The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 29 May 2022 [1].

Roberta Williams[edit]

Nominator(s): Shooterwalker (talk) 18:57, 8 April 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

This article is about a notable game developer, who earned their reputation mainly with the King's Quest series from the 1980s and 1990s. She arguably developed the first graphic adventure game, which catapulted her career and her company, Sierra Entertainment. She retired in the late 1990s after Sierra went through a series of acquisitions (including some unfortunate financial drama). But she leaves a great legacy of titles she personally developed, plus the successful business that she ran with her husband, Ken. She has won lifetime achievement awards for her overall career. I think the article is already in pretty strong shape after the GA, and should be very thorough, and pretty well-written. The prose can always use another pass and I will work at this to bring it up to featured quality. Shooterwalker (talk) 18:57, 8 April 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Comments Support from AviationFreak[edit]

Just conducting a prose review here. At least to my reading, this article contains a lot of extraneous commas. I personally tend to be fairly particular about this and I don't want to assert that my opinion is necessarily the only "right" way of doing things, so maybe hold off on this until another editor gives a second opinion. Moved from the FAC page on 11:39, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

This is what I've got. Certainly a pioneering figure deserving of a FA, glad that effort is being made! AviationFreak💬 00:51, 9 April 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

AviationFreak, hey, could you move the review to project's talk? It would help a lot to alleviate the length of an FAC, as this would double in length once the nominator answers these! You can keep the general comments and support here. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 08:05, 11 April 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Sure thing! AviationFreak💬 11:39, 11 April 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@AviationFreak: Thanks for the review. I think I've addressed all your comments. Mostly focused on prose, but also dug into the research where it helped to clarify and be more specific. Let me know if there is anything else. Shooterwalker (talk) 20:25, 11 April 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Looks much better now, just a few tweaks:
  • Change the "r=" parameter in ((Inflation)) to better suit the understood level of uncertainty in large dollar amounts (i.e. $500 million)
  • 20th Game Developers Choice Awards is piped from "Pioneer Award". Suggest making the piped text "earned the Pioneer Award".
That's all that I'm seeing at this point. Excellent work! AviationFreak💬 21:43, 11 April 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • I blanked on this until I realized the issue was in the lead. Should be fixed now. Thanks again for the review. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:50, 2 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Thanks again. Shooterwalker (talk) 00:57, 4 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Comments from Panini![edit]

Placeholder; I'll review after I get some other projects done. Panini! • 🥪 12:04, 12 April 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Comment: note that The Secret got announced a couple weeks ago as a 3D and VR remake of Colossal Cave Adventure ([2]). --PresN 14:55, 12 April 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

2022 (UTC)

Lead
  • "Roberta took a brief sabbatical" - How come?
  • "and focused her retirement on travelling and writing historical fiction" - Did she do (or write) anything notable during this period?
  • "Several publications have named her as one of the best or most influential creators in the game industry" - For what reasons?
Game design career
Early graphic adventure games
King's Quest breakthrough

Everything beyond here looks good to me. Good Job! Panini! • 🥪 13:30, 2 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Did my best to address these. It's always a thin line between overstating something and being extra clear. Hopefully the tweaks in language were able to clarify some of the facts. I'm glad you liked it overall, and hopefully this is good enough for support! Shooterwalker (talk) 23:45, 2 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support. I would leave some other "you did a great job" comments but I gotta run. Toodles! Panini! • 🥪 23:59, 3 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks for the review and run into you again soon. Shooterwalker (talk) 00:57, 4 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Comments from Edwininlondon[edit]

Thank you for bringing this bio here. Good to see another woman's bio at FAC. I have no domain expertise so can just add a few comments:

That's it from me. Edwininlondon (talk) 10:44, 2 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for the feedback. I took these into account and hopefully we're closer to FA now. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:47, 2 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
All fine except for you have Cygnus as Cygnus Games but the source says Cygnus Entertainment. Edwininlondon (talk) 05:57, 3 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Edwininlondon: Ah, the two sources are different on that. But went ahead and changed it to be more consistent to the source in citation. Hopefully that does it now. Shooterwalker (talk) 00:57, 4 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
OK. I Support on prose. Nice work! Edwininlondon (talk) 06:44, 4 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks again! Shooterwalker (talk) 22:10, 4 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Note from nominator[edit]

