Talk:Coleco

Comment

What a second? Maurice Greenberg is 78 years old as of 2004. If that is correct, he couldn't have founded Coleco in 1932 at age 6! Previous unsignedcomment dated 02:33, 19 December 2005

If there's a Maurice Greenberg born in '1926, it wasn't the founder of Coleco. What data do you have? Coleco was definitely founded by a guy named Greenberg, whose two sons took over the business. We called them Lenny & Squiggy. They had a very high opinion of their ability which was not necessarily borne out b event. One of the problems we had was immense overhead from building an HQ during the fat days of Cabbage Patch that became a huge burden when the craze fell back to normal levels; another was a tendancy to go for sales rather than profit. It was really fun in the short run, not so much fun in the long run. rewinn 06:25, 16 July 2006 (UTC)?

"teetered on the edge of bankruptcy"

I wonder if this section can be expanded a little bit. I'm curious how a company can be teetering on the edge of bankruptcy in 1984, when in 1983 they introduced one of the most successful toy lines ever (the Cabbage Patch Dolls) --68.47.81.141 08:11, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's a good point. Coleco's mismanagement of its CPK wealth should be legendary, but it didn't actually crash until 1988 per http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE6D8113BF930A25754C0A96F948260 http://www.nemesisworld.com/starcom/coleco.html . Also I think the Colecovision lasted at least until 1985, according to the history at http://www.thedoteaters.com/p3_stage4.php ... rewinn 05:51, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Board Games, etc.

Although there's no need to delve into the minutiae of Coleco's product lines, the article does fail to address ventures such as the acquisition of Scrabble for a brief period of time. I don't know enough myself to state whether this was an oddity, or that Coleco made a more extended attempt to diversify into board games, etc. D. Brodale (talk) 11:53, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Popular culture

If this isn't cited to published literary/cultural analysis by December 4, it goes. There is nothing that requires uncited material to sit indefinitely and Jimbo has said that he prefers it to be removed. WillOakland (talk) 22:34, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Will, it falls under the Pop Culture guidelines of the video games project (WP:VG/POP), which does not require "published cultural analysis" and never has. It does however require an entry to be reflective of a pop culture influence, and be an actual focus of the content (scene or subbject) vs. a passing reference. Likewise that tv episodes have their specific episodes referenced, which these have, they are not "uncited". Other entries have been removed, the two that are left fall under the current practiced guidelines across the project (see others such as Pac-Man, or the recent Feature article status Space Invaders). If you're not familiar with the guidelines, feel free to discuss them over at the guidelines talk page. At the very least, I could see possibly moving these to the Colecovision and Adam articles respectively. But complete deletion is out of the question, they fall under established guidelines regardless of any threats or lack of familiarity of the guidelines on your part or a "jimbo's". I see you just started editing this past year, so its quite possible you did not know of the guideline's existence. However, they were created by consensus of the project specifically to cut down on trivia lists while recognizing instances of pop culture influence, and are followed across articles that fall under the project's domain, such as this one. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 05:11, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't recognize any guideline as being able to preempt the original research policy (Do you at least know what that is?). If you don't know, in the context of Wikipedia, who Jimbo is... well, damn. I've been editing far longer than is apparent. Apparently too long. WillOakland (talk) 06:02, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Bill, that's the reason for the requirement of a citation of the exact episode information - so that its not WP:OR. Stating blindly "there's this scene in some episode of this one show I saw last night" would be original research, which is why again, the guideline was created by consensus of the entire project to make sure everything was on the up-and-up. Articles going through peer review of the featured article status and including said material, also establishes consensus outside of the project by the very people judging good content here. Stating you don't care about a normal and well used process here on Wikipedia to establish guidelines used by many, and the effort by a multitude of editors that went in to it - that you'll do what you want anyways - can come off as being a disruptive editor and in this case a bit of WP:OWNERSHIP as well. Likewise, watch the sarcasm. If you've been here for "apparently too long" under another account, then you should be familiar with WP:civil. I'm aware of who Jimmy Wales is, and I don't recall him participating in this discussion or editing this page in regards to what we're discussing. In fact, "As a general principle, Wales has been unwilling to act in contravention of community consensus". I'm trying to reach a compromise and talk to you civilly. At the very least, as stated, I could see moving them off this page and on to their specific pages on Wikipedia. Any notable pop culture references on the Coleco page should really be about the company itself. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 16:56, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

