Help needed to create Defold Wikipedia article!

I think we can try submit. we can make it perfect even afterwards. there is an ongoing discussion on direct links to games that wikipedia might not like because of advertising. I would try to put them as references and then submit

Thereā€™s advice at the top of the page to ensure the article complies with core content policies
One thing that it might fail on is lack of citations. There are some, but maybe not enough.

That would be awesome to publish something now when people are looking for the info about Defold and read about King instead: King (company) - Wikipedia
(Iā€™ve already got a couple of messages about it)

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I added a few more references and removed some overly enthusiastic wording. Iā€™m not very convinced of the fluency of the very first paragraph (which is the first thing one reads).
also I think it could be better expanded on some unique concepts of defold (but maybe Iā€™m being a fan boy here)
in any case, if I donā€™t see any suggestions, Iā€™ll proceed with the submission in the next few hours

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agree. with the ongoing shitshow itā€™s worth rushing it out :slight_smile:

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AFC request submitted. waiting times are not promising :man_shrugging:. in the next few days Iā€™d like to expand on:

  • runtimes size
  • performances (the post written a little while ago could be a start)
  • cloud build
  • the fact that Xcode or Android Studio are not necessary
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Well done! Much appreciated!

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the article passed the content assessment and has been accepted. Defold - Wikipedia is now a thing :slight_smile:

as said above, there is still some work Iā€™d like to do. also someone suggested linking this and this which are excellent references

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Great! Thanks to everyone who participated.

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Bad news: the the article has been taken down for a few reasons. There are multiple reasons why but one worth mentioning on the forum is

The moderation teams views this as promised compensation and a breach of guidelines.
Also, @britzl and Ragnar (one of founders)'s history of contributing to the post a few years ago presents a conflict of interest.

EDIT: another issue raised by a moderator was that Defold doesnā€™t meet the notability criteria i.e. Defold must have received significant external coverage prior to getting an article. It also seems that proposals to create an article have been rejected several time in the past and Defold is approaching spam status in their eyes, risking the topic being banned from the website altogether.

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Iā€™ve taken back this offer and updated the original post.

Correct. The wikipedia page was initially rejected because I attempted to create it myself. And then a community initiative was also rejected for reasons which I canā€™t remember.

I have two main concerns with this whole thing:

  1. Wikipedia redirects Defold to the page about King, giving a false impression that Defold is still somehow affiliated with King.
  2. Wikipedia is a source of truth. So much so that even Google uses it for its Knowledge Graph. Not having a wikipedia page is a significant disadvatange.

I personally feel that this is really inaccurate. Some arguments for this case:

  • Defold was initially know as the internal game engine used by King, the makers of Candy Crush, the worlds most profitable mobile game ever. This in itself is notable.
  • The fact that King is no longer the owner of Defold and instead handed over the source code and trademarks to the Defold foundation is notable. Source: King is making its Defold game engine open source | Pocket Gamer.biz | PGbiz
  • Defold has gradually grown into a well known game engine. Some sources to back up this claim:
    • The European Game Developers Federation recently mentioned that ā€œthe Commission should increase its support for privacy-friendly open-source alternatives for game engines, like for example Godot or Defoldā€. Source: EGDF
    • Google is recommending Defold as one of the main engines to use for Android game development. Source: Android Developer Pages
    • Defold is approved middleware for both Nintendo and Sony consoles. This is not something most game engines can claim. Not even Godot (which has a Wikipedia page btw).
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Hobbyist non-gamedev Wikipedian here, I think there are A LOT of misconceptions flying around about Wikipedia, and Iā€™d like to take this chance to attempt to correct the most important ones as best I can.

Anyone who finds the notion of a Defold Wikipedia article important should listen to what I have to say

Firstly, the following two posts hint at a gap of understanding in what exactly WP is, what it is for, what it is not, and what ā€œnotabilityā€ specifically means in a Wikipedia context.

Instead of practicing the old tradition of Wikipedia users spamming a few shortlinks to various help pages in your face, Iā€™ll do my best to explain these fully and lay them out below (However I will still add links to learn more where reasonable)

Wikipedia is, at its heart, an Encyclopedia, which is a fancy word for a ā€œTertiary Sourceā€. This means that it collects and aggregates facts from reliable secondary sources, and cites those secondary sources directly rather than citing original sources/official sources.
This means that it is not sufficient to simply cite official pages, Refold, etc.

