Key points, piracy and unconfirmed claims - arbitration needed

[Antrad 37]

  If you go to the page for American McGee's Alice, you will see this "key point":

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/American_McGee's_Alice

Quote

Pirated copies' audio quality for cutscenes, etc. is low and compressed, but when installing from a retail CD the audio quality is high.

If you open history you will see this is some kind of leftover from a problem with a pirated version of the game from MyAbandonware and it has no business on this Wiki.

Normally I deleted it, but user Expack3 wrote that users "claiming to have legitimate copy" experience this issue and reverted it back.

I deleted it again saying "unconfirmed claims that don't apply to all versions should not be a key point, if there are official releases with reduced audio quality those should be named specifically and listed in "availability" or "localization" section".

Expack3 again reverted, only mentioning some posted photos we don't know which version they came from, and some Steam guide in the edit summary without providing a link or release version in the actual article and we are going nowhere.

I will repeat my points;

- Problems with pirated versions don't belong on this wiki.

- If some official release really is flawed compared to the rest then you need to at least state which one and provide reference

- If the problem is specific to certain release or localization then we have sections for it where the issue can be mentioned

I hope Expack3 doesn't get angry, but I think this is a better place to discuss this and we can hear a third opinion.

[Aemony 142]

😩

What muddies this whole situation is that the game is not easily accessible any longer and so cannot be easily confirmed either, and because it's from a time where games often had regional distributors it's entirely possible that one or more distributors across the world had compressed audio to keep the game unto a single disc instead of two (this is pure hypothetical here from me).

And just because it is possible to connect an issue to a certain pirated release does not mean that release itself is the origin of that particular issue, and warrants a removal.

Hence, mud everywhere...

 

Regardless though I don't think this sort of thing belongs in the key point at all. I'd much rather we see it moved into "Issues fixed" section and expanded a bit upon -- mention the uncertainty of the situation basically with a note that retail CDs (from what region?) is known to have high-res audio. Anything that gets it out of the key point, basically.

[Andytizer 269]

I don't have an issue with acknowledging the existence of a widely distributed pirated copy of the game - as long as we don't directly link/promote it. The main reason we don't promote piracy is due to an abundance of caution and not wanting for PCGamingWiki to be 'taken down' by a rightsholder for whatever reason. Secondly, we promote the legal and fair way for gamers to acquire games, which we hope helps to promote a healthy PC gaming ecosystem. 

Secondly if this was a key point, it can be removed - key points are deprecated (replaced by Introduction) and this sounds more like an "Issues fixed" as @Aemony suggests and where it has already been moved, and where it can remain even when you figure out the actual result.

In the absence of any definitive proof it is worth opening a line of communication between @Expack3 and @Antrad eg PMs or on Discord, without slinging it in wiki edit wars or on forum posts - you can compare hashes and notes.

[Antrad 37]

There will be no edit wars from my side, I really don't care that much and don't want Expack3 to think I am hostile. I opened this topic to point to a possible problem, expressed my opinion how to handle it and the people in charge can decide what is best.

[Rose 273]

Making an exception to the wiki stance on documenting issues specific to piracy is not acceptable, irrespective of whether it is hard to obtain the game legally. Unless and until proven that there are legitimate copies that are affected, the information should have no place on the wiki. A precedent of the opposite can be used to justify documenting issues specific to pirated copies of many other old games.

[Theclaw135 4]

Pirated copies should be presumed untrustworthy by default. No telling how they've been tampered with.

DRM that makes legitimate copies inoperable is a separate concern.