Talk:Review bomb

Use a table for this?

We have sufficient prose to establish the nature of a review bomb, and how it impacts (or doesn't) sales. Thus, I think we could fairly replace the current prose describing specific examples with a table that can list game, developer, the "review bomb" date, and the reason why, along with one or more RS references (eg no forum post claims of review bombs). Otherwise, I can see us getting either into inclusion issues of why some review bombs were posted and not others, while avoiding clunky proseline-style approaches.

At least, until we get 1+ more RS articles that talk about the review bomb phenomena and list out several examples from which we can then use as a limited subset of all review bombs, thus providing explicit inclusion metrics. --MASEM (t) 16:32, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Metal Gear Survive

Should Metal Gear Survive be included in the list? Fans of Hideo Kojima were very vocal in their hatred for this game since its initial announcement and that resentment carried over to its Metacritic user rating as it was bombarded by detractors of the game (the majority of which likely never even touched the game, but that's not really relevant). It has very low user scores, every platform having scores under a 2.0/10.2601:642:4201:D231:C45B:B82B:C4CC:8DC6 (talk) 06:39, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm not seeing many sources to support that it was review bombed. It probably doesn't help that the game's gotten luke-warm reception (not a great title) so its hard to see user review bombing against just generally lackluster reception. --Masem (t) 14:54, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

There was review bombing before the game received any review scores from critics. But since there are no sources indicating the review bombing, I'll leave the issue alone.2601:642:4201:D231:1CD4:9762:9BCB:935D (talk) 03:04, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Controversey on RCG's marketing stragety

According to the sales report, Both games in China shared less than 20% respectively of global retail before the event take place. Consider the price in Steam CN region is rather low (50% off compared to base price), it's unlikely that the devs set their vision of fortune on so-called Mainland China. Maybe consider revising the words like "a game primarily aimed at the Chinese market", at certain points it's rather misleading to the readers.--AdomiZ (talk) 13:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Review bombing is (at least mostly) not a thing

When complete garbage gets more negative reviews than positive ones, it's because the product is complete garbage, not because some evil wizard hackers are doing it for fun.

"Pokemon let's go is getting review bombed!" NO IT'S NOT! The game is a prime example of complete and utter trash. Even before it was released, the people that liked the idea of a Pokemon game, where you don't even fight wild Pokemon, was an incredibly tiny minority. This is NOT a "bombing", this is just a case of "The developers decided to make a bad game, and this is what they deserve"!

Steam early access games are ALSO not getting "bombed". The developers promise things, then the games are without updates for months, or even worse, the updates make the game worse and worse, and the people show their opinions!

It should be illegal to simply says "Oh, this is review bombing!" and then proceed to delete a ton of valid negative reviews. This is literally false advertisement. They are faking the numbers. In an extreme case, this could mean that instead of being told that only 1% of the players like something, suddenly you are being told that 100% of the players like the game, just because someone decided "oh no, this is bombing!" and gets rid of negative reviews! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.49.95.176 (talk) 23:49, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Ofcourse, 'Review bombing' is another word for 'using your freedom of speech to point out flaws in the way a game company operates', and, as the way the company operates directly affects how their games are maintained, it's obviously relevant. But sure enough Wikipedia has a hot take to give so better write up that opinion article and yeet those who disagree. We all know why, let's not pretend we don't. Wikipedia is entirely maintained by people who think of freedom of speech not as a primary pillar of civilised society but instead as merely an excuse to be 'hateful'. They suggest the site is 'editable by anyone' to maintain the illusion of democracy, but the reality is if you make any edit that is not in political agreement with the overseers, even if completely factually accurate and within their guidelines, you'll find it removed extremely swiftly. This transformation from Encyclopedia to, frankly, blog, is made easier by only accepting hugely discredited pseudojournalism websites such as 'The Guardian' as sources. This site should not be taken as a credible resource for anything remotely political, it's essentially just the 'Conservapedia' of the other extreme of the political spectrum. Articles like these are there to be laughed at not taken seriously.2A00:23C4:E0B1:8101:5537:F846:334:D1A9 (talk) 13:20, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm fully aware that many gamers see review bombing as a means of speech to impact the developer (I don't know necessary agree, but that's not the point here). The problem is, we have to go with what reliable sourses say, and there are no reliable sources that present review bombing like this. To state that, that would fail WP:V and other core policies. --Masem (t) 14:38, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

