Talk:Where in North Dakota Is Carmen Sandiego?

Thoughts as I edit

I'm going to go through and continue making copy edits. First I am going sentence by sentence and making general grammatical and flow changes. The second step will be to reorganize the article to fit the format of a traditional video game page. This would place gameplay/plot first, then development, then release, and finally reception and legacy. There are some sources in here that may be unreliable, such as mobygames and maybe some others. Also seeing a lot of run-on sentences with semi-colons. I'm no grammar expert but trying to make it flow better. Lots of quotes too so try and paraphrase and work into prose whenever possible. TarkusAB 15:38, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

The more I edit, the more I realize there is to do. I simply don't have time to do a complete overhaul of this article. There is lots of information here, but it's written in chronological order like a story and many pieces feel out of place. The biggest issues I see are 1) Organization: Everything is thrown into the history section. It should separated based upon what's being discussed, like this:

• Gameplay: The content of the game. Talk here about the topics being North Dakota specific.
• Development: From inception to right before release
• Release: When, where, distribution, etc. You can also create a subsection here about re-discovery and re-release
• Reception: Critical reviews and reception, both at the time and retrospective. Sales are included as well.
• Legacy: Lasting impact, if any. Can be lumped into reception.

For example, Cifaldi should really only be talked about in the release section. That way you don't have to introduce him everytime as California historian Frank Cifaldi. Introduce him once and just say Cifaldi for the rest of the article. So there is that, then: 2) Sources. This article is very well researched and there is a lot of information (maybe too much, cut some trivial facts out), but work needs to be done with the sources. You may want to check the reliability of some sources replace if you can. See WP:VG/S for more info. For example, Destructoid is reliable source, but you only used it for one sentence. Maybe it could be used to replace some of the more unreliable sources like Twitter. Also almost all the sources are missing published dates. Next, 3) Way too many quotes. Waaaaay too many. Paraphrase and write in an encyclopedic tone, use the sources as EVIDENCE of what happened and write the article in your own words. For example: Cifaldi later posted of Twitter: "Had to fly to ND to get it but I've got a raw rip of a pristine unused retail version, this game is A-A-A-ARCHIVED". can be written like: Cifaldi flew out to North Dakota and was able to aquire a retail copy of the game and archive it.

I could go on, but I think that's a good place to start. If you can make some of these changes then ping me I can take another look and make more copyedits. I may come back here and there to make improvements if I can. TarkusAB 19:33, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

@TarkusAB: Cheers for your comprehensive thoughts. I'm pretty busy atm and need a break from the article after the hectic infodump session I had over the past few weeks. But my plan is to return to the article soon to start working on your points. The work you've done so far has been really great, and I look forward to seeing how the article evolves as we both contribute to it.--Coin945 (talk) 06:27, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

In terms of sources, I've been forced to be creative due to this being both a 25 year old game, and an extremely rare/obscure game. I do have a few promising book leads...but I can only access snippets so can'tread and extract all the juicy info. Any tips or tricks?--Coin945 (talk) 17:07, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, remember that you don't have to include everything. Every tweet, every forum post, not all are necessary. You need to be able to cover a thorough overview of the game without going into unnecessary detail. For example: "The fund was provided by Superintendent Dr. Wayne Sanstead and Director of Information and Resource Dr. Ron Torgerson." Who is going to read this, and go "hmmm? I didn't know that, interesting"...no one. It's useless information, these people are not notable or important. The fact that the funding was provided by the education department is enough info. I would recommend taking a look at Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill, an article I primarily wrote on another rare/obscure game. There's a lot more to this game that I didn't include. For example there are tons of posts on online forums made by the owners of the prototype. However, these posts really pollute the article with useless bits of information, plus forum posts of random people online are not verified/published works and isn't really encyclopedic. There are some less reliable sources in there that I'm still trying to replace, but I've left them there for now because the information in the source can be verified for multiple reasons and I feel the information is crucial to the article. I should have time to take a more in-depth look at this article this weekend. TarkusAB 17:48, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Rewrite

OK so I went through and basically moved everything around so it's in better organized into the right sections. I also deleted unnecessary trivial information, speculation, and poorly sourced info as I ran into it (Random people's personal blog posts are absolutely not reliable). If you are concerned I removed something that was crucial to the article, you can look back into the history and look into re-adding. You may want to read through the article again to make sure I didn't say anything that isn't true, because I had to combine sentences and sources in some spots, and I did not read through the sources again.