I count three supports on prose. There's been some modifications since the GA, and I might appreciate some input from someone with expertise in the subject matters. (Pinging @Indrian: if they have the time.) I'm guessing we probably need an accessibility and a source review too? Someone flagged the Ken Williams book as questionable, but I think it's used sparingly and appropriately, in accordance with WP:SPS. I think this article is very close to featured quality now. Shooterwalker (talk) 22:10, 4 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Image review

  • I fixed the alt text in the various images. I can always tweak them further if they need to be more descriptive. Shooterwalker (talk) 02:13, 10 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Comments from Z1720[edit]

Non-expert prose review. I am really happy that a female game designer has been brought to FAC, as this will help combat the systematic bias that is present on Wikipedia.

Those are my thoughts. Z1720 (talk) 20:37, 5 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  • I tried my best to address most of these. Let me know if you see any lingering issues, and thanks for the review. Shooterwalker (talk) 18:16, 6 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Source review[edit]

Footnote numbers refer to this version.

I'll look at the formatting again once these points are addressed. I'll look at links and reliability next. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:37, 6 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

What makes the following reliable sources?

I'll delay checking links until these are resolved. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:02, 6 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  • For the parameters, those are probably artifacts of copying and pasting sources from other articles, and I haven't been checking the actual markup, focusing instead on how it actually reads. Is there a best practice when it comes to which parameters to use for different types of sources?
    There's no standard; the requirement at FAC is consistency, so there are lots of ways to do it. A common way, and what I would probably recommend since it's easy to remember, is to use the website= parameter (or work=, which is just an alias for the same thing) for the name of the website, and either don't put the publisher in at all, or have a rule about when to put the publisher in, such as "only put the publisher in if it can't be deduced from the website name". That approach would be fairly quick for you to apply to the cites in the article at the moment.
  • Otherwise, I fixed a lot of sources, and even removed a few. The remaining sources you mentioned (adventureclassicgaming, womengamers, the Ken Williams book) are interviews with Ken and Roberta Williams. I believe they meet the standards of reliability based on WP:ABOUTSELF, and if anything seems contentious, we could add clarification such as "Roberta has recalled that..." or "according to Roberta". Shooterwalker (talk) 18:21, 6 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    I've struck the ones you've removed. The issue with a possibly unreliable source is not so that it's opinion, but that reliable sources with a reputation for fact-checking will cross-check quotes in interviews with the interview subject to make sure they have them right. I was once interviewed by a national magazine and a fact-checker called me to confirm all the quotes. I haven't looked yet to see exactly what is supported by these sources in each case, but if for example you can show that Williams comments positively about the interview that would confirm she is OK with the quotes in it.
    This is a good place to look for evidence of reliability; it doesn't mention adventureclassicgaming or gamersdepot, and says womengamers has to be used with care since it's a blog. The talk page of that page is pretty active and you might ask there if there's a way to show the reliability of these sources for what you're using them for. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:15, 6 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to quickly tag Indrian because they advised me to use the Ken Williams source when they oversaw the good article nomination. They might be able to speak to the accuracy of the web-based interviews too. Hopefully that can at least shorten the list of sources that we need to continue investigating. Shooterwalker (talk) 20:38, 8 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • I've taken a look at the context of the sources used, and on the whole I think they comport to Wikipedia policy.
  • First to address the book: it is self-published, but it is a memoir. Ken Williams is an expert on the life of Ken Williams because he lived it. Ken Williams is also an expert on the shared experience of himself and Roberta because he lived that too. He also directly quoted her on a couple of points in the book. Seeing as they are still married and actively doing a new game project together, I find it highly unlikely he published material she was not okay with behind her back. Wikipedia:ABOUTSELF permits the use of self-published sources when the author is discussing themselves or events they were direct participants in so long as it is not unduly self serving. This book is cited to a few times, but it is almost all for basic biographical or corporate information. While Ken is the author, the birth of Roberta's child is also the birth of his child; Roberta's marriage is his marriage; a game being greenlit by Roberta's company is a game being greenlit by his company, etc. So long as the book is used to document this shared experience, it comports with policy. The only uses that may be dodgy are when the book discusses her inspirations for doing certain games like Wizard and the Princess or Phantasmagoria. While I personally have no doubt these are "true" statements based on Ken's understanding as both her husband and the head of the publisher of her games, that may stray too far from being material about the author of the book. I would, of course, defer to the source reviewer for that.
  • As for the interview sources; I really don't see the problem. These are, in effect, self-published sources about the subject because it is the subject's own words being cited to. This is not a situation where a news site is asking for and incorporating into an article a quote from the subject that might be taken out of context: it is the transcript of a conversation between two people. Even if edited or cleaned up, the material is entirely in the context of the questions that were asked and the answers are the subject's own words. The only concern I could see would be if the interviews were suspected to be complete fabrications, but I feel that would be moving out of the realm of source critique and into conspiracy theory. Adventure Classic Gaming, for instance, has published interviews with dozens of the biggest names in adventure games from all the major companies, and some of these interviews were conducted and published when these people were still employed by said companies. Are we really supposed to believe that dozens of interviews were fabricated and none of these individuals or their employers sued or had the material removed? Also, in the specific case of that site, both Ken and Roberta were interviewed twice, seven years apart. I don't find it credible they were generally unhappy with their treatment if they came back for round two.
  • Focusing in specifically on Gamersdepot.com, I believe this site passes the notability threshold regardless of the above. It's not on the VGProject sources list because it went defunct in 2006 before anyone was really assessing reliability much on Wikipedia. Looking at the old "About" page, it did have an editorial board that included at least one veteran journalist, but more importantly, it was part of the Cnet Gamecenter Alliance which was, according to our Wikipedia article, "a network to bring [Cnet's] Gamecenter and four partner websites [...] under one banner." Cnet is considered reliable on Wikipedia for tech news, and the Gamecenter Alliance websites were all Cnet affiliates.
Anyway, that's just my two cents since I was asked her to opine. Obviously, the source reviewer has the final say on all of this, and I defer to their judgement. Indrian (talk) 00:58, 9 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Thanks a lot to Indrian. @Mike Christie: let me know if that addresses all or even some of your concerns. I'll be honest that in all the FA nominations I've participated in, I've never had someone ask me to contact the interview subject to see if they can confirm their interview comments are accurate. But we can figure out which sources still need that, with the understanding that contacting Williams may be difficult or even slow. Shooterwalker (talk) 04:16, 9 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Indrian, thanks for the detailed notes. It's not an editing area I'm famiilar with and this is very useful. Shooterwalker, I didn't mean to imply that we should contact Ken or Roberta Williams; sometimes in a small field people go on record about what they think about other sources.

