Moderator Guidelines and Contributor Rules

[Chaotic Viral]

An age gate could be added to the DB portion of the site. I don't see why we'd want children submitting or moderating anyway.

Also, Wikipedia and MobyGames, two of our main sources for verification, both allow nudity in their images and neither has any sort of age gate.

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, Chaotic Viral said:

An age gate could be added to the DB portion of the site. I don't see why we'd want children submitting or moderating anyway.

Also, Wikipedia and MobyGames, two of our main sources for verification, both allow nudity in their images and neither has any sort of age gate.

Thats not the point, images would be downloadable by anyone with the program.

Also as has already been stated, this has always been the rule and will continue to be the rule, NO NUDITY.

[Chaotic Viral]

1 minute ago, neil9000 said:

Thats not the point, images would be downloadable by anyone with the program.

Also as has already been stated, this has always been the rule and will continue to be the rule, NO NUDITY.

It has always been the rule because, as Jason said, the website lacks any sort of age gate. Other websites feature images with nudity without any sort of age gate so the rationale behind the rule doesn't hold up.

Anyone would be able to download the images but only if they've added the game to their library first. If some kid out there is downloading porn games that's not LaunchBox's fault.

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, Chaotic Viral said:

It has always been the rule because, as Jason said, the website lacks any sort of age gate. Other websites feature images with nudity without any sort of age gate so the rationale behind the rule doesn't hold up.

Anyone would be able to download the images but only if they've added the game to their library first. If some kid out there is downloading porn games that's not LaunchBox's fault.

Again its not the point, we have a no nudity rule whether there are legal ways around that is not the point, its simply something we do not want in the database, period. End of discussion.

[Chaotic Viral]

4 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Again its not the point, we have a no nudity rule whether there are legal ways around that is not the point, its simply something we do not want in the database, period. End of discussion.

So it has nothing to do with potential legal consequences and is just puritanical nonsense. Just say that to being with, then.

[Jason Carr]

Yup, "puritanical nonsense". We've seen it all now. I've given several good reasons, they just all seem to be getting ignored or excused. Apparently this is quite a touchy subject, but we're done discussing it. Anyone who argues it any further will get the ham banner.

[Lordmonkus]

[Thanatos_Prime]

On another, hopefully less volatile note:

There are submitters deleting all Kanji alternate names in the database. I had heard that this could be an issue with some themes, but I thought that this was just for primary naming, not alternate naming. I did a couple of searches here and possibly missed a conversation about it, but I don't see anything other than kanji being ok for the database itself. Can anyone give me some clarity on if Kanji characters in alternate names are a problem. I have a hard time approving deleting a large amount of information that someone worked to get into the database.

Edited September 18, 2020 by Thanatos_Prime
fixed typo

[Jason Carr]

7 minutes ago, Thanatos_Prime said:

On another, hopefully less volatile note:

There are submitters deleting all Kanji alternate names in the database. I had heard that this could be an issue with some themes, but I thought that this was just for primary naming, not alternate naming. I did a couple of searches here and possibly missed a conversation about it, but I don't see anything other than kanji being ok for the database itself. Can anyone give me some clarity on if Kanji characters in alternate names are a problem. I have a hard time approving deleting a large amount of information that someone worked to get into the database.

I'm not aware of any good reason to do that. Generally it's a poor idea to delete alternate names, even if you think they're irrelevant, because usually they're there for a reason, and they rarely hurt anything. I'd be curious to know why users think that's a good idea though.

[kurzih]

Would be nice to know for sure if they are really hurting something with the themes and how. I would also start rejecting those if there isn't any concrete example for not having them in the DB. There's a lot of space for alt names.
In the other hand I doubt they are much useful for scraping/importing, since most filenames are in Latin Alphabet.

But if we flip the coin: I can see the benefit having Katakana/Hiragana/Kanji in the DB. For example with very limited Japanese language skills, I have found a huge amount of content when searching in Japanese letters.