Some work still needs to be done on the sources. There are still some unreliable sources, like mobygames sources should be deleted/replaced. For example, you reference mobygames for the credits...why not just reference the game credits directly? You can do that. If you have access to the game's manual and documents, you can use them as sources for the gameplay too. Those old published articles in papers and stuff are great, as are articles by popular reputable sites like destructoid.

Here's another example of reliability now that I'm thinking about it. The track "High Life" on Daft Punk's album Discovery features a sample from a certain disco song. The song is not credited in the liner notes, it has not been metioned by the band or their record label. Not even have any reputable music publications or websites mentioned this sample being used in this song. However, there are multiple YouTube videos and personal blog posts by people like you and me clearly showing the use of the sample in the song. But no matter how true it seems, this is Original Research which is not allowed on Wikipedia.

I might still work on the page some more this weekend. Just remember that this page is an encyclopedic article and we really just need the important and key facts here that have been verified as true from reputable sources. I know I sound like a broken record, but that's what I noticed when reading this article the most. TarkusAB 22:38, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Requesting articles via Inter-library loan

Hi, I recently received a copy of the Nibble article that mentions this game after I requested it through my university library's article lending service. I also requested the Education Technology News Article, but I must have given them the wrong page number, because the part they sent me doesn't mention the game (it was difficult to figure out the article title and page number just from google books). I was going to request the InCider article tonight, but I need at least the article title and page number along with the journal title and volume. As TarkusAB noted above, we don't have to access every single source that mentions the game, but it would sure be nice sometimes. If you can figure out the article title and page number, I can probably request a given article.

I'll read the Nibble article and see if I can contribute any further information from it (I suspect Wikipedia would frown on me putting a link to it here, but if you'd like the text please e-mail me). Rwelean (talk) 03:02, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Rwelean:, thank you for your update, and your additions to the article. I must have gotten confused with a source because I read it as being 13 educators led by Craig Nansen (as one of the 13), but it meant 13 educators led by a 14th. So that will need to be updated accordingly. Here are the facts I have about the various articles/books/etc.

• Education Computer News - Volume 9 - Page 3 (1989)
• North Dakota Education News - Volumes 29-31 - Page 7 (1994)
• Exploring the Plains States Through Literature - Page 73 (1994)
• CARMEN SANDIEGO REALLY GETS AROUND N.D. VERSION DEVELOPED IN MINOT (Grand Forks Herald newspaper article, 1/30/1992)
• InCider - Volume 7, Issues 6-12 - Page 85 (1989)

Hope this helps. :)--Coin945 (talk) 05:47, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Coin945:, I requested and received the Education Computer News article earlier with the same information, but the article they sent, "Grants and Awards," didn't contain any information about the game--if you figure out how to torture Google Books into hinting at the title, I can try again. I requested the other articles and book and should hear back from ILL in about a week. Rwelean (talk) 02:49, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

@Rwelean: Try "States Get Tailor-Made Geography Software" (September 1, 1992). It's what I can see in the tiny GoogleBooks extract. --Coin945 (talk) 04:00, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

I made a request using that title. Thanks for getting out your magnifying glass :-). Rwelean (talk) 02:32, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

@Rwelean: I've also discovered this document: At the North Dakotan State Library. As far as I am aware, I cannot access the full catalogue of the Minot Public Library as I am not a member. --Coin945 (talk) 04:48, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

@Coin945: Hmm, I know university libraries often loan books to each other, but I don't think state libraries are part of the interlibrary loan system unfortunately. I'm not anywhere near North Dakota either.

Some of the articles I requested are coming in. The entry in Exploring the Plains States Through Literature was really short and I'm not sure the source adds additional information (other than the fact that it was included in literature about the plains states, which is cool).

North Dakota Education News--the main article is about candidates for the NDEA (North Dakota Education Association?). Gloria Lokken rain unopposed for Northwest region director. It has information about her educational history/qualifications, and this sentence: "Lokken is presently on the North Dakot Curriculum Committee and the North Dakota Database Committee (one of 13 members who developed "Where in North Dakota is Carmen Sandiego," a computer program to teach North Dakota history and geography." (no end parenth!) So it does contradict the Nibbles source, but otherwise there isn't any more material to cite. I'm reading the Carmen Sandiego Gets Around source now! InCider is still in progress Rwelean (talk) 02:10, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

• Hi @Rwelean: I hope you're doing well! Please can you email me the sources you've got on this game? Re: Carmen Sandiego Gets Around, Nibble, etc.--Coin945 (talk) 17:38, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

• I finally replied to your e-mail with the articles. Rwelean (talk) 01:55, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

JACKPOT!!

