Team Fortress Wiki talk:Policies/Community content notability guidelines

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Extension of the Mod notability section to the broader Community content notability concept

See User:Mikado282/Sandbox/Community content notability guidelines

Community content has been a foundation of the Team Fortress franchise. The Team Fortress concept was initially created as a community mod to Quake. Team Fortress 2 was developed with an intention to foster the operation of Community servers and the Community development of mods and maps, groups and event. Presently about a third of Team Fortress 2 participation is on Community servers.[1] The majority of new content for Team Fortress 2 is Community developed. If this wiki is to be most useful and relevant, it should continue to give some service to Community content.


OK, the elephant in the room; what do I, a relative non-participant in Community events or servers have to contribute to the subject of Community content? Please provide the balance of your perspectives to my suggestions where I may be seen as overly biased to including Potato events and maps (there, it’s said). On the other hand, IIUC, most of the new Community content pages come from the Potato events, and at this time, participation on Valve MvM and Potato MvM maps are roughly at the same level.(Clarification: Per teamwork.tf, certain Valve missions are much more popular than the Reforged missions, while the Reforged missions, in early August, were much more popular than certain other Valve missions, at that moment. Since then, Potato participation has decreased.)

At present, there is compliant of quality, incompleteness, and style deviation of a certain range of Community content pages. But really, the answer to those issues is no different than for the same problems of quality, incompleteness, and style deviation in Valve content pages when they happen; edit it. The real question is whether each Community content page (new or legacy, finished or stub, opus or shlock), like each Valve-content page, actually belongs as a unique page on the wiki main space, and that, IMO, is the question of notability.

My observation is that the existing "Mod notability" section has much of the wording appropriate to extend to Custom maps, and potentially to Community events. I have started a sandbox for such an extension here. The links to Community content pages and categories is intended to illustrate present coverage of Community content. The criteria I added are those that seem to also matter on notability, particularly for events.

Alternatively, instead of extending the Mod notability section to Community content notability, you may suggest additional sections specific to Community maps and Community pages.

I am not set on any particular criteria, but some expansion seems called for if we are to look at the broader Community content.

M I K A D O 282 ⊙⊙⊙⊙⊙ ⊙⊙ ⊙⊙ (talk) (Help Wanted!) 22:31, 2 August 2020 (UTC) 03:51, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Should Community notability take into account the relative popularity of the official content the Community is expanding. Is it more notable when a mod draws thousands[2] to a less popular game mode(MVM about 9% [3][4][5]) than a mod that might draw similar thousands to a more popular game mode (pl or ctf)?

I am not saying this isn't a sticky wicket.

M I K A D O 282 ⊙⊙⊙⊙⊙ ⊙⊙ ⊙⊙ (talk) (Help Wanted!) 12:55, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I added suggested replacement Custom content tags to the Policy talk page. I may take some time to make the banners, or you may.

M I K A D O 282 ⊙⊙⊙⊙⊙ ⊙⊙ ⊙⊙ (talk) (Help Wanted!) 01:50, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

1.Since some community contents with low notability could be more famous in the future, should we move them to a user sub page like what we did for Creators.tf?
2.For the tags, most community content may never be released officially, while they are "released" on some servers or mods, so Dereko would prefer "unofficially released Community content".
3.For notability discussion in the future, I believe we need an independent discussion page which would make the discssions gather together and make it easy to refer to, and even if the community content page is deleted, the results of the discussion can be publicly preserved.

