Talk:Paranautical Activity

RFC: NPOV

The consensus is that the article generally meets WP:NPOV but the material about the drama was excessive and its wording could be improved. Editors have made improvements to the article to address this. Cunard (talk) 05:09, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Do we have WP:NPOV issues in this article? Are we giving undue weight to the problems with the developers, such as the death threat, without any kind of positive portrayal? Looking for other opinions, so I’m opening an RFC because this article doesn’t seem to get much traffic. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 06:50, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

• Agreed Yes, looking at this article it appears to be factual, the references and citations offered appear to be legitimate, however the article itself is badly non-neutral and paints the company as rather sinister, and in places the rhetoric is emotive and unwarranted. Damotclese (talk) 16:39, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
• We do explain, in the developer's words, what the situation was, they were apologetic for it, and they tried to make amends. I do not think we need to quoted death threat, just that he said a threatening language that led Valve to their decision - that language is excessive. But NPOV is met given how much little exposure there otherwise was to this. There's definitely no "sinister" language about the company here. --MASEM (t) 17:31, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

  @Masem: I added the direct quote because I thought it seemed best to state the plain fact of what was said, rather than interpreting it as a “death threat” or a “perceived threat” (perceived by whom? Actually I’ll fix that now) or anything else. But I don’t have a strong opinion on this point, so if I was wrong, cool. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 21:17, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

  Given Valve's quote from [1] "Yes, we have removed the game's sales page and ceased relations with the developer after he threatened to kill one of our employees", and that he later said that he didn't mean it that way, it's clearly a "perceived threat", Valve took it as one. --MASEM (t) 23:02, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

  Valve took it as one—a point that was missing from the article. Now remedied, like I said. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 16:14, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

  Just feel like I should update here to explain [2]: I don’t think we need the qualifier of “perceived.” If I make a death threat in frustration or even in jest, I’ve still made a death threat. That is unambiguously what the statement was, regardless of intention or state of mind. And the text is more readable for it. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 00:19, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

  There's the nature of it being a threat said in frustration (how many times has Homer Simpson told Bart this?), and then the nature of a threat being made and taken seriously. Valve believed his words were a true death threat, but the developer clearly came back to say it was a off-the-cuff comment, and not made as intentional. As such it was absolutely perceived as a threat, but was not a true threat. --MASEM (t) 00:45, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

  It wasn’t a sincere threat. But it was a threat, a statement of intent (I am going to …) to harm, albeit a likely insincere one. The sentence in question does not discuss the threat’s sincerity, and the very next sentence gives clarification. As to your example, the accompanying physical action has always made Homer’s threat seem sincere to me. Irrational, but sincere. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 23:47, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

  At least within the US, there is legal aspects around issuing death threats (criminal law), but a relatively recent SCOTUS case determined that a threat is only such if there is clear intent to actually carry it out. I agree that if we used the non-legal definition of "threat" then it wasn't percieved, it was one, but we should be cautious and recognize that there's a legal definition, and which no one has been charged with, hence the appropriateness of "perceived", since Valve clearly saw it as that. --MASEM (t) 16:37, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

  See, this is why I favored using a direct quote. No fear of misinterpretation. But how about an alleged death threat? The cited source says he allegedly said [it].—67.14.236.50 (talk) 23:00, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

  • An additional aspect on this: we'd love to include more on neutral development aspects (the ideas for the game, how development went, etc.), but these simply don't exist in RSes - it's the negative aspects that really are the only elements that make the game notable. It tries to show all sides of the negativity associated with the game, but we can't artificially create more balance if there are no sources there to support it. --MASEM (t) 13:18, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
• It seems mostly OK to me, though I guess it does seem slanted a little toward dwelling on the drama. Still, what are you supposed to do when there's this much drama? We can't ignore it. If there were a concrete proposal, such as "this is how it looks now" vs "this is how I propose we write it", that might help. I notice that there are no reviews listed. Metacritic has some cataloged: PC, XBox. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 05:35, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Is there any information out there on the actual development of the game? Rather than being about the game’s development, the section by that title discusses disagreements over publishing the game through Steam. In the meantime, I’ve renamed that section to “Controversies” “Publishing.” —67.14.236.50 (talk) 02:33, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Renaming is fine as that helps to recognize it's not really development. But I have tried searching for sources on the positive side of development and found nothing not tied to the publishing issues, which is unfortunate. --MASEM (t) 02:52, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.