@Rwelean, Rachel Helps (BYU), and TarkusAB:, I have been conversing with Craig Nansen, the director of this project, and he just send me a Dropbox link of all of the documents he has relating to the game. This is invaluable to us!! I have permission to link you both to the dropbox and other information he sent to me. I really need both of your skills and talent to consolidate all of this (overwhelming amount of) information and distill it into a Wikipedia article. Please provide your Wikipedia email address if you are interested. :)--Coin945 (talk) 14:17, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

I may be able to provide some time to assist. Go to my page and use the "Email this User" function on the sidebar. TarkusAB 19:49, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Done. :)--Coin945 (talk) 05:09, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Dropbox

Thoughts:

• The dropbox has a lot of good info in it. I've already gone through this article two times and to be honest I'm not really crazy about it and rather work on other articles at this time.
  • That's fair. I greatly appreciate you going through the article at all. :D Your work has been vital in taking it to the next level. Thank you @TarkusAB:. I wish you all the best with your future endeavours.--Coin945 (talk) 12:17, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
• Also I've noticed you've added back in sources I previously identified as unreliable and removed. I don't want to get into an editing war and the whole back and forth. Simply put, if you ever want to move the article forward in quality and eventually promote it to Good Article status or even Featured Article, which you now definitely have all the sources to do so, then these need to be removed.
  • I have no intention of getting into an editing war. I thought that the sources told an interesting part of the story, so I decided to put them back in when doing a major overhaul of the article based on the new sources I acquired from the dropbox link. Future copyedits can decide what information should stay or go to make the article the best it can be.--Coin945 (talk) 12:17, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
• Lots of the stuff in the dropbox has not been published by a reliable source, and therefore cannot be used. This includes email conversations, those red bull contracts, etc. Just sourcing "Craig Nansen" is silly. For more about what is considered a reliable source, see: WP:RS
  • I have not used emails and red bull contracts for those very reasons. I did source a few things to "Craig Nansen" only temporarily as they fall into the "true, yet unverifiable by third party reliable sources category" and I wanted to see if I could swap the info for better sourcing. They may sadly have to go.--Coin945 (talk) 12:17, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
• What SHOULD be used are the newspaper clippings and press releases. If not already known, you need to determine which newspaper they came from and the date or issue number or something like that.
  • As you can see, I've already added pretty much every single newspaper clipping and press release... except one source which has no identifying information on the publication (which is a shame). I was able to work out the rest of them by analysing the source text closely.--!!!!
• The game manuals are good sources when it comes to building the gameplay section.
  • Already done. Section needs to be cleaned up though.--Coin945 (talk) 12:17, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
• The paragraphs are too long, and there is fluff in places. I highly recommend reading through: WP:BETTER, WP:TMI, WP:IKNOWITSTRUE, and WP:TLDR

TarkusAB 11:53, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

• • Thanks for the advice. I agree with you 100% with this - I do have a habit of being a bit... thorough with the information sometimes. The article is in dire need of a copyedit. :)--Coin945 (talk) 12:17, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
    • Consider submitting to Guild of copy editors TarkusAB 12:35, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

SCREENLAND episode about the game

A note to all interested editors and particularly Coin945, half of an episode of SCREENLAND focuses on Frank Cifaldi's conversation effort of this game. It's available online for free. If there's anyting worth using it as a cite, you can use this: It's a great watch! Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 07:35, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

References

• Thanks @Salvidrim!: for the clip. Turns out in this case I've already watched it and added its useful content to the article. But I really appreciate the sentiment. :D--Coin945 (talk) 02:15, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Extra sources

• [1] Page  1 of The Pierce County Tribune, published in Rugby, North Dakota on Monday, February 24th, 1992
• [2] Page  3 of Beulah Beacon, published in Beulah, North Dakota on Thursday, May 31st, 1990

Coin945 (talk) 00:43, 12 October 2022 (UTC)