Scholarly Journals in Quakeworld

Saturday 27th October, 2007 | Skip to comments (8)

For anyone in academia, virtually all of you know how to search a database of scholarly journals when you want to see studies performed on a particular subject of interest. For example, an undergraduate stoner may be inclined to use PubMed to search for the health effects of smoking marijuana. Unfortunately, no kind of database exists in Quakeworld. The closest thing our community has is qwrama’s very own wiki; however, the wiki serves more as a reference to names and clans and the like. It does not explain concepts that are based on social sciences like psychology or sociology. Furthermore, economics can explain probabilities and percentages using game theory.

Can such a database be constructed?

We run into a few logistical problems here.

First off, pragmatism. Is this idea even worth undertaking? Many of us are busy, many of us aren’t, so what characteristics in a player will predict whether or not he or she will contribute to this so called Philosophy of Quakeworld database. Next, how do we go about naming discovered concepts? Many players undoubtedly know a plethora of different ideas and concepts that can be applied to actual game play, inter and intra clan relations, and time management, so who gets to name what? How do we come to a consensus on how to name ideas without a formal committee of some sort? Lastly, the integrity of this database could potentially be even lower than wikipedia. Let’s say “Team A” writes an article discussing the optimal amount of players to have in an active clan. They may discuss personal accounts of their successes in different numbers but this is ends up just being a case study. Case studies are biased perspectives usually lacking empirical evidence. Just a thought…

Anyway, I’m much too busy to be spearheading this idea but I would appreciate some acknowledgement for this pitch at the very least.

Posted by cyan in News
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8 responses to “Scholarly Journals in Quakeworld”

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r4
Sunday 28th October, 2007

well judging from my CS days, 2 extras are needed.

basically, the formula goes, amount of starters + xTH man + extra (who doesn't plan to play unless starters + xTH man can't make it).

So for qw's sake it would go...

4 starters + 5th man + extra.

Some clans I was active in when I played CS had more than 1 extra but most of them were extremely inactive and were only on the roster just in case something crazy happened and they were really needed.

Åke Vader
Monday 29th October, 2007

It definitely sounds interesting and some similar thought has struck my mind sometime (a more formal 4on4 guide etc). It would be interesting to try out the idea to see what can come out of it. Would also be interesting to know what topics people think are the most important/interesting.

Åke Vader
Thursday 1st November, 2007

Noone interested? snif :'(

Jjonez
Saturday 3rd November, 2007

I'm not really sure what would be new about the concept, but I probably don't fully understand what you're trying to say. I mean: there have been quite a few in depth 'studies' or 'reviews' on several aspects of QW and it's gameplay over the past ten years. Hoony's editorial on spawn systems comes to mind and the whole CPM team put quite a bit of effort in discussing boundary phylosophical gameplay questions.
So how is this different? The way it is organised/published/reviewed?

Empezar
Monday 5th November, 2007

sounds like a good idea. jjonez, one big difference is that it would be a searchable database so people could easily find this stuff. currently it's spread out over the internet and/or people's harddrives (i.e. not publicly available anymore).

mushi
Monday 5th November, 2007

wiki articles can do it imo. qwdrama's very own wiki is not a simple player/clan repository anymore. It has been improving and already has useful information. i would like to see more "articles" wikified. Besides, wiki is good for keeping articles updated.

Jjonez
Tuesday 6th November, 2007

OK. It is not organised in one place currently; that is a problem. However, there are a number of others to tackle before it would come even close to being a scientific journal in the traditional sense.
One is the case study problem cyan already noted: there is very little content currently available that goes beyond that. But what about the review proces? This is not the same as having an article published somewhere and then adding a comment form. It requires 'respected' reviewers and even a bit of infrastructure to keep track of the process.
How does reviewing even work in non-exact science disciplines?

Åke Vader
Thursday 8th November, 2007

As most people aren't even willing to put in any work on writing a "regular" guide, i guess people won't bother doing any serious scholarly stuff and certainly not bother doing any serious reviewing.

It's still an appealing idea though...hm. :I

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