User talk:Musikguru88

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Vegantics (talk) 13:46, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! Certainly not trying to be spam. I would ask though, re: linkspam, the resource I’ve pointed to in some cases is not all that different from the IPDB pages that are also found in some of the resource links. Musikguru88 (talk) 14:01, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I agree that in some cases Kineticist and IPDB serve very similar roles and it is an perfectly acceptable source to cite. My concern is that is appears to be pretty much the only website you ever link to and in some cases they are being placed in the body of articles (see WP:EL for more guidance on that). I've modified some of the articles you recently edited to include Kinetecist as a relevant citation to provide an example.

I am also concerned because Kineticist is a fairly new resource and looking through their materials shows they are extremely interested in SEO. By comparison, IPDB does not have an interest in self-promotion because it is crowd-sourced. It makes me naturally wary of over-linking to the site, but perhaps that is prejudice on my part.

Thanks for responding to me, I'm very glad to see other folks excited about contributing to Wikipedia's body of knowledge on pinball. I'd be happy to talk resources and research strategies as they relate to Wikipedia policy if you're interested.

Vegantics (talk) 14:12, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Gotcha! Thanks for the explanation. In some cases I'm not sure how to properly incorporate some of the Kineticist material but your guidance is helpful. Would love to chat about resources and research! If you wanna shoot me a message sometime outside of Wikipedia colin at kineticist dot co is my email.

And for transparency Kineticist is my site. So I am certainly biased but my intentions are pure. IPDB is a great resource but isn't exactly actively maintained (they may be catching up but a lot of the newer titles aren't in their database). I think my nightmare scenario, which is one of the motivating factors behind the site, is that IPDB dies off (the org that provides hosting services no longer exists, and they haven't changed their design much in like 20 years, so it suggests an entity that isn't a priority to whoever owns it), and Pinside gets sold to like a Fandom or something.

For Kineticist, we start with OPDB data as a basic structure and then add to it over time with tutorials, links to 3rd party resources, etc. We also participate in the dev community that maintains OPDB. 72.93.97.4 (talk) 15:42, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is really helpful info to have your background and interest in contributing to pinball-related Wikipedia articles. To provide some additional context about how Wikipedia operates, your relationship to Kineticist presents a conflict of interest when editing articles about pinball (see WP:COI)). However, that does not mean that you cannot edit or write articles about pinball-related topics if you are transparent and use due diligence. Because your site benefits from these links, it can be difficult to ensure neutrality in your contributions. I would encourage you to review WP:COIE and WP:SPAMMER to understand how to appropriately edit pinball-related articles and identify your COI in relation to them.

If you are interested in providing more diversity to your resources but worry about their longevity, I would encourage you to consider archiving links as you to to make sure they stay accessible. This also allows you to improve the overall quality of Wikipedia (which should be your primary objective here) without being dependent on one site as your only source of information.

On a personal note, while I do appreciate a lot of Kineticist's content and I'm glad to see an active and robust new pinball resource, the spam-like quality in which these links have been added has made me reluctant to cite it on Wikipedia as a policy. I'm glad to be having this conversation and understanding where you're coming from as it makes me more willing to rely on the site as a resource.

Cheers!

Vegantics (talk) 17:20, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ok thank you! I tend to batch my work when I can, so things tend to happen in chunks. And it’s a bootstrapped, mostly solo effort (with content contributions from the community). But, I am very involved in the larger pinball community (also write for this week in pinball and serve on the board of the New England pinball league).

What’s the best way to archive links? I’ve been starting to collect a lot of 3rd party links on my site for content related to specific people in pinball. Articles, podcasts and videos mostly. Hoping to give that content more visibility and give it more of a chance to stick around long term. Musikguru88 (talk) 17:31, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's great to hear about-- especially as early internet pinball resource depreciate and vanish. On Wikipedia the Internet Archive is definitely the go-to. Podcasts and videos (as I'm sure you're aware) present a greater challenge because of their file sizes, but I would recommend Podcast RE for archiving podcasts and probably just ripping/re-uploading to a private Youtube account for videos. You will of course run into intellectual property issues with the latter, but it preserves the content to allow a conversation with the owners about how to keep it available online.

Vegantics (talk) 18:18, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]