User Dereko Name.png 05:32, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

1.Since some community contents with low notability could be more famous in the future, should we move them to a user sub page like what we did for Creators.tf? -- Dereko
Unfortunately, I don't know what was done for Creators.tf. We already have a policy for use of Sandbox for drafts of potential articles. The main space articles (e.g., Operation Canteen Crasher) should not link to user space pages. If it is notable, the article should only be in user sandbox during drafting (if then))
2.For the tags, most community content may never be released officially, while they are "released" on some servers or mods, so Dereko would prefer "unofficially released Community content". -- Dereko
FWIW, I come from a background were release has specific meaning. As I view it, Value patches are controlled releases, but I don't assume that even with Potato that we have an anything that might be considered a controlled release. One of our Community tags has a statement that the content may have errors, omissions, or out-of-date information. I think any Community content tag should have that statement, since we have no particular assurance of configuration control -- we can say Teien has been in 5 Community events, but I wouldn't try to say that the same version or which different version of Teien was used in each event. I would say that Teien is notable, but which version of Teien used in each event is less notable (Achievement Idle and its derivatives are notable, but the change histories of all of its variants are not).
3.For notability discussion in the future, I believe we need an independent discussion page which would make the discssions gather together and make it easy to refer to, and even if the community content page is deleted, the results of the discussion can be publicly preserved. -- Dereko
OK, I see the weakness in that part of my proposal. It seemed to me that a page's Notability discussion could be recorded on its Talk page, but yes, where do we record it when it is not notable (where any later editor might find it, too). WP has a very involved process for DYK; every WP DYK entry has a logged record of the results of dozens of man-hours of review. We would want to make this a very light process, and for events, a blanket assessment for the event, not a separate discussion for every map in the event.
M I K A D O 282 ⊙⊙⊙⊙⊙ ⊙⊙ ⊙⊙ (talk) (Help Wanted!) 21:15, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
I don't think moving something to userspace is a "solution" for articles that art not notable -- while userspace can be used to draft stuff, the tf2 wiki is not a web host. Naleksuh (talk) 19:28, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Before I give me complete reply about what Mikado said earlier: You're allowed to put anything you want on your user space (Within reason, of course. This means you can't just organise KKK rallies here, for example) as far as I know. I host a personal list of stranges I own/do not own here, which has nothing to do with the wiki. Moving the pages related to this topic should be completely fine anyways, as it is a TF2-related thing anyways.
Complete reply:
First of all I'd like to mention that the teamwork.tf numbers might not be entirely accurate, it takes the timeframe of an exact second and only counts nicknames. I.e. everyone playing at 08:00:00, but this leaves out everyone playing from 07:00:01-07:59:59, and leaves out everyone playing from 08:00:01-08:59:59. So take the numbers from Mikado with a grain of salt as it shows 12k players in TF2, while steamDB and steamcharts show roughly 20k minimum and 80k maximum (And they are independent of each other, they take individual IDs over the span of an hour instead. Teamwork.tf's system also means theoretically, if there are 40 people named "Jeff" they'll all be counted as 1 person despite being different people and in different games.).
Maps: For maps, I can only see it going 2 ways: Maps are completely excluded, no exceptions. Or, the only maps that are allowed in are maps that have official Halloween versions (E.g. Bagel and Cauldron).
Potato mvm: I mention potato specifically because of how the situation currently looks. I haven't peeked in their Discord to see if anyone is gonna continue/has abandoned the wiki side of the project, but I've noticed less and less contributions to the point where it looks like some translated parts of the wiki (Lots of red links). I'm personally strongly in favour of moving all of the potato.tf stuff over to a user space, but keeping the main event page and the medal pages. These user space pages shouldn't be linked in the main articles either, if they want they can link it on their own site but as it is currently looking, it's looking quite bad. I'm all in favour of letting them move it themselves, as they refused to wait when asked to and flat out ignored what was suggested. I'm also advocating for turning it into one big "potato mvm" or "potato.tf" page, this would mean severely shortening the descriptions, removing any mention of who made which missions, and which missions/maps were featured. I've also noticed some stuff that possibly breaks copyright laws during 2020's april fool's event, which are still on the wiki. (This goes for any future things as well)
TF2-inspired games: Things such as Fortress Forever and Team Fortress 2 Classic, these are games which are inspired by TFC/2 and I believe they shouldn't be on the wiki at all as they are fan-games. However, it could be put under an overall "TF2-inspired games" page.
Mods: Things such as Advanced Weaponiser and creators.tf. Personally I don't have much of a problem with these, but I have no clue what the specifics would be. A rough guideline would be having multiple servers running, and an active pool of people playing. (I told you, it's rough).
Gamemodes: Stuff such as Versus Saxton Hale and Zombie Fortress. I think the same really applies as with mods, except that the content of the mods need to be looked at (I.e. Freak Fortress has the Vagineer, whose mouth looks like... well... you get it.) to ensure it's nothing weird.
I'm not sure if this was he purpose of this discussion, but this is how I interpreted it.
GrampaSwood (talk) 20:22, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

