Wikipedia Closes Wii, PS3, Sony Entries

GameSpot reports that Wikipedia has closed the next-gen console entries because of nigh-onto constant defacement from angry fanbois. From the article: "Last week the complete Nintendo company page was replaced with the phrase "Nintendo Sucks!!!!!!!!!" briefly before the Web site reloaded the original entry. Previous vandalism efforts include someone doodling on a Hitler moustache and horns on the photograph for the entry for Bill Gates, and the sentence "Microsoft is Zomg T3h Suck0r!!!!!!" briefly replacing the computer software company's page. All of the next-generation consoles make it into the company's top 40 list of most revised pages, with the Nintendo Wii at number 10 (12,780 revisions), the PS3 at number 21 (9,894 revisions), and the Xbox 360 at 25 (9,481 revisions.) Interestingly, the Wii seems to attract more conflicts of opinion on the site than the subjects of Scientology (8,475 revisions), God (7,537 revisions), and even Britney Spears (9,886 revisions.)"

Misleading headline

[The One and Only]

They semi-protected three articles. This happens all the time, why the fuck is it on Slashdot?

To quote Digitiser..

[Channard]

.. albeit in reference to Amiga Zealots... "Why are you so insecure? Anyone would think we'd dissed your girlfriend... Oh, now we understand!"

I mean, honestly - why the hell do people think consoles need their loyalty? The companies behind them are out to make cash, which is what corporations do. They have their own marketing budget, people paid loads of cash to sell games and consoles and so forth. And before anyone mentions 'viral marketing', this kind of crap would only serve to put me off buying a console.

So Sad

[Chimp_On_Stilts]

I find it disheartening that young gamers feel the need to find a single console and lock onto it with a religious fervor. We're all gamers, we all enjoy the same hobby, but a large part of the community spends its time decrying everyone else.

The only reason I can think of that this happens, immaturity aside, is that young gamers must rely on their parents to buy consoles and their parents probably limit them to one console of choice because of price. This may give the kid a need to prove to himself and others that he got the very best console possible and made the best decision, because if he didn't make the best decision he'll never be able to buy the other console(s) and fix the problem.

Too bad they can't just relax and enjoy the different experiences offered by all the consoles.

Re:So Sad

[NexusTw1n]

In my youth I argued about the relative merits of:

Atari VCS vs Philips Videopac

ZX81 vs Vic 20

Spectrum vs C64

ST vs Amiga

Part of the fun of being a kid is having the energy and enthusiasm to cheer lead the system you own, while dissing the system your best friend's parents bought him instead. It's fun, and just because it's now progressed onto the internet doesn't make it any less harmless then it's ever been.

Re:To quote Digitiser..

[LunaticTippy]

Well, there is the usual adolescent desire for everyone to be the same. They'll pick on queers, blacks, nerds, tall people, short people, etc. ad nauseum.

However, there may be a bit of rationality behind it. I remember making fun of atari 400 and sinclair 1000 owners because they didn't have a real keyboard, TI owners for paying too much, and every time I'd meet a fellow commodore owner I'd get all exited and start trading programs. It felt good to find someone else who'd made the same decision that I did, and it had a payoff in terms of being able to trade experiences, techniques, and programs.

It is possible that this kind of behavior makes sense in a way. After all, if everyone owned a Wii there'd be more games for it.

I'll never understand it now that I'm not a kid anymore. I'll also never understand getting in a fight with someone over their religion, country, favorite team, etc., but it happens every day.

Re:To quote Digitiser..

[HeavenlyBankAcct]

I mean, honestly - why the hell do people think consoles need their loyalty? The companies behind them are out to make cash, which is what corporations do. They have their own marketing budget, people paid loads of cash to sell games and consoles and so forth. And before anyone mentions 'viral marketing', this kind of crap would only serve to put me off buying a console.

