Model for sources / references

[gene]

As we seem to have some sort of basic running application for GamingEnvironments, I would like to start with the development of "sources / references".

The general idea is:
After the user has entered some information about GamingEnvironments, Games etc. the user can add information about the sources / references (German: "Quellenangaben"). This is a central thing for Oregami - we want to document the games world with solid sources.

My first questions are:

1) How do we call this context? "Sources" ? "References" ? As I am not a nativ english speaker, I am unsure about this.
Here are some suggested translations for "Quellenangaben":


2) What data can the user enter to define a "reference"? Some suggestions:

• free text / comment
• URL
• an image / creenshot
• ISBN book number + page ?

When the reference is given, I will try to display it on the website that shows the "real" information, e.g. GamingEnvironments, Games etc.

I'm looking forward to your thoughts!

[MZ per X]

As we seem to have some sort of basic running application for GamingEnvironments, I would like to start with the development of "sources / references".

Great news!

The general idea is: After the user has entered some information about GamingEnvironments, Games etc. the user can add information about the sources / references (German: "Quellenangaben"). This is a central thing for Oregami - we want to document the games world with solid sources.

Thanks for saying it loud and clear again. This is really important, so I would dare adding that the user MUST provide some reference for the data entered. Of course, we need to decide for every kind of data whether we need strong or weaker reference. For proofing that a game existed, i.e. for adding a new game entry, we probably would accept just about anything. A screen shot from another well-known game database, or even "mind of the user" for well-known games. But for more specific data like a release date we would need stronger sourcing.

1) How do we call this context? "Sources" ? "References" ? As I am not a nativ english speaker, I am unsure about this.

After asking LEO, I would go with "Reference".

2) What data can the user enter to define a "reference"? Some suggestions:

• free text / comment
• URL
• an image / creenshot
• ISBN book number + page ?

You know my paranoia in this regard. My first thoughts would be like this:

1) The user should also be able to select the type of reference provided (Mind Protocol, Gaming Press, Press Release, Fan Site, Official Site, ...). More contents of this list will come with time.

2) "Mind Protocol" can be a very valid reference for some data where no other reference exists. But I wonder if people will abuse this, if we add it? Of course, we can always try to replace such reference later.

3) I would like to see it if people have everything in place at Oregami, i.e. they don't need to go away from us to check the reference. That means no links or bibliography alone, but screen shots of URL's and scans of relevant pages added to it. The only URL's to accept should be internal Oregami links, for instance if there's a scan of a magazine review in our database, and people reference it as proof for the game existing, or to reference the release year.

4) Of course, one reference can be a source of multiple data sets, so we would also need the feature to assign existing reference to new data.

When the reference is given, I will try to display it on the website that shows the "real" information, e.g. GamingEnvironments, Games etc.

Sounds very cool!

[MZ per X]

Dropping some ideas from our Discord channel here:

1) Multiple references per datum

2) Voting system per reference

[gene]

I have started a new approach for our reference model, take a look at it here: https://oregami.atlassian.net/wiki/spac ... References

The key is that we will seperate the information in two parts:
1) description of where the information "logically" comes from
2) technical (additional) documentation for the given reference

While 2) is rather simple:
- screenshot (game)
- screenshot (website)
- photo (book, manual, etc.)

it get's a bit more complex with 1).

My approach is that each reference hast a "reference type" and depending on that type it has some additional attributes. Please have a look at the above linked wiki page for more details.

I will start the implementation with "reference type" and a "title"/"text" field, that should give us a good feeling if this can work well.

[MZ per X]

2) technical (additional) documentation for the given reference

While 2) is rather simple:
- screenshot (game)
- screenshot (website)
- photo (book, manual, etc.)

Let's start with this. I think, this is the pure technical side of referencing, i.e. what exactly does the user contribute and what does that technically mean for us. Let's generalize a bit more:

Contribution ---> Outcome

Picture / PDF file ---> Upload
External URL ---> Automatic screenshot + Upload
Internal URL ---> Save to database
Text ---> Save to database

Let's leave out for now special handling of videos (can be shot) and bibliography (books can be scanned or bibliography can be submitted as free text).