It doesn't matter what people's opinions are, the wiki should always concentrate on facts, not on the feels. Stay objective instead of subjective. If Warcraft 3 Reforged got voted into a 0,5/10 by more than 29 thousands people - that's the sign of negative reception, all speculations about WHY it got negative impact are irrelevant to the main articles.2A00:1370:8111:4317:B8D3:ACF7:8F55:D96C (talk) 02:12, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

This is actually a valid point. There's a review bomb (using reviews to show disappoint over something wholly unrelated to the game, like a company's policies), and there's just dunking badly on a game for a bad product. W3Reforged is the latter, and should not be included. I feel we're getting to include every case where users have negatively rated down a game but we should be limiting it to when this is being used to complain about something unrelated to the game. --Masem (t) 02:25, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Reality is though, most of these things being described as review bombs aren't actual review bombs, they're legitimate complaints about the game. Review bomb as a term is being used to describe unwarranted reviews, but most of these situations are warranted. Developers making unwelcome changes to games, removing things, adding things, trying to charge for things, a customer saying 'I don't like that' isn't a review bomb. I think you need to seriously review what you consider a reliable source, because most of the time the people labeling these things aren't reliable sources. They're not experts. They're just unsolicited opinions from either interested parties or very low quality 'journalists' parroting what everyone else is saying. Wikipedia has its own agency and can simply decline to include that kind of poor quality content.--82.0.110.4 (talk) 08:14, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

So tell me, if you please, what's the difference between an I'll-received game/movie/song etc and so-called "review bombing"? Is it "review bombing" whenever the audience/public dislikes a given product or just a corporate coping mechanism? Laroucan (talk) 12:20, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

there is no such thing as "review bombing", delete this article! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.170.86.132 (talk) 12:36, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Death Stranding

I think Death Stranding should certainly have a place on this article, considering it has received over 14,000 Metacritic reviews in half a month, which I'm sure has set some sort of record on the site for the most reviews left in so short a time (if of all time). To put it into perspective, Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (2017) has received over 8,000 reviews in 2 years. The main difference to typical review-bombing however is that the range of positive and negative reviews has settled to around 50/50. Anyone disagree with its inclusion? -- Wikibenboy94 (talk) 12:27, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, it can't be included just because you see that on MC. We need sources calling it a review bomb. --Masem (t) 13:12, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

I have seen sources making note of this, unfortunately what few there are I'm not sure would be considered reliable or not, aside from perhaps Push Square. -- Wikibenboy94 (talk) 13:50, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Formatted listing of examples

I think there really needs to be some organized formatting of the examples given on this page, particularly the video games. It's far too long and sloppy. Perhaps arranged by year/decade? -- Wikibenboy94 (talk) 13:45, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Warcraft III: Reforged

@Masem: You've removed the paragraph on Warcraft III: Reforged, citing that they were "directed to the game, so not a review bomb", but a number of the games here have been included due to that exact reason: players were protesting against aspect(s) of its design. Why is this not considered to be a review-bombing? -- Wikibenboy94 (talk) 10:33, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

All other games on the list are more related to fans reacting negatively to a business decision of similarly related aspect like govt censoring that is only loosely tied to the game, and the negative reviews not a direct statement of the game itself. W3R has a mix of bad gameplay reviews and irks at Blizzard, but it also was not highly praised by critics. As such it goes on the games notable for negative reception list since fans and critics are aligned. --Masem (t) 11:25, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

On second thought, and given RSes call it a review bomb, i've added back W3R, but you'll see I've reworked it as to distinquish the non-gameplay factors as the "bomb" part, whereas there are parts that agree with the main critical consensus. --Masem (t) 20:06, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

