Talk:Minecraft/Archive 9

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Article neutrality banner

In the past, I added a Template:Controversy section banner to the article due to, well, the currently existing controversies section. This is in line with WP:CSECTION, which advises that these sections should usually not exist at all and their content be implemented elsewhere into the article. While CSECTION is not technically a policy, it is still a very reasonable and valid argument to WP:NPOV, which is policy. However, in this revision, the banner was removed. I have readded it, and I will explain why I disagree with the assertion behind removing it: "To be honest I don't see a problem with the controversies section. They are controversies about minor topics ([...]) that wouldn't be in the article without the controversies so we can't merge the controversies section into other sections"

First of all, I doubt that if a controversy is about a minor topic, it likely should not be in the article at all per WP:FRINGE. Things such as the EULA controversy and the mob votes are not something that need an entire dedicated sub-section and it draws attention to such minor parts of the game and its reception/community to make them seem like bigger problems than they actually are. They are things that should be in the article, but in reality could easily be summarized in a Development or post-release updates section that is actually worth its salt. Meanwhile, I doubt the account migration controversy needs to be documented at all as only one reliable source is used in the section. That in of itself might just be the definition of a fringe point of view. There are certainly some extraordinary cases where a specific section dedicated to one controversy may be warranted, but from what I'm seeing about all of these incidents, none of them would even reach that mark.

And yes, this section does compromise the neutrality of the article. Or at least, the reception towards it. The prose of the critical reception / reviews section (which needs a complete rewrite, but that's a topic for a different time) only contains about 554 words. The controversies section has 870. The value of what critics and reliable sources have to say about the game is far more noteworthy than fan backlash as far as Wikipedia is concerned, so why is the controversies section given so much weight prose-wise? λ NegativeMP1 23:06, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

• WP:CSECTION isn't just "not technically a policy"; it's an essay and thus shouldn't factor into this at all. Essays are not evidence of community consensus (let alone necessarily good practice).
• Discussing these controversies does not violate NPOV provided 1) we talk about them only how and to the extent that reliable, independent sources have talked about them, 2) we give WP:DUE weight to all the perspectives, and 3) per WP:BALASP we weigh the length of this section against the relative significance to the topic (currently ~6.5% of the main prose) and cover only the most notable controversies. An encyclopedic treatment of Minecraft necessarily includes this section.
• The EULA subsection only has one source, but given it's notable enough for coverage in The Guardian, I could find two dozen articles easily from reliable gaming outlets discussing it in significant detail. I have added a Kotaku article which can show readers that this wasn't some pet issue of The Guardian, but beyond that, unless other articles contain different, relevant details, it'd feel like refbombing.
• We should refrain from using bottom-of-the-barrel slop like Game Rant (sprinkled into the 'Controversies' section) and replace it with better sources, but I'm not convinced any of the four controversies we list are non-notable enough to be removed.
• The 'Critics' and 'Awards' sections together are 1100 words (the awards are issued by critics based on their critical opinions about the game), and moreover, this isn't a zero-sum game; Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and expanding out the 'Critics' section is a valid option.
• I have since reduced 'Controversies' to 697 words, as the first three subsections were excessively verbose.
• I've additionally removed the first three subsections' headers and placed them directly under 'Controversies', as the first three subsections were thematically very similar. "Mob Vote" retains its header since we provide the overall context for the Mob Vote from start to finish as its own self-contained narrative.
• While the existence of this section isn't problematic, the way we wrote it was – presenting backlash as vehement and unanimous (ex. "The Minecraft community and server owners, however, heavily despised the new change").

As you're citing an essay as your primary argument, as I don't think this violates BALASP, as I've cleaned up the subsection's neutrality, and as much of the subsection's length was illusory (inflated by extraneous headers and needless verbosity), I'm going to remove the tag. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 12:42, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for cleaning up the section but I still don't think that a dedicated section for any of this is needed. What would prevent the EULA update from just being covered in a well fleshed out Development section? Or the Mob Votes from being covered there as well? At least the section reads way better now so it's definitely more neutrally worded, so I guess my concerns are somewhat alleviated. λ NegativeMP1 17:25, 6 May 2025 (UTC)