[MZ per X]

I have started a new approach for our reference model, take a look at it here: https://oregami.atlassian.net/wiki/spac ... References

Your list is already quite comprehensive, thanks.

it get's a bit more complex with 1).

My approach is that each reference hast a "reference type" and depending on that type it has some additional attributes. Please have a look at the above linked wiki page for more details.

I still think that we need to distinguish further. It may be German over-engineering, but I think we need to separate between the actual source of the information and the medium through which we get to know this source.

As always, let's use an example:

Let's assume there was a press conference at GamesCom 2018, through which a new game was announced. This is the actual source of information. There could be multiple media through which we could take reference to that press conference later:

1) There is a video on Youtube with a recording of that press conference.
2) There is an editorial piece in a gaming magazine with the most important information in it.
3) A fan published a transcript on his personal blog.
4) An Oregami contributor contributes a mind protocol of that conference to our database.

See what I mean? The press conference in itself is a very strong reference, but it can be weakened by the medium used to document it.

Thus, I think we need to distinguish between actual source and the medium, both with their own attributes attached.

What do you think?

[MZ per X]

gene gave a link with the missing piece of information (primary and secondary sources):
https://www.enago.com/academy/should-yo ... eferences/
So I would suggest to differentiate between primary and secondary sources for Oregami, too. The difference to writing papers is that we're not doing primary research, but we're documenting factual stuff. So our secondary sources are not interpreting the primary ones, but document them.

I'm not sure how this will work out in practice, as we must not raise the bar to contributing too high, but I will try to update the wiki page and see what comes out of this.

[MZ per X]

I'm not sure how this will work out in practice, as we must not raise the bar to contributing too high, but I will try to update the wiki page and see what comes out of this.

I developed the idea to document the primary source only on meta level, and the secondary sources on detail level. I think that will enable a practical solution, like for instance when we don't know the primary source for information on a fan site we could do the following:

Primary source: Unofficial Information ---> Fan research
Secondary source: Fan Site ---> URL+Screenshot

Furthermore, I collected a list of primary sourcing.

Quoting from the wiki page for discussion:

We differentiate between primary and secondary sources, where the primary source holds the factual information, and the secondary source(s) documents the primary source.

Thus, a "Reference" in this context consists - technically - of exactly one primary source, and one or more secondary sources.

The problem here is that we might not know the primary source having been used to create the secondary source. In this case, the secondary source - also - becomes a primary source.

The primary source should be on a meta level, first of all to enable judgement of the strength of the source which will enable us later to search for weak sources and replace them. But equally important this is to not make contributing a primary source too hard.

The secondary source should hold detailed (also technical) information about the source, or in other words, it is what can be viewed / read / checked later on to judge the reference.

Primary sources

• Game Release
  • in-game content (everything after the game was started)
  • media content (everything on the medium or during installation)
  • packaging content (everything inside and outside the box)
• Official Information
  • press release - written
  • press release - prerecorded (Audio / Video)
  • press release - live
  • developer interview / visit
  • advertisement
• Journalistic Information
  • editorial content - written
  • editorial content - prerecorded (Audio / Video)
  • editorial content - live
• Scientific Information
  • scientific content - written
  • scientific content - prerecorded (Audio / Video)
• Unofficial Information
  • Wikipedia
  • fan research
  • peer-reviewed game database

I will work on a list of secondary sources next.

[MZ per X]

I've made up my mind a bit about this:

I'm not sure how this will work out in practice, as we must not raise the bar to contributing too high, but I will try to update the wiki page and see what comes out of this.

Raising the bar too high. I mean when I see this:

book: title, author, publisher, issue, isbn, publication date

website: title, author, website, URL, publication date, date of last visit, type (official site, fan page, press)

internet video: title, author, URL, timecode

event: event title, event type (e.g. press conference), place, date

Who will contribute with mandatory source when we demand such detailed data? I think practically no one - either for missing data or mostly for lack of time/enthusiasm. Although I would like to see us able to filter the references later using such detailed data, I think we need to say bye to this for a start.

One alternative would be to make all the details non-mandatory, which equals not implementing them at all I'd reckon. A better alternative might be to keep the references relatively clean and easy, but implement events / books / videos / links as their own bounded context later and update the existing references to point to those internal database entries.

The thinking goes on.