Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[rrenaud]

Which is a better Dominion strategy site,

http://www.play-board-games.com/dominion-strategy-tips/

or

http://dominionstrategy.com

The former keeps on being the reverted to the cannonical link for dominion strategy on wikipedia, and it's a shame IMO.

[DStu]

Do you think you get a unbiased answer here?


Anyway, what do you want us to do? Start an edit-war?

[rrenaud]

Not just start, win ;P.

The play-board-games.com dude has (IMO) spammy links to a bunch of small strategy articles where he has ads.  He might be doing it for the money, we are clearly doing it for the love.

[Thisisnotasmile]

I edited our link in and left the other one there. Why can't both links be given?

[DStu]

Browsing through the history of the article
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dominion_%28card_game%29&action=historysubmit&diff=410216569&oldid=410216494

there seems to be a bot that reversed the first link to dominionstrategy (possibly because of the .wordpress. that was in the domain). So probably it is also a good idea to win a discussion on the discussion page, don't know if it's realistic to get an admin convinced that the link should point to here, but it might be worth a try.

I edited our link in and left the other one there. Why can't both links be given?

Let's see if the other guy is thinking the same way. Especially as his link is second...

[Varsinor]

I edited our link in and left the other one there. Why can't both links be given?

I'd say because a good Wikipedia article should clearly only list relevant external links - if it lists every completely unimportant page which briefly claims to be about Dominion strategy, one might as well use Google. Wikipedia is all about condensing and linking to the most relevant information. The site of that guy is not relevant for Dominion at all and should definitely not be mentioned alongside the link to the groundbreaking and excellent dominionstrategy.com.

That guy's page contains a few bullet points off the top of his head, many of which aren't even good advice. I mean, come on - he writes: "Less is More: Less Copper tends to be better for your hand. I am not saying never buy a Copper, but if you can I’d usually buy something else. I usually won’t even use an extra buy to get a Copper unless it is very early in the game."

Not *even*. Unless very early in the game. We see.

That shows the guy doesn't have much of a clue about how to play Dominion, so the Wikipedia article about Dominion shouldn't link prominently to his handful of "tips".

I have therefore just removed the link to that guy's page, let's see if it stays removed now...

[Kirian]

I edited our link in and left the other one there. Why can't both links be given?

I'd say because a good Wikipedia article should clearly only list relevant external links - if it lists every completely unimportant page which briefly claims to be about Dominion strategy, one might as well use Google. Wikipedia is all about condensing and linking to the most relevant information. The site of that guy is not relevant for Dominion at all and should definitely not be mentioned alongside the link to the groundbreaking and excellent dominionstrategy.com.

That guy's page contains a few bullet points off the top of his head, many of which aren't even good advice. I mean, come on - he writes: "Less is More: Less Copper tends to be better for your hand. I am not saying never buy a Copper, but if you can I’d usually buy something else. I usually won’t even use an extra buy to get a Copper unless it is very early in the game."

Not *even*. Unless very early in the game. We see.

That shows the guy doesn't have much of a clue about how to play Dominion, so the Wikipedia article about Dominion shouldn't link prominently to his handful of "tips".

I have therefore just removed the link to that guy's page, let's see if it stays removed now...

And of course it hasn't.

[Sinfrax]

Wow, that play board games site is really awful. I don't understand why it's there. Maybe put this link instead, I often point people here as it's the best place to get early tips for the game. http://dominionstrategy.com/new-to-dominion/

[Deadlock39]

This is absurd... I browsed through the edits, and it is obvious the owner of that site just keeps adding his link back in every time it is removed.  Sure, *some* of the tips on that page are reasonable, but as a whole, the page is trash, and there are probably 100 pages about Dominion on the internet that have just as much of a legitimate claim to be linked to on the Wikipedia page (none). 

This guy is clearly just using Wikipedia as a means to market his bad, ad-laced site about board games.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Still not really sure why we care as long as our link is there...

