Forum:Our Credibility (Or Lack Thereof)

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AS IF! The world is garbage! CRUNCH! Okay, look. During the recent tumult over the term "Somebody", JC did post a link to one rather interesting forum: this. Our PR appearance is definitely poor. Take a look at these. The issue raised in the last forum was actually corrected... by me. I immediately changed it after seeing the issue. That doesn't change, however, the perception of the wiki by the masses. The Kingdom Hearts Wiki has absolutely no credibility. So how should we change that? I have a few steps in mind, some of which are very drastic and I don't expect to be done, but here they are: We need to not turn debates over information into screaming fests. The "Somebody" debate is a perfect example of what not to do. Notice how he even posted an editorial on Kingdom Hearts Ultimania. That just shows how annoyed we made him. Why else would he have gotten the general public involved? Clearly things got out of hand. Let's not have that happen again. We need to decide whether we are a wiki about presenting 100% accurate information or not. Face it; the term "Somebody" is not fully official: Kryten even admitted it. And one of the largest points raised against changing it is that "the term 'Somebody' sounds less awkward than 'complete being'". But when has that ever stop us? The same thing happened when we were considering changing "Lingering Sentiment" to "Lingering Will", and we decided to change it because that is the more official name. So we have to decide: should we use the name that sounds better or the name that is fully official. This goes for all our information. We need to use names that are as official as it gets from now on, and we need to change the names that already aren't as factual as they could be to better ones. Which leads me to my next point... We need to recheck all our (specifically story-related) information for accuracy. Much of it is likely untrue. Other pieces, such as the "Darkness changing people's eye/skin/hair color" bit are based off of info. from Nomura's interviews. He said, "Braig gained yellow eyes and pointed ears, because he was close to Master Xehanort." Although it could technically be deduced that Xehanort's Darkness was the cause, is that 100% factual? No. Even someone like Ventus-Vanitas, who has yellow eyes, can be explained; Vanitas had yellow eyes because he was around Xehanort, and that trait was passed on to Ventus. Also, why is it that Riku's eyes didn't turn yellow when he started to become close to the darkness in Kingdom Hearts? All we know for sure is that being around Xehanort creates those symptoms, and that's how we should treat it. And that's why we should go through everything and fact-check it. We need to gain ourselves input from people who don't think the information is credible. If we can somehow get them to make a list of everything they see factually incorrect with this wiki, we'll have some idea of what we need to double-check. If it turns out we were either wrong or simply jumped to conclusions with the info. based on some other information, it should be removed. If we were right, we should explain calmly why they're wrong; we'll have a debate over it if there's enough disagreement. We need to change the name of this wiki to something other than "wiki". This is not something I actually expect us to do, but it would be helpful in making us seem more credible. Think about Wikipedia: it has tons of information, but no school or business would use it for 100% factual information. By calling this place a wiki, we're basically saying, "Anyone can edit us and post whatever information they want, so we're not credible!" Regardless of the truthfulness of this statement, that's how people actually see us. By changing our name to something different, we would therefore seem more credible. Please, don't dismiss this right away. If you don't pay attention to how people see us, we're doomed!

Chitalian8 Say... — Every Player had to give up something. Everybody makes sacrifices. It was me. All of it. — 03:18, 10 October 2011 (UTC) That's... actually pretty depressing. Anyway, some of those people are just being ignorant and not fully reading what's on our pages (I'm looking at the Magic Mirror one). I notice that we're also being lumped in with the Wikia, so we really do need to distance ourselves even more. This wiki's always been about presenting the full truth, and nothing other than the truth, so I don't see a need to change our policies to fit around "what sounds better". As for changing the name of the wiki, I would be up for a slight name change, we could just make it "Encyclopedia" or something along those lines. Also, very importantly, it's the internet. There will always be masses who disagree what's there, and they just happen to be much more vocal than the people who have no problem with our info.

