Talk:Machine Zone

Corporate information

@Kenosplit: Are you working for MZ? If so, please take a look at WP:PUBLICIST to see whether those rules or guidelines might apply to you. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 22:04, 4 April 2016 (UTC), rev. 16:18, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

@Lwarrenwiki: Please let me know if you will revert some of the edits I made and, if not, what your concern is with the edit. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kenosplit (talk • contribs) 22:30, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Conflict of interest editing

@Kenosplit: Thank you for the upfront disclosure you made here concerning the fact that you work at MZ. You can still contribute meaningfully to the article through discussion on this talk page – for example, you can use the {{request edit}} template to suggest changes, as recommended at WP:FCOI. And in response to your last request above: I expect that by tomorrow morning, I'll look again at your previous edits to see what can be independently sourced per WP:THIRDPARTY, and I'll see if we can restore those portions in a way that satisfies Wikipedia's neutral point of view and non-promotion requirements. Hopefully the result will fully address your legitimate concern for keeping this article up-to-date and accurate. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 02:10, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

• @Kenosplit: I have revised and updated the first paragraph, not using your previous edits, but instead in my own words based on third-party sources. Setting aside the significant issue of promotional language, the other major concern with your edit is that you copied the exact words of MZ's web site (which includes Machine Zone, Inc.'s copyright notice). If I had (hypothetically) been the person who copied MZ's copyrighted material into Wikipedia, that would have potentially caused me and Wikipedia to be infringing MZ's copyright. You should review WP:COICOPYRIGHT to more fully understand the problems that are raised if an actual representative of the copyright owner places copyrighted material into Wikipedia. Copyrighted material is not permitted on Wikipedia unless the copyright owner has expressly granted the required license. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 16:11, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

• Correction: the exact words do not appear on MZ.com, but they do appear here and here, and while those pages don't bear MZ's copyright notice, the material clearly was written by representatives of MZ and is used to market MZ for recruiting purposes. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 16:20, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

• @Lwarrenwiki: Thank you, I think the first paragraph does read better. I may propose additional edits as well. Also, because of the rebrand to "MZ," I believe that the references to "Machine Zone" throughout the article should be changed to "MZ" as that is now what the company calls itself. For historical reasons, I understand the need to refer to "Machine Zone" upfront and in the company's bio, but I believe the company should otherwise accurately be referred to as "MZ" throughout the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kenosplit (talk • contribs) 17:35, April 12, 2016 (UTC)

• @Kenosplit: "MZ" can consistently be used in the article when referring to events after the rebranding. The name of the corporation is still Machine Zone, Inc., and it is also accurate to continue using "Machine Zone" in the article, especially where the article refers to events prior to April 2016. MZ's current branding is duly noted in the first paragraph at the top of the article, and again in the concluding paragraph. I don't believe that today's branding and MZ's style preference would justify an attempt to retroactively rewrite history in the article's past references to "Machine Zone." Lwarrenwiki (talk) 18:32, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

• @Lwarrenwiki: I proposed some additional edits to the first paragraph to make it more accurate. Your descriptions were inaccurate in places and I wanted to fix those errors. Also, although I did not make the edit in the edits I just proposed, I absolutely think "Machine Zone" should be changed to "MZ" throughout the article. I understand referring to the company as "Machine Zone" in recounting the history of the business, but if the company now goes by "MZ," I believe it should be referred to as "MZ." It isn't intended to be promotional; that's the brand name of the company. One way to make the distinction easier, perhaps, is to split the history of the company section into a gaming section and into a real-time services section so that people understand that the company was associated with "Machine Zone" with regard to its games but as "MZ" with regard to its real-time services. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kenosplit (talk • contribs) 21:22, April 12, 2016 (UTC)

Edit request 1

• @Lwarrenwiki:, I have communicated with Jytdog and he has given his blessing for me to propose edits to this article. I would like to propose that we revert the changes he made to this article. As I think we can both agree, the changes he made essentially reverted the article back several months, ignoring Machine Zone's Epic War, LLC studio, Mobile Strike game, and RTplatform -- which only made the article outdated and inaccurate. He also reverted back the old logo and old website address, both of which should be updated. There are several articles we can cite to for these new products/services and the rebranding, and I am happy to include those cites once the language has been reverted back. Please let me know what you think. Thanks! Kenosplit (talk)

Please note that the edit was made a different editor - see here. not me. Jytdog (talk) 22:43, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

• @Kenosplit: The large reversion was made by JzG, a Wikipedia administrator – which means (among other things) that he's been granted administrative privileges that allow him to enforce the policies we've been discussing. (As far as I know, Jytdog isn't an administrator with blessings to give, just a very experienced and well-respected editor with considerable expertise in conflicts of interest.)

