Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

Attention fans,

A new, greatly expanded article was recently published on Wikipedia. I'm intentionally not providing a link because I don't want the powers-that-be there to find any cause to hastily vote it for deletion. ("Oh look, the author is mounting a campaign to get an article" etc.) Clearly this article was written by a fan, but to avoid potential VfD for being "non-notable" some more source links are needed.

Other than the 2019 Q3 report by The Orr Group (Roll20 overlords) that show that Basic Fantasy is in the Top 45 of games played on their platform (ahead of LL, S&W, DCC, and OD&D) there aren't nearly enough links from "reliable sources" about the importance of the game. Much information comes directly from this website.

If you know of some good official third-party coverage from recognized orgs (i.e, not a mom and pop blog), please link them in the article.

1. What's the problem with posting the link? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Fantasy
2. Why does the entry necessarily need more citations for its "importance"?
3. What's wrong with "Mom and pop" blogs? They're exactly how the OSR and this game in particular started and gained popularity and traction (along with several forums), well before social media, reddit, etc.

I'm just confused by the wording of this post. Why not simply share the link, stating that a Wikipedia entry is now online, and spread the word to have it written out, expanded, citations added, etc.

I understand how Wikipedia works. I'm really sorry you don't seem inclined to take my word for it, but you could easily answer your own questions by reading their policies, and not doing something I explicitly declined to do, while also asking why it's a problem.

It's rather ironic, really, given that you're an admin and I've seen recent evidence that content policies exist here also -- and are swiftly enforced. Why would you assume that just because you disagree, it's not policy. If I think that it's silly to move someone's work notes out of the workshop just because they haven't uploaded something yet, should I assume it's a silly, made-up policy?

No. Solo has his policies; Wikipedia has theirs.

Anyway, to save you some searching about how their admins operate, have a look at these:

• Here's the reasoning for deleting the previous version of the article. Notice what they are saying, and what I'm now asking:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... antasy_RPG

• Here's the deletion history from 2015, where the admin "Oknazevad" then deletes the article because "None of these sources support a separate article; they're either primary sources, message board posts, or user-submitted blogs. None are really independent coverage from reliable sources."
  https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... on=history

• Finally, here's the current edit history of the current article where an admin "Oknazevad" has made a minor edit to the new article:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =984273024

This suggests a few things:

• The admin kept this article on a watchlist, even after deleting it, in order to track it in case it was recreated.

• The admin kept noticed it immediately, and made a minor correction to the code, possibly out of the goodness of their heart, but also in order to have it listed in their Contributions log (which they can review, to monitor the article's progress/lack of progress).

• As I've pointed out in my original message, 3rd party evidence of notability is still lacking (and the links to those policies is in the Vote for Deletion thread link, above).

• It's in danger of being snuffed again, if it doesn't acquire some better source references in whatever time period the admin feels is reasonable.

• And if it does get deleted, they have a policy that prohibits re-creation of a deleted article without valid cause.

Anyway, people can choose to try to enhance the article while it exists under the watchful eye of the admin who last deleted it, or, do nothing and hope it doesn't get deleted again.