How long has eSims been around?

[RedWardancer]

Should be close to a 25th anniversary, if it has not already past eh?

[Ssnake]

Don't know the exact date when eSim Games, LLC was founded - but yes, we're close to the 25 year mark.

[RedWardancer]

This should be cause for a celebration of sorts, once the exact date is discovered.  😎

[BlackDeath]

An other date : release date of SB 1! (according to wikipedia)

Almost 24 years now!

 

I hope for a big party next year

[Ssnake]

Wikipedia is wrong, the release was on August 25th, 2000.

[Volcano]

I just changed the wiki page to reflect this.

 

I want people to know - ANYONE can edit Wikipedia, and you don't need to have a profile. Just edit the page, and add a note on what was changed. People seem to think the Wikipedia is set in stone, and actually everyone should be editing the pages so that the "Wiki editor cartel" doesn't write world history.  Just saying!

[RedWardancer]

Excellent!

 

Now with that out of the way, it's up to the eSimGames folks to set up the convention for us to attend in honor of SB Pro and SBP PE for next year! 🎉🎊

[Gibsonm]

3 hours ago, Volcano said:

I just changed the wiki page to reflect this.

 

I want people to know - ANYONE can edit Wikipedia, and you don't need to have a profile. Just edit the page, and add a note on what was changed. People seem to think the Wikipedia is set in stone, and actually everyone should be editing the pages so that the "Wiki editor cartel" doesn't write world history.  Just saying!

 

Yep, which is why its a terrible reference.

 

People can just type whatever they want.

 

[Captain_Colossus]

1 hour ago, Gibsonm said:

 

 

 

People can just type whatever they want.

 

 

 

 

which is true of anything and anyone. we assume a historian must be correct for some reason or another.  maybe there is peer reviewed research going on or maybe the ideas are packaged 

in such a way that the market is more responsive. when you drill down deep into that however you get a lot of narrative and conjecture maybe backed up by citations. ultimately it is more of a consensus which prevails- which is what wikipedia is when it is functioning reasonably well - only it is generally free notwithstanding donations

 

in this particular case the discrepancy is off by a matter of days in terms of an important date with respect to esim- which was easily be made right by the same process

 

thanks to mass media and the internet and easy to use content creation tools, we crossed some threshold where it is extremely easy to generate a lot of clickbait nonsense and spread it around like a virus. there really was no precedent before we unleashed this thing called the internet and all the weird implications that came with it

 

wikipedia is remarkably free of the clickbait and spam i see everywhere else, AI created or badly photoshopped clickbait images in the article headline (for example a badly photoshopped image of a lion defeating a killer whale like you might see on youtube or on yahoo's homepage, or some implied claim that an alien spacecraft was discovered underneath a las vegas casino- just click on this sketchy looking link for details)

 

generally the process for wikipedia seems to work reasonably well i would say, while also avoiding the corporate spin machine of the traditional mainstream media, avoiding becoming a platform where someone can cybersquat on an entry and manufacture a lot of noise or something of that kind. since you do not see a lot of that if any, it is surprisingly functional given all the other static out there

 

 

[TankHunter]

9 hours ago, Volcano said:

I just changed the wiki page to reflect this.

 

I want people to know - ANYONE can edit Wikipedia, and you don't need to have a profile. Just edit the page, and add a note on what was changed. People seem to think the Wikipedia is set in stone, and actually everyone should be editing the pages so that the "Wiki editor cartel" doesn't write world history.  Just saying!

 

I want you to know that I changed it to state that it was released in 69 BCE in the month of Mensis Sextilis as a science fiction game.  

 

The above comment may not be considered to be truth

[Volcano]

  

3 minutes ago, TankHunter said:

 

I want you to know that I changed it to state that it was released in 69 BCE in the month of Mensis Sextilis as a science fiction game.  

 

The above comment may not be considered to be truth

 

 

I will accept BBY as a real historical reference, before I accept BCE. 

[RENEGADE-623]

22 hours ago, Gibsonm said:

 

Yep, which is why its a terrible reference.

 

People can just type whatever they want.

 

Which is why most, if not all, colleges do not accept Wikipedia as a citable reference. (at least when I went thru college, and pretty sure it is still that way)  However, i do not think the steel beasts wiki 

really has to worry about that too much.  I myself havent been on it in ages, but Im pretty sure no one outside of the steel beasts community really has any clue that it even exists, and I would like to think that

the people here in the sb community wouldnt put false misleading info in the wiki, altho it may happen unintentionally, but dont think it would be done intentionally.