I, too, am curious why Warcraft Reforged is included here? The game turned out to be objectively worse than the original. Not just that fans were let-down by Reforged, but the new game literally contained (and still contains) less features than the original with a downgraded menu interface, lack of cross-realm matchmaking (which was in the original), and . . . well. . . more flaws than can be listed here. What is the standard for determining whether a game is "review-bombed" as opposed to simply receiving the negative criticism from its fanbase that it deserves? The term "review-bombed," itself, seems like a very subjective phrase for inclusion on Wikipedia sans clear evidence that there was some kind of coordinated effort by a group (or groups) to leave negative reviews in order to harm the company's reputation as opposed to fans expressing their extreme dislike of a game. Looking at the items mentioned (EULA changes, forced adoption of Reforged client) those are all directly related to the game. These aren't tangential issues because Warcraft Reforged is not a "standalone" game, but, by its nature as a "Remaster," was released as a modification to the game. In other words, to say that "the review bomb was focused on additional issues beyond the game's quality," isn't exactly accurate, as these issues are about the quality of Warcraft 3, which Warcraft Reforged altered. Just my $0.02, I don't think that Warcraft Reforged should be included on this article. Krakaet (talk) 00:47, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

To piggyback on what I wrote a moment ago, I don't see any reliable sources indicating that it was "Review-bombed." Is that the standard? Whether RS says it was a "Review-bomb"? If so, then I propose that WC3:Reforged be removed, as I can't find an RS which even uses the term "review-bombed" in relation to it. The sources just correctly point out that it received ". . .a low score of 0.5/10 several days later based on over 14,000 reviews, making it the lowest-ranked game on the site by user score." However, there's no suggestion that the low score was undeserved or the result of a coordinated effort to harm the company due to grievances not directly related to the game. Like I mentioned before, forced adoption of the Reforged client by Classic Warcraft 3 players, as well as changes to the EULA of Warcraft 3 (Which is now Reforged, as you can no longer play the Classic Warcraft 3 client unless you install from an old CD and don't update the game), are directly related to the quality of the game because Warcraft Reforged and Warcraft 3 are now one game. Krakaet (talk) 01:03, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Books

Have there been any books that have been review bombed? If so, please add them to the article. --24.188.22.145 (talk) 02:43, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Unclear definition

Currently the article makes it seem that anything that has received many negative reviews in a short time span has been the victim of a "review bomb". As if to say bad products/services deserving of critique can not exist and that a flood of negative reviews must be the result of mob mentality, yet no sources are provided for such a sentiment. The entire article has a tone to it that seems to paint various products as victims of unfair reviews. To put it differently, where are the sources supporting the claims that the products listed on this page were "review bombed" as opposed to receiving negative reviews for being a undesirable product? Currently the article is little better than "gut feeling" with no way of telling a "review bomb" apart from "bad product that received genuine and deserved negative reviews". Without a passable definition of what a "review bomb" exactly is, what is even the point of having this article, just a list for people to add products to they feel were unfairly reviewed? 2003:F2:1709:EB00:1D78:5A6E:655E:5177 (talk) 13:32, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

The inclusion should be based on reliable sources calling the overall "reviewing event" a "review bomb" (that exact term), not the judgement of editors. If the sources don't support that, then it shouldn't be included. We may need to require two or more sources asserting a "review bomb" because finding one source to make such claims becomes easy. --Masem (t) 13:52, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Then the in/exclusion (and the definition as a whole) relies heavily on (editorial) pieces from gaming news websites (who do not all publish their editorial policies) written by authors who are oftentimes unknown with no way of finding out their credentials short of doing original research. As such the reliability of the information is questionable and should be attributed to the author rather than being given as straight up fact as is being done in this article. There are sections of this article that would do well to be rewritten following the guidelines for statements attributed to editors/authors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources#In-text_attribution. I have been going through the sources for the various claims made in this article, and there are numerous occasions in which the source is from a less well known gaming news outlet written by someone completely unknown. i.e. it is barely more reliable than an average blogpost on a private website. This wiki article should reflect that level of reliability by properly attributing instead of presenting all the statements as facts. 2003:F2:1709:EB00:1D78:5A6E:655E:5177 (talk) 14:58, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

@Masem I see oyu did not respond to the user above. I have been struggling with this, too. The articles I can see cited here for the definition that we are using in Wikipedia of review bombing seem to come from articles that, according to Wikipedia:Reliable sources, probably are NOT reliable. The specific item I am looking at is in the section for News Organizations reading "* Whether a specific news story is reliable for a fact or statement should be examined on a case-by-case basis." Taking a look at the citation #3 on the article, which is used to create the definition, it is coming from what is apparently an editorial piece from an editor on Kotaku.com.au who states A) that he has a potential conflict because he dated a game developer of one of the games that was allegedly "review bombed" and, B) his sources for compiling his belief that "review bombing" on games is as a result of negative sentiment not directly related to the quality of the game, itself, comes from anonymous kotaku.com.au users who emailed him.