[viritys]

We've probably had this discussion, but at least I didn't find it in relative ease PLUS the decision should be one of the visible moderation rules: the naming convention for the companies.

I have my own preferences, we all do, but in the grand scheme of things I would just like to avoid this:I think the best way forward is to forget our opinions and just let Jason pick one format (with or without "games, software", with or without "inc, ltd" etc) and then the moderators work their magic.

It would help a lot if we could set alternate names for companies ie if I would submit "Rising Star Games", it would automatically set itself as "Rising Star Games, Inc" if those two entries were under the same company entry and the ",inc" was the main name.

[neil9000]

1 hour ago, viritys said:

We've probably had this discussion, but at least I didn't find it in relative ease PLUS the decision should be one of the visible moderation rules: the naming convention for the companies.

I have my own preferences, we all do, but in the grand scheme of things I would just like to avoid this:I think the best way forward is to forget our opinions and just let Jason pick one format (with or without "games, software", with or without "inc, ltd" etc) and then the moderators work their magic.

It would help a lot if we could set alternate names for companies ie if I would submit "Rising Star Games", it would automatically set itself as "Rising Star Games, Inc" if those two entries were under the same company entry and the ",inc" was the main name.

The publisher should be whatever is on the box for that game. If they use Rising Star on one game but Rising Star Games on another then so be it. Also the name difference could also be for international releases where the company name is trademarked slightly differently, or is under a parent company with a inc in the name for example.

Again whatever is on the specific game box is what should be used. Also i havent looked it up, but who's to say that Rising Star and Rising Star games are the same company? They may be in this case, i dont know, but that doesnt mean that will always be the case, the reason for the slight difference could be because it is not the same company.

[viritys]

In that example they are the same company and they only operated with one name ie those are just preferences of different contributors. I personally like the long format because of the accuracy, but my opinion doesn't matter ie if what you say is the rule, that's the way it should be said in the rules. Can you add the rule? And to clarify, should we go with what it says in the logo in box - front? Or the small print in the box - back? If there is no box, go with what it says within the game?

Example below: Front says "Sega Sports", US back says "Sega of America, Inc", Germany back links to "Sega Europe" and mentions "Sega Corporation". What's the combination we should run with?  Right now the game exists for three platforms in DB and publishers are empty, Sega & Sega of America, Inc.

Edited October 18, 2020 by viritys
spelling

[neil9000]

26 minutes ago, viritys said:

Example below: Front says "Sega Sports", US back says "Sega of America, Inc", Germany back links to "Sega Europe" and mentions "Sega Corporation". What's the combination we should run with?  Right now the game exists for three platforms in DB and publishers are empty, Sega & Sega of America, Inc.

Well that was exactly my point in my reply you have the same game but with different publishers due to international name differences for the publishers.

1 hour ago, neil9000 said:

Also the name difference could also be for international releases where the company name is trademarked slightly differently, or is under a parent company with a inc in the name for example.

The database is US based so the publisher for that game should be the one from the US box, so Sega of America, Inc in that case. The "Sega Sports" is just a brand slapped onto Segas sports games at that time, its not a publisher just a label to slap on sports games, like Sega also have the Sega Ages branding on remakes and re-issues over the years.

"Sega Sports was a brand used by Sega to market sports video games during most of the 1990s and the early 2000s. First appearing in 1993^[1], Sega used the Sega Sports name for about ten years, following in the footsteps of Electronic Arts' EA Sports label (or Electronic Arts Sports Network as it was originally known)."

[viritys]

What I'm trying to achieve here is to add a rule to the rule set to clarify the moderation, not fix or even talk about single entries

What got me going today was when someone asked to change Firebird to Firebird Software. Firebird was just a label; the actual company behind it was British Telecom's division Telecomsoft. BT nor Telecomsoft doesn't show anywhere in any of the boxes so I was thinking how to handle it and realized I don't know what the correct approach is.  Crawling through Moby I found one game where the box mentions that; But mostly this text doesn't exist and it only has "Firebird" as a logo.  If I follow the above thinking, Firebird shouldn't be used because it's just a label like Sega Sports. Correct? Not correct? 