I believe your agreement not to edit content about Machine Zone yourself was the right decision. I hope you will understand that I don't believe your previous edits were acceptable under Wikipedia's policies. And because undoing JzG's changes would return the article to an unacceptable state, I have no intention of rolling back the edit that JzG made.

JzG removed much more of my writing than yours, and I don't take that personally. Knowing that an administrator has taken an interest in the article, I do expect that I will take another stab at expanding it in the near future, incrementally, by rewriting some of my previous contributions with even greater care to maintain the necessary neutral point of view, non-promotional tone, appropriate wording, and reliance on independent third-party sources to establish facts and notability.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a newspaper – and therefore, an article that is "outdated" about very recent developments is not as large a concern as you may think it should be. As it stands right now, the article is a short but satisfactory one that complies with Wikipedia's policies. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 03:33, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

• @Lwarrenwiki: I understand that Wikipedia is not a newspaper, but a lot of people look to Wikipedia for information about lots of different topics, and so I would hope that there is at least an attempt to make sure it is reasonably updated so as to not provide inaccurate or misleading information to people. I would appreciate updating this article sooner rather than later for that reason. And I understand that you may be very busy, which is why I have offered my assistance to update this article page. Unless you object, I would like to offer proposed edits with citations so we can make sure this page is as updated as possible. Kenosplit (talk)

• @Kenosplit: You would certainly be more than welcome to offer further proposed edits in that level of detail, and I believe the best place for you to put a proposed draft would be in a section of this Talk page, just as Jytdog suggests below. at a subpage under your user page. You can create a short-term userspace draft at User:Kenosplit/Machine Zone. That page obviously does not yet exist, but you may create it by clicking on the red link and adding temporary draft content there. At the very top, please put: {{userspace draft}} Lwarrenwiki (talk) 17:49, 15 April 2016 (UTC), rev. 18:45, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

No, the Talk page of the relevant article is the appropriate place to propose edits. Kenosplit, in Wikipedia there is no deadline, as I advised you on your Talk page. This is an encyclopedia, not the company's website - we aim to communicate to readers accepted knowledge here, not factoids or news. Please keep your work here in line with Wikipedia's mission and ways of doing things as much as possible. Machine Zone as a company is only of interest to WP as a player in the video game ecosystem, and the article should cover big points in the life of the company, not blow-by-blow and definitely not hype. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 18:32, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

@Kenosplit: I stand corrected — better to go with what Jytdog just said. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 18:35, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Edit request 2

Machine Zone, Inc. (MZ) is a privately held technology company, founded in 2008 and based in Palo Alto, California. Machine Zone is best known for its freemium mobile MMO strategy games Game of War: Fire Age and Mobile Strike, which both consistently rank among top-grossing mobile games.[1][2][3] Machine Zone's MMO strategy games are powered by Machine Zone's Realtime technology, which connects mobile ecosystems globally through concurrent data streams in real time.[4][5] In April 2016, Machine Zone rebranded itself as MZ and announced the launch of RTplatform, a cloud-based platform as a service that enables licensees to use Machine Zone's Realtime technology for their own simultaneous data exchange and real-time interaction between millions of endpoints.[6].

I also request that we update the old logo with the new logo. Thank you. Kenosplit (talk)

@Kenosplit: Your proposed first sentence is neutral in tone and verifiable, and I have no problem with it.

I believe your proposed second sentence is uncontroversial before the comma. The second half would be verifiable for specific years, but the word "consistently" goes too far (my fault!), and that word isn't supported by the cited sources.

Your proposed third sentence reads like marketing material, and the second half is entirely unsupported by the sources you cited.

Your proposed fourth sentence was my own work – so you'd probably think I'd be in favor of using it unchanged, but I'm afraid not. When my previous edits were deleted by JzG, I checked my work and recognized why he labeled this a "horrible article" in his edit note.

