16th May 2010, 9:26 PM
Here's another example. There's a thread on Sega-16 over the struggles someone went through on Wikipedia trying to get the site to accept changes to the Sega Genesis sales figures... the numbers Wikipedia had were wrong. The prob are no "right" numbers, because Sega never really released much sales data for its systems, so a LOT of guesswork is involved necessarily... but it definitely wasn't 29 million, that number is far too low.
Thanks to some work from me and several other people (Pimpuigi being the one who compiled it and worked at getting it on Wikipedia), a new estimate of 40 million was estimated at. I think that one might be slightly high, but it's the best we can do...
But, would Wikipedia accept it? For a while the estimate was changed to the new number, but someone kept changing it back. Finally a "compromise" was reached. This is what it says now.
How awesome, the old number is still there even though it is certainly wrong -- someone just refuses to allow it to be removed.
My point is, just because someone has more accurate information than what's on the site doesn't mean that the change will actually be allowed, unfortunately. It all depends on the whims of the people with more authority to make edits.
(And yes, darnit, things like this or release dates matters! How are you supposed to know when things happened if you don't know when they were released, or exactly how well a system did if you have no idea how many systems it sold? It is quite obvious to me that things like this matter and are of consequence... I am of course a history major. Things like this do matter.)
Thanks to some work from me and several other people (Pimpuigi being the one who compiled it and worked at getting it on Wikipedia), a new estimate of 40 million was estimated at. I think that one might be slightly high, but it's the best we can do...
But, would Wikipedia accept it? For a while the estimate was changed to the new number, but someone kept changing it back. Finally a "compromise" was reached. This is what it says now.
Quote:^ a b Some sources have claimed 29 Million units sold,[4][dated info] noting that 14 Million were sold in North America.[4][dated info] However, there are updated specific sales numbers for the United States totaling 20 Million.[5] This presents a disparity in the sales numbers. In addition to that, Tec Toy has sold 2 Million units of their own Mega Drives (as of August 31, 2005,)[6] Majesco has sold 2 Million units of their Mega Drives,[6] and Sega has sold 1 Million units of their Sega Nomad.[7]
How awesome, the old number is still there even though it is certainly wrong -- someone just refuses to allow it to be removed.
My point is, just because someone has more accurate information than what's on the site doesn't mean that the change will actually be allowed, unfortunately. It all depends on the whims of the people with more authority to make edits.
(And yes, darnit, things like this or release dates matters! How are you supposed to know when things happened if you don't know when they were released, or exactly how well a system did if you have no idea how many systems it sold? It is quite obvious to me that things like this matter and are of consequence... I am of course a history major. Things like this do matter.)