Can you add the rule to the listed moderation rules?

[Thanatos_Prime]

On 10/18/2020 at 5:25 AM, viritys said:

Can you add the rule to the listed moderation rules?

The first rule of moderation is to check the information with multiple sources and try to use the best information possible. A game can have multiple publishers, in those cases all could be correct and all could be added. I don't think we need another rule for this, it is already covered.

[kurzih]

Just a quick comment on my part: I would first look at the cover/back cover (priority North American) information as the main source for the publisher's name as we do for the title name.

And my opinion is that companies usually use a  shorter version of their trade name for external communication to consumers for example. And for legal contracts, agreements, manuals, contact details etc. they use full trade names. I don't think this community driven database requires the full legal trade names of publishers and what type of business (limited, public, co-operative, private etc.) the company it is. I'd stick with the simpler approach. But that's just my opinion.

Big gaming databases like Gamefaqs (simpler) and Moby Games (gathering all possible regional versions, type of business) are total opposites in Company naming. There's truly nothing wrong or more right about this. The question is, what do we want? (I know that I'm going to take a break from moderation if someone starts to change every publisher's that's already out there ?)

[lugnut2099]

Hey there, everybody.  Apparently I never had a forum account, even though I'm approved for moderation on the Database and whatnot... and I'd swear I remember posting before to ask about a few of the quirks of the database... but apparently not?  Weird....

Anyway, this times up nicely since you guys are on the subject of publishers and such - what's the protocol on how to add entries for alternate country variants?  Let's say a game's US release was published by Activision, but the Japanese release was by Sega and the European version from YetAnotherCompany.  Or the (admittedly somewhat uncommon) issue of a game that had a re-release by a different publisher than the one who put it out the first time?  You can always just add them as secondary entries of course, but is there any way to clarify *why* they've been added?  The only method I can see for now is to append an "additional info" section below the game description that states "Japanese release published by XXXX" or whatnot.  (Which if we did that I guess this could be a way to note additional release dates too, but there doesn't seem to be any way to add those at all currently...)

I'm positive this has come up at some point in the past, probably about 600 times, so I apologize for dragging it out again, but it seemed easier to ask now while the topic of publisher issues was being mentioned than to dig around for old posts.

(And just to throw in my two cents on the multiple entries for one company issue, I agree with the post above - go with the shorter/"common" version.  I'd pick just plain "Sega" over "Sega Sports," "Sega of America," "Sega Corp," whatever.  The others aren't wrong per se, but unless there's a way to link them all back to the initial "Sega" parent entry it's just kind of a mess and leads to what I'd call an incomplete/broken database since just clicking "Sega" should be enough to get me a list of everything published by Sega without needing to hunt down the stragglers that are missing due to being isolated away on seperate entries...)

 

[DOS76]

1 hour ago, lugnut2099 said:

Anyway, this times up nicely since you guys are on the subject of publishers and such - what's the protocol on how to add entries for alternate country variants?  Let's say a game's US release was published by Activision, but the Japanese release was by Sega and the European version from YetAnotherCompany.  Or the (admittedly somewhat uncommon) issue of a game that had a re-release by a different publisher than the one who put it out the first time?  You can always just add them as secondary entries of course, but is there any way to clarify *why* they've been added?  The only method I can see for now is to append an "additional info" section below the game description that states "Japanese release published by XXXX" or whatnot.  (Which if we did that I guess this could be a way to note additional release dates too, but there doesn't seem to be any way to add those at all currently...)

I believe we are only looking for the US publisher in this case and the same for the release date hopefully someone with more knowledge of the DB rules can chime in and verify that.

[Thanatos_Prime]

We've been entering all the publishers, the DB can take all of them, it was designed for multiple publishers.