For the most part, here, you're referring to a group of people here who have great amounts of their personal identity onto their purchase of, and allegiance to, a particular product. This isn't anything new -- or relegated to gamers -- think of the grown men you know who would actively define themselves by their brand of truck. I think that when people are in a situation where they feel that they have no ability to carve out their own indentity -- be it feelings of impotence or just a general lack of creativity -- they will turn to external means to establish who and what they are in the eyes of others.

Quite simply, like any other group which defines shared identity as a similar product choice, or belief in a shared ideology, gamer fanbois are, at the root, confused individuals who are searching for a sense of belonging. There's a large population of the "gamer" population that's, quite frankly, socially awkward. Evangelizing a game system (or a brand of PC, or a genre of music, etc) gives these people an easy way to feel a "connection" with a social group that doesn't require any alteration in the way that they deal with the world or interact with other human beings.

When I was a teenager, I was really into hardcore music for the same reason. My skills of actually holding a conversation were fairly limited, but I knew that I could hang out with my "hardcore friends" or log onto a message board and 'communicate' in the way which I was comfortable. This in and of itself is fairly harmless, but the insular nature of these sort of 'product cliques' will almost always eventually turn to "us against them" codifications as the individuals within the group struggle to establish their own socially hierarchy. In my days as an elitist asshole, it was the 'corporate drones' who would 'actually buy this mass-produced music' that were the de facto topics of my rage. For these kids it's the 'idiots' who would 'actually buy [system].' It's the same motivation in both cases -- a desire for acceptance, at its root.

Re:So Sad

[ivan256]

Part of the fun of being a kid is having the energy and enthusiasm to cheer lead the system you own

Part of the fun of being a parent is teaching you child why they shouldn't be little assholes so they grow out of that phase in their lives eventually. Instead we outlaw discipline, have pep-rallies, endzone celebrations in high-school football games, and encourage childish behaviors right up into early adulthood.

It is not harmless to let your kid be a little brat with no guidance on why it is wrong. Someday they will have to grow up and work with other people instead of having a need to one-up everybody.

Re:News?

[Swanktastic]

I found it interesting that the Wii was 10th on the most edited list. I suppose the "newsworthiness" of this is not the fact that vandalism is happening- period. The interesting fact is the magnitude of the vandalism.

I wouldn't find it interesting that a subway car got spray-painted. I would find it interesting that all the subway cars in NYC got vandalized overnight.

It diminishes the network effects

[0xdeadbeef]

Other platforms decrease the amount of games available by taking developer mindshare, and introduces the risk that your chosen platform might become unprofitable and discontinued. So, in a very real sense, each platform decreases the value of all the other platforms. Once you choose one, it is in your interests to promote it.

Re:The lesson to be learned

[Tweekster]

you mispelled "idiots"

Re:To quote Digitiser..

[illumin8]

Well, there is the usual adolescent desire for everyone to be the same.

Adolescent desire? It's called human nature and it affects people of all ages. But yes, it is pretty childish when you think about it.

Re:So Sad

[Das Modell]

I find it disheartening that young gamers feel the need to find a single console and lock onto it with a religious fervor. We're all gamers, we all enjoy the same hobby, but a large part of the community spends its time decrying everyone else.

The most astoundingly stupid argument you can hear in a console X vs. console Y vs. PC debate is hardware. For many people, hardware by itself is everything; it doesn't matter what kind of graphics it produces or what kind of games are available for the platform, as long as the specs are, at the very least, theoretically superior to other platforms. Doesn't matter that Neverwinter Nights 2 looks and runs like shit while several GameCube and Xbox games look a lot better, it only matters that NWN2 is being played on a AMD64 with dual GF 7900s, while the aforementioned consoles have inferior hardware. Doesn't matter that Resident Evil 4 is crazy awesome and looks great, the GameCube's hardware is inferior to the Xbox's, at least on paper. I can't play shit like that, what would people think? Now I can't even play the Xbox because the Xbox 360 is better!

For a real gamer, hardware is just a means to an end (PC), or entirely irrelevant (consoles). Sure, you can be enthusiastic about hardware, but as soon as you start saying shit like "I can't play the GameCube because it has a 485 MHz CPU," you become an asshat.