For the interview sites I'll go through what each one was used for in more detail and come back and post here again soon. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:45, 9 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I've now struck womengamers.com; I found an about page, which for some reason I didn't find before, indicating editorial control. It looks like they did allow user contributions, and one of the conductors of the interview is not listed as a staff contributor, but the other is the site's founder, so I think that's fine. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:51, 9 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

For Gamezebo I was able to find this on the Internet Archive -- my main concern there was that the evidence used to establish reliability now is no help in establishing whether it was reliable in 2011. This page lists editorial control as of 2011. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:57, 9 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

For Adventure Classic Gaming, it's the same issue -- yes, it's unlikely someone would mangle an interviewee's words, but we still don't use interviews from websites thought to be unreliable. We would not use an interview from the Daily Mail under most circumstances, for example. In this case I found this page showing that Jong is the founder and editor-in-chief of the site. He doesn't distinguish between editors and contributors, and says nothing about editorial policy, so there's no way for me to tell how much editorial control is exerted over contributions from the public. However, he's the one who conducted both interviews, so I'm fine with using them -- I looked at what they cite and there's nothing controversial there. I would be less happy about a interview conducted by someone other than Jong unless there's a way to tell that they're actually a staff member, or some other evidence that there's overall editorial control on all contributions. Anyway, I've struck this above.