...is that really the standard we are going for here? Krakaet (talk) 22:57, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

I strongly urge you not to go there with the situation around Grayson, as that is absolutely calling into BLP that has been sufficiently debunked per the Gamergate article. Masem (t) 23:26, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're talking about? I'm not attacking Grayson and I genuinely have no idea what this has to do with gamergate.

You haven't addressed my point about WP:RS and how the reliability of specific articles from news sources need to be determined on a case-by-case basis. Krakaet (talk) 02:38, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

There's zero need to consider whom Grayson dated in evaluating the source, even as he named that person in that article. That's the type of problems we have had elsewhere in the past with editors trying to push misinformation related to GG. And given that the specific title he calls out even isn't featured on this list means we don't have to worry about it at all; he's covering many games that were review bombed that he has no connection with. And its very clear from other sources that Grayson's got the definition of review bombing is close to what most others use too like [1] or [2] (in fact I would fine tune it based on some of those) . Also I don't see anywhere in his article that he is defining it from what people emailed him; he's describing why people turn to review bombing based on those emails. So no, I see nothing wrong with that article as a source. Masem (t) 03:09, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) review bombed on Steam

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere. Talk:Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020 video game)#Review bombed on Steam

84.250.17.211 (talk) 01:23, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

References

Add Madden NFL 21

The game was review bombed on Metacritic and now has the lowest user score out of all the games. This is due to many players upset with the lack of changes, the bugs that weren't fixed from past installments, and the use of microtransactions. I think you should put it in the 2020s section of the article.--24.44.76.88 (talk) 13:31, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

That's legitimate (user) reviews being bad for it, not bombing it for non-game related things. --Masem (t) 14:21, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Then we have to have a talk about this WHOLE definition for what Review-Bombing actually is. If it is only review-bombing when the reviews are not related to the game at hand, then, the Origin citation (citation #7 on the page) does not refer to review-bombing, itself, despite using the term, because the article refers to users leaving overwhelmingly negative content because of the game's use of DRM which is DIRECTLY related to the game. Krakaet (talk) 23:10, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Games review bombings in separate article

Because there now seems to be at least two instances of video games being review-bombed every year and the already lengthy subsection is only going to become more bloated over time compared to that on films and TV, would it beneficial in future for a new page to be created that focuses solely on video game review bombs? Wikibenboy94 (talk) 23:29, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

We shouldn't be documenting *every* bombing. That's the problem. We should be doing the initial examples, and those that draw larger attention from multiple sources but not those one or two sources pick up on. We're just trying to get the idea across. --Masem (t) 23:33, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Balan Wonderworld

Can you put in the positive review bomb that the critically polarizing game Balan Wonderworld received?--24.44.76.88 (talk) 19:00, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

We need a source that says a positive review bomb is happening. --Masem (t) 19:16, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I have a link that shows you that Balan Wonderworld is getting positive user reviews on Metacritic that are very sus. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/03/balan_wonderworld_is_getting_a_suspicious_amount_of_1010_metacritic_user_reviews --24.44.76.88 (talk) 15:31, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

That works, and has been added. --Masem (t) 17:48, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Battlefield 2042

So there was an edit that added Battlefield 2042 to the list of review bombs on the main article, but it was reverted. One of the issues was a lack of sources, which is understandable, but doing a quick search shows several news articles that state that the game was review bombed upon release on Steam. This seemed like a similar situation to the GTA Trilogy being bombed after poor launch reception from fans, so should it be listed or not?

Some of the articles for reference:

Indian Express: https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/gaming/see-you-in-bf4-battlefield-2042-review-bombed-now-of-steams-worst-games-7635408/

Gaming Intel: https://gamingintel.com/battlefield-2042-review-bombed-on-steam-after-broken-early-access/

Noisyline: https://noisyline.com/battlefield-2042-gets-review-bombed-by-14000-users-on-steam/

PC Gamer: https://www.pcgamer.com/battlefield-2042-immediately-has-thousands-of-negative-reviews-on-steam/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ssss (talk • contribs) 00:56, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Review bombing is for situations where the reviews are being added not directly related to the game. For GTA, it was the removal from the storefront and subsequently the game being unplayable due to this issue. BF2042 has just gotten tons of bad reviews, and is not a review bomb. --Masem (t) 01:20, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Should Sia's Music be listed as an example of Review bombing

It is questionable whether Sia's Music should be listed as an example of review bombing based on the fact that the reviews (ignoring the outliers of 1 and 10) trend towards negative reviews.

