another redesign, simplifying its stock aesthetics to something similar to the current look, but with the scissor cut-out lines making a more frequent appearance. Several talk page suggestions were implemented into the template over the years. The infobox continued to be redesigned, and many of the features discussed earlier in this page, including most changes, resulted in the current state of the template, which is as good as new.
This template came a long way, and still does its job well as "a basic template for new template editors" like Netoholic said. At this point, so many variants of the meta-template exist that as of October 3, 2020, it has appeared on "approximately 3,430,000 pages, or roughly 7% of all pages" according to the "Template:Infobox" page's template documention. It has a future, with unexplored potential waiting to be tapped.
I personally am an electronic music enthusiast, a lot. I delve into various types of it. Generally speaking, it feels like a fresh breath of air, always. One of my favorite techno songs is Juan Atkins' "No UFO's" (released under the alias of Model 500 via Metroplex, a record label). It's a pioneer's work of art in the 1980's, seeing pure Detroit techno being enjoyed is definitely a treat.
This new C-class article about the single really gets you interested in this sort of music. I felt fascinated at how the prose stayed consistent for the whole effort, it's very decent. I believe the prose looks like an accomplishment for the article's author, Andrzejbanas, who had a electronic music GA with "Planet Rock (song)". Reading the article is an constantly fulfilling experience for your electronic music knowledge needs, as many aspects of the track are covered in digestible detail. I did minor contribs to the No UFO's article, none major I think.
If any problems then it's the lack of a reception section. The "Planet Rock" article has it, but if this one wants to become a GA, then it needs that section. The section makes it complete and some readers consider it essential for song articles.
This is a great C-class article. It's very fancy in my opinion. Andrezejbanas has went on (and has already went on) to make more electronic music-related articles, such as "Acid Tracks", an article about the Phuture single of the same name that birthed acid house.
Misc.
Big!
I actually truly finalized my signature just now. Here it is: «=-iaspostb□x+=» I've been cleaning up the list of pages at "Forgotten articles" and "Long stubs", recently. It's big work!
A brief paragraph on some Javascript and redirects
Did you know that it is possible to use Javascript in Wikipedia? It's real, you can alter the look of the wiki and modify the way you use the website. monobook.js (example) is a script for things made for the monobook setting, and vector.js (example is like that except it works with the vector setting. Javascript is normally done when you're an administrator, but recently a custom-made feature allows other users to do the same thing. Redirects (examples: User:I'm Aya Syameimaru/bbmr, User:Ias!/userbako, and User:YuyukoSaigyo.59/ys.59) are used to redirect a user to another page, hence the name "redirect".
Review
Some talk page comment I was amazed at
I have to note that someone made a cool comment about me recently. That message is You're Aya Syameimaru!, written by jp×g. He praises me like so crazy, so here's the full thing:
"Nice sig. Nice userpage. Nice edits!!! I love to see it. Give Reimu my regards."
It's so good that I even responded to it like this:
"That's a very good praise. It's a very enjoying experience. I like Reimu Hakurei for being an awesome shrine maiden/miko."
So that user did a good job at loving the whole "ias" thing.
Misc.
Note about this issue
It took me a long time to get to making this issue fully written and published because I was lazy for a few months. I made some new userboxes during that time.
An encyclopedia is supposed to be truthful. No matter how digital or physical it is, facts have to be checked to ensure consistency with real-life expectations. If it is either ambiguous or unrealistic, then it will be questioned for further examination, either leading to acceptance or disapproval. The results become various; while some of them are being praised with ease if true, others are met with polarized opinions for conflicting reasons. This can also happen in a wiki like Wikipedia because of its open nature, as even though it stated itself to be a free encyclopedia, there are bound to be opponents who reject such status even if it's real or not. And this can exist in video game-related articles, too, as if one group finds something suspicious in an otherwise normal informational page pertaining to a new console. We Wikipedians could've blamed ourselves for the unnatural warfare if we agreed with our critics, but it wouldn't be easy.
It's clear that references fall into two categories: reliable sources and unreliable sources. That is because of not only how the editors of this website view things, but also because of how the course of this wiki's history was altered. Back in 2001, the wiki was relatively small, acted like a neutral encyclopedia, and had short articles with no bent towards inaccuracy. As it grew, more topics were brought into the table such as video games, and disagreements over neutral point of view (NPOV) became commonplace. The concepts of reliable and unreliable sources emerged out of this situation, and evolved over the years, either for the better or worse. More later events changed the perceptions of what it means to write a truth, so orders were enabled and conflicts arose. Some users moved out of Wikipedia because of various circumstances, including controversies surrounding mere revisions of certain statements of gaming-themed pages. Now we have many big articles with varying levels of neutrality, random levels of claims (either truths or lies), and at times unnecessary biases thrown into the text out of nowhere. Therefore it is crucial that only the truth in reliable sources is presented fairly, and not the opposite.
You can't present a work as about something that actually happened unless it realistically discusses true events, and if you fail, it turns into a hoax. If a solution to the issue is available, then it is de-hoaxed. Some fake sources are invented to make implausible pages about impossible computer games. When it is found out, the article is judged and is either rewritten or ceases to exist. Articles are meant to be written entirely neutral, in the way of fairly representing truth without confusion, and in the absence of bias and critiques. Writing an article from a point of view is vulnerable to outsiders' criticism, even if there is neutrality in the text, because they can spot inaccuracies and needless opinions in what is supposed to be a neutral text. We now know that in these current times, everyone is viewing your edits as either grounded on reality or very distortive, so it is important to write neutral truths.
In short, don't fake your work, and write an article about real things. The current environment of the game industry is so prone to disbelief that trusting a journal is hard when you have a bunch of critics. I think that, as of today, a reformation of the truth is needed for everyone. (originally written for WP:VG/NEWS)
The name of this category, "All articles that are too technical", makes you think that these articles are gonna be extremely complicated. Since the word "too" is in the name, it is said that only very technical ones deserve to be dealt with, but it actually falsely claims that of those same very/highly technical articles (a.k.a. tech articles) are extremely technical, which is frankly bizarre because not all tech articles are extremely technical, and in fact, all of them are technical to random degrees; thus, the term "too" does not describe the situation accurately. The term "very" is a suitable replacement for "too", because the way the category name is worded (particarly the "too" part) make users think that technical articles shouldn't exist.
But in fact, technical articles should exist, because they're professional articles. The Wikipedia rules say that all articles must be accessible to inexperienced readers, but there is no need to use the rules as a justification for punishing tech(nical) articles. These pages are free as a bird, since they normally express high quality throughout with beautiful writing skills, detailed prose, fancy usage of templates, illustrative references, etc., and more. Wikis deserve technical articles, since they're accurate and fairly represent the topic(s) they're discussing. Hop on over to your skills and improve it to large marginal degrees that this place will be a true encyclopedia in the future.
Misc.
Interviews?
I've been considering making an interview section for this newsletter, so I'll see if it's possible or not.