ShardofTruth Once you believe, truth and lie are quite the same thing. — 08:20, 10 October 2011 (UTC) I think you're spot on with most of your points As if!, I have just a few additions and suggestions: Somebody: The "Somebody" debate will never die out as long we have no official term for them, "complete being" isn't a suitable replacement because it's clunky and not used a single time in the games or an interview. I think the best thing to do would be to replace the term on every page with a paraphrase like "original persona" (which is used on the original characters of the Organization XIII for example). But that shouldn't be a problem because we never put Sombody in any article, so all that should be left are the galleries which owe the sombody headline to our friend S071084, who is thankfully rampageing on the other wiki right now. But still, we need to categorize and the only place the term appears is in one image category and the enemy template, that shouldn't be a big deal for everyone, who visits the wiki just to read articles. Official names: Most of the translated FM stuff (enemies, weapons, items) don't have a official English names or get it very late due to reuse in other games like "Two Become One" or "Frozen Pride", on the other hand the same Japanese name gets different Englisch translations from game to game (the Energy synthesis item is the worst example: it's called Power in KH; Energy in KHII and Wellspring in KHBBS). It's a difficult terrain, but if we have evidence we should use it, it's not like we can't rename it later if we get a "real" translation. Credible information: Yes and the fact template should be used more often if an information may not be accurate and input from more people is always nice. I'm working on a Interview Space right now to get a place on the wiki where the facts can come from. Any help on this project is appreciated. Wikia name change: I think a change could achieve the contrary. "The call themselves "KH Encyclopedia" but aren't more credible than a wiki. The wiki will never be perfectly accurate, it's not possible with so many different editors with different background and perceptions of the games. But we can definitely make it better, so let's invite the gamefaqs forum writers officially and ask them, what they would change and if they can help us.

...Ouch. I mean, really, ouch. What As If said is right, we barely have any new members and we're already making ourselves look bad in the eyes of public. This has to stop, otherwise people won't even bother visiting our site let alone actually joining as a member to help us. As hypocrite as it sounds, As If is right yet again. People are trying to voice their opinion and let's try to discuss things calmly and civilly as much as we can, even if the said person is outrageously annoying. Heck, we should even make commitment to act nice to everyone that has good intentions. Also, as funny as it is, we should probably keep smart-ass comments to a minimum as well, since it can annoy people much more than you know. Also, Shard's interview space is a brilliant idea, now we need to cross-check every single article, starting from those related to the interviews as the interviews are our primary source, spoken true by Mr. Nomura himself. And then we can continue to check the other articles. (Also, Chitalian, I noticed there's a pink spot on your depressed Neku TBA, you might wanna remove it XD) 17master"..." — 11:23, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

As a person who mostly reads this wiki, not edits it, I'd like to put my two cents.

I completely and utterly don't get there that came from. Really. Those people don't know how much work you guys do, they don't know how much effort you put in staying factual. I read some logs, and the amount of debate over even small misinformation can be impressive. I doubt that most of them ever edited a wiki, and most of that bullying comes from sheer ignorance.

It would be interesting to see what will happen if you plain ask them what they want to change though. Although I won't be surprised if nothing comes from it.

I shouldn't go into my ranting any further, or I might will overstep some borders. This whole thing would be really sad, if it weren't so utterly irritating. And the most annoying thing is that what you write is meant for those people.

I'll repeat: I say this as a reader, nothing else. If anyone would like to cite me, he should know that I'm not affiliated with this wiki in any way. My signature is NOT short! 13:29, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

KrytenKoro - "Punch your lights out, hit the pavement. That's what I call entertainment. Causin' problems makes you famous - all the violence makes a statement." TALK - I'm not able to look at those links right now, but as regards "somebody" -- not only is it the closest to official term we can find, but we've made plenty sure to never claim it was the totally official term. Like Shard said, we only use it in maintenance and categorization contexts. If someone's using it elsewhere, yes, that needs to be corrected. We also directly asked the KHU-user if he could provide a better alternative, and give sources for it. So, we are asking for input, and we've always been open for input. Whether we rigorously (and aggresively) scrutinize that input is another matter, but I'm not aware of us ever just ignoring these opinions. I will fully admit that my temper let that discussion get overheated. I blew my top when he started saying we were completely making stuff up like the "complete-person-emblem", when it's right bloody there in the Ultimania, basically the Bible for KH fans. I'll try to tone it down, and I apologize that I let it happen.

