Category talk:Unreleased works

It appears that some discussion on this category may be needed. It's obviously problematic in that the only source of information for unreleased games must necessarily come from the game's author; other IFWiki editors cannot examine these games for themselves and they have few options for editing pages about unreleased games except deleting what the game's author wrote about it.

(Personally, I think writing about a game one hasn't released yet is counterproductive to the creative process, but I know not everyone feels this way. There's also something to be said for allowing authors some leniency here regarding reasonable promotion for their unreleased games. Does anyone want to write about how to promote a game? Hmm, anyone?)

It's also very possible that an unreleased game might NEVER be released, in which case a wiki page about it is probably unwanted and unnecessary. (Possibly we might want info on planned but never released games from commercial publishers, e.g. Planetfall II, but such info might best be documented on that company's page, rather than get its own page.) Therefore, I think it might be prudent to have a policy when a page about an unreleased game should be deleted -- unless, of course, it did get released, in which case we treat it like any other regular game page. Perhaps we give the author, say, three years beginning from the date that the page was first created? If the game hasn't been released by then, we can delete that page. Does that sound like a reasonable compromise? 'Cause I don't want to deny authors the chance to promote their games-to-be, but neither do I want IFWiki to become a junkyard of pointless pages about games no one can ever play. -- David Welbourn 03:52, 25 September 2008 (PDT)

That sounds reasonable to me.

However, I think Le pouvoir délaissé : The coming race II, also in this category, is a bit different, because an incomplete but playable version was released years ago (in 2002, I think) and is still available on the game's homepage. So it's rather similar to IntroComp games, for instance, and the page shouldn't be deleted even if the complete version is never released. Perhaps we could also have another category ("Unfinished games", maybe?) for that kind of thing? --Eriorg 06:04, 25 September 2008 (PDT)

This sounds like a reasonable compromise but I’m not sure I would like to see it on the ifwiki. It is all about when to draw the line. I have about 10 games in various states of completion and then I have dozens more which are just concepts - ideas jotted down on bits of paper, notepads etc. If everyone loaded the wiki with unfinished games they would out number the real ones. --Richard Otter 21:27, 25 September 2008 (GMT)