Sunday, February 21, 2010

The Case of Wikipedia v. Kinuyo Yamashita



Among video game composers, Kinuyo Yamashita isn't exactly a well known name, although she probably should be. Back in the mid-80s, she worked at Konami and was the composer for the original Castlevania. She also worked on a handful of other Konami games, mostly Japanese-only, including Esper Dream, Almana no Kiseki, King Kong 2, Stinger, Hi no Tori (Famicom version), Knightmare II: Maze of Galious (MSX version), Usas, and a handful of others. She quite after a few years to go freelance - according to a recent interview with Square Enix Music, Konami's refusal to properly credit their developers played a big part. (She shows up under the pseudonym "James Banana" in the ending to the NES Castlevania, although she's credit properly in the MSX2 Vampire Killer, which has the same music.) After going freelance, she did the outstanding Power Blade soundtrack, and worked on a number of Natsume titles, including the SNES version of Pocky & Rocky and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, along with Megaman X3 for Capcom. Her official website documents several other Japan-only games, including many entries in the Medarot/Medabot series, but also notes that she had a brain hemorrhage which left her unable to compose for a number of years. She's recently become for visible on the web, thanks to her MySpace account and here appearance as a guest speaker in Video Games Live!. She has quite an interesting background!

Well, apparently Wikipedia doesn't think so.

I mean, what? The music for the original Castlevania is some of the most iconic in video game history, and is still being rearranged by Konami over twenty years later. Why not delete Koji Kondo, too? (On this note: this Original Sound Version post on the same subject mentions that they've deleted Shinji Hosoe, a veteran composer for Namco and others for over twenty years, for similar reasons. His works aren't quite as famous as Castlevania, but he's still a fairly well known, well documented composer.)

The argument by the nimrod Wikipedia editors keep shooting down source after source as "unnotable" As noted above, Japanese developers are notorious for keeping secrets - we know that Keiji Inafune didn't really design Mega Man but still aren't 100% sure who did - and trying to source these things in the games themselves is nearly impossible. That's why it's incredibly valuable (and amazing) when places like the Game Developers Research Institute dig up some of these guys to set the record straight. But oh, hey, according to the Wikipedia deletion argument, first person sources are irrelevant, as her apparently her own web page, along with various interviews, don't count, and the popularity of her original songs don't either.

Every once in awhile, there's a tiny part of my brain that thinks that Wikipedia, along with the general wiki format, will overcome the general usefulness of websites like HG101. Then I see instances of stupidity like this, with the Wikipedia editors clearly being small minded know-nothings, and think, yeah, sites like mine have nothing to be worried about.

EDIT:

One of the more recent Wiki folk reupped her original entry here, along with a longer list of her works and more sources.
Posted by Discoalucard at 3:11 PM
Labels: , ,

26 comments:

  1. This really is absurd. Wikipedia entries for well-known figures and historical events include scores of specious information that is left standing simply because it is credited to a third-party source. That they should delete Yamashita's entry simply because her relative obscurity in the west has led to a paucity of third party resources to draw from is an utter embarrassment. Kurt, is there a Japanese Wikipedia entry for her? If so, might you link to some of the Japanese sites discussing her and her work to back up a new English entry's claims? Either way, you make an excellent point. I mean, how many gaming publications ripped off information you posted on the Castlevania Dungeon back in the Nineties and presented it as their own research? Did the presence of the same information in EGM somehow become more respectable than when it had been presented on your site? Yamashita and other composers, designers, etc. from the early days of Japanese games will remain criminally obscure as long as sites like Wikipedia insist on such absurd and arbitrary benchmarks.
    ReplyDelete
  2. Wikipedia may be more useful than HG101 but HG101 is a lot more interesting. Retro gaming essentially requires subjective examination because of the nostalgy and general love for the subject.

    The thing with deleting fine articles on Wikipedia has more to do with the ego of some editors than actual concern for quality. That, and bias issues which keeps some pretty useless and generally poor articles alive (better be a spergy furry if you want your articles stay alive).