Typically authentic reviews will form a bell curve with a tendency towards extremes for example a highly rated piece of media might have a peak of the bell curve at 8 with a dip at 9 and a second peak at 10 due to people's tendency to round up or down to the extremities. In the case of Sia's Music this trend can be seen with the number of reviews increasing as it approaches 1, this indicates that the significant spike in low reviews is more likely the tendency to extremes, rather than review bombing.

In fact the positive reviews are likely a case of reverse review bombing as they are outliers that do not follow the trend towards negative that the movie's authentic reviews have. 182.239.142.81 (talk) 02:24, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Review bombing is not justly low scores, it is low scores associated with something other than critical reviews of the work. Masem (t) 02:27, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Cleanup to Video games section

Per the comment made by @Masem: in November 2020, I think it is only right that we seriously start to consider only adding video game review bombings deemed significant to this article, and exising the vast majority of those that are only backed by one or two sources; the list of games does not reflect the heading of "Notable examples". If we keep on adding several review-bombed games each year for say the next decade (unless Metacritic bothers to incorporate anti-review-bombing measures before then), this article is going to become very bloated. Wikibenboy94 (talk) 12:48, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

NPOV and refocus?

As some IPs have said above, it seems that this article is rather confusing in what "review bombing" is and what it means. For example, in 2017, we have this: Nier: Automata was review bombed in April 2017 by Chinese players demanding a translation of the game to Chinese, whom PC Gamer called "a powerful new voice". The linked article has this to say:

1,113 negative reviews slammed Nier's Steam page in a single day, essentially doubling the total number of negative reviews overnight. That's not enough to sink a game like Nier, but it is enough to drop its ‘recent reviews’ from positive to ‘mixed’ in early May. What happened? Why the sudden rush of negativity? On April 27, Square Enix released Nier: Automata in Asia—without Chinese language support. And hours after release, they doubled the price in China. It turns out that's a really, really good way to piss off thousands of players.

There is no reason to believe that these reviews are fake or illegitimate, just that there are a bunch of them showing up at the same time. Beyond that, the article also says that the reviews were coming entirely from people who had actually bought the game, so it would be impossible for a bunch of random people who got mad online to spam negative reviews. To me, this does not seem like an act of trickery -- it sounds like the company did something that annoyed a lot of people, and they left negative reviews as a result. Of course, they may or may not have been justified in doing so, but it stretches the bounds of credibility to impute malice to the mere fact of them doing it.

Anyway, what I am trying to say here is not that it isn't a real phenomenon, but that I think the current version of the article may be giving media companies a bit too much credulity -- of course they're going to imply that negative reviews of their products are the result of nefarious schemes! Politicians do that too, and we don't take them at face value, so why would we do it for some video game studio? jp×g 17:28, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Should we add Pokemon Scarlet and Violet?

According to Metacritic, the game is being review bombed for technical issues and low quality. Jaxhill2342 (talk) 14:43, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Review bombs are when the negative reviews for something other than related to the game. So no, what's happening with PSV is just negative reviews. Masem (t) 14:59, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Update

Velma has recently been review bombed on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb. 2600:1009:B148:6B60:C5C9:AA82:A3FB:97C6 (talk) 21:27, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

It's not a review bomb, it just sucks.

The name "review bomb" is incredibly negative and should be changed. It's clearly something *evil* and *bad*, yet a lot of the examples are actual justified grievances players are levying against the content being reviewed. Warcraft 3 Reforged and the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition are both "new" games that completely replace the perfectly functional old games with a shittier alternative. Superhot VR removed content and received negative user reviews for it. Hitman on GOG was negatively reviewed for having online-only DRM despite being distributed on a aggressively DRM-free platform. Youtube Rewind 2018 got lots of thumbs downs for being more "Celebrity Rewind" than "Youtube Rewind". 159.196.133.36 (talk) 07:02, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Notable incidents section is massive