References for topic

  1. teamwork.tf, Server Statistics, Players by game mode, Access date: 2020 08 26. On and about this date, the page indicates approximately 1 to 2 ratio between players on maps on Community Servers vs. players on maps on Valve servers. At 8:58 PM CDT, on the pie chart updated 8 minutes previously, the tooltip for the Community sector reported "Community servers: 6901 players (34%)", or about a third.
  2. Potato.tf, Homepage. On access date 2020 08 26, the Potato reports over 16,000 participants.
  3. teamwork.tf, Server Statistics, Players in TF2 servers, Access date: 2020 08 26. 25,848 players at Aug. 23, 15:00.
  4. teamwork.tf, Valve Servers, Players in Valve servers by gamemode (mvm), Access date: 2020 08 26. 1,865 players at Aug. 23, 15:00.
  5. teamwork.tf, Rush Hour Mann Versus Machine, Players who played Mann versus Machine, Access date: 2020 08 26. ~386 players at Aug. 23, 15:00.

Glossary: Official versus Unreleased content, et al

Proposed definitions relevant to the above conversations (because "Community" itself is too broad to be practical for specific use).

Official: Generally, "official", "Valve", or "released" content refers to content that Valve Patched into the game or published on its copyrighted Internet sources (e.g., blog, comics, news).

Unofficial: Generally, "unofficial", "custom", "mod", or "unreleased" content in contrast refers to content that was developed outside of Valve, and is used on non-Valve servers, and has not been Patched into the game.

Community: "Community" has a couple conflicting meanings in this conversation: Maps and cosmetics that Valve has patched into the game but were developed in the Community are called Community content by Valve. But, But "Community" also means things made outside of Valve. And, servers not nominally operated by Valve are called "Community servers" by Valve. (On the Halloween ConTracker, Valve makes the distinction between "official_maps" and "Community_maps", but all of the maps on the ConTracker are "official" and "patched".

Looking through this again, now, maybe this thread should be renamed "Custom content notability guidelines" or "Unofficial content notability guidelines".

M I K A D O 282 ⊙⊙⊙⊙⊙ ⊙⊙ ⊙⊙ (talk) (Help Wanted!) 21:50, 9 August 2020 (UTC)


Community charity events

OK, I have been wondering about notability for the Community charity event aspects of this, in particular.

A couple of factors:

1) I would think there is a natural tendency to want to help with charities, to be useful, in a helpful sense. So, would Community event featuring a charity establish notability? But it is probably not enough for the event to claim it is a charity, there would need to be some vetting of some form.

2) It occurs to me that a Community entity hosting a charity using Valve's TF2 IP may require some Valve approval. I don't know personally, I would have to ask someone who actually ran one. Doesn't running a TF2 IP when promoting a charity involve some Valve intellectual property rights and corporate image control, but, also tax law? In short, if Valve openly acknowledges a charity that is using Valve IP integrated with online money exchange, that establishes a degree of legitimacy (e.g., not wire fraud) -- not just some guy saying "send me money for a fund raiser".

Sorry so disjoint; but, does Valve promotion of a Community fundraiser make the event notable enough to mention on TFwiki, with helpful information in an article, before the actual event?

M I K A D O 282 ⊙⊙⊙⊙⊙ ⊙⊙ ⊙⊙ (talk) (Help Wanted!) 01:52, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

1. We can always just add a link to popular/notable charities (E.g. ones highlighted on the blog/famous ones such as hugs.tf and Tip of the Hats) to the main page if we wanna help out.
2. It does not.
GrampaSwood (talk) 19:14, 19 August 2020 (UTC)