Initial decisions
For the record, the Spaceworld 1997/1999 demos (GS demos) and GBC Picross leak are starting unrestricted because, at this point, it has been plenty long since the GBC era, and it has also been plenty long since they were leaked.
If there is another game or demo or whatever that is leaked, feel free to ask about it in a new section of this talk page. Tiddlywinks (talk) 13:00, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
- Due to the policy changing, this no longer applies. Tiddlywinks (talk) 18:51, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
Protection
Just pointing out that this policy page hasn't been protected yet. Landfish7 05:10, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
What Happened?
Was asked to bring this discussion to the talk page, despite being part of an extremely small thread in the Bulbapedia Discord dedicated to the idea of revitalizing "Beta" content, started by myself. It contained a manifesto laying out my suggestions as to how alpha/beta/prototype/pre-release content should be handled on the site.
The Original Post
Here it is in full context, posted on 2023-04-16.
The Followup
Ever since this was posted, literally 15 messages were dropped in that thread, none of which cited any major opposition to this proposal. This, to me, signified that it would be handled at some point, though not met with any huge issues, due seeing zero pushback. What followed was posted on 2023-06-28, a whole two months after the initial post, and was about the update made to this page.
This was a closed-door effort by Bulbapedia staff that was never brought up to any other user, including myself, or any of the others that are actively willing to write/clean-up prototype content. It's frankly a rather rude and insulting response, a stance that has been echoed by many of the people that were willing to actually engage with literally writing this information up for free. After two months of radio silence, Bulbapedia staff have decided to give these plans the axe from behind a moderator chat, using the phrase Some base "facts". We're not covering prototype builds. followed up by Bulbapedia does not consider them to be part of its mission. These vague statements cast a wide net of stagnation over the future of covering prototype Pokemon content on the site.
The first core issue is that the page makes distinctions between incredibly specific yet ultimately nebulous terms such as Demo Builds, Pre-release builds, Cancelled Games and Source Code. From the current iteration of this page, pages on Demo Builds and Cancelled Games are OK, but Pre-release builds and Source Code are not. What happens to the current Pokemon Picross GB page, which is a cancelled game with information entirely referencing a Pre-release build? What about the Diamond & Pearl demos? They were leaked Pre-release builds, and some were demos built from source code. What about Pre-release content such as sprites seen in early trailers or magazines, that we now actually have due to Pre-release content? Are we not allowed to update the images? How is this going to be tracked? How do we know if the Pre-release content itself is from a demo? What about content from public demos (such as the LGPE one at E3) that has crossover with Pre-release content? What about official posts from staff referencing pre-release content, can they not be reported on?
These incredibly simple questions based off responses to an ill-defined page tell me that the staff aren't equipped to handle this level of categorization that they've created. This is totally fine! However, when it is passed as some sort of site law, and happened without involving people that can actively define and contribute to this content (especially when it's been made clear that they're willing to do so) it feels rather insulting. I created a giant manifesto that received zero pushback, and now the staff want to go with their openly contradictory definitions, without consulting anyone who could even begin to work through them.
This APPEARS to stem from the statement on the page, Bulbapedia does not consider them to be part of its mission. This is vague and unconvincing. Currently, the only broad prototype content seemingly allowed on the site (according to this page) is everything that is already on the site, besides SW99. What about content in SW99 that originated from an earlier point in time? Are we disallowed from referencing that content literally ever? If "public knowledge already exposes some of its content" can we only report on assets that were a part of the actual demo experience itself, and not things that were in the data? How do you begin to moderate that when we don't have the full context of these two-day events that were held 20 years ago?
Since there is no explanation as to why this is the case, one can only assume that Bulbapedia's "mission" involves the site not being taken action against by Nintendo/TPC/GF, due to the nature of how some of this material was obtained. Ignoring the fact that not a single YouTube video, website, blogpost, social media post and entire wikis have EVER been taken down on reporting/discussing this content so long as it does not distribute the ROMs or source code themselves, what makes the stuff from SW97 more "legal" against action than something like reporting on the DP Source Code? Or the GS development repo sprites? Or the Pokemon Sword builds? These were all originally obtained by the same person back in May of 2018, and SW97 falls into that camp, as does Picross. Additionally, companies like Niantic have been openly aggressive to dataminers for Pokemon GO, trying to obfuscate their code so the games' assets can't be dumped. The NetEase version of Pokemon Quest has done something similar, as does HOME. Are we going nuke all of the visual content from those games on the site because the companies that make them don't want them to be dumped?