Let's talk a bit about sources. Notice that my recent edits have relied, as much as possible, on well-known journalistic sources: the Wall Street Journal, Businessweek, Forbes. Those are clearly reliable independent sources. Then there's a second tier of publications or websites, such as VentureBeat and Pocket Gamer, that may sometimes include their own reporting or analysis in a story, but at other times will merely echo back the content of your press releases, or will rely on quotes from your CEO for the story. Any statement made by MZ – whether it's in a press release, on your website, or in an article or interview that quotes your CEO's own words – is not going to be considered neutral unless it can be independently verified elsewhere.

When I wrote that fourth sentence, I was relying primarily on quotes from your CEO, and trying to reword them and synthesize them into a neutrally-phrased version with less marketing-speak. You previously stated that I didn't get it quite right; the fact is, I should never have made the attempt. If it's not reported independently by a reliable source, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 05:14, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

• @Kenosplit: Also, you used the phrase "Machine Zone's Realtime technology" twice. That is not an acceptable phrase, for several reasons. The capitalized term Realtime either (1) has the same meaning as "real time," in which case we should say "real time," or (2) means something else, and there's no neutral source that tells us the significant difference between "Realtime" and "real time." The possessive "Machine Zone's" is also a problem. That little apostrophe is making a big statement that MZ has a proprietary ownership right, not just in its code and its servers, but in something larger, something amorphous that's so broad it has to be called a technology. As marketing language, it's very good writing, but it is far from neutral or independently verifiable. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 18:07, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

My rewrite to the second sentence is close to the borderline of sounding promotional, but I carefully chose every word to avoid promotion, puffery, or undue weight. "Best known for" is logically linked to "widely advertised," and the cited source supports that. The borderline-factoid about the two products is justified because it is limited to a verifiable and noteworthy statistical/financial fact – "highest-grossing" is not an opinion, such as "top ten games" would be – and it causes that sentence to be a complete and satisfactory answer to one of the likely questions that an unfamiliar reader would have at that point: "What's so notable about this company and the two games that were mentioned?" Lwarrenwiki (talk) 15:51, 17 April 2016 (UTC), rev. 16:05, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Page move from Machine Zone to MZ (company)

@Sphilbrick: I'm not sure whether you realized that your bold page move wasn't uncontroversial. I'd like it to be reverted, and hopefully we can reach consensus on doing that. Here are a few reasons why I think the page should have remained at Machine Zone:

1. A previous request to reflect the recent rebranding in this article came from the known sockpuppeteer Kenosplit, a COI editor working for the company. It had no other supporters.
2. The rebranding is a marketing decision, which is reflected in the press release you cited. It's not an actual name change. It's still Machine Zone, Inc. - that's the company's name, and it hasn't changed. It's used on everything that isn't promotional in nature, to identify the company unambiguously.
3. The brand MZ is adequately identified by your expansion to the article, and in the infobox field "Brands." That's exactly what the infobox field is for.
4. As the primary article on the company, Machine Zone requires no disambiguation.

Would you have serious objections to reverting the move? Thanks. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 15:27, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I have serious objections. It will take me a few minutes to summarize them.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:40, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

As you are almost certainly aware, we do have a problem with COI editors. In many cases it is an understandable ignorance of our rules in the mistaken belief that someone associated with the company is in a better position to provide content than someone who is unconnected to the company. It is quite appropriate for us to revert edits made by COI editors. However, that reversion is proper because the edit was made in technical violation of a rule, but it does not make the content of the edit necessarily incorrect. We can debate the appropriate name for this organization but the fact that a COI edit was reverted is irrelevant to the discussion.

Of course the rebranding is a marketing decision. Wikipedia has to be very careful to make sure we aren't used as part of a marketing plan. For example, it is not uncommon for a company making some change to attempt to coordinate the announcement in various social media simultaneously. They often include Wikipedia in this group, not fully understanding the distinction between Wikipedia and other types of social media. Had the request for the name change occurred on the day of the rebranding, I would've rejected it. We are not going to be part of a marketing campaign. However, once a rebranding has occurred, if it is picked up by reliable sources, we should reflect what is reported by the reliable sources.

Per WP:COMMONNAME, we do not necessarily use the legal name for an organization. There are many thousands of examples of articles where we've chosen a commonly understood general name for a corporation rather than the legal name in their incorporation papers.

If this organization wants to be known as MZ and if reliable sources are accepting that name we should follow. I haven't done an exhaustive review of the literature; I have no doubt that at this point in time more will refer to Mountain zone then MZ but that's because the name change is relatively recent. If we can find that a preponderance of reliable sources discussing this organization after the name change are still using the old change that will sway my view.