That just leaves the IPO date for Sierra, and the citypaper.com link. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:08, 9 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  • Thanks for problem solving with me, and sorry for the misunderstanding. I figure the interviews aren't making too many controversial claims, and some are listed as situational sources on WP:VG/RS. Let me see if I can address the remaining references.
  • I did fix the citypaper.com archive link, and the archive says "Copyright © 2015, Baltimore City Paper, a Baltimore Sun Media Group publication".
  • The "going public" date is confusing. The source really just says that they were a public company by the early 1990s. The Ken Williams book says they started working on their IPO in 1987, and then for some confusing reason, the first shares were available at the end of 1988. I'm reverting to an older version of the article where the status of the company is mentioned more broadly, in the context of the subject's career. I don't think the exact date is too crucial.
  • I also took some time to clean up some of the reference templates for consistency. Let me know how we're doing. Shooterwalker (talk) 02:13, 10 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • Funnily enough, neither article was right. Sierra went public in October 1988. IPOs take a long time to pull together, so it’s not surprising they were working on the IPO in 1987. Indrian (talk) 02:40, 10 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    Those two fixes look good now. I've struck those and will take a look at the formatting again now. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:57, 10 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Cite fomatting Footnote numbers refer to to this version.

Links

That's everything. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:33, 10 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  • I think I got everything. Thanks for being thorough. Take a look and let me know what you think. Shooterwalker (talk) 15:27, 10 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The links are all good now. The remaining cites with publishers (other than books) are:

If you're getting to consistency by eliminating all the publishers, getting rid of these will be the end of it; if these are left in for some reason let me know what it is. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:59, 11 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  • I removed all of them except the 1UP Network, and it's a unique one if you follow the link. Computer Gaming World is conventionally a magazine, but I'm referencing it to the 1up Network, which owns / re-published it. It's the only source that does this so I think it makes sense to make it clear who the two different entities are, so it doesn't look like a mistake. I hope that makes sense. Shooterwalker (talk) 15:34, 11 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Pass. All good now. Thanks for being patient with a fairly nit-picky review! Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:46, 11 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Coordinator comments[edit]

  • If it's all the same, I don't mind waiting until the image is established to meet fair use. I worry that if it's removed, the verification process might die with it. (But I've always struggled with the image processes here, and you can correct me if I'm wrong.) Shooterwalker (talk) 01:01, 13 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    VRT process is unrelated to whether the image is used in any articles. Commons hosts many images that will never be used in WP articles. (t · c) buidhe 08:19, 13 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    Sounds good. Hoping the image works out as it raises the overall quality of the article. Shooterwalker (talk) 13:53, 13 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Hi Shooterwalker, as Buidhe notes, there would seem to be a consensus to promote this article. Before a coordinator considers it with a view to closing they would expect the VRT issue to have been resolved. You could remove the image, on the understanding that it would not be reinstated until and unless VRT give it a clean bill of health. Or you could leave it open, anticipating that the coordinators will have a reasonable but not infinite degree of patience with the nomination. Your call. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:12, 13 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I honestly don't understand the VRT process at all, and don't know how long it will take. I'm waiting in the dark, so to speak. But I would like to see the image included when this article is promoted. If you think it makes sense, I'd like to wait. (And obviously let me know if your patience starts to run out.) Shooterwalker (talk) 20:49, 13 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Fair enough. Will do. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:43, 13 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Hi Shooterwalker, it's been a week since the last exchange. Gog is now on a short break so stepping in I think it's time to finalise the licensing or else simply remove the image in question and promote without. The image can always be added back when/if VRT is sorted. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 15:06, 20 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Before we do that, do you have any idea how to move the VRT process along? I'm mostly sitting here waiting, and I have no idea if it will be days or months. Shooterwalker (talk) 18:03, 20 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • I'm afraid that's a black box to me, image reviewers might know. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 20:55, 20 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Oh well. If we're out of time, go ahead and remove the image. If the prose is all the same, that's what's most important. Shooterwalker (talk) 21:39, 20 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Just FTR, I see it's been removed from Commons -- and hence the article -- by another editor. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 20:31, 29 May 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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