FYI I'm not impressed by your ability to link to policy pages, and in my experience that's usually a sign of someone who's here to start drama rather than write respectable encyclopedia articles. WillOakland (talk) 22:16, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry you feel that way Bill, I've been contributing since 2005, have worked on moving several articles to FAC, and am an involved member in good standing of several projects here on Wikipedia. Since you've smirked at every attempt for a civil discussion, and with your last one violated Wikipedia:No personal attacks at this point I'll file an rfc over at the video game project for consensus on this issue. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 23:12, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what WillOakland's issue is here. The specific episodes are referenced, so I don't see how he can say they are uncited. I'm definitely detecting a hostile attitude from him. Asher196 (talk) 23:59, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I share Asher's sentiments, as well as the sentiment that it would do WillOakland some good to calm down and not respond rudely for someone so uptight with policy. The section needs work, but isn't complete crap. Also kinda surprised there's no note of Code Monkeys' rather blatant reference to the company.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 01:05, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

User:WillOakland: I would strongly recommend that you assume a little good faith here and keep your discussion civil. I found out about this discussion from WT:VG and am rather put off by what I'm seeing here. Your statements do not seem to reflect community consensus on the matter (WikiProjects have adopted their own guidelines based on Wikipedia policies, but you seem to be ignoring them), and the tone of your end of this discussion is bordering on both article ownership and tendentious editing. If you feel strongly that popular-culture information should be outright deleted, I would recommend you join or start a broader discussion on this topic as a whole at the WikiProject Talk page, as this has much farther-reaching implications than just for this article. If you have any questions, feel free to respond either here, on WT:VG, or on my Talk page. Thank you. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 01:04, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not even slightly interested in personal issues.

However. Wikipedia is not a catalog of every single joke ever told. Bulleted lists of one-off jokes made in sitcoms, cited directly to the sitcoms themselves, are not sourced commentary; they're indiscriminate trivia. They do not belong here, they do not belong in the Coleco Adam or ColecoVision articles, and they do not belong anywhere.

One of the main ways you can tell a poorly-written article on Wikipedia is a failure to make a distinction between commentary on a subject (a useful source) and a reference to a subject (generally not a useful source). These are very much the latter. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 01:31, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Nice, removing the disputed content during the discussion. Well, I reverted your edit. Let's get more input. Asher196 (talk) 01:41, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

(Edit Conflict) As for the content itself: I happen to agree in this instance that the pop-culture references here do not contribute anything of worthwhile significance to the topics (Coleco, the Adam or the CVision). I think they can be safely removed as being irrelevant per the guidelines - the machines in question could be replaced by virtually any other old piece of gaming hardware and have pretty much the same meaning. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 01:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

AMIB: While I appreciate your position, the guidelines for WP:VG/POP were created by consensus of the video game project for a reason. That includes a requirement of citing the episode in question. We just had Space Invaders pass FA status using said guidelines and citations in fact, approving that precedent. Kiefer: I can certainly understand and respect it from that perspective. That's exactly why that viewpoint was added in to the guidelines regarding "consensus needed" for specific types such as this.--Marty Goldberg (talk) 01:43, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

You're right on the guidelines being borne from consensus talks earlier on. I think we might have differing opinions on the significance of some of these things, though - AMIB has a point that we can't just go listing every joke that's been made about a topic. I think that the Space Invaders article has very good pop-culture references that do a LOT to improve people's understanding of how significant a game that is. Unfortunately, I can't say the same about these - the joke about the Adams "rusting up" may have to do with reliability issues for that platform, but I can't think of anything mainstream that would make that joke particularly funny to someone who hasn't had an Adam die on them in some noteworthy way. Considering the platform's relative lack of popularity, it seems to me more that this joke is meant to pick on old video game systems as a whole (or more specifically any system that wasn't particularly successful), and thus it fails the notability test. Again, this is my opinion, but I'm basing my "vote" (if you will) on my interpretation of those guidelines. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 01:53, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, as stated so its clear for everyone - I'm more interested in following the established guidelines. If general consensus is that the material is not noteworthy (as the "Consensus needed" situation lays out), then I'm for removing them as well. But not blind removals based on the ignoring of guidelines laid out by previous consensus. I don't have a difference of opinion on significance with you or AMIB now that its been discussed. I was/am simply concerned that guidelines be followed, and was disagreeing on statements regarding citation (one person claiming lack thereof, AMIB claiming citing an episode is not valid when that's what was set up by consensus and in fact just passed as acceptable with the FA of Space Invaders). --Marty Goldberg (talk) 02:03, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I will state my view clearly: I do not accept any interpretation of a guideline that allows articles to become sprawling concordances of examples where the subject has been mentioned in the media. Over the past couple years, insistence on high-quality secondary sources has emerged as the best means of deciding what is "encyclopedic" and I believe in ruthlessly applying that throughout Wikipedia, especially in sections explicitly tagged as "popular culture" sections. I remember quite clearly that "popular culture" was introduced as essentially newspeak for "trivia," without much interest in whether there were actual cultural studies to refer to. WillOakland (talk) 03:13, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