Wondering if the list of notable incidents is getting too long now. About 3/4 of the page is dedicated to that massive list in the middle. It is so long it limits access to the last two sections that are more significant to the article's topic. I'd say either the list needs to be massively trimmed down, or it needs to be split into a separate list. Either would be an improvement on what is turning into a sort of "in popular culture" grab bag section. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 06:12, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, there needs to be some sort of inclusion criteria, I think. It's getting a little ridiculous. silvia (BlankpopsiclesilviaASHs4) (inquire within) 06:17, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

This is something I'd brought up not long ago (see "Cleanup to Video games section") and pinged Masem who has been quite active on the page, but didn't get a response. As I said there it's going to become extremely bloated if every couple of review-bombed games are added every year. Wikibenboy94 (talk) 11:10, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Ping was probably lost long ago. 100% agreed we should be more selective. I think there may be a few threads we can use for the video games section - such as review bombs related to Chinese censorship, review bombs from DCMA and other takedown actions of fan mods/etc. If a game has been review bombed, it can be documented on that game page, this page should serve as highly visible examples. but as for inclusion, I immediately don't know what line to draw and would need to think on it. Masem (t) 13:19, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Could we split that section into a separate list now, to get this page focused on the concept itself again, and then figure out criteria on the new page? —Torchiest ^talk_edits 21:22, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

(Thread necromancy, my apologies.) I agree the examples are excessive and excessively detailed here. Compare this article to Vote brigading, which is almost entirely its list of examples (which is not an aspect this article should try to emulate), but those examples are extremely concise and to-the-point (which is very much something to strive for).

Regarding Torchiest's criticism that It is so long it limits access to the last two sections that are more significant to the article's topic.... at the risk of being a dangerous radical who influences other editors to commit brazen transgressions against The Norms™ — but, hey, WP:IAR, right? — it seems to me that if the sections at the end of the article are both (a) getting buried by the example mountain, and (b) seen as having more encyclopedic value than the examples, those sections could simply be moved to come before the examples. I mean, I know it's heresy, but the organization of an article should be informed by the content and its value to the reader, not by templates or rigid notions of The Wikipedia Article Standard Format. Nothing says the examples must come before discussion of the practice's effects, or of its goatee'd mirror-universe form.

On that note, I was originally looking at the article's cleanup tagging just before I headed over here to Talk-land. (Context: The current pair were both applied in 2022-11 by BlankpopsiclesilviaASHs4, who I see is part of this discussion. That's convenient! I was going to start a separate topic, but while I have you here... 😉) So, the maintenance tags:

• {{Excessive examples}}, nobody could possibly dispute that one, I think.
• But I'm having a hard time with the {{Too many sections}} tag. I looked at the article both today, and as of the exact revision where that tag was applied, and... I'm just not seeing it. The section count doesn't appear to be at all unwarranted for the article length, and for the most part sections are amply populated, with enough text to more than justify their existence.
  Now, it's true that many of the current sections' length can almost entirely be attributed to the {{Excessive examples}} problem. Trim down the content and you're left with a bunch of excessively short sections that would need to be consolidated. But that's not the same thing as having "too many sections" now, and IMHO the article doesn't — it has pretty much exactly the right number of sections for its current body content and organization, with each one being a comfortable length.
  The shortest are: § Origin — the only thing anyone could really do there is just expand it with more content, it couldn't easily be combined with any of the others. § Video games/2023 — yes, it's really short, but it's also the current year that's only half over. I think it can be given a little leeway for now. Did someone jump the gun in splitting it out, to add just that one entry? Yeah, probably. But meh, it's done. (Your initial tagging predates that addition, anyway.)
  If we get to the end of the year, and there's still just that one anemic example for 2023 — well, (a), we should throw a party, because that's a major improvement in the overall article's evolution, compared to prior kitchen-sink years — but also, I'd certainly support folding 2023 back into the previous, to make § Video games/2022–2023.

FeRDNYC (talk) 07:53, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Review bomb

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Review bomb's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "WP":

• From Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019 video game): Hume, Mike (May 30, 2019). "'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare' trailer revealed, release date Oct. 25". Washington Post. Archived from the original on May 30, 2019. Retrieved May 30, 2019.
• From Saving Christmas: Holley, Peter (December 8, 2014). "Kirk Cameron Says Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas Is the Target of an Atheist Conspiracy". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 9, 2014.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 14:05, 15 March 2023 (UTC)