[Deadlock39]

Well... "we" don't really have any reason to care.  (Now, if every illegitimate Dominion link was allowed to be on the Wiki, it would be pretty hard for someone to actually find their way to the "right" one... but in reality, there is only one so...)

I don't really even personally care if "our link" (theory's link) is there.  I think the blog is a great Dominion resource that makes sense to be linked on the Wiki, but it doesn't really affect me one way or another if it is.

The people who should care about that link are the people who care about the integrity of Wikipedia.  Someone is clearly using the Dominion page to promote their crappy board game website, which isn't something that belongs on Wikipedia.  I mean, I've heard of entire topics not being allowed on Wikipedia that seem like less of an offense than this.

[rrenaud]

You guys should all care about the quality of wikipedia.  wikipedia is awesome.

[Kirian]

Let's try not to get into an edit war.  Much better to take it to the talk page.  Even better to do it without resorting to anonymous IPs...

I have a well-established editorial history there so I'll post and try to get the problem taken care of, including flagging for arbitration if absolutely necessary.  As RR says, we should care about WP's quality, but shouldn't just let this go back-and-forth.

Edit:  Actually, the more I look at WP's External Links policies, the more I realize that we don't really belong on that list either.  No other SdJ winners have fan-based blogs/forums on their External Links lists, nor do any have strategy guides of any sort; only one has a link to online play.  All have BGG links, so I'm going to leave those intact, but, uh, yeah... we don't actually qualify, guys.  Sorry.

[Deadlock39]

I wouldn't really think that "we" (this forum) would qualify in any way for Wikipedia linkage, but, regardless of precedent, the unbelievable amount of information about the game present on the blog itself seems like it belongs in a wiki for the game.  If it really doesn't fit the scope of Wikipedia, it won't really bother me if it gets removed, but it seems certain that the other site doesn't belong, and from the looks of it there has already been a bit of an edit war going on for a while.  (One in which, a large number of different individuals have found and removed the link, and a single person continues to add it back.) 

If you do manage to swing some sort of arbitration, I would suggest having them look at other contributions from that IP.  When I was looking through the Dominion edits, I noticed he has also added a link to Ticket to Ride, and who knows where else.

[rrenaud]

Edit:  Actually, the more I look at WP's External Links policies, the more I realize that we don't really belong on that list either.  No other SdJ winners have fan-based blogs/forums on their External Links lists, nor do any have strategy guides of any sort; only one has a link to online play.  All have BGG links, so I'm going to leave those intact, but, uh, yeah... we don't actually qualify, guys.  Sorry.

How many of the other SdJ winners have dedicated strategy sites?

[Kirian]

Edit:  Actually, the more I look at WP's External Links policies, the more I realize that we don't really belong on that list either.  No other SdJ winners have fan-based blogs/forums on their External Links lists, nor do any have strategy guides of any sort; only one has a link to online play.  All have BGG links, so I'm going to leave those intact, but, uh, yeah... we don't actually qualify, guys.  Sorry.

How many of the other SdJ winners have dedicated strategy sites?

While your point about SdJ winners is technically true, let's expand to other games.  Starcraft, WoW, Magic, L5R, and Civilization all have dedicated fansites/blogs with news, information, strategy discussion, etc.  Yet TeamLiquid, Wowhead, GatheringMagic, Elfiver, and CivFanatics aren't listed on their respective WP pages--despite the fact that three of those have their own WP pages.  The external links on those WP pages go to the official sites.  WP's policy is pretty darn clear on fansites in external links, and the policy is, simply:  Don't.

(Four of those five games won Origins Awards, by the by.)

[DStu]

While your point about SdJ winners is technically true, let's expand to other games.  Starcraft, WoW, Magic, L5R, and Civilization all have dedicated fansites/blogs with news, information, strategy discussion, etc.  Yet TeamLiquid, Wowhead, GatheringMagic, Elfiver, and CivFanatics aren't listed on their respective WP pages--despite the fact that three of those have their own WP pages.  The external links on those WP pages go to the official sites.  WP's policy is pretty darn clear on fansites in external links, and the policy is, simply:  Don't.