And again, nobody is condoning "sprawling concordances". That's exactly why the Pop culture guidelines were created and crafted by consensus, to cut down on long trivia lists that were occurring in articles under the project and to provide a mechanism to discuss the merit or non-merit of proposed entries in these sections - such as the consensus against these two entries now established here. Likewise, nobody of the 1,091 members of the project and its task forces is interested in a Popular culture section as "news speak", and that once again is doing a disservice to the people involved in the consensus of the guidelines. Finally, that all has very little to do with your continued conduct, and "ruthless" attempts to ignore any attempts at dialogue or for you to take part in this process civilly up to this point. Including snide remarks meant to goad on my talk page or the one you put here regarding a drama bus and quickly replaced with the above paragraph. This is a problematic history on your part over the 9 months your account has been active, evidenced by your edits and your talk page, with a propensity for edit warring and conduct problems. Wikipedia promotes dialogue and discussion for conflict resolution, not ultimatums, incivility and a "I don't care what anyone has to say" attitude. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 04:25, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Let me say this more directly, Will: I do not accept this notion that you are the sole voice of what stays and what goes on Wikipedia. One of WP's core policies is the consensus policy, and we had already arrived at a consensus of what constituted acceptable pop-culture information in a genre that has a lot of pop-culture in it. For you to say that you don't accept anything that deviates from the strictest letter of a core policy, even when that policy allows for exceptions and for WikiProjects to adopt their own standards that are in keeping with those policies, is for you to reject community consensus. And when you do that, you're making a public statement that you do not intend to follow policy when working on this project. That is bound to get you in trouble sooner or later, whether it be edit warring, personal attacks, tendentious editing, or what have you.

Please don't reject literally months or even years of constructive consensus work just because your personal view is stricter than most. That's not how things work here. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 05:21, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The discussion looks to be spread out on a couple talk pages, but here looks like the place to discuss the issue.

In regard to the use of references in popular culture, I do think that such a practice is acceptable within reason. That being said, the current content does not seem to be within reason. However, I do not think this calls for the removal of the content. In its current state it gives undue weight to the pop culture reference; the explanation of the reference is more than is needed, as is a separate section for the two references. If they were to remain, I would trim them down to a simple sentence stating that the system has been referenced/parodied in television, and include the sentence in a legacy section rather than a pop culture section. Something else of note, it would be a much stronger argument keeping the references in if there were more—that is not a request to fill the page with them. I'm just saying that Space Invaders#n popular culture worked because there were a number of TV episodes to substantiate a sentence like this.

In regard to the use of secondary sources. Yes, Wikipedia articles should be built using secondary sources, but primary sources are acceptable. Especially when the content is not "challenged or likely to be challenged". Such content does not require a citation, though it is recommended. In a case like this, a primary source seems perfectly fine to me as I don't think anyone is going to really challenge the TV episode. I'd say this certainly falls under the descriptions found at WP:PSTS. My two cents. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 05:16, 11 November 2008 (UTC))

Certainly, prose is always preferred over lists. I did some checking, and found this resource that can be used in future discussions (including in discounting on non-notability) - each entry includes photos of the scenes in question that help to illustrate the item being discussed. Specifically for Colecovision, I could only find two there and both were regards to South Park. There's also the already listed Simpson's reference, a family guy reference, as well as everybody hates chris. There's also being noted as a pop culture item in VH1's I Love The 80's Strikes Back]. So at the very least we have several entries to create a prose sentence like you suggest. There's also this album with an entire song entitled Coleco Vision which meets guideline criteria. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 06:28, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