[Captain_Colossus]

1 hour ago, RENEGADE-623 said:

Which is why most, if not all, colleges do not accept Wikipedia as a citable reference. (at least when I went thru college, and pretty sure it is still that way) 

 

 

 

wikipedia is not in itself necessarily inaccurate as a citable reference,  it is a reference which is assembled from other references or in theory that is how it should work. in other words, it is not a primary source,  you are not quoting directly from extant writings of lucretius, rather you are quoting from a wikipedia source at least one degree removed; but if cites are provided in the wiki entry which leads you to the primary source, that is, if wikipedia leads you to the source material, in that sense it is just a pointer which led you to the source material much like asking another person where to look may point you in the right direction. and so this is where educators push back as it cuts down on the workload and the student is shortcutting the process- not spending hours reading and indexing for himself

 

so this does not mean that it is inaccurate, it means that it is 'inappropriate' to not put in the work and effort which is assumed to be the process:

 

student A quotes the wiki entry directly, which we will say here for the sake of argument is not incorrect. it is just that the cite is wikipedia

student B uses the same wiki entry but follows the cite in the wiki to the primary source material, and quotes the primary source directly from there

 

what is the difference? student A and student B reference the exact same quote, only student A cites wiki and student B cites the primary source. student B still used the wiki to find the quote

 

so in other words it is not in itself accuracy which is the problem, but problems of plagiarism and/or the student not putting in the same amount of work technically (a similar problem occurs with AI writing essays- the information may not necessarily be 'wrong', it is just that the student is not doing anything or the material is plagiarized. before the internet, it was the cliff's notes and study guides in published form which pissed off educators- again, not per se inaccurate, maybe they are or maybe not, but it is shortcutting the work if it is accurate

 

for all that it does, and i would be the first to think that anything that has such a low bar for entry, like a public restroom wall where anyone can write anything they want, wikipedia is extraordinarily not dysfunctional like i would expect (pick a topic- the moon say, the public graffiti and misinformation on the topic is not there)

 

i think in the future it is education which must change. AI and internet 'cheating' are the future or at least figure into it much like calculators and computer word processors 'cheated' but eventually became the norm. students increasingly must take on heavier and more difficult curricula as time moves on, must learn more , remember and retain more, and account for much more than their predecessors did, as certain new skills are acquired (students in grade school are now exposed to coding and more advanced mathematics then i was), other skills eventually fall off such as cursive writing or using manual typewriters, which are no longer viewed as necessary or relevant

Edited August 28 by Captain_Colossus

[RENEGADE-623]

The whole point of my college not allowing it was the fact that anybody can go in there and edit it.  And there was no checks and balances to ensure that the info being entered into it was correct.  

[Captain_Colossus]

sure- but that does not mean that it is inaccurate or largely so (the issue in this thread was the starting point was off by a few days - easily amended).

 

even if the information referenced in wikipedia is perfectly accurate, the next contention is that it is plagiarized or that it is simply lazy of the student- again the same issue with cliff's notes which came before, the bane of teachers everywhere

Edited August 28 by Captain_Colossus

[Mirzayev]

1 hour ago, RENEGADE-623 said:

Which is why most, if not all, colleges do not accept Wikipedia as a citable reference. (at least when I went thru college, and pretty sure it is still that way)  However, i do not think the steel beasts wiki 

really has to worry about that too much.  I myself havent been on it in ages, but Im pretty sure no one outside of the steel beasts community really has any clue that it even exists, and I would like to think that

the people here in the sb community wouldnt put false misleading info in the wiki, altho it may happen unintentionally, but dont think it would be done intentionally.

You can't post on the SB wiki without specifically being given edit rights. 

[Gibsonm]

1 hour ago, RENEGADE-623 said:

Which is why most, if not all, colleges do not accept Wikipedia as a citable reference. (at least when I went thru college, and pretty sure it is still that way)  However, i do not think the steel beasts wiki 

really has to worry about that too much.  I myself havent been on it in ages, but Im pretty sure no one outside of the steel beasts community really has any clue that it even exists, and I would like to think that

the people here in the sb community wouldnt put false misleading info in the wiki, altho it may happen unintentionally, but dont think it would be done intentionally.

 

I was only referring to Wikipedia in general, not the specific SB Wiki, which is other have mentioned needs people to login (and I guess silly edits can be tracked).

 

[RedWardancer]

So, has anyone in eSimGames begun preparations for a bigtime celebration for us all to attend next year?  Somehow, we got sidetracked from the important part. 🤣😁🤘

[Hedgehog]

SB 25th anniversary idea:

 

Ssnake plays in a TGIF/Kanium game.

[Ssnake]

I suppose that could be arranged.

[Gibsonm]

9 hours ago, Hedgehog said:

SB 25th anniversary idea:

 

Ssnake plays in a TGIF/Kanium game.

 

Standby for comments from the Germans, Task Force Hannibal, PhanPhantasy, BG ANZAC and all the other VUs you omitted.

 

Edited September 11 by Gibsonm

[Maddin25]

Quote

eSim Games is an independent software developer, with initial development on Steel Beasts starting in 1995.

 

Found here (at the bottom)

https://www.army-technology.com/contractors/training/esim-games/

 

So esim is already going near 30th anniversary? 

[Ssnake]

The first lines of code were written in 1995. The company was founded only later. So, the quoted line is technically correct, which is the best correct.