Talk:The Legend of Zelda - Series Sales

Suggestions

This page is way too full of personal and opinionated research. There really should be nothing on here except for hard sales numbers. In particular, the "relevance to brand" and "interesting trends to note" are extremely subjective and add nothing to the article. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a place to write opinion pieces. At the very least, find some citations that back up what you are writing.The "important facts" in the Japanese sales section also have one cited bulletin point out of thirteen. To top it all off, the entire article was created almost entirely a single person.

The warning at the beginning of the article states: "This page is meant to highlight how each game in the The Legend of Zelda series has sold to date. It sources information from a variety of business-focused publications and catalogues the last-known sales figure for every game in the series." A very large portion of this article goes against this purpose and is not actually sourced from anything other than the author's brain. Telling people to not edit it despite this is extremely silly, and I believe it hinges on anti-collaboration. I suggest removing anything other than raw sales figures and statistics from this article. Boigahs (talk) 20:13, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Hello! First, thanks for your feedback. We appreciate you taking the time to convey it.

Regarding the page, the ultimate goal of pages such as these is to educate. Encyclopedic information is useful, but context even more so. Our approach to pages pertaining to real-world topics such as business and design and sales is to provide as much context as possible, in order to help combat misinformation.

1. Regarding the "relevance to the brand" and "interesting trends to note" sections, these are observations based on facts and they help contextualize each game within the overall brand. We prefer this approach as it provides a well-rounded, objective, and contextualized representation of the facts. This thoroughness is more important than ever, given that misinformation spreads quickly on the Internet.
2. As you pointed out, the "Important Facts about the Japanese Market" section was lacking in citations. It has now been updated with citations for each of the relevant points it makes. (This was a work in progress)
3. Regarding the fact that the article was written by a single person: this is because the author of the article is an industry professional with a long history of expertise studying the Japanese videogame market, as well as the Zelda franchise. As a Wiki, we try to make sure that subjects are always authored by those most knowledgeable.

However, this doesn't mean that other contributors are not welcome. Wikis are ultimately a collaborative effort, and we encourage anyone that is passionate, knowledgeable, and willing to contribute to help us stay on top of things. That said, Zelda Wiki also prides itself on accuracy and thoroughness, so passion and deep knowledge/understanding are paramount.

That having been said, the notice at the top could be more welcoming. It isn't meant to discourage people from contributing; rather, to ensure consistency and accuracy of content. Anyone that wishes to contribute to pages such as these is more than welcome to begin discussions through their respective Talk pages, and bring forth their own theories and citations. It isn't meant to sound anti-collaborative, merely to hold all our contributors to high standards. TriforceTony (talk) 06:52, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your response. I still disagree with the first point though. Observations based on factual data are still subjective. It's very easy to fail to reference other data that might be relevant and introduce personal biases. For instance, it's clear the writer believes that being less "exploration focused" affects sales more than release timing, even though there is really no good way to be sure of that with the data given. Citations on things such as "Lead to a re-examination of the series", or "Helped rebuild faith in the brand", or "The new template for Zelda for the foreseeable future" are still very important, even if you personally think that they are self-evident. Having subjective statements with no citations more likely to spread misinformation than just stating raw data. I'm not arguing against the validity of the observations; I agree with some of them, but I just don't think this sort of thing belongs in an encyclopedia to begin with. Boigahs (talk) 14:41, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Hello again. Those observations have not just one but several citations to back them up. That's why there's a "Learn more" link next to them—so that readers can read the entire chain of events that led to the observation and come away with a better understanding of the circumstances. (As opposed to just a single citation that would only give one a very limited view of the same.)

Due to the amount of context required to understand these complex circumstances, attaching dozens of citations to a single sentence is simply not feasible, nor is it helpful. Instead, the "Learn more" link next to each observation takes the reader to a dedicated page with hundreds of citations that help paint an accurate picture of of each Zelda game from a business and design standpoint.

The contents of both pages were put together after four years of intense research (across multiple languages and media), catalogued and contextualized in a large database before it was used to create the two pages. This database is continually updated as new information presents itself. We're confident in the thoroughness of our research and believe we have sufficiently covered every meaningful angle through the hundreds of sources we have analyzed and cited. If new information that clearly contradicts our content arises (or is presented via this talk page) in the future it will be taken into account and the relevant pages edited/updated accordingly. Until then, we believe our content provides an acceptably thorough, well-sourced, and well-rounded understanding of the Zelda series from a business and design standpoint.

It would hamper the context necessary to support the points made in the article to provide less information, so we've instead expanded upon these points further in the "Trends to note" section and included a few direct citations for those that aren't inclined to follow the "Learn more" links for a more thorough understanding of the circumstances.

Thanks again, and best of luck. TriforceTony (talk) 11:09, 8 June 2021 (UTC)