Would this count as categorization/maintenance? Chitalian8 13:51, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Chitalian8 Say... — And here's me, playing the world's tiniest violin. Your face is priceless. — 13:49, 10 October 2011 (UTC) EDIT CONFLICT:And again, to everyone, I restate my point that It's the damn internet. It's a harsh place. We can't please everyone and we certainly can't silence all of the people who don't like us. It's human nature to disagree. Many of the links you have there, As if, link to Gamespot/GameFAQs forums, in my opinion one of the lowest forms of forums out there. Many of their arguments are actually "It's a wiki, of course it sucks". My point is, we shouldn't take the opinions of such a small percentage of the people on the internet so seriously when we know that the majority of people who visit our wiki have no problems with it.

17master - Hey, guys, check out my new camera! TALK - Oh wait, this isn't a camera... - {{{time}}} That might be true, but, do we really know how much people visited our Wiki? Who knows, maybe the number of visitors might decrease. Or, we might even barely have any visitors at all. I mean, finding anons or new users in the Recent Changes can be pretty here :/ Of course, not that I'm implying anything here, but it's just... y'know... It worries me a bit.

KrytenKoro - Click TALK - The enemy gallery headers are certainly a more visible form of categorization, but categorization they still are. Though, with the existing way we cover them, including "Crank Tower", "The Experiment", and "Hostile Program"...I think we have an easy out. Name those sections "Other". Honestly, we have not confirmed whether all of them (specifically those stated above) are truly entelechies, and "Other" is both non-committal, and a neat pun on one of the term's used for a non-Nobody. And if that's not acceptable, I present my previous proposal: Entelechy. It literally means this exact type of being, in plain English, and it sounds f'ing awesome. I maintain, though, that simply retitling them "Characters" or "Other characters" was a lazy, unworkable suggestion only made to ridicule us.

KrytenKoro - "Hey, I want to settle down. And as soon as I find the right small group of girls, the seven or eight women who are right for me, my wandering days are over, buddy." TALK - Okay, I had a chance to look at the threads during lunch, and they seem to be mostly the same fluff as there's always been, for any wiki. Can someone post to the same thread (I can't do it at work), the following: "If you have examples of misinformation that you can back up with sources, especially if we are claiming something contradicted by Nomura, please leave a message on the appropriate talk page and we will look into it. As regards "somebody"—the way that our wiki is coded, we do need a categorization to input. As we attempted to explain (while losing our temper, we admit), these should not be visible to casual readers, and the term is not made-up, it is taken from multiple quotes which each define it as meaning the type of being we need it to mean. We are aware, though, that the term has not been made explicitly official, which is why we have endeavored to keep it hidden and use it for maintenance purposes only. If it is used in a place that it is visible to readers, that is not how we have meant to use it, and that needs to be cleaned up." ...anyway. I highly, highly doubt that they will notify us of errors, even if they can collect the sources, because, come on, gamefaqs. They hate basically everything there. To us, though: are we using "Somebody" in any place where it is visible and could come off as claiming it as an official term? I'm absolutely certain we never use it in actual text, but does it appear anywhere beyond categories and inputs? If so, it would be possible to both use the "Other" specified above, or create a quick disclaimer template which states something like "'Somebody' is used here to refer to a complete person with a heart, mind, and soul. 'Somebody' is not the official term for this type of being, but is used within several quotes to informally refer to it. It should not be taken as a canon, official term."

AS IF! The world is garbage! CRUNCH! Actually, I was thinking of getting a new editor to say something along the lines of this: I'm a new editor at the wiki, and I realized how much misinformation is in it. There's too much for me to possibly find on my own, so could you please help me put together a list of misinformation I can show to the admins? Maybe we could get SidVI to do it? I don't know...