For each fact/factoid/statement made on a WP article, it should be backed up by at least one of the linked sources (And cited in-line). Official sources CAN be included in the total source list and can be used to corroborate implications from secondary sources. This is why companies cannot make up feats about themselves, and then edit their WP pages to brag about them.

The fact of the matter is, WP is treated like a nexus and source for the one official truth. WP plays an important role in everyday society, and therefore what is written on WP is treated with high regard.

On a personal and social level, I can totally understand and respect how it feels offensive having your life work (in the case of britzl) or your favorite game engine (in the case of many others here) be described as ā€œNOT NOTABLEā€. This is a massive insult, and understandably quite hurtful, especially when many other game engines of slightly larger userbases have their own fully fleshed out WP pages.
The important thing to note here is that the people saying this donā€™t mean that the game engine Defold is an unimportant subject, but rather that the WP article ā€œDefoldā€ has not necessarily proven that it meets the criteria laid out in WP:Notability

WP:Notability is typically measured by number of WP:Reliable Sources. This means that in order to prove that a subject meets the criteria, a draft must be submitted with a list of Reliable Secondary Sources which back up the statements made in the draft.

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Thanks for explaining in more detail @Griffin !

For the page itself then I guess we need to add more sources.
Here are a few (sorry if duplicates, as I donā€™t remember what the page said):

Recent mention by Casey Muratori, a game industry veteran:

Our repository has more than 3000 stars now:

Weā€™re listed in the list of technologies used by Steam games:
https://steamdb.info/tech/

Weā€™re in the Top 10 of popular game engines on OSSInsight:

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Iā€™m glad to help!

Specifically sources which meet the criteria of WP:RS, which can be summarized as ā€œReliable secondary sources in unbiased mediaā€, this means newspapers, books, news articles online, etc, anything from secondary sources (which are sources that use primary sources [AKA original/official sources] to comment on goings on).

Specifically, of the 4 sources you listed in your reply post, only the first is likely to be admissable as a reliable secondary source. The others are not secondary sources.

Sorry for the assumption, but ā€œsecondary sourcesā€ can translate very weirdly into other languages. I recommend reading a brief summary of WP:RS to understand exactly what is meant and what is admissable if you believe I have inadequately explained.

Iā€™m happy to answer any further questions about WP, RS, COI, or any other series of letters strung together in a pretentious manner :slight_smile:

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Intuitively, I would have assumed the opposite to be true ā€“ the first article is a collection of opinions by a blogger while GitHub and Steam list objective figures. One could even argue the first article violates WP:QUESTIONABLE. Could you explain why you found that one source to be a reliable secondary source?

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Gladly!
This all ties back to what a secondary source is.
The key part of this is, as you said,

They list these figures themselves because the data comes from their own respective databases. This makes them considered platforms, and therefore the data/stats/info on those pages are considered primary sources. The information contained on them isnā€™t assumed to be WP:N until it is mentioned in a secondary sources.
While you are completely correct (good eye!) in flagging the first article for being potentially opinionated, the opinions of an industry professional speaking in a public and official capacity (preferably with further links included in the article to back up claims made) can be considered notable.


You can think about this in the manner of Elon Musk on Twitter. If Elon Musk were to tweet that the sky is, in fact, green and everyone else is afraid to speak the truth, then this would be an unsourced opinion (and maybe a conspiracy theory, or evidence of his colorblindness). However, if Elon were to tweet that ā€œTesla is having financial troublesā€, or that ā€œSelf driving technology is near-impossible to get rightā€, then these things could be considered potentially notable primary sources due to his authority in the field. Secondary sources commenting on these tweets would therefore be fully admissible for citation on WP.

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thanks @Griffin

so, taking this article as an example

could this be considered a secondary source or should we find a blog/tweet that comments on the fact that google suggests using Defold?

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I started a new topic under Talk so we can make sure we have reliable sources

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Simply citing google itself could be considered a direct citation of a primary source which would qualify as original research which is not allowed. You would need to find a news article or report or something online saying that google recommends it, not a tweet, but something marginally more official and public than that.
Most preferably, think ā€œnews websitesā€ and anything close enough to gaming news websites to be considered unbiased and topical overview

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This was an interesting read. Lessons learned today:

  1. Wikipedia has a lot of bureaucracy
  2. You can trust media on the Internet and newspapers (they can be unbiased)
  3. You can trust individuals with subjective thoughts/opinions (aka Mask)
  4. Never trust big companies like Microsoft (Github) and Valve (Steam)