This discussion seems to have died off rather suddenly. Are there any more opinions on this matter, or are we ready to call a consensus? — KieferSkunk (talk) — 01:10, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Just to clarify, was the consensus that the content should be trimmed and moved to a more appropriate article? (Guyinblack25 ^talk 17:18, 13 November 2008 (UTC))

Consensus was to remove it all together, that is until you mentioned your prose alternative which I'm leaning towards now as well with the references I mentioned above. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 17:24, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that an all-prose rewrite of those points will fix the notability problem in this case. I think the data should be removed entirely. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 20:13, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. What I envisioned was a 1-2 sentence description of being mentioned on TV. However, such a sentence by itself would probably be a magnet for more trivia. I guess "In pop culture" sections can only work if they are fully fleshed out. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 20:23, 13 November 2008 (UTC))

Well, I do believe there is enough for a sentence like that on the Colecovision page with the Vh1, Southpark, and Family Guy coverage as a collective. I.E., they're not notable enough to list on their own (as currently done), but are supportive as references of a 1-2 sentence description of tv/media, similar to how it was done on Space Invaders. I.E. the Space Invaders Pop culture line "The game has appeared in numerous facets of popular culture. Multiple television series have aired episodes that either reference or parody the game and its elements; for example, DangerMouse,[33] That '70s Show,[34] Scrubs,[35] and Robot Chicken.[36]" could just as easily be tooled for the above. The Vh1 item alone is notable as specific discussion (an entire segment) on the system as a pop culture item, with the two tv items as additional references. Then there's the issue of the track of that album being specifically titled with the system's name, which is deemed as worthy per the guidelines. Possibly under a section entitled "Legacy and pop culture", as I don't believe the sentence would be enough to justify its own section. The Adam one is all by its lonesome, so I can't see that staying anywhere. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 20:32, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I can accept that. I was going on the current version where we have just one item for Adam and one for CVision. If there are several items for CVision that can be put together, then I agree they're more notable combined, so I'm good with that. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 04:32, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok, per this discussion (which I'm assuming by now is consensus), I removed the section from here and reworked the material as references at ColecoVision. There is now a section there entitled "Legacy and pop culture influence". I was also able to flesh it out with more music references, and rework some of the legacy material already on that page - which now includes references and such. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 21:44, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Cool, thanks for taking care of that. :) WP:CON FTW! — KieferSkunk (talk) — 23:41, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

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Some of them are FICTIONAL

Coleco was Pixelated, Merged and Acquired by Amazon Since 1996. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:6EF1:57D0:51D7:CA58:2C09:8A94 (talk) 23:26, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Coleco Vision vs Gemini

One of the things that has been infuriating me since looking online is an oddity. As a youth I owned a "Coleco Vision". But my Vision looks nothing like all the pictures and videos I found online. To the contrary after research I discovered a second device named the "Coleco Gemini" instead. The article is light on details so does anyone know what prompted creation of second console (according to article in same year even). Is this a regional thing? (Vision was USA model and for us in rest of world we get Gemini which is branded as Vision?) Confused to say the least and Gemini seems to have far fewer details online to help clarify. Kav2001c (talk) 20:37, 28 February 2021 (UTC)kav2001c

The ColecoVision and the Coleco Gemini are two entirely different consoles. The ColecoVision was distributed in the US and Canada by Coleco themselves. In the UK, Europe and Australia the ColecoVision was distributed by CBS Electronics and was slightly rebranded to be the CBS ColecoVision. The Coleco Gemini is an entirely different beast and is simply a clone of the Atari 2600 console. There's a good YouTube video that covers the Gemini here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojwlfXEvpGI. Hope this answers your questions. Ikrananka (talk) 20:49, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Coleco website

https://coleco.com/

Should it get a mention on page? Doremon764 (talk) 20:55, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Why ask the question on the Talk page and then immediately go ahead and add the website link to the Coleco page anyway? Regardless, that website has nothing to do with Coleco Industries Inc. and so has no place in the Coleco Industries info box. The only appropriate places for it might be in the "Brand" section or the "External Links" section. Ikrananka (talk) 21:10, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Added to “External Link” section.Doremon764 (talk) 21:28, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Cabbage Patch Kids ?????

Unless I missed it - There was no mention of the "Cabbaga Patch Kids" - - - another Phenomenon in itself

Amazing story (Coleco) 2001:569:52E5:3700:F8A5:3F16:CBA:7933 (talk) 17:43, 8 October 2022 (UTC)