KrytenKoro - "It's always best when the other chap is willing to die for his beliefs; you both have the same goal in mind." TALK - I...don't think it will help the situation at all to be setting up pretenses and attempting to "trick" them. I wasn't able to access the gamestop threads on my phone, but the two I could see, they were hardly unanimous there anyway. Add that to the Somebody issue, and the situation is not that we have glaring errors that everyone else in the world can see, it's that this small subset of commenters disagree with our interpration a few events. And that's fine, if they can make a case for their interpretation, that's gravy. But the onus is on them to prove their case—it's hardly accurate to say that these people are 100% correct about everything and that we should be desparate for their approval and info. I think we have a healthy enough process of fact-checking and improvement, especially compared to gamefaqs itself, or even those individual users (and yes, this is a bit of a false comparison, since we should always strive for our own perfection). If those users would like to be part of the fact-checking process, that's fine, and we invite them to contribute. If they just want to bitch and moan (like, honestly, they've only ever done), that's also fine, but I have no interest in seeing it here.

LightRoxas - "I'm proud to be a small part of something bigger - the people it did choose. TALK - "I am who I am, because of them." I think it's important to note that most of our credibility is simply carried over from our previous existence as a wikia-wiki, where we were certainly susceptible to lots more vandalism than we are now. That being said, we would still be foolish to not try and change our credibility.

KrytenKoro - "That's when we bumped into Hannity. Sean Hannity. See the thing about this dude is, at first he's fair, right? And you're like "Wow!" But then BOOM. The dude's balanced, too. And you're like, HOLY SHIT." TALK - Sure, but let's not start panicking because gamefaqs, of all places, criticized us. If we have errors, let's examine them and correc them. But there's no point in worrying about what other fansites think about us, especially when those fansites aren't much better (or even worse).

LightRoxas - "I'm proud to be a small part of something bigger - the people it did choose. TALK - "I am who I am, because of them." Actually, that's exactly my point. Frankly, the Internet is gonna be filled with hate, especially between fansites. Anyways, I went through the trouble of listing all our supposed options in the Somebody case: Somebody: Never really used outside of Axel in CoM, but much shorter and concise than other options. Other: Only used by Roxas when referring to the complete beings of a Nobody. Doesn't seem to make sense for, say, Goofy or Simba. Beings: Doesn't work, as Roxas and Naminé are referred to as beings in the Secret Reports. Complete Beings: It might work, but is way too long and sounds very clumsy. Characters: Doesn't work, includes Heartless, Nobodies, and the like. Other Characters: Very lazy, and probably the worst thing we could name them. Entelechy: An English word that basically means true being, and sounds awesome. However, it would likely confuse some readers. Existent: This is a word I propose, as Nobodies are referred to several times as "non-existent." But that's just my two cents, which rarely proves to be worth anything.

Chitalian8 Say... — Only by allowing strangers in can we find new ways to be ourselves. Life's little crossroads are often as simple as the pull of a trigger. — 20:38, 10 October 2011 (UTC) From what I understand, "Other" isn't meant to be used the way Roxas said it, it's meant to be used along the lines of "Other Characters".

KrytenKoro - "Hey, I want to settle down. And as soon as I find the right small group of girls, the seven or eight women who are right for me, my wandering days are over, buddy." TALK - So, here's what I see as the options: Keep "Somebody", add a disclaimer template to all visible uses. Keep "Somebody" for input-use only, make it invisible wherever it is visible, and use "Other" when that's impossible. Use "Entelechy", which is a plain English word that means exactly this type of thing, instead of being Nomura-speak, may or may not use disclaimer (honestly not needed, but due to the obscurity of the term this may come off as even more confusing to readers). My personal favorite, but likely to cause even more of an outcry than somebody, and for good reason. Basically, if we use this one we are choosing "being technically correct but mostly passive aggressive at random internet douches" over "giving our readers clear, accurate information". "Complete Being" is never once spoken in any of the scripts I found, and is exactly as made up as the gamefaqers wrongly accuse "Somebody" of being. Same goes with "Existent". We can't use "characters", "people", or "beings", because the games themselves explicitly define Heartless and Nobodies as being included in those terms. "Other" is not acceptable as a type, only as a passive aggressive header for the enemy galleries—it's in-game context is specifically "the original persona of a Nobody", and there's an argument to be made that it could refer to the Heartless in the pair, given Sora's situation. Honestly, I think the best solution is to simply continue using "Somebody" for most uses, to switch to "Other" for enemy galleries, to remove "Somebody" wherever it's used as if it was an official classification, and to add a disclaimer note (like (MG)) wherever "Somebody" cannot be made invisible. Afterwards, to set fire to the world, beginning with KHU and GameFaqs and eventually progressing through everything else.

