Talk:References:Marc Laidlaw emails/Unverified
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I sent an email to Marc Laidlaw asking if he's aware of the YouTube series Freeman's Mind. How do I prove that it's real so that I can add it to this page? — Unsigned comment by CPFreeman
- You may forward the email you received from Marc to one of us on the administration team. The wiki's email is combineoverwikitv@gmail.com. Marphy (talk) 12:47, 28 July 2017 (MSK)
The thing about the Half-Life movie and Vortigaunt reuniting with their loved ones comes from an old interview, not an email. This has already been noted on the Vortigaunt's page, and should be changed to reflect as such. — Unsigned comment by 73.225.156.74
More Articles mistaken for Emails[edit]
Found more "emails" that were really just interview quotes.
-"On the Xen Crystal" was taken from a interview with loonygames. Notably, was already cited on the Xen Crystal page.
-The commentary on "Killing Eli," "Breen's last words," "Story-Telling In" and "Nature of" the Episodes came from a interview with Halflife2.net (now ValveTime.co.uk. It seems they removed their interviews from the website at some point, or I just failed to find them on the current layout).
-"Cut Characters," "Old ideas," and "On Gordon Freeman" were sourced from a Computer And Video Games interview, part of it already cited on the Female Scientist page.
-The first "email" under "On the expansion packs" (second seems to be proper fan mail, or forgery), and all of "Narrative structure, game-play and emotional impact" appears to come from an Gamasutra article, one I can't access through the Wayback Machine atm, but I found an old ValveTime thread archiving it right here.
-"...Story of the Episodes" is quoted from Erik Johnson, not Laidlaw, and was stated in this IGN interview.
-"Changes between Half-Life 1 and 2," "Characters versus caricatures," "Development and Goals of Alyx," and "Design of Gordon Freeman" are retrieved from the April 2010 issue of Edge Magazine (#213). Later re-posted on Gamesradar.
-"...White Forest" originated in yet another Computer And Video Games article, and was previously used as a citation on the respective page.
-"The inspirations and character development for Gordon," (not to be confused with the similarly named two above!) "Fan Works," "Concepts for Half-Life 2" and "Iterating Ravenholm" were all taken from this interview with New Rising Media, and yet again was a bit from these "emails" used as a citation elsewhere on this wiki, this time regarding the Leather suit.
-"On Xen and beyond" was actually said by Lombardi, not Marc, in yet another Computer and Video Games interview. Some correspondence from The ValveTime Forums had Marc further clarify these statements, but they're unreliable without further verification.
It's possible there's some more quotes from these articles that line up with this page I missed, I would hazard a guess there are even more article quotes "mistaken" for emails here I didn't find. Some of these really read like parts of a interview as supposed to casual email exchange. Be best to move them to citations in appropriate pages. There's some other informative bits in these interviews that isn't replicated elsewhere on the wiki, it'd be a waste to see them gone.
In regards to the main source of these quotes, the 2012 SPUF thread was a successor to a 2009 thread with the same purpose, only by a user who was later banned from the community. I believe this is the source of the forged emails. Reading other posts from the 2009 OP on their own thread, they way they talk matches the tone of a lot of the less convincing sounding Laidlaw "emails", especially in regards to how they carry a self-important tone to their answers about Half-Life Lore. Sometimes they (the OP, not "Laidlaw") answer questions brought up in that thread like their word on the lore is god, but never give a single source. A lot of the weirder emails (I.E. Talking like GMan, really?) were only posted in the 2009 Post and nowhere else, not even by other users on that thread. Pretty fishy.
The thread itself was based on this 2006 HL2.net/ValveTime thread, which was a collection of emails posted on it and similar threads (like this one) and occasionally from other websites. You can find sources for a lot of the older emails on the ValveTime forums ("sources" as in the earliest time they were reposted to the internet, and not necessarily by the person who talked to Laidlaw in the first place, or even if they were real at all), and a few on the steam threads. From there, it would appear the 2009 OP initially added in everything the 2004 thread missed, and, for whatever reason, added a bunch of random interview quotes to make their fake emails more legitimate. I don't know if there was anybody else in on this (wouldn't shock me), but I think we have a patient zero for the forged emails. Not that we shouldn't keep relying on forwarded emails for verification, I just feel it's something to note for myself and others researching this odd topic.
Lastly, does anyone have the original tweet from Laidlaw that brought attention to this in the first place? The original tweet was deleted with the rest of his twitter, and I can't find it archived, even with the Wayback Machine. I recall him calling out one "email" in particular in the replies. Thanks! (P.S. I'll register an account before editing next time.) --73.225.156.74 03:35, 14 September 2024 (MSK)
- Thanks for collecting this information! I should note that the sheer inadequacies of this unverified emails page are very well known as the original page was simply a collection of everything posted in the Marc Laidlaw Vault threads from the old SPUF, hence not necessarily emails to begin with, which were then split between verified and unverified email correspondence after Marc noted the fake messages. The majority of the efforts since the split has been on the verified emails page, for obvious reasons, but a full cleanup endeavor has always been meant for this unverified "emails" page too, albeit long overdue. There's still an immense amount of work to do, but for now, I've removed the non-emails you've noted and temporarily placed them in this holding page for reference: Talk:References:Marc Laidlaw emails/Unverified/Not emails
- Regarding the almost certainly forged emails, the one Marc specifically pointed out on Twitter was to someone named "Brad". I forget which one he specifically referred to, but there were multiple purported emails which mentioned Brad by name, and I marked all of the "Brad" emails at the time here.
- If you see any currently cited tweet from Marc Laidlaw on the wiki that lacks a link to an archived version, then know that there simply isn't any archive available. A pass was done on his tweets after his (multiple) account deletions, and unfortunately some just weren't saved by any archival tools. The tweet cited here on this unverified emails page was added by me, so it's confirmed in the sense that an administrator explicitly witnessed its existence at one point, but there are no independent archives available for this particular message. Marphy (talk) 18:42, 15 September 2024 (MSK)