All of this is OK, or none of this is OK. Even if a company (again, has never happened and never will) wanted to come after Bulbapedia for merely reporting on this data, it would be pulled regardless of these ill-defined categories. The site will never ever get to say "Oh, it was just a demo! so that makes it okay" -- because a company doesn't care about the site's way of categorizing which information is "allowed" or not. Furthermore, the staff cannot possibly comprehend how much will just slip through the cracks because very few people on the team are intricately familiar with this content to parse it -- and the people that are weren't even invited to the dicussion, despite having an extremely rigid definition of how to handle this properly The current page draws an incredibly arbitrary line in the sand from people that cannot properly define both what that line is, and what content goes either behind or in front of that line.
This is the same issue as AI art uploads, where staff are trying to police something they themselves admit to not being able to fully understand. Can the staff explain which of these two images from below are even allowed on the site?
The solution for this is to completely go back to the drawing board and actually re-evaluate how this content should be categorized, reported on, and allowed on the site, from the people that originally suggested these changes months ago. Nobody has to immediately agree on those changes, but the option to be included in the discussion would be nice at the very least.
--Lewtwo (talk) 16:58, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
- I didn't participate very much in the conversation on Discord, but I'd like to show my support here for the points Lewtwo has made. I personally helped out a lot on TCRF documenting the development DP sprites, as well as the development RS pokemon data/dex entries, and I would like to eventually be able to move that information to here on Bulbapedia. Minibug (talk) 17:24, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
- I think the point about categorization/terminology is a reasonable one to explore. What terms would you apply to differentiate the final games, every version before a final game, a game like Picross, and the specific SW97 and SW99? Tiddlywinks (talk) 18:56, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
- They are all prototypes, as said in my post. Demos and past revisions of games are considered prototypes.--Lewtwo (talk) 21:52, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
- Okay. In that case, would you say that, like, "most prototypes cannot be documented; the only exceptions are if a specific prototype was used as a demo or was the latest version of a canceled game" is using more appropriate terminology? Tiddlywinks (talk) 23:23, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
- They are all prototypes, as said in my post. Demos and past revisions of games are considered prototypes.--Lewtwo (talk) 21:52, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
- I think the point about categorization/terminology is a reasonable one to explore. What terms would you apply to differentiate the final games, every version before a final game, a game like Picross, and the specific SW97 and SW99? Tiddlywinks (talk) 18:56, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
My thoughts regarding all of the above is the following:
- The term for beta pages even up into the most recent years have always used beta for Development leftovers left in the games. I recall this being how it was even before I joined and at some point proposals for all of the pages to change them to Developer Leftovers. I am entirely for this stuff being overhauled in general. A Pre-Release article covering important details leading up to the release of the games that were known to the public or made known through demos of the games in question; a Developers' Leftovers page for content that is still in the game but goes completely unused, was coded incorrectly, or in some cases is unrelated testing images, audio, or lines of code / dialog, and in more recent times, pages for covering early Demo / Alpha builds of games and what is leftover in them. So in short sum, splitting things into three categories for articles: Pre-Release (for coverage and developer insight that lead up to the games), Demos / Alpha build (which we already have some of), and Development Leftovers (for content leftover in the final build(s).)
- As for the Spaceworld 97 page being very spotty, that one is very much on me as I had made the page at the time with the full intention of adding screenshots and the such to the page; however, as the leaks had recently occurred, there was a lot I could not add and was left in limbo and unfortunately ended up being left in the state it currently is during the time it got mainspaced. I won't lie and note that I was hitting burnouts from editing and looking into the 97 and 99 builds at the time as I couldn't exactly do that much and just ended up leaving it as it was while waiting til I had motivation again to edit the pages (which.... as much as the motivation should have returned by now, still feeling out of it on how to handle the pages in general but want to see them improve and grow into better pages; all articles are collaborative efforts as one knows.) Although reading the page title suggestions, Unused Content or Developer Leftovers both seem good but not sure which one people would prefer.
- The early fanzine scans still being used was in large part due to staff at the time being unsure on if using actual sprites was ok (which I feel far more than enough time has passed and that sprites from the demos should be fine at this point) to use or not.
- On the topic of a hub page, there is one present if you search "Beta" but it is very much a bare bones page as it always has been, honestly not sure what to do with those or how to improve and add on to the pages.
As for the policy being updated, this should be fine. I'm hoping we can try to figure out things in a couple of weeks with more input from contributors. I feel mixed regarding covering prototypes, would love to see them covered in all honesty; but for now, waiting to see how you and other contributors feel about having a majority of them on here. Feels like in the current day, pages would be fleshed out waaaaaaaay quicker than when me and some other contributors and admins started adding them to the wiki a few years. Apologies again if my words seem more like fluff than addressing your concerns and the topic at hand on how to handle Prototype content going forward. Frozen Fennec 03:31, 30 June 2023 (UTC)