KrytenKoro - "Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life." TALK - Okay, I was able to check the gamespot one, and they did specify two possible errors: how Sora got his Keyblade, and the "Keyblade of Worlds' Hearts" thing. I don't see them actually giving any sources or complaints in the history of the article (are they talking about the wikia article, maybe? Regardless, can someone check the Ultimanias to verify the information?

AS IF! The world is garbage! CRUNCH! Great news! The Keyblade of Worlds' Hearts thing was something I wanted to delete ages ago, since as of now no source has been posted. I'm glad someone else commented on that.

KrytenKoro - And when you see me standing there, you'll know you've got a friend with a rock, I mean a big-ass rock. TALK - C-C-C-Caveat to that, they did say that whatever we had was based on a faulty translation. Soooo...we need to check the original material and see what a good translation says, rather than just deleting the claim.

AS IF! The world is garbage! CRUNCH! ...I know that.

LightRoxas "Lead me into everlasting darkness!" I fixed the issue of where Sora got his keyblade (on Sora's article, at least. It might be elsewhere).

KrytenKoro - And when you see me standing there, you'll know you've got a friend with a rock, I mean a big-ass rock. TALK - Aqua didn't perform the ceremony, to my memory. I'm pretty sure Ventus made him a wielder, while Riku gave him the Keyblade.

AS IF! The world is garbage! CRUNCH! I though Ven only made him a dual-wielder and that his heart was naturally as Keyblade-worthy as Riku's.

Neumannz — Looks like I'm gonna have to jump...! TALK — I work alone! Except when I work with Xion...which is all the time. — 03:52, 11 October 2011 (UTC)   Contact with Ven's heart made him a Keyblade wielder; having Ven's heart rest within him makes him a dual-wielder. "Other" would be highly satisfactory for enemy galleries and such; after all, that symbol that we use for "Somebodies" is the Ultimania's symbol for "Other". If we need an alternative category name, maybe "Unaffiliated character" or just "Unaffiliated" or something similar? After all, what we call "Somebodies" are just characters that don't fall into the major groups of Heartless, Nobodies, Unversed, and Dream Eaters.

LightRoxas - "I'm proud to be a small part of something bigger - the people it did choose. TALK - "I am who I am, because of them." My bad, I got confused between Kairi and Sora. It is my understanding that Ventus is the complete reason he can wield any keyblade, including dual-wielding. dang noobishness...

ShardofTruth Once you believe, truth and lie are quite the same thing. — 19:52, 11 October 2011 (UTC) This is not completely true as explained here by 24.7.239.218.

So they're picking on us on all that and the spoiler policy? Seriously.......? I could facepalm at their general direction. Inasmuch as we have gotten some things out of canon/outside the universe, I've checked Traverse Town and there are quite a number of articles which have a tag slapped on it saying that story has to be in-universe. Can't. they. even. SEE. that. blatantly. massive. tag. Not that I'm trying to defend us - where we are wrong, we are wrong, but where we have actually 1) made a spoiler policy page so that it'd be visible to others, 2) slapped tags calling users to iron out what's wrong, really now, there's no cause for them to complain. There are some things even the stars cannot tell me. • TroisNyxÉtienne — 22:49, 11 October 2011 (UTC)