The disambiguation issue is obviously dependent on the choice of name. We cannot use simply MZ because that's a disambiguation page so I chose MZ (company). If the consensus is that the name should remain as Mountain zone than know disambiguation is needed but if the consensus is that MZ should be the name and we do need to address disambiguation.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:55, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the response. In view of the points you made, and seeing as how you're an admin, I'll leave it alone and let the matter rest. If future events do result in the conditions that you mentioned, I'll reopen discussion here. (That is, if reliable sources continue using "Machine Zone," or if other editors indicate enough support for "Machine Zone" to call it a consensus for that name.) Lwarrenwiki (talk) 16:35, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

• That is, if more reliable sources follow the lead of CNBC, which used "Machine Zone" (not MZ) throughout this article dated today. (I'll be expanding the page shortly, using this source.) Lwarrenwiki (talk) 16:49, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

The fact that I'm an admin should carry zero weight in the discussion. Let's see what the sources say.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:32, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. And I'm sorry, but I've got to at least ask this question, given the history of COI editing on this page: since the logo change was based on an OTRS ticket, were those edits done on behalf of a source with a COI that ought to be disclosed? Lwarrenwiki (talk) 17:42, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

And since you say, "Had the request for the name change occurred on the day of the rebranding, I would've rejected it," would no similar concern be raised by changes on the same day that they know their CEO is getting prominent exposure from a one-on-one interview on CNBC's Squawk Box, a financial news source of some importance to venture-funded companies? (That kind of publicity doesn't happen for this company every day.) Lwarrenwiki (talk) 18:36, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

I am sure I have handled over 100 requests sent in to OTRS for an update to a logo. My guess is that every single one of them came from a company representative. We want people who have a conflict of interest to avoid writing text in an article, because even the best intentioned editor has a bias and that bias may be reflected in their preferred text. I would even discourage representatives of organizations from directly adding images for similar reasons, they might be particularly interested in flattering images that may or may not be the best choice of a neutral editor. However, when it comes to a logo, there is no editorial judgment. A logo either is or is not the logo of the organization. For that reason, I would see absolutely no problem with a company representative updating the logo in an article. The fact that it is a common request at OTRS is that while company representatives know their logos, they are typically unfamiliar with our fair use rationale forms, so it is easier for me to fill them out than to explain to them how to do it. However, if they do manage to do it, I cannot imagine how this would be a violation.

Regarding the timing I don't see the comparison. I said I would reject the name change on the day of the rebranding, because almost by definition, that new brand has not yet been reflected in independent reliable sources. We want to wait until it is, which it has been. I was unaware that their CEO was on some show but I don't see how that is relevant to whether the name has been reported in reliable independent publications.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:22, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

• fwiw I think the move was fine. The company changed its name. People will still be able to find it via the redirect that was left after the move. Jytdog (talk) 21:02, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

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Split proposed

@Ranze: I agree with your suggestion that a new article could be created for Mobile Strike. The editor who creates it would need to do more than just split the section, because there's not much in this section about Mobile Strike. Splitting would result in no more than a stub. For that reason, perhaps after giving it a few weeks reasonable time to attract attention, I'd like to remove the {{Split portions}} template and leave a redlink to Mobile Strike, which would continue to indicate that the suggested article has potential and does not yet exist, without the disruption to the flow of the MZ article. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 18:56, 7 September 2016 (UTC), rev. 20:05, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't think this article is so long that a split is useful. Jytdog (talk) 19:16, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

The matter could also be addressed, very easily, by creating Mobile Strike as a redirect to this article. If somebody later wants to expand the redirect into an article about Mobile Strike, they can do that. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 20:00, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Per WP:SPLIT this should happen organically; the content here a) becomes very big, and b) would work as a standalone, and so it gets SPLIT and the lead is copied back here, to keep the child and parent in WP:SYNC. Nobody should just write the Mobile Strike article from scratch, really... Jytdog (talk) 20:27, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

news

the following was added here and edit-warred back in here:

It violates WP:NOTNEWS and is trivia. Not to mention violating WP:RELTIME in style. There is no "today" in WP as there are no datelines.

A California appeals court ruled Glassdoor Inc. doesn’t have to disclose the identity of a job reviewer who’d written about game maker Machine Zone Inc., saying Friday the trial court’s finding that the review revealed trade secrets was wrong and reminiscent of a Kafka novel.

References

-- Jytdog (talk) 21:23, 15 April 2017 (UTC)