Question about some recent Atari game deletions @megatari49

Dear megatari49, I noticed that you deleted some games that according to your information, "do not exist", such as:

1) Philia - The Sequel to Elansar (however this game does exist (source: https://www.arcade-history.com/?n=philia-the-sequel-to-elansar&page=detail&id=441684) despite being a homebrew)
2) Same with Nuq (Quake;Quakeforge)
3) The same with Mathematica (whose source is here https://www.atarimania.com/demo-atari-st-matematica_22216.html)
4) Same with Doom (pmDoom) by Patrice Mandin, who made a special port.

In general, hacks are not accepted, unless in general the changes applied are absolutely original.

In general, if there are doubts, you can indicate that you doubt its existence, with the tag "todo-verifyexistence" to generate some debate prior to its elimination, especially if there is information on the Internet or magazines that cast doubt on its real existence.

Sorry users, if I identify you in the title of the post, that's how I made sure you read it :)

I think it is very important to check carefully if there are sources, in whatever language, to avoid deleting and replacing games forever, otherwise we will never finish the universal list xD

Greetings.

- Mathematica is OK to delete. It is not a game. Its a demo (not a game demo).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene

- Nuq looks like being a Atari Falcon game instead of Atari ST. But if this is the case should get a platform change instead of deletion.
- pmDoom runs on an Atari,68020? Whats that? An Atari ST or a Falcon?
- Philia also seems to be an Atari Falcon game.

So most of the time the problem here seems to be that an Atari ST entry was deleted instead of changing the platform to Atari Falcon.

(thats from 5 minutes research before having to go to work now ;-)

I have temporarily suspended editing abilities to megatari49 until we address this situation as I have counted about 50 deleted games.
I'm all in for deleting non existing games, but we have to be sure other editors work is not wasted too.

As said above, games can be marked as "todo-verifyexistence" and they could have the platform changed if wrongly inserted.

I also watched the deletions and it seems that most of them were legit. And in general I like the fact that the Atari ST gets a clean up (which it never got so far and suffers from old entries imported from whatever "lists" 20+ years ago). I would say keep going with keeping my statement about ST -> Falcon in mind. Technically non of these games existed for the Atari ST platform from my understanding. They could be deleted and then re-entered as fresh entry for Falcon as well. Biggest mistake was entering them for Atari ST in the first place imo.

I have re-enabled megatari49 editing abilities.

The amount of deleted games was worrying, but it looks like they are legit.
Please everyone be careful with your edits, but it's better to have a false alarm than cause real damage.

I should work on a "soft delete", but it would require editing every single page and DB query on the site, but it could be very useful at some point.

Sometimes those 5 minutes are scarce. However, I agree with you, in the sense that it could have been reviewed before; Because, for example, in some previous entries, I saw eliminations of games that only had a name used in a certain region (USA, LATAM, EU), but they did exist.
Greetings

In any case, in my case, I always copy as many sources as possible, some a bit crappy (I won't mention them), other times, they are sources based on magazines of the time or on conversations I have had with programmers.

No, although ATARI ST had a puerile life, I at least counted about 5 or 8 entries that were legitimate games. I understand that you are from Europe, right? In America, those games were marketed. It is not for nothing that I would take the responsibility of generating this discussion by directly mentioning another user.

Thank you very much Andreas, for your understanding; I think the TAG is enough. While it is true that there are many duplicate games, and many confusions with the way they have been marketed from country to country, I emphasize the use of sources.
On some occasion Teran told me that they were not necessary in games that were "very well known", even so, perhaps "today" they are well known, in 20 more years, who knows?

Even so, I have seen deleted games, which did exist.
If you prefer, I can create a discussion point every time I see one, attach evidence and we decide, what do you think?

You could make a generel thread with the title "Un-delete game entry request" and in that thread post the games that you think should not have beeen deleted. It could be that there were wrong deletions as you say. But we need concrete examples. Maybe we can learn something from the resulting research.

It is possible to view the latest games deleted logs using this link:
https://www.uvlist.net/admin/whatsup/?u=&a=game+delete

I'm sorry that the log shows the platform id and not the name (and can't be retro-fixed).
Add that ID to this url to see what platform actually is:
https://www.uvlist.net/platforms/detail/ID

Teran: Look, here's a perfect example...

https://www.uvlist.net/admin/logs/?type=game&id=261563
Ritchardo removed this video game from the Apple II

And this reason he gave:
"I can't find anything about this game, there is very little information here; You can read it if you need to, but I can't find any sources."

But here, I leave you not only the source, but the game itself......(I could paste 14 more sources, but I think the video game is enough)

https://archive.org/details/a2woz_1-2-3_Digit_Multiplication_1986_Microcomputer_Workshops

The issue, as I think both of them, along with Andrea, detect, is that one feels like they are doing work in vain; That is why the sources, even if they are "few" as justified in the elimination, are previously confirmed, or someone is asked to do so, I have no problem.

Here I leave other examples, with some of the sources:

https://www.aventuraycia.com/juegos/robo-city/
Source: https://www.aventuraycia.com/juegos/robo-city/
This was the typical crappy game that they gave away along with the CDs that one bought in street stores.

https://www.uvlist.net/admin/logs/?type=game&id=251183
Source:
1) https://www.kinokuniya.co.jp/f/dsg-02-9780816012169
2) https://tanrunomad.com/apple-ii-games/
3) https://archive.org/stream/family-computing-07/Family_Computing_Issue_07_1984_Mar_djvu.txt

Regarding this game Philia: the Sequel to Elansar, the entry was removed, if it exists, here is one of the sources:

https://orionsoft.itch.io/elansar

https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=26630

The issue in this last game is that today, any type of entry disappeared, not even Falcon exists. I know that for Falcon, as for ST, the official deliveries were almost non-existent; but these games released later are not clones or hacks of others, they are legitimate creations.

Finally, before deleting an entry because it is from another platform, you change the platform and that's it. So that this does not happen = (https://www.uvlist.net/admin/logs/?type=game&id=159501)

I have a doubt with this one, because it is a teaching program, but it teaches by playing: https://www.uvlist.net/admin/logs/?type=game&id=276756
Source: https://www.backloggd.com/games/adi-french-13-slash-14-years/

You are right that are examples of games that should not have get deleted. When the other editors who deleted them see this, maybe they could spent a minute or two and re-add them.

Thank you for that Becoro.

Game re-added here.

Don't know how I missed this particular one to be honest I had a number of tabs open and probably deleted the wrong one. Funnily enough is this why I abandoned my very early attempt to try and clean up the Apple II format - there's over 6000 games, a large number of which are the most basic of entries and I made a bad call.

I've moved on to another format that I am more familiar with for the time being with a view of improving the quality of entries from the most basic of name entries to including things like screenshots, genres, descriptions where possible.

If anyone does find anything that they feel I've made a mistake on, please reach out and I'll absolutely review it. I'm not precious.

Thank you very much for the enormous contribution to the team. I have also been learning from other older users.