    Luckily, nobody forbids someone publish the same deleted articles on some shadow Wikipedia.
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  3. Yup, there's a Japanese wiki article here:
    http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B1%B1%E4%B8%8B%E7%B5%B9%E4%BB%A3 I don't think anyone can jump into the "deleted page" discussion though, and it's locked at the moment so it can't be re-added.

    I don't mind magazines or whatever using info from HG101 or anywhere else - the whole reason why it exists is to spread this information, so that's mostly the point. The hoops some of this goes through for Wikipedia to deem is "credible", though, is suspect.
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  4. I didn't mean to chastise magazines and other sites from utilizing your articles and posts, but used it to illustrate how the same information recycled through various sources suddenly can become "credible" in the eyes of Wikipedia editors. Say you posted an interview with Ms. Yamashita on your site. This would apparently be an insufficient source for Wikipedia. However, if some enterprising journalist at, say, "GQ" decides to do a piece on the evolution of game music and uses your interview with Yamashita for a section on the early days, the info now carries more weight. I just find it arbitrary in the extreme. I completely agree with you and commend your efforts to increase the awareness of classic, obscure, and cult games, as well as the often-neglected crews that developed them.
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  5. This is one of the reasons why I detest Wikipedia so much. They've deleted a lot of good articles in the past for the same reasons. If the subject isn't that well known or there aren't that many online pages on it, as in this case according to the editors, all the more reason to keep the page for when people are looking up information.

    And don't get me started on the errors and mistakes which feature in Wiki articles which, when I've tried to correct them in the past, have had them reverted on the grounds of vandalism.

    Like I said, I hate Wikipedia.
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  6. Currently Wikipedia aims to delete almost anything related to popular culture and branch like videogames. They want to be serious and respected and they destroyed years of contributions in recent times. Honestly it's almost useless to contribute to wikipedia on arguments like that, while independent sites or dedicated wikis are a better place to put research and info.
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  7. Anoymous is being alarmist.

    There is solid info on games all over wikipedia. It's the older games, the ones that are harder to dig up third party sources for, that fall into disarray. And to be fair, the articles have their share of fanwankery, so the new regime is a neccessary evil.

    Luckily, wikia has drawn away a lot of the squatters, the ones who revert all edits. So the contributors that are left aren't interested in padding out "list of Silent Hill monsters".
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  8. The Wikipedia Gentry strikes again...

    Wouldn't it be funny if you posted an article in Wikipedia and it got deleted for lack of "reliable third party sources", but in the meantime a magazine ripped off the article for a story, and you could reupload it with them as a "reliable third party source"?
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  9. Just do an article about her. Wikipedia also accepted your Heaven and Earth Trilogy article as viable source, proofing that Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma and The Granstream Saga are in fact a series.
    ReplyDelete
  10. I actually researched and wrote a magazine article on the history of fan translations purely because Wikipedia deleted the massive entry on it - which is a shame, because it's a fascinating subject. ROMhackingdotnet proved most helpful with providing direct information.
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  11. The article is currently locked so it can't be edited or reposted. Apparently a few people already tried to reverse it and the admins got sick of it, although there's still at least one request to unlock and re-establish it.

    Wikipedia definitely needs editors in places, but this is not that place.
    ReplyDelete
  12. F*ck Wikipedia and their "standards", maybe one day people will wise up and NOT donate, then we'll see less drama and more quality.

    As for Ms. Yamashita, what an amazing woman! Her music for CV is just some of the greatest music composed for any medium ever. I never knew about her brain hemorrhage, I'm glad she recovered!

    Also interesting, from her BIO:
    "Yamashita started playing the piano at the age of four, taking lessons once per week. She learned the classical piano, where she played Chopin and Beethoven. As a child, her parents didn't listen to music, so she didn't have any musical influences."