(Four of those five games won Origins Awards, by the by.)

If you want to argue further you could point out that these probably have so many dedicated sites that you don't want to list them all. And WoW at least links Open Directory, which also lists fan-sites.

So these rules are there for a reason (also observing the German wikipedia one tends to not believe this anymore), and probably we have found it here. Everyone who cares about the article is either biased in this question, and the "usual" wikipedia editor/admin can not rate external pages for their quality.

This site here of course does add usefull information for everyone interested in the topic, but there it is probably difficult to set up and enforce a rule that seperates this one from other ones. And which does not lead to spammed articles to more popular topics, where say 10 sites exists

[theory]

Edit:  Actually, the more I look at WP's External Links policies, the more I realize that we don't really belong on that list either.  No other SdJ winners have fan-based blogs/forums on their External Links lists, nor do any have strategy guides of any sort; only one has a link to online play.  All have BGG links, so I'm going to leave those intact, but, uh, yeah... we don't actually qualify, guys.  Sorry.

How many of the other SdJ winners have dedicated strategy sites?

While your point about SdJ winners is technically true, let's expand to other games.  Starcraft, WoW, Magic, L5R, and Civilization all have dedicated fansites/blogs with news, information, strategy discussion, etc.  Yet TeamLiquid, Wowhead, GatheringMagic, Elfiver, and CivFanatics aren't listed on their respective WP pages--despite the fact that three of those have their own WP pages.  The external links on those WP pages go to the official sites.  WP's policy is pretty darn clear on fansites in external links, and the policy is, simply:  Don't.

(Four of those five games won Origins Awards, by the by.)

According to that broad reading of "fansite", literally every outside link ought to be excluded except those that are "official", including BoardGameGeek.  The policy is not followed on any "classic" board game that has a strategy community (e.g., Chess links to ChessBase, Backgammon, Scrabble, Go, etc.). 

[theory]

The more I research, the more it seems like this policy is completely asinine.  It's not followed on any classic board game (Monopoly, Go, Scrabble, Chess, Backgammon), and looks more like a tool to get rid of bad links, rather than a hardfast rule. 

I mean, today's WP Featured Article has these external links:

    BlackFrancis.net - Official site
    frankblack.net - Fan site
    Black Francis discography at MusicBrainz
    Frank Black's Allmusic entry
    4AD - Frank Black
    Review of 2008 Live Show in Manchester
    Paley & Francis Facebook Page
    Paley & Francis YouTube

[greatexpectations]

The more I research, the more it seems like this policy is completely asinine.  It's not followed on any classic board game (Monopoly, Go, Scrabble, Chess, Backgammon), and looks more like a tool to get rid of bad links, rather than a hardfast rule. 

it probably discourages bad links as well as for-profit links.  i think that your site is a bit of an exception to the spirit of the rule because it is both a detailed/quality site relating to the game and it doesn't seem to be done for any financial profit.

[rrenaud]

It's done with (slight) financial loss!

[Tables]

Also, since the author of the game frequents this site, surely that has to count in favor of it? I mean, it doesn't make the site official or anything, but it gives the site a bit of a claim beyond just a fan site, right?

[GendoIkari]

I just now saw this thread... man, that other site doesn't seem so good. The very first thing mentioned for strategy on the front page seems wrong...

Get 8…buy one: A Province that is. Over 90% of the time if you get 8 treasure you should buy a Province. I am sure there are a few cases this isn’t true, but Provinces are the most efficient way to get victory points and not clog up your hand.

Now, maybe he wrote this back when only the base set was out or something... but this is certainly not true now. Granted you still buy a Province with $8 a pretty significant amount of the time, but there are a great many times when you don't, now.