    To jump from classical music to "Vampire Killer"? That's INCREDIBLE! She is definitely an important part of videogame history, and I'm glad places like HG101 exist so that even if the "higher cultured" individuals of Wikipedia deny her notability, HG101 will ensure that her legacy is preserved with dignity and honor as it should be.
    ReplyDelete
  13. Wow, I had no idea she did the music for Mega Man X3! That game (the SNES version) has one of my favorite soundtracks of all time <3

    Anyways, Wikipedia is stupid. If I'm just searching for anything in general that they happen to have info for (with actually good sources), then cool, but when they do idiotic things like this, it just makes it so hard to take them seriously. It's absolutely absurd that they consider third-party sources more reliable than first-party sources in a case like this.
    ReplyDelete
  14. I like the way information is organized in the wiki format, but giving anonymous idiots the ability to shoot down people who actually know what they're talking about destroys any real utility the main Wikipedia site might have. A major advantage of the web is that we can build and maintain accessible bases for our knowledge; we pool our information and collectively reap its benefits. Why would we sacrifice that benefit for the sake of enabling fantasies of power and authority among a few ignorant or emotionally disturbed users? The technology we have now has amazing potential, but it's worthless if we don't get our priorities straight.

    I don't see a fix for Wikipedia's problems any time soon. Anyone working in a field of specialized research would be better off maintaining their own site.
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  15. She's in New Jersey! You should go and interview her or something...
    ReplyDelete
  16. I think it was a given that Tokuro Fujiwara designed the first Rockman as far as gameplay is concerned, while Inafune is the character designer?

    Anyway these shortminded people at Wikipedia are so depressing that I think I'll boycott the site for a while. :(
    ReplyDelete
  17. @johnnyfog

    As a frequent Wikipedia editor myself, I agree that Wikipedia can be a good source of information if the right people are in charge. It has improved in a way that its trying to discourage squatters from adding in-universe fanwankery (or as they would say "original research") to the articles and trying to explain away plot holes that are just that, plot holes.

    However, I hate how "third party" sources are considered more reliable than "first party" ones, even though third party sources are just as guilty as being wrong on many things (especially when it comes to the likes of Gamespot and IGN) or how a subject is not "notable" enough unless it has enough third party citations. I had an edit war with another user at some point for clarifying that Metal Gear 1 was an MSX2 game because the cited article only said it was an "MSX game", even though the game's packaging clearly specifies MSX2. For them, if something isn't on the internet, it doesn't exist.
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  18. Wiki has put her page back up! No one sullies up James Banana and gets away with it! Nobody!
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  19. I just saw this yesterday and was quite pleased. If you look at the history you can see some other admin decided to unlock and repost it. Good to know there's some balance deep within that bureaucracy.
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  20. Unfortunately, it's been taken back down again. She deserves a page! I don't understand the stupid "notability" clause Wiki editors are citing as reasons to take it down. Hopefully, it'll once again be reinstated in the near future.
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  21. If you're pissed about Wikipedia just go edit tvtropes.org because they don't have a notability clause.
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  22. I'm still incredulous that people even bother with Wikipedia anymore. 95-99% of the content is so poorly written as to be basically unreadable, and from an organizational standpoint it's a disaster. Sure, it's a handy resource, but when an entire encyclopedia is written by committee... well, it shows.
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  23. They deleted my page on Tokuhiko Uwabo, too. Also I did one on Takahito Abe ("Susano o Densetsu") which they took down.
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  24. I've gone and done what Wikipedia refuses to - here's proper online hub for information and the music of Kinuyo Yamashita:

    http://lvls.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/tunage-kinuyo-yamashita/
    ReplyDelete
  25. I've first heard of Kinuyo Yamashita a while ago when I found out that she was the composer of the totally awesome music in Telefang (an underrated game which had two very infamous bootlegs known as Pokémon Diamond and Jade), so as such I best know her for that. I also soon learned that she composed the music for Castlevania, and played the game primarily to hear the music. Oh boy, was it awesome.

    So anyway, I noticed that Yamashita at one point had an article on Wikipedia, but totally freaked out when I found out that it was removed. Seriously, what the heck? Do people have any grasp of notability whatsoever? It's so freaking subjective and biased. So just because a couple of people never heard of her, means there shouldn't be an article about her on Wikipedia? Yeah that's smart, just remove relevant information to improve a wiki.

    I seriously hate Wikipedia now. What the hell are people smoking?
    ReplyDelete
  26. yayyy! guys her page is back up